Use of barrel in applications studies

Abstract

Barrel is a language-development facility, whose conceptual and theoretical bases are outlined in a companion paper. The present paper attempts to describe applications of Barrel and usages of it, on the Data General Eclipse, mostly, but also on the DEC Vax 11/750.The studies in which Barrel has been applied are primarly non-numerical. An attempt is being made to develop strong capabilities in both string and list processing. An important newer form of computation: that of logic processing is being watched with some facilities for it being included in the work.Four components of Barrel are described: BMAC, basic facilities providing an interpreter with some rudimentary compiler features, reminiscent of interactive Basic; BICON, delivering string processing facilities modeled after the new string-processing language, ICON; BLISP, a (functional programming) subset of LISP; BTPS, a table-processing system which links to other (network based) table-processing software. The components operate interactively, line-by-line or in larger units of code.