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+Welcome
+=======
+
+== Colm = COmputer Language Machinery
+
+Colm is a programming language designed for the analysis and http://www.program-transformation.org/Transform/TransformationSystems[transformation of computer languages].
+Colm is influenced primarily by http://www.txl.ca/[TXL].
+
+=== What is a transformation language?
+
+A transformation language has a type system based on formal languages. 
+Rather than define classes or data structures, one defines grammars. 
+A parser is constructed automatically from the grammar, and the parser is used for two purposes: 
+* to parse the input language,
+* and to parse the structural patterns in the program that performs the analysis. 
+
+In this setting, grammar-based parsing is critical because it guarantees that both the input and the structural patterns are parsed into trees from the same set of types, allowing comparison.
+
+=== Colm's features
+
+Colm is not-your-typical-scripting-language (TM):
+* Colm's main contribution lies in the parsing method.
+  Colm's parsing engine is generalized, but it also allows for the construction of arbitrary global data structures that can be queried during parsing.
+  In other generalized methods, construction of global data requires some very careful consideration because of inherent concurrency in the parsing method.
+  It is such a tricky task that it is often avoided altogether and the problem is deferred to a post-parse disambiguation of the parse forest.
+* By default Colm will create an elf exectuable that be used standalone for that actual transformations.
+* Colm is a static and strong typed scripting language.
+* Colms' is very tiny and fast and can easily be embedded/linked with c/cpp programs.
+* Colm's runtime is a stackbased VM that starts with the bare minium of the language and bootstraps itself.
+* creates aVM is very tycan be embedded in C as it It runs in a embeddable vm, the language is bootstrapped.
+
+=== Where is colm used?
+
+Colm is developed and used intensively by http://www.colm.net/[Colm Networks] to develop fast network traffic automata and systems for traffic identification, decoding, pattern matching, and extraction of security events. 
+But colm is also the driving force in http://www.colm.net/open-source/ragel/[the Ragel State Machine Compiler]
+
+=== What is colm's history?
+
+Colm's development started by https://twitter.com/ehdtee[Adrian Thurston] during his http://www.colm.net/files/colm/thurston-phdthesis.pdf[Ph.D. thesis] period after intensive study of http://research.cs.queensu.ca/~cordy/Papers/TC_SCAM06_ETXL.pdf[TXL].
+
+
+=== When not to use Colm
+
+Colm is meant to create executables or object files that can be linked in other programs. 
+This make is ideal for tasks like high performance transformations, but not very convienient for throwaway-oneliners that are common with tools like 'sed' or 'awk'.
+