The Mumps Programming Language

Kevin C. O'Kane
Professor Emeritus
Computer Science Department
University of Northern Iowa
Cedar Falls, IA 50613


Last Update: April 24, 2025

Documentation

  • The Mumps Programming Language (Amazon versions)
  • Mumps Language Users' Guide (PDF)
  • Mumps Language Quick Introduction & Tutorial (PDF)

  • Installers

    mumps-native-single-user-amd64.deb

    md5sum
    701085f4f2e64d5f6a8190237938941a

    April 21, 2025

    mumps-sqlite3-amd64.deb

    md5sum
    0a25fb191e87d16cf36cb41f2cf8fd4e

    April 21, 2025

    The native-single user version uses a faster database but is single user (only one user at a rime may access the database) and not ACID compliant. The sqlite3 version uses the Sqlite3 database. It may be accessed by multiple users concurrently and is ACID compliant but much slower.

    Note: if you have a previous version installed, you may need to remove it before installling the new version. This can be done in the Synaptic package manager (package name: mumps-sqlite3 or mumps-native-single-user) or with the command:

    sudo dpkg --remove mumps-native-single-user
    or
    sudo dpkg --remove mumps-sqlite3

    To install, on many systems, from an explorer window, double click the downloaded .deb file.

    Alternatively, in the directory containing the .deb file, do the following (there may be errors indicating missing packages. Step 2 will fix this):

    • sudo dpkg -i mumps-native-single-user-amd64.deb
    • sudo apt install -f

    Or, the following:

    • sudo apt install gdebi
    • sudo gdebi mumps-native-single-user-amd64.deb
    Both will install the package and resolve dependencies. Substitute mumps-sqlite3-amd64.deb for the Sqlite3 distro.

    These installer files have been checked with current (22.1 Xia) versions of Linux Mint {Mate, Cinnamon, and Xfce} and Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble Numbat). They should work on other similar recent Debian based systems. If not, try a re-build from the full source code below.

    Please read the README.txt file linked below. There is also a copy of the mumps-doc man page which will be installed. This page (under development) is a brief tutorial introduction to mumps.

    --------
    ===> README.txt <===
    ===> mumps-doc-man-page.txt <===
    ===> mumps-sql-db-create.txt <===

    Source Code

    mumps-21-apr-2025.tgz

    The Mumps source distro now contains:

  • The legacy (2000) Mumps Interpreter,
  • The ISR project which is written in Mumps and MDH,
  • The Inverse Document Frequency Weighted Genomic Sequence Retrieval,
  • The Glade Compiler,
  • The OHSU Medline Database.
    Other Resources

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial & Examples YouTube Playlist (Also, see below)
  • High-res copy of an hierarchical medical record diagram
  • EER Relational Database Version of the Hierarchical Model
  • The MDH (Multi-Dimensional and Hierarchical) Toolkit is a collection of C++ classes and code to emulate many Mumps features in C++: Multi-Dimensional & Hierarchical Toolkit Users' Guide (PDF)
    The Mumps Language

    Beginning in 1966, the Mumps programming language (also referred to as M), was developed by Neil Pappalardo and others in Dr. Octo Barnett's lab at the Massachusetts General Hospital on a PDP-7. It was later ported to a number of machines including the PDP-11 and VAX.

    Mumps is a general purpose programming language that supports a novel, native, hierarchical database facility. The acronym stands for the Massachusetts General Hospital Utility Multi-programming System. It is widely used in financial and clinical applications and remains to this day the basis of the U.S. Veterans Administration's computerized medical record system VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture), the largest of its kind in the world.

    As originally conceived, Mumps differs from other mini-computer based languages by providing a:

    1. Hierarchical database facility. Mumps data sets are not only organized along traditional sequential and direct access methods, but also as trees whose data nodes can addressed as path descriptions in a manner which is easy for a novice programmer to master in a relatively short time;
    2. Flexible and powerful string manipulation facilities. Mumps built-in string manipulation operators and functions provide programmers with access to efficient means to accomplish complex string manipulation and pattern matching operations.

    Syntactically, Mumps is based on an earlier language named JOSS and has an appearance similar to early versions of BASIC which was also based on JOSS. Another feature of Mumps which distinguished it from other language environments at the time was its ability to run multiple applications and serve multiple users concurrently on very primitive computers.

    Over the years, a number of implementations were developed. Many of these are now extinct or have evolved considerably from their original base. As the early implementations began to differ linguistically from on another, an effort to standardize Mumps began. This culminated in the 1977 ANSI standard for Mumps (X11.1-1977).

    The standards effort continued until 1995 when the last standard was published (see: American National Standard for Information Systems - Programming Languages - M ANSI/MDC X11.1-1995). Since then, the standards writing Mumps Development Committee has disbanded and there have been no new standards developed. At present, the 1995 standard has lapsed in the United States but remains in effect as ISO (ISO/IEC 11756:1999). Also, as of 1995, there were related standards either published or in development for Mumps system interconnections (X11.2), a graphical kernel definition (X11.3), X-window binding (X11.4), TCP-IP binding (X11.5) and a windowing API (X11.6). These have also lapsed in the United Sates but some are still in effect at ISO.

    GPL Mumps is distributed in source code for Linux and Cygwin (for MS Windows). It is licensed under the Gnu General Public License V2 and may be redistributed subject to the conditions of the license. The package includes a robust Mumps interpreter, a Mumps compiler (not up to date) and a Mumps-like class library for C++ (MDH).

    For the most part, GPL Mumps follows the 1995 standard but those areas where it deviates from the standard are highlighted in the documentation. In addition to supporting a builtin database, the GPL Mumps permits storage of the Mumps global arrays in relational database management systems. At present, this includes sqlite3. When the globals are stored in one of the RDBMS systems, they become ACID compliant and accessible by means of SQL queries.

    Also available is an document indexing, classification and retrieval sytem using the vector space model written in Mumps.


    Mumps Programming Tutorial

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 1
    https://youtu.be/7j91ioSlZ8U

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 2
    https://youtu.be/qYTRShO_-ls

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 3
    https://youtu.be/kFQL6X4zS0w

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 4
    https://youtu.be/tfsf7g3R5r0

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 5
    https://youtu.be/bApNg_n-ZFk

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 6
    https://youtu.be/BuA7AS1NAa0

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 7
    https://youtu.be/F_zb2pVuXaU

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 8
    https://youtu.be/DWilGkzGIqw

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 9
    https://youtu.be/DWilGkzGIqw

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 10
    https://youtu.be/S_ys4GexsdQ

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 11
    https://youtu.be/QFv2BquU4DY

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 12
    https://youtu.be/5bzfWrSyXJc

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 13
    https://youtu.be/iRcR3_5rK1M

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 14
    https://youtu.be/WhvgJbHS9Ik

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 15
    https://youtu.be/E0jWvyBXPZY

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 16
    https://youtu.be/VMoXa_ZK4t4

  • Mumps Programming Language Tutorial Part 17
    https://youtu.be/xXVm29Z6kcY

  • Mumps programming example: word dictionary & count program
    https://youtu.be/V3ZV3Zga5jU

  • Mumps programming example: word dictionary & count Part 2
    https://youtu.be/UA3cef_WXmw

  • Mumps Document Term Matrix example
    https://youtu.be/e756GyRAnNI

  • Global Array Navigation
    https://youtu.be/Nt2_ULtm8_c

  • Arithmetic operations in Mumps
    https://youtu.be/xWBB2L5EhM0

  • RDBMS Medical DB Model vs Mumps
    https://youtu.be/DxMzmaVDs5g

  • Building a MeSH Tree
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObUAklaia1Y

  • MeSH Tree Print Programs
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ZVnYeQROc

  • MeSH Index Program
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w4PpEU9EBM

  • MeSH Titles Program
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA3xneZNHPY

  • Find MeSH Terms and Sub-Terms
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZOiN5ZF7MQ

  • Installing Mumps with the Native Database
    https://youtu.be/MvGPiySRTdU

  • Example: Simple programs to add 10 numbers in Mumps
    https://youtu.be/2vYtMVA-GRo

  • Example: Reading multiple values from a single line
    https://youtu.be/JR01YIy1R9w

  • Example: constants
    https://youtu.be/xEnDYZnogQ4

  • Inverse Document Frequencies
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHPwftg_PlI

  • Weighting Terms in Documents
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zeqx5MSu3s

  • Building Mumps Desktop Apps with GTK/Glade Part 1

  • Building Mumps Desktop Apps with GTK/Glade Part 2

  • Building Mumps Desktop Apps with GTK/Glade Part 3