OT: Punctuation-starved Programming Languages

[Don Y]

Jay West wrote:
> Chuck wrote...
>>> Back in the 60's and 70's there was a brief interest in "natural"
>>> programming languages that used English as a basis.  The goal was to
>>> provide something that would be easy for an "average" person to use.
> 
> Well, it wasn't a programming language, but it was a command prompt data 
> retrieval database language. Pick (aka Reality, Sequel, Zebra, 
> Revelation, Mentor, Ultimate, Prime Information yada yada yada....) did. 
> For example, at the command prompt, the following are valid commands and 
> yield just what you'd think.
> 
> LIST CUSTOMER-INVOICES WITH ORDER.AMOUNT > "50.00"
> 
> SELECT CUSTOMERS WITH ZIP = "63102" AND WITH AR.BALANCE # "0.00"
> LIST CUSTOMERS NAME ADDRESS CONTACT
> 
> And of course you could store those commands in a file and even use 
> in-line prompting for variables, so it was kind of a programming 
> language too.

Yes, Janus was like this as well (and SQL follows the same sort
of approach although with a more stilted grammar and salted with
more punctuation).  I recall typing queries that ran the full
width of the paper on a DECwriter -- only to discover that I
had transposed two characters somewhere in the middle!  :-/