AMBIT is a historical programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

 that was introduced by Carlos Christensen in 1964 for symbolic computation

Symbolic computation

Symbolic computation or algebraic computation, relates to the use of machines, such as computers, to manipulate mathematical equations and expressions in symbolic form, as opposed to manipulating the approximations of specific numerical quantities represented by those symbols...

.
The language was influenced by ALGOL 60

ALGOL 60

ALGOL 60 is a member of the ALGOL family of computer programming languages. It gave rise to many other programming languages, including BCPL, B, Pascal, Simula, C, and many others. ALGOL 58 introduced code blocks and the begin and end pairs for delimiting them...

 and is an early example of a pattern matching

Pattern matching

In computer science, pattern matching is the act of checking some sequence of tokens for the presence of the constituents of some pattern. In contrast to pattern recognition, the match usually has to be exact. The patterns generally have the form of either sequences or tree structures...

 language for manipulation of strings

String (computer science)

In formal languages, which are used in mathematical logic and theoretical computer science, a string is a finite sequence of symbols that are chosen from a set or alphabet....

 (a more popular example from the same time is SNOBOL

SNOBOL

SNOBOL is a generic name for the computer programming languages developed between 1962 and 1967 at AT&T Bell Laboratories by David J. Farber, Ralph E. Griswold and Ivan P. Polonsky, culminating in SNOBOL4...

).
The acronym AMBIT stands for "Algebraic Manipulation by Identity Translation", but has also claimed "Acronym May Be Ignored Totally".
AMBIT had dialects for manipulation of lists (AMBIT-L) and graphs

Graph (data structure)

In computer science, a graph is an abstract data structure that is meant to implement the graph and hypergraph concepts from mathematics.A graph data structure consists of a finite set of ordered pairs, called edges or arcs, of certain entities called nodes or vertices...

 (AMBIT-G)
Both pioneered with data structure diagram

Data structure diagram

A Data Structure Diagram is a data model used to describe conceptual data models by providing graphical notations which document entities and their relationships, and the constraints that binds them....

s and visual programming

Visual programming language

In computing, a visual programming language is any programming language that lets users create programs by manipulating program elements graphically rather than by specifying them textually. A VPL allows programming with visual expressions, spatial arrangements of text and graphic symbols, used...

 as data and patterns were used to be represented by directed-graph diagrams.
AMBIT/L was implemented for a PDP-10

PDP-10

The PDP-10 was a mainframe computer family manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation from the late 1960s on; the name stands for "Programmed Data Processor model 10". The first model was delivered in 1966...

computer and used to implement the interactive interactive algebraic manipulation system IAM.

Literature

• Carlos Christensen, Michael S. Wolfberg, Michael J. Fischer: A Report on AMBIT/G (Volume I-IV), Massachusetts Computer Associates Inc. 1971