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{{Short description|String processing programming language}}
{{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 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,'
The Snowball compiler translates a Snowball script (a .sbl file) into either a [[thread safety|thread-safe]] [[ANSI C]] program or a [[Java (programming language)|Java]] program. For ANSI C, each Snowball script produces a program file and corresponding header file (with .c and .h extensions).<ref>[http://snowball.tartarus.org/texts/quickintro.html "Snowball: Quick introduction"], Martin Porter, web page. Retrieved 2 September 2014.</ref> The Snowball compiler checks the consistency of its script, and this check was used to discover a [[typo]] in a seminal academic paper by Lovins which had remained undetected for 30 years.<ref>http://snowball.tartarus.org/algorithms/lovins/festschrift.html</ref>▼
▲The Snowball [[compiler]] translates a Snowball script (
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. 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>[http://snowball.tartarus.org/compiler/snowman.html "Snowball Manual"], Martin Porter, web page. Retrieved 2 September 2014.</ref>▼
▲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>
▲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. 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/>
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 ==
{{compu-lang-stub}}▼
* {{official website|snowballstem.org}}
* [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]
[[Category:Experimental programming languages]]
[[Category:Text-oriented programming languages]]
[[Category:SNOBOL programming language family]]
▲{{compu-lang-stub}}
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