FOR NEW USERS: A TASTE OF POP-11

Pop-11 is a rich and complex language with many subtle features. However it has a very easily learnt subset, which is very close to what can be found in many other programming languages.

Readers who have access to a Poplog system and who wish to get a feel for the langauge should obtain the "TEACH GSTART" file from the Birmingham University ftp site

    ftp://ftp.cs.bham.ac.uk/pub/dist/poplog/teach/gstart

For those who are not able to run Pop-11 here are some illustrations of what would happen if you could.

The symbol "=>", known as the "print arrow" is used to print "results" left on the stack by preceding Pop-11 expressions. Lines starting "**" are printed out by the print, arrow. In a few cases, the output overflows to the following lines. Those cases should be clear. Everything else is input. ";;;" precedes an end of line comment, ignored by the compiler.

The Pop-11 compiler is incremental (like most Lisp, Basic, and Prolog systems) which means that you can give a succession of commands as illustrated below. Each command is compiled to machine code then run. (It is not interpreted.) The commands may either be typed directly to the compiler or given to the compiler through the Poplog editor VED, or some other editor, e.g. Emacs.

Examples follow.

;;; Put some integers, decimals, a word, a string and a list on the
;;; Pop-11 stack and print them out.
1, 2, 3, 99.9, 105.0035, "cat", 'a string', [a list] =>
** 1 2 3 99.9 105.0035 cat a string [a list]

;;; Declare three variables, one initialised, and do some calculations:
vars radius = 10, circumference, area;
2*pi*radius -> circumference;
pi*(radius**2) -> area;
[The circumference is ^circumference and the area is ^area] =>
** [The circumference is 62.8319 and the area is 314.159]

;;; Define a procedure to create a palindrome from a list

define palindrome(list) -> result;
    ;;; This procedure takes one input and returns one result
    ;;; take in a list, append the reverse of the list
    list <> rev(list) -> result;
enddefine;

;;; test it
palindrome([a b c d e]) =>
** [a b c d e e d c b a]

palindrome([[the cat][sat on][the mat]])=>
** [[the cat] [sat on] [the mat] [the mat] [sat on] [the cat]]

;;; Use the Pop-11 pattern matcher to define a procedure to
;;; report associations expressed as "key value" pairs in a list
;;; of associations.

;;; set up an association list
vars person =
    [name fred age 30 job butcher wife sally kids [sue tom]];

define association(item, list) -> result;
    ;;; If something follows item in list, return it,
    ;;; otherwise return false. Declare "found" as a pattern variable;
    vars found;
    if list matches [== ^item ?found ==] then
        found -> result
    else
        false -> result
    endif
enddefine;

;;; Test it

association("name", person) =>
** fred

association("wife", person) =>
** sally

association("kids", person) =>
** [sue tom]

;;; And, of course, a recursive definition of factorial, showing
;;; the "functional" programming style, without output variables
define fact(x);
    if x == 0 then 1
    else
        fact(x - 1) * x
    endif
enddefine;

;;; test it
fact(6) =>
** 720

;;; Pop-11 has unlimited precision integers. A 'small' example:
fact(200) =>
** 788657867364790503552363213932185062295135977687173263294742533244359
   449963403342920304284011984623904177212138919638830257642790242637105
   061926624952829931113462857270763317237396988943922445621451664240254
   033291864131227428294853277524242407573903240321257405579568660226031
   904170324062351700858796178922222789623703897374720000000000000000000
   000000000000000000000000000000

;;; Check that the results are correct (under a second on a Sun IPX)
fact(1000)/fact(999)=>
** 1000

;;; And complex numbers, with a real part and an imaginary part
vars i = sqrt( -1 );
i =>
** 0.0_+:1.0

i * i =>
** -1.0_+:0.0

;;; cross type equality works:
i * i = -1 =>
** <true>

;;; And ratios, with numerator and denominator

66/48 =>
** 11_/8