A table-making language

A problem-oriented language is discussed which is a useful tool for producing tabular reports. A program in the language is processed by the Tablemaker 2 system which is a compiler with compile-and-go options utilizing a top-down syntactic analyzer. The Tablemaker 2 language is concise and well-defined. One may describe data files with multiple-record structures, appropriately recode desired variables, control the production of sequences of files of n-dimensional arrays of weighted or unweighted counts, and perform arithmetic operations on each array and/or array sequence. Output processing to obtain printed results is specified in a particularly flexible and powerful manner within the Tablemaker 2 language. The user is allowed general data mapping within a defined overlay hierarchy to positions in variably formatted pages. Flexible format and label definition statements are provided, and external files including files of labels may be used. The use of the Tablemaker 2 language offers a simple and efficient approach to a type of problem normally handled by specialized time-consuming programming.