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Oct 10, 2026 · Fundamentals

What Regex Can't Do: SNOBOL Did It in 1962 with 32KB

This article explores SNOBOL, a 1962 string-processing language that pioneered first-class patterns, automatic garbage collection, a portable virtual machine, and associative arrays—features decades ahead of their time—yet lost to simpler regex-based tools like AWK and Perl.