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The article introduces the March 1973 issue of the journal ACM Computing Surveys. The journal received various contributions from outstanding authors mostly computer professionals. The journal helped computer people to catch up on the latest ideas concepts and advances in the field. The effect of this change has created new opportunities and challenges for the authors of survey. An increasing number of readers are capable of benefiting from tutorial and survey papers presented at advanced levels. The author provides the characteristics of a paper acceptable by the magazine. A good tutorial paper covering an area of the computer field that has recently become important and better understood will get top priority. The body of the paper should be interesting. The text of the survey can be brief, letting the bibliography that attends it and the index into it be as long and up-to-date as required. An excellent survey article is likely to be given preference over a tutorial that is rated only good.

New direction in Artificial Intelligence research have led to the need for certain novel features to be embedded in programming languages. This paper gives an overview of the nature of these features, and their implementation in four principal families of AI languages: SAIL; PLANNER/CONNIVER; QLISP/INTERLISP; AND POPLER/POP-2. The programming features described include: new data types and accessing mechanisms for stored expressions; more flexible control structures, including multiple processes and backtracking; pattern matching to allow comparison of data item with a template, and extraction of labeled subexpressions; and deductive mechanisms which allow the programming system to carry out certain activities including modifying the data base and deciding which subroutines to run next using only constraints and guidelines set up by the programmer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of programming languages has raised many issues of language design, definition, and implementation. This paper presents a series of ten mini-languages, each of which exposes salient features found in existing programming languages. The value of the mini-languages lies in their brevity of description and the isolation of important linguistic features: in particular, the notions of assignment, transfer of control, functions, parameter passing, type checking, data structures, string manipulation, and input/output. The mini-languages may serve a variety of uses: notably, as a pedagogical tool for teaching programming languages, as a subject of study for the design of programming languages, and as a set of test cases for methods of language implementation or formal definition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]