Snowball (programming language): Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|String processing programming language}}

'''Snowball''' is a small string-handling [[programming language]] whose name was chosen as a tribute to the [[SNOBOL programming language]], with which it shares the concept of string patterns delivering signals that are used to control the flow of the program.

{{distinguish|SNOBOL}}

{{Primary sources|date=March 2020}}

{{Update|inaccurate=yes|updated=September 2014|date=April 2021}}

'''Snowball''' is a small string processing [[programming language]] designed for creating [[stemming]] algorithms for use in [[information retrieval]].<ref name=Snowball-HomePage>[http://snowball.tartarus.org/ "Snowball"], Martin Porter, web page. Retrieved 2 September 2014.</ref>

The creator of Snowball, Dr. [[Martin Porter]], ''" toyed with the idea of calling it ‘strippergram’"'', because it ''"effectively provides a ‘suffix STRIPPER GRAMmar’"'' (see the homepage). In an amusing coincidence, the [[SNOBOL programming language]] was originally named '''SEXI''' - ''String EXpression Interpreter.''<ref>[http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2008/12/sort/time_rev/page/1/entry/0:180/20081226091150:1B4F85B0-D357-11DD-ABF7-AB09AB975BFC/ WORTH READING Wikipedia entry on SNOBOL -- the TRUE story NOT Wikipedias] (Dave Farber, Interesting People mailing list, 26 December 2008)</ref>

The name Snowball was chosen as a tribute to the [[SNOBOL]] programming language, "with which it shares the concept of string patterns delivering signals that are used to control the flow of the program."<ref name=":0" /> The creator of Snowball, [[Martin Porter|Dr. Martin Porter]], "toyed with the idea of calling it 'strippergram,'" because it "effectively provides a 'suffix STRIPPER GRAMmar.'"<ref name=Snowball-HomePage/>

The basic [[datatype]]s handled by Snowball are strings of characters, signed integers, and boolean [[truth value]]s, or more simply strings, integers and booleans. Snowball's characters are either 8-bit wide, or 16-bit, depending on the mode of use. In particular, both 8-bit [[ASCII]] and 16-bit [[Unicode]] are supported.

The Snowball [[compiler]] translates a Snowball script (an .sbl file) into program in [[thread safety|thread-safe]] [[ANSI C]], [[Java (programming language)|Java]], Ada, C#, Go, [[JavaScript|Javascript]], [[Object Pascal]], Python or Rust.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Porter |first=Martin |title=Snowball: Quick introduction |url=http://snowball.tartarus.org/texts/quickintro.html |access-date=May 4, 2025}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite web |date=March 27, 2025 |title=Snowball README |url=https://github.com/snowballstem/snowball# |access-date=May 4, 2025}}</ref> For ANSI C, each Snowball script produces a program file and corresponding header file (with .c and .h extensions).<ref name=":1" /> The Snowball compiler checks the consistency of its script, and this check was used to discover a [[typo]] in a seminal academic paper by [[Julie Beth Lovins|Lovins]] which had remained undetected for 30 years.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://snowball.tartarus.org/algorithms/lovins/festschrift.html|title=Lovins revisited|website=snowball.tartarus.org |author1=Martin Porter |access-date=6 August 2024 |date=December 2001}}</ref>

==See also==

* [[SNOBOL]]

* [[Stemming]]

The basic [[datatype]]s handled by Snowball are strings of characters, signed integers, and boolean [[truth value]]s, or more simply strings, integers and booleans. Snowball's characters are either 8-bit wide, or 16-bit, depending on the mode of use. In particular, both [[ASCII]] and [[UTF-16|16-bit Unicode]] are supported.<ref name=":0" /> Like the [[SNOBOL programming language]], the flow of control in Snowball is arranged by the implicit use of signals (each statement returns a true or false value), rather than the explicit use of constructs such as if, then, and break found in [[C (programming language)|C]] and many other programming languages.<ref name=":0">[http://snowball.tartarus.org/compiler/snowman.html "Snowball Manual"], Martin Porter, web page. Retrieved 2 September 2014.</ref>

==References==

Though the original [http://snowball.tartarus.org/ Snowball website] maintained by Dr. Martin Porter and colleague Richard Boulton has been closed since 2014 following Dr. Porter’s retirement,<ref name="Snowball-HomePage" /><ref name=":2" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Porter |first=Martin |title=Snowball - Credits |url=http://snowball.tartarus.org/credits.html |access-date=May 4, 2025}}</ref> the site itself is still accessible, and the language continues to be developed as [https://github.com/snowballstem a community project on GitHub].<ref name="Snowball-HomePage" /><ref name=":2" /> Additionally, large projects like the [[Natural Language Toolkit|Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK)]] for Python employ Snowball along with stemming algorithms designed by Dr. Porter and other contributors to the Snowball language.<ref>{{Cite web |title=nltk.stem.SnowballStemmer Documentation |url=https://www.nltk.org/api/nltk.stem.SnowballStemmer.html |access-date=May 4, 2025 |website=Natural Language Toolkit}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Source code for nltk.stem.snowball |url=https://www.nltk.org/_modules/nltk/stem/snowball.html |access-date=May 4, 2025 |website=Natural Language Toolkit}}</ref>

==References==

{{reflist}}

== External links ==

* {{official website|snowballstem.org}}

*[http://snowball.tartarus.org/ Snowball homepage]

* [https://github.com/snowballstem Snowball Stemming language and algorithms project] on GitHub

* [https://github.com/snowballstem/snowball/blob/master/algorithms/porter.sbl Porter Stemmer in Snowball]

{{compu-lang-stub}}

[[Category:Experimental programming languages]]

[[Category:Text-oriented programming languages]]

[[Category:SNOBOL programming language family]]

{{compu-lang-stub}}