@karchie @graydon For added lulz, due to all the aforementioned obstacles, the state of "language" design in magic stops at about the SNOBOL4 level, or maybe MUMPS; structure is all computed-goto spaghetti code and (if you're lucky) regular expressions with variable syntax conventions and missing bits (eg. no grouping for some reason). In SNOBOL4 any program more than about 4 lines long rapidly became impossible to follow.