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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