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SPARCL

Language type:

V - Visual or graphical

Description:

Created as an attempt to combine visual, logic, and set-based programming disciplines, SPARCL is an academic programming system developed to aid exploratory programming.
As a logic programming language, SPARCL supports definition of facts and relationships between them. The system has three kinds of clauses: facts, rules, and questions, although any rule can be queried as a question if the user wishes. Data types supported by the language seem to be numbers and atoms.
Execution in SPARCL, as in Prolog, occurs in response to a question. The language system performs a unification of the facts and rules presented by the visual diagrams. Backtracking is the unification strategy employed by the current implementation.
There is only one implementation of SPARCL, for the Mac, available free from the language's web site.

Origin:

L. Spratt, U. of Kansas, 1993.

See Also:

SETL    Forms/3    Prolog    CUBE   

Remarks:

SPARCL runs in the highly visual environment provided by MacOS on Macintosh hardware. It can also generate 3-D models of its 'programs' for rendering with the POV-Ray raytracer. However, it is not clear from the documentation whether the 3-D aspects of some SPARCL programs are algorithmically necessary, or merely cosmetic. Use of the 3-D rendering as a tool for improving view comprehension of diagrams of algorithms was examined in a 1994 paper about SPARCL.

Links:

SPARCL Tutorial

Date:

Last updated 8/8/98

Sample code:

Here is a SPARCL program that computes the sum of the values of a term.

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. Please use email, the address is ziring@home.com