FOIL (programming language): Difference between revisions

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{{about|programming languages|other types of foil|Foil (disambiguation)}}

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'''FOIL''' was the name for two different [[programming language]]s.

==CAI style language==

The first '''FOIL''' was a [[Computer-assisted language learning|CAI]] [[programming language|language]] developed at the [[University of Michigan]] in 1967.<ref name="g665">{{cite book | last=Land | first=E. de | title=Information Technology in Health Science Education | publisher=Springer Science & Business Media | date=2013-11-11 | isbn=978-1-4684-2460-7 | url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Information_Technology_in_Health_Science/9d7cBwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=FOIL+programming+language++CAI+language+1967+michigan&pg=PA517&printsec=frontcover | access-date=2025-07-22 | page=517}}</ref> The acronym stood for File-Oriented Interpretive Language and it was very similar to other [[Computer-assisted language learning|CAI]] languages like [[COURSEWRITER]] and [[PILOT]]. However, it tried to make the language somewhat block-structured using whitespace which ended up making the language vaguely similar to [[BASIC]] or [[ABC (programming language)|ABC]].

===Example===

<pre><nowiki>

:START COUNT=0

TY Enter the number of times you want to repeat the statement:

ACCEPT

MAX=NUMBER.(1)

:LOOP

TY This loop has run #COUNT times it will terminate when it runs #MAX times

IF COUNT<MAX,

COUNT=COUNT+1

GO TO :LOOP

TY Do you want to do this again?

ACCEPT

IF 'yes', GO TO START

IF 'no' GO TO FINISH

:FINISH

TY Goodbye!

STOP

</nowiki></pre>

==References==

{{Reflist}}

==Music generation language==

The second '''FOIL''' was a music generation language for the Touché computer instrument in 1979. The Touché was a keyboard that had digital tone generation and allowed you to program software for performances. The acronym stood for Far Out Instrument Language and was succeeded by MetaFOIL and FOIL-83. The language was developed by [[David Rosenboom]] and was based on [[Forth (programming language)|Forth]].