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List of Names
Short Form
Full Form
- Lucid
- Language type:
P - Parallel or Multi-programming
- Description:
Lucid is a dataflow programming language
designed to experiment with non-VonNeumann
programming models. It has fundamentally
different semantics from a language like C
or Lisp: in Lucid the programmer defines
filters or transformation functions that
act on time-varying data streams.
Lucid supported a very small set of data
types: integers, reals, and symbols.
The syntax of Lucid was deliberately design
to be unusual and different, to prevent
programmers from applying procedural-programming
habits that might be inapplicable, and
to sustain the illustion of data flows
as infinite objects.
Lucid also employed several techniques
from functional programming: lack of
side effects, and lazy evaluation.
Lucid evolved greatly in the 1980s and
1990s. The current evolutionary step
of Lucid
is called GLU (Granular LUcid). It
supports high-level data flow programming
and embedding of legacy code. GLU is
available free for most UNIX platforms.
- Origin:
Ashcroft and Wadge, 1976-77.
- See Also:
- Remarks:
Lucid was a powerful advance in computer
science, and spawned several additional
research areas over the 1980s. Two of
those areas, Multidimensional Programming
and Intensional Programming,
are active research areas in computer science.
- Links:
- Date:
- Sample code:
A Lucid program to solve Hamming's Problem,
from Ashcroft & Wadge, Lucid, the Dataflow Language.
h
where
h = 1 fby merge(merge(2 * h, 3 * h), 5 * h);
merge(x,y) = if xx <= yy then xx else yy fi
where
xx = x upon xx <= yy;
yy = y upon yy <= xx;
end;
end;
Descriptions in this dictionary are ©1997-99 Neal Ziring. Some
examples copyright of their respective authors. Some
technologies and languages are trademarked. Permission to
copy descriptions is granted as long as authorship credit is preserved.
Comments on this dictionary, corrections and suggestions, are all welcome.
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Dictionary and script maintained by Neal Ziring, last major modifications 3/18/98. Most recent
additions to dictionary and master list, 1/00.