BANCStar programming language

In computing, BANCStar is a specialist programming language for financial applications. The language is an internal language for the National Financial Computer Services, Inc (later Broadway & Seymour) BANCStar application, which is software to automate the operations of a bank branch. [ [http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Broadway+&+Seymour's+WinPrism+To+Debut+in+Early+1997-a018763321 Broadway & Seymour's WinPrism To Debut in Early 1997] (press release, 15 October 1996)]

The language resembles an esoteric programming language: so much so that it has sometimes been mistaken for a joke language. The only legal characters are the numerals 0-9, the comma, the minus sign and the carriage return — but is used in real commercial applications. It was originally intended as generated code from a user interface-building tool — similar to bytecode rendered in ASCII — but due to limitations in the tool became a directly-programmed language in itself. [http://www.geocities.com/connorbd/tarpit/bancstar.html BANCStar] (Joe Loughry, The Turing Tarpit)]

Sample BANCStar code

8607,,,111547,15475,22002,220021316,1629,1,1649 3001,1316,3,3007811528,22052,22002,220029301,0,1528,152831568,10001,800,1078560,,,15688550,210,,3001,,,3100,1316,3,3008911547,15475,22002,220023001,1316,3,300893001,1317,3,100008400,,,8550,700,801,3001,,,9301,0,522,5223000,1284,3,100018500,,3,8500,,5,1547,,1,-2301

References