Indeed the primary usage was text and string manipulation; it had a huge following in the 70s and 80s in the humanities. However, like with most languages, all the bases are covered for complex functions, mathematics, etc; it just never got as much traction in those spaces. Far as I know it was the first language to use associative-arrays, it also supports backtracking (like prolog), and meta-programming (code generation during runtime), map functions, lambda like functions, etc. It really had it all!
Re:The seven programming ur-languages
by erik_seaberg on Thursday September 30, 2021 @11:58PM
(#28714329)
https://thedailywtf.com/articles/a_case_of_the_mumps makes unflattering comparisons to both FORTRAN and SNOBOL, but it sounds like its own special hell.
Mathematica is essentially a transformation engine like that.. A standard Lisp unification engine, initially.
And didn't Snobol lead to some language that's embedded in large healthcare management systems?