Snowball (programming language): Difference between revisions

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'''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 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 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 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/>