About the service
I offer specialized services in the SNOBOL4 language and its fast cousin SPITBOL — a language originally created for working with strings and patterns. If you have inherited a stack of SNOBOL source code from an academic project, research laboratory, or old data processing pipeline, I will read it, explain the logic, and make it work again. My daily task is pattern matching: I design SNOBOL patterns that scan, split, rewrite, and validate text noticeably shorter than equivalent regular expressions, and I describe the behavior of each rule in detail. I take on the transformation of awkward legacy data, where records are broken, delimiters are inconsistent, and the format was never properly documented. I extract fields, normalize encodings, verify columns, and deliver clean results ready for a modern database or spreadsheet. If desired, I port SNOBOL logic to Python, Perl, or C when the client wants to move away from the old runtime while preserving the original semantics rather than guessing at it. For historians of computing and university courses, I prepare commented and runnable examples showing why this language mattered. Each job includes readable source code, inline comments, a short design note, and a test corpus so you can verify the behavior yourself. I have spent years untangling string code that others have given up on, and I genuinely enjoy it. Tell me what your text should become, and I will build the necessary patterns — reliably and on time.
