Editing Information Processing Language (section)

==Legacy to computer programming==
IPL arguably introduced several programming language features: 
* ''List manipulation''—but only lists of atoms, not general lists
* ''Property lists''—but only when attached to other lists
* ''Higher-order functions''—while assembly programming had always allowed computing with the addresses of functions, IPL was an early attempt to generalize this property of assembly language in a principled way
* ''Computation with symbols''—though symbols have a restricted form in IPL (letter followed by number)
* ''Virtual machine''

Many of these features were generalized, rationalized, and incorporated into Lisp<ref>[http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/node2.html John McCarthy (1979) ''History of Lisp'' "LISP prehistory - Summer 1956 through Summer 1958."]</ref> and from there into many other programming languages during the next several decades.