The ABC Programmers' Handbook

 

The ABC Programmers' Handbook

by Leo Geurts, Lambert Meertens, and Steven Pemberton

Table of contents

Introduction
A Quick Look at ABC
Examples of ABC
Using ABC
Description of ABC
Appendix 1: ABC Quick Reference
Appendix 2: ABC Implementations

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CHAPTER 4 Description of ABC

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  CHAPTER 4 Description of ABC General Issues This chapter gives a semi-formal definition of ABC. It describes the syntax and semantics of ABC, and lists the predefined commands, functions and predicates. Values in ABC ABC has two basic types of values: numbers and texts, and three ways of making new types of values from existing ones: compounds, lists and tables. Texts, lists and tables have in common that they contain an arbitrary length progression of  'items', all of the same type. They are collectively known as  trains. All values of a given type have an  ordering, which means that all values of the same type can be compared with each other. This ordering is informally specified below; for a precise definition see section  Order tests . Comparison of values of different types is not allowed. All values have a textual representation, and can be written and read. The built-in functions of ABC for operating on values are described in section  Formulas wit...
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CHAPTER 3 Using ABC

  Using ABC INTRODUCTION TYPING TO ABC 2.1 Suggestions 2.2 Undoing mistakes 2.3 Typing brackets and quotes IMMEDIATE COMMANDS 3.1 Permanent locations 3.2 Deleting locations 3.3 Finishing an ABC session 3.4 Other immediate commands 3.5 Interrupting a running command MORE ON TYPING 4.1 Indentation 4.2 Capital letters 4.3 Redisplaying the screen THE FOCUS 5.1 Moving the focus up and down lines 5.2 Correcting whole lines MAKING YOUR OWN COMMANDS 6.1 Functions 6.2 Predicates 6.3 Refinements 6.4 Making changes 6.5 Correcting errors 6.6 Renaming and deleting how-to's OTHER FOCUS MOVES 7.1 Making the focus smaller 7.2 Making the focus larger 7.3 Moving the focus sideways 7.4 Moving a single hole 7.5 Using a mouse COPYING AND RECORDING 8.1 Dealing with brackets and quotes 8.2 Recording WORKSPACES 9.1 Changing the contents of locations 9.2 Moving things between workspaces SOME COMMON MISTAKES 10.1 Uninitialised locations 10.2 Incompatible types 10.3 Ambiguous expressions AN EXAMPLE SUMMARY O...
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CHAPTER 2 Examples of ABC

  CHAPTER 2 Examples of ABC Introduction This chapter gives a number of examples of ABC commands and programs. It is through examples that the advantages of ABC become really clear: that ABC programs are concise, clear and understandable. The examples in this chapter have been written for clarity, rather than, for instance, efficiency. This reflects one of the aims of ABC, namely to reduce programming time and let the computer do the work. Shorter, clearer programs are easier to program, easier to get right, and easier to change. The examples often build on previous examples. In particular, the commands and functions from the section on common data-structures are used a lot by later examples. Several versions of some examples are given in order to demonstrate different programming styles, or to show the effect that different choices of data-structures have. Two First Examples To start with we shall give a couple of simple examples. The first, although simple in ABC, would actually ...
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