CML: A Meta-Interpreter for Manufacturing

A new computer language for manufacturing is being used to link complex systems of equipment whose components are supplied by multiple vendors. The Cell Management Language (CML) combines computational tools from rule-based data systems, object-oriented languages, and new tools that facilitate language processing. These language tools, combined with rule processing, make it convenient to build new interpreters for interfacing and understanding a range of computer and natural languages; hence, CML is being used primarily to define other languages in an interpretive environment, that is, as a meta-interpreter. For example, in CML it is quite easy to build an interpreter for machine tool languages that can understand and generate new part programs.