[1] : Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001)

intercal /in'tr-kal/ n. said by the authors to stand for `compiler
   language with no pronounceable acronym' a computer language designed by
   don woods and james lyons in 1972. intercal is purposely different from
   all other computer languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written
   language, being totally unspeakable. an excerpt from the intercal
   reference manual will make the style of the language clear:

  it is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person whose
  work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem.  for example, if
  one were to state that the simplest way to store a value of 65536
  in a 32-bit intercal variable is:
  
       do :1 <- 0$256
  
  any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd.  since this
  is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be made to look
  foolish in front of his boss, who would of course have happened to
  turn up, as bosses are wont to do.  the effect would be no less
  devastating for the programmer having been correct.
  
   intercal has many other peculiar features designed to make it even
   more unspeakable. the woods-lyons implementation was actually used by
   many well, at least several people at princeton. the language has been
   recently reimplemented as c-intercal and is consequently enjoying an
   unprecedented level of unpopularity; there is even an alt.lang.intercal
   newsgroup devoted to the study and ... appreciation of the language on
   usenet.

   inevitably, intercal has a home page on the web:
   `http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/intercal/'. an extended version, implemented
   in what else? perl and adding object-oriented features, is available
   at `http://dd-sh.assurdo.com/intercal'. see also befunge.


see also:
perl befunge 

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

intercal
     
         /in'tr-kal/ said by the authors to stand
        for "compiler language with no pronounceable acronym".
     
        possibly the most elaborate and long-lived joke in the history
        of programming languages.  it was designed on 1972-05-26 by
        don woods and jim lyons at princeton university.
     
        intercal is purposely different from all other computer
        languages in all ways but one; it is purely a written
        language, being totally unspeakable.  the intercal reference
        manual, describing features of horrifying uniqueness, became
        an underground classic.  an excerpt will make the style of the
        language clear:
     
        it is a well-known and oft-demonstrated fact that a person
        whose work is incomprehensible is held in high esteem.  for
        example, if one were to state that the simplest way to store a
        value of 65536 in a 32-bit intercal variable is:
     
            do :1 <- 0$256
     
        any sensible programmer would say that that was absurd.  since
        this is indeed the simplest method, the programmer would be
        made to look foolish in front of his boss, who would of course
        have happened to turn up, as bosses are wont to do.  the
        effect would be no less devastating for the programmer having
        been correct.
     
        intercal has many other peculiar features designed to make it
        even more unspeakable.  the woods-lyons implementation was
        actually used by many well, at least several people at
        princeton.
     
        eric s. raymond  wrote c-intercal in
        1990 as a break from editing _the_new_hacker's_dictionary_,
        adding to it the first implementation of come from under its
        own name.  the compiler has since been maintained and extended
        by an international community of technomasochists and is
        consequently enjoying an unprecedented level of unpopularity.
     
        the version 0.9 distribution includes the compiler, extensive
        documentation and a program library.  c-intercal is actually
        an intercal-to-c source translator which then calls the local
        c compiler to generate a binary.  the code is thus quite
        portable.
     
        intercal resource page
        http://locke.ccil.org/~esr/intercal/.
     
        usenet newsgroup: news:alt.lang.intercal.
     
        "the intercal programming language reference manual", donald
        r. woods  james m. lyon.
     
        jargon file
     
        1997-04-09
     
     
see also:
princeton come from c lt;intercal resource pagegt; usenet lt;news:alt.lang.intercalgt; jargon file 

Intercal >> I Words
Intercal, definition of term: Intercal
intercal_pag1.html