Open MUMPS by Example

MUMPS ("Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-Programming System"), or M, is a general-purpose computer programming language originally designed in 1966 for the healthcare industry. Its differentiating feature is its "built-in" database, enabling high-level access to disk storage using simple symbolic program variables and subscripted arrays; similar to the variables used by most languages to access main memory. Read more...

The implementations currently available are:

• Intersystems (Caché)
• FIS (GT.M)
• MUMPS Database and Language by Ray Newman
• Open Mumps

The examples in this tutorial are run with GPL Mumps.

Prerequisites

• The Mumps Programming Language
• Mumps Language Users' Guide
• Mumps Language Quick Introduction & Tutorial

Quick Setup

Download the open source distribution of the Mumps interpreter and run the following commands:

tar -zxvf mumps-18.02.src.tar.gz
cd mumpsc
sudo ./ConfigureNative.script
sudo ./BuildMumpsWithGlobalsInSingleUserNative.script

The resulting interpreter is located in /usr/bin/mumps.

$ mumps

Mumps 17.30; Built: 16:05:53 Sep 23 2019
Float: double; DBMS: Native Stand Alone; Hardware math: yes; Int: int; Float digits: 6; Cache: 33; Block: 2048; FP Bits: N/A
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Enter HALT to exit

> write "Hello world"
Hello world
> halt
EOF - goodbye ...

1. The Very Basics

hello-world.mps

$ mumps 01-the-very-basics/hello-world.mps
Hello world

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Contributions

Would you help make this tutorial better? Contributions are welcome.

• Feel free to send a pull request
• Drop an email at info@programarivm.com with the subject "Open MUMPS by Example"
• Leave me a comment on Twitter
• Say hello on Google+

Many thanks.