Information Processing Language: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:33, 14 October 2021

Revision as of 06:47, 2 January 2022

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== Legacy to computer programming ==

IPL arguably introduced several programming language features:

* ''List manipulation''—but only lists of atoms, not general lists.

* ''Property lists''—but only when attached to other lists.

* ''Higher-order functions''—except that—while assembly programming hashad always beenallowed ablecomputing towith compute withthe addresses of functions to call;, IPL was an early attempt to generalize this property of assembly language and in a principled way

* ''Computation with symbols''—except—though thatsymbols thehave symbolsa arerestricted form in IPL (letter+number, notfollowed fullby words.number)

* ''Virtual machine''.

Many of these features were generalized, rationalized, and incorporated into Lisp<ref>[http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/node2.html John McCarthy (1979) ''History of Lisp'' "LISP prehistory - Summer 1956 through Summer 1958."]</ref> and from there into many other programming languages during the next several decades.