Re: Pattern matching

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

<<The latest version of GNAT, 3.10p, includes a package to do SNOBOL style
pattern matching.  If you're not using GNAT, you could always download the
source and use just that package with your compiler (I think).>>

Provided that the compiler you use implements Unrestricted_Access in a manner
identical to the implementation in GNAT, that may be true, although a fair
amount of hacking would be required even then (and I suspect that in fact
only GNAT can compile this package). These packages were written with no
attempt to be cross-platform portable, and they rely on the use of
UnrestrictedAccess in a fundfamental manner at the interface.

So for practical purposes, I suspect that these packages are in practice
GNAT specific. 

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies.

P.S. the language is SNOBOL 4, not plain SNOBOL, and indeed it is probably
better to refer to this as SPITBOL style pattern matching anyway. As usual,
the documentation is found in the relevant g-*.ads files. Note that in
addition to full pattern matching capabilities, these packages also
provide associative array capabilities (like Table in SPITBOL).