History of the Icon programming language

  • Authors:
  • Ralph E. Griswold;Madge T. Griswold

  • Affiliations:
  • Madge;-

  • Venue:
  • HOPL-II The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages
  • Year:
  • 1993

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Abstract

The Icon programming language, which was conceived in 1977, was strongly influenced by the earlier SNOBOL languages and the subsequent SL5. This paper concentrates primarily on the early development of Icon, but also discusses subsequent versions. The motivation, design philosophy, and environmental factors that shaped Icon are emphasized in this paper.