Implications of Modern Syntactic Style on the "QAL" Data-Acquisition Language

The "Q" data-acquisition software system has, for the last several years, provided most of the abilities required by experimenters in nuclear physics at LAMPF. The system allows its user to select and record the required data at very high speed using a simple notation. It is not necessary to become familiar with machine level programming considerations to use the system. This paper reports partial results of a study of the "QAL" language with special emphasis on improvements suggested by recent progress in the field of programming language design. The results indicate that some features of new programming languages would solve some of the problems users have with the current system. It is also possible to capture the abilities of the current system within a PASCAL-like syntax without sacrificing efficiency.