The Snobol 4 Programming Language

In 1974 I was hanging around the University of Toronto's High Speed Job Stream: you could write programs on punch cards and run them on the IBM mainframe without a user account. I was running FORTRAN programs on the system's WATFIV implementation, when one day I found a big, green textbook left behind by a hapless undergrad. I started perusing the book, and right away I saw that I was no longer in Kansas. I was looking at the SNOBOL programming language, and the style of programming--using pattern matching, back tracking, succeed, fail, fence, and so forth--was utterly new. My brain exploded and I started writing programs for the University's SPITBOL compiler. Years later, when I saw Prolog and Regular Expressions, I came to appreciate how innovative the SNOBOL team had been. I've ordered a copy of this text for my library, and I recommend it for anyone who appreciates the work of pioneers like Griswold.