RFP: Really cool language now released as open source: Q'Nial

[Jon Roland]

Yes, the name is Q'Nial. That's not a typo. NIAL stands for Nested Interactive 
Array Language, and the Q stands for Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, where 
it was developed by Mike Jenkins and others in 1982, In 1982 I ported it to run on 
the Fortune 32:16, then the leading Unix desktop machine on the market, which I 
was retailing.

If you are interested in computer languages, go to http://www.nial.com/ and 
download the binaries and documents, or even the source and compile it.

I am recommending it be packaged and added to some of the repositories for the 
convenience of those who would like to try it out.

It is not just an academic language. It explores what is called array theory, an 
alternative theory of mathematics to set theory (think of it as set theory with 
more structure). But I have used it to analyze and solve several kinds of advanced 
problems, involving graphs, queues, etc. It has been used by NASA to help design 
the Space Station. It's widespread use has been held back by the lack of a 
compiler, but now that it is released as open source that will hopefully be done. 
We could also use a GUI front end and integration with an IDE. I am looking at 
doing that with Eclipse.

Nial is a functional language that can be thought of as a couple of steps beyond 
such languages as APL, LISP and Prolog, among others. It is especially promising 
for AI applications.

Simple instruction: After downloading and unzipping the binaries, you launch it 
from the command line by just executing ./nial. You will then get a message

making the initial workspace

and you are in the interpreter. To see it is working just key in

	1 + 1 <enter>
2
	
You just enter expressions and hit enter to execute them and display the results. 
There is also a folder containing several sample programs, each of which has an 
.ndf extension.


-- Jon

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