The SNOBOL3 Programming Language

SNOBOL3 is a programming language designed for the manipulation of strings. Features of the language include symbolic naming of strings and pattern matching. In addition to a basic set of primitive string-valued functions, the system includes the facility for defining functions. These defined functions facilitate the programming of recursive procedures. This paper presents an intuitive description of SNOBOL3 and at the same time incorporates complete reference material for the programmer. The implementation of SNOBOL3 for the IBM 7094 computer operating under BE-SYS-7 is the basis for this description, but most of the material is common to all implementations.