Editing Clipper (programming language) (section)

==History==
Clipper was created by Nantucket Corporation, a company that was started in 1984 by Barry ReBell (management) and Brian Russell (technical). Larry Heimendinger was Nantucket's president.<ref name=Bar/> In 1992, the company was sold to [[Computer Associates]] for 190 million dollars and the product was renamed to CA-Clipper.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://vivaclipper.wordpress.com/tag/ca-clipper/ |title=CA-Clipper |website=Viva Clipper! |date=14 September 2013}}</ref><ref>GrafX Software licensed CA-Clipper in 2002 from CA for ongoing marketing and distribution.</ref>

Clipper was created as a replacement [[programming language]] for [[Ashton Tate]]'s ''[[dBASE]] III'', a very popular [[database language]] at the time. The advantage of Clipper over dBASE was that it could be [[Compiler|compiled]]<ref>[[Compiler|Compiling]] dBASE code changes it from [[Interpreter (computing)|interpreted]] code, which must be interpreted every time each line of code is executed, to [[p-code machine|p-code]], which uses a [[virtual machine]] to process the compiled p-code. p-code is considerably faster, but still not as fast as the [[machine language|machine code]] generated by native compilers. As a technical marketing ploy, the p-code was wrapped into object code (linkable .obj files) which gave the impression that it was compiled to native code.</ref> and [[Execution (computing)|executed]] on [[DOS]] as a [[Computer software|standalone application]]. In the years between 1985 and 1992, millions of Clipper applications were built, typically for small businesses dealing with databases concerning many aspects of [[Customer relationship management|client management]] and [[Inventory management software|inventory management]]. For many smaller businesses, having a Clipper application designed to their specific needs was their first experience with software development. Also many applications for [[banking]] and [[insurance companies]] were developed, here especially in those cases where the application was considered too small to be developed and run on traditional [[mainframe]]s. In these environments Clipper also served as a [[Debugger front-end|front end]] for existing mainframe applications.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.thocp.net/software/languages/clipper.htm |title=Clipper |date=20 June 2007 |website=thocp.net |publisher=The History Of Computing Project |access-date=24 August 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080512215826/http://www.thocp.net/software/languages/clipper.htm |archive-date=12 May 2008}}</ref>

As the product matured, it added elements of the programming languages [[C (programming language)|C]] and [[Pascal (programming language)|Pascal]], and [[object-oriented programming]] (OOP), and the code-block [[datatype|data-type]] (hybridizing the concepts of dBase [[Macro (computer science)|macros]], or [[string (computer science)|string]]-evaluation, and [[function pointer]]s), to become far more powerful than the original. Nantucket's Aspen project later matured into the [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] native-code CA-[[Visual Objects]] compiler.<ref name=DobCA95>{{cite magazine |last1=da Silva |first1=Rod |date=October 1, 1995 |url=http://www.drdobbs.com/database/examining-ca-visual-objects/184409649 |title=Examining CA-Visual Objects |magazine=[[Dr. Dobb's Journal]]}}</ref>