What is Clipper?

 Actually these days the official moniker is CA-Clipper.  (This is just
 as well since the US Government and its contractors have appropriated
 the name "Clipper" to apply to a voice encryption chip.)

 Clipper is a programming language, and it is also a compiler.  The
 programming language is a proprietary superset of dBASE III+, and also
 shares some features with C/C++ and Smalltalk.  It is a general-purpose,
 high-level programming language well suited to corporate and commercial
 applications development.

 CA-Clipper is also a compiler product marketed by Computer Associates,
 the second largest software vendor in the world today.  The CA-Clipper
 compiler is (by definition) a fully conformant implementation of the
 CA-Clipper programming language for IBM-PC-type personal computers
 running DOS-like operating systems.

 There are other Clipper implementations, from vendors other than Computer
 Associates, that have varying capabilities and run on platforms other
 than MS-DOS.