2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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INTERCAL
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/int@rkal/ , n. [said by the authors to stand for Compiler Language With No
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Pronounceable Acronym ] A computer language designed by Don Woods and James
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Lyons in 1972. INTERCAL is purposely different from all other computer
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languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written language, being
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totally unspeakable. An excerpt from the INTERCAL Reference Manual will make
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the style of the language clear: It is a well-known and oft-demonstrated
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fact that a person whose work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem.
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For example, if one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of
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65536 in a 32-bit INTERCAL variable is: DO:1 -#0$#256 any sensible
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programmer would say that that was absurd. Since this is indeed the simplest
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method, the programmer would be made to look foolish in front of his boss,
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who would of course have happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do. The
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effect would be no less devastating for the programmer having been correct.
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INTERCAL has many other peculiar features designed to make it even more
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unspeakable. The Woods-Lyons implementation was actually used by many (well,
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at least several) people at Princeton. The language has been recently
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reimplemented as C-INTERCAL and is consequently enjoying an unprecedented
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level of unpopularity; there is even an alt.lang.intercal newsgroup devoted
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to the study and. .. appreciation of the language on Usenet. Inevitably,
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INTERCAL has a home page on the Web: http://www.catb.org/~esr/intercal/. An
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extended version, implemented in (what else?) Perl and adding
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object-oriented features, is rumored to exist. See also Befunge.
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