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Snowball (programming language)
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<p>Snowball is a small string processing <a href="/facts/Programming_language/cWTYbgWa">programming language</a> designed for creating <a href="/facts/Stemming/lqtKp4X7">stemming</a> algorithms for use in <a href="/facts/Information_retrieval/MFSmpeNw">information retrieval</a>. </p><p>The name Snowball was chosen as a tribute to the <a href="/facts/SNOBOL/cdF7ezMJ">SNOBOL</a> programming language, with which it shares the concept of string patterns delivering signals that are used to control the flow of the program. The creator of Snowball, <a href="/facts/Martin_Porter/HxQSxLsT">Dr. Martin Porter</a>, "toyed with the idea of calling it 'strippergram'", because it "effectively provides a 'suffix STRIPPER GRAMmar'". </p><p>The Snowball compiler translates a Snowball script (a .sbl file) into program in <a href="/facts/Thread_safety/fx3ULqUw">thread-safe</a> <a href="/facts/ANSI_C/rPKeEuPm">ANSI C</a>, <a href="/facts/Java_(programming_language)/9ScgFyAL">Java</a>, Ada, C#, Go, Javascript, Object Pascal, Python or Rust. For ANSI C, each Snowball script produces a program file and corresponding header file (with .c and .h extensions). The Snowball compiler checks the consistency of its script, and this check was used to discover a <a href="/facts/Typo/sv95N3Gr">typo</a> in a seminal academic paper by <a href="/facts/Julie_Beth_Lovins/SfklBcMT">Lovins</a> which had remained undetected for 30 years. </p><p>The basic <a href="/facts/Datatype/fcx5hgVL">datatypes</a> handled by Snowball are strings of characters, signed integers, and boolean <a href="/facts/Truth_value/SY4e2w8l">truth values</a>, or more simply strings, integers and booleans. Snowball's characters are either 8-bit wide, or 16-bit, depending on the mode of use. In particular, both <a href="/facts/ASCII/vGUI33Qu">ASCII</a> and <a href="/facts/UTF-16/ofSmbCem">16-bit Unicode</a> are supported. Like the <a href="/facts/SNOBOL_programming_language/cdF7ezMJ">SNOBOL programming language</a>, the flow of control in Snowball is arranged by the implicit use of signals (each statement returns a true or false value), rather than the explicit use of constructs such as if, then, and break found in <a href="/facts/C_(programming_language)/Ky2No763">C</a> and many other programming languages. </p>