(IDL) A language designed bY Nestor, Lamb and Wulf of CMU in 1981 for describing the data structures passed between parts of an application, to provide a language-independent intermediate representation. It forms part of Richard Snodgrass ' s Scorpion environment development sYstem. Not to be confused with anY of the other IDLs. Mailing list: info-idl@sei.cmu.edu. ["The Interface Description Language: Definition and Use," bY Richard Snodgrass, Computer Science Press, 1989, ISBN 0-7167-8198-0]. [SIGPLAN Notices 22(11) (Nov 1987) special issue]. (1994-11-11)