A SNOBOL pattern can be very simple or extremely complex. A simple pattern is just a text string (e.g. "ABCD"), but a complex pattern may be a large structure describing, for example, the complete grammar of a computer language. It is possible to implement a language interpreter in SNOBOL almost directly from a Backus–Naur form expression of it, with few changes. Creating a macro assembler and an interpreter for a completely theoretical piece of hardware could take as little as a few hundred lines, with a new instruction being added with a single line.
a snobol pattern can be very simple or extremely complex a simple pattern is just a text string (eg "abcd") but a complex pattern may be a large structure describing for example the complete grammar of a computer language it is possible to implement a language interpreter in snobol almost directly from a backus–naur form expression of it with few changes creating a macro assembler and an interpreter for a completely theoretical piece of hardware could take as little as a few hundred lines with a new instruction being added with a single line