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Icon is a very high-level programming language featuring goal directed execution and many facilities for managing strings and textual patterns. It is related to SNOBOL, a string processing language. Icon is not object-oriented, but an object-oriented extension called Idol was developed in 1996 which eventually became Unicon.

The Icon language is derived from the ALGOL-class of structured programming languages, and thus has syntax similar to C or Pascal. Icon is most similar to Pascal, using := syntax for assignments, the procedure keyword and similar syntax. On the other hand, Icon uses C-style brackets for structuring execution groups, and programs start by running a procedure called "main".

In many ways Icon also shares features with most scripting programming languages (as well as SNOBOL from which they were taken): variables do not have to be declared, types are cast automatically, and numbers can be converted to strings and back automatically. Another feature common to many scripting languages, but not all, is the lack of a line-ending character; in Icon, lines not ended by a semicolon get ended by an implied semicolon if it makes sense.

Procedures are the basic building blocks of Icon programs, and although they use Pascal naming they work more like C functions and can return values; there is no function keyword in Icon.

procedure doSomething(aString)
  write(aString)
end



Article source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_programming_language






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