The Twotran data acquisition and analysis language

A language for specifying the data acquisition and initial-event rejection requirements of experiments using the TRIUMF VAX-based CAMAC data acquisition system has been designed and implemented. Terse, low-level, assembler-like syntax was rejected in favor of a form more familiar to physicists, namely Fortran. The language, known as Twotran, is an extended subset of Fortran. A description is given of the design of the language, from its earliest inception to its present state, and of the interfacing of the language-processing support to the remainder of the data acquisition system.<>