Kvikkalkul

1 definition found

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  Kvikkalkul
       
           /kveek`kahl-kool'/ A deliberately cryptic
          programming language said to have been devised by the Swedish
          Navy in the 1950s as part of their abortive attempt at a
          nuclear weapons program.  What little is known about it comes


          from a series of an anonymous posts to {Usenet} in 1994.  The
          poster described the language, saying that he had programmed
          in Kvikkalkul when he worked for the Swedish Navy in the
          1950s.  It is an open question whether the posts were a
          {troll}, a subtle parody or truth stranger than fiction could
          ever be.
       
          Assuming it existed, Kvikkalkul is so much a
          {bondage-and-discipline language} that it is, in its own ways,
          even more bizarre than the deliberate parody language
          {INTERCAL}.  Among its notable "features", all symbols in
          Kvikkalkul, including variable names and program labels, can
          consist only of digits.  Operators consist entirely of the
          punctuation symbols (, ), -, and :.  Kvikkalkul allows no
          {comments} - they might not correspond with the code.
          Kvikkalkul's only data type is the signed fixed-point
          fractional number, i.e. a number between (but not including)
          -1 and 1.  Dealings with the {Real World} that require numbers
          outside that range are done with functions that notionally map
          that range to a larger range (e.g., -16383 to -16383) and
          back.  Kvikkalkul had a probabilistic jump operator which, if
          given a negative probability, would act like a {COME FROM}.
          This was, sadly, deleted in later versions of the language.
       
          {Home (http://prefect.com/home24/kvikkalkul/)}.
       
          (1998-11-14)