Subject: TRAC-64

From: [email-masked] (Henry Lowengard)
Date: 21 Jan 1994 12:28:57 -0500

Hi folks:
    On my college's PDP/8 running TSS/8 we had a language known as
STRING which was really a version of TRAC-64. We also had source for this
and I was wondering if either of these things has appereared. I made
my own adaptation (I think) called FADEN - just so people wouldn't know what I was doing.

   TRAC code looks like this:
     #(DS,F,#(ML,ARG,4))'
     #(SS,F,ARG)'
     #(F,6)' 24
etc. 
  sort of a cross between FORTH and LISP. I actually wrote my own variant
of this on the MOSS/AMORAL system for NORD-10 (Norwegian) computer in 
Oslo in 1976. (?!) My version was easier to read and was called
MOTHBOL. MOTHBOL had some very weird ways of making temporary
variables (there is no stack in TRAC or MOTHBOL - the text itself is
continuously interpreted and substituted). Also, real TRAC has an
arbitrary precision math (integer) package as a default!
    and: I recently came across my one surviving paper tape from 20
years ago. perhaps I'll transcribe it and run it through the emulator!
(Lots of spare time on my hands?)
        jhhl

-- 
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| jhhl   @panix.com    Henry Lowengard     43 W16 #2D NYC 10011-6320 USA    |
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From: [email-masked] (Larry Luther)
Date: 25 Jan 1994 05:41:20 GMT

> (Lots of spare time on my hands?)

    You didn't do justice to TRAC by comparing it to Forth and Lisp.
Its elegance is comparable but TRAC and GPM are general purpose macro
processors.  TRAC was used as a preprocessor for the rendering software
used on Digital Productions Cray XMP.  It is quite interesting.  I first
came accross it at school where I implemented it on a PDP 11/20.  It
only took about 900 instructions.

Larry Luther
[email-masked]