Need general info on common lisp, opinions sought

Need general info on common lisp, opinions sought

[gnuist]

Is it good to have the following line in .emacs file?
(require 'cl)
Is it going to cause any tradeoff or only pure additions?

How is common lisp different from emacs lisp?
Where is the documentation on linux system?
Is it more than it or less than emacs lisp?
Which should I use and why? I need info on people's taste on this subject.

Opinions sought!

Re: Need general info on common lisp, opinions sought

[huntingdon]

On 3 Oct 2002, gnuist wrote:
> Is it good to have the following line in .emacs file?
> (require 'cl)
> Is it going to cause any tradeoff or only pure additions?
> 
> How is common lisp different from emacs lisp?  Where is the
> documentation on linux system?  Is it more than it or less than
> emacs lisp?  Which should I use and why? I need info on people's
> taste on this subject.
> 
> Opinions sought!


Your postings don't really make any sense ...

What's your relation with Don Saklad?

What's your opinion on AI kill files?

-- 
BPL

Re: Need general info on common lisp, opinions sought

[Marco Antoniotti]

gnuist007@hotmail.com (gnuist) writes:

> Is it good to have the following line in .emacs file?
> (require 'cl)

I have it, although I think to remember that RMS disagrees.
If you are using some (X)Emacs packages you are bound to get a
top-level (require 'cl) anyway,  so I would not worry too much.

> Is it going to cause any tradeoff or only pure additions?

Mostly pure additions.  It definitively helps in the construction of
packages.  E.g. ELisp does not have `defstruct': you get that with the
CL package.

> How is common lisp different from emacs lisp?

There is one fundamental difference and a lot of big, yet not so
fundamental ones IMHO.  The main one is that CL is "statically
scoped", ELisp is "dynamically scoped".

Other differences are

CL has packages (read "modules" or "namespaces" - somethign that was
somewhat re-invented for Guile).

CL is "general purpose".  ELisp is "general purpose within the
confines of (X)Emacs" (of course (X)Emacs is the "total application",
but that is another story).

CL has provision for very efficient numerics and it is compiled to
native assembly on your machine.

> Where is the documentation on linux system?

`C-h i' is your friend :)  For CL start off at http://www.alu.org.

> Is it more than it or less than emacs lisp?

They serve different purposes.  If you need to extend (X)Emacs then
you should go with it.  If you need to do more generic programming
which required speed, then you should go with CL.

> Which should I use and why? I need info on people's taste on this
> subject.

They serve different purposes.  ELisp and CL are very simular.  If you
put (require 'cl) in your .emacs file, then you can write code that is
very much like CL code. Of course YMMV.

> Opinions sought!

As long as you know mine are worth only .02E :)

Cheers

-- 
Marco Antoniotti ========================================================
NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group        tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488
715 Broadway 10th Floor                 fax  +1 - 212 - 995 4122
New York, NY 10003, USA                 http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu
                    "Hello New York! We'll do what we can!"
                           Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'.

Re: Need general info on common lisp, opinions sought

[Kaz Kylheku]

gnuist007@hotmail.com (gnuist) wrote in message news:<9e8ebeb2.0210030436.7d87eee@posting.google.com>...
> Is it good to have the following line in .emacs file?
> (require 'cl)
> Is it going to cause any tradeoff or only pure additions?
> 
> How is common lisp different from emacs lisp?

Emacs Lisp is a hacked down version of a dynamically scoped Lisp
dialect that is obsolete by several decades.

> Where is the documentation on linux system?
> Is it more than it or less than emacs lisp?
> Which should I use and why? I need info on people's taste on this subject.

Common Lisp is an ANSI standard programming language with many quality
implementations, both free and proprietary. Many Lisp implementations
compile to native machine code, can produce stand-alone executables,
support multithreading, provide access to the underlying platform.

Emacs Lisp is a proramming language implementation designed to create
an extended environment around a text editor.

Take a look at what task you have in mind, and choose accordingly.

Re: Need general info on common lisp, opinions sought

[Christopher C. Stacy]

Contact the reference desk at the Boston Public Library.
I am sure they can help you.

(kidding)

Re: Need general info on common lisp, opinions sought

[Christopher Browne]

After takin a swig o' grog, cstacy@dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) belched out...:
> Contact the reference desk at the Boston Public Library.
> I am sure they can help you.
>
> (kidding)

I wonder whether there's anything particularly unusual about the BPL,
to warrant the attention it gets, or if it is merely Yet Another
Library with Much The Usual Foibles that just happens to have someone
that is hypersensitive to its foibles (perhaps to the point of seeing
conspiracy where it doesn't exist :-))...
-- 
(concatenate 'string "chris" "@cbbrowne.com")
http://cbbrowne.com/info/linux.html
"The problem with X is that it's overadequate" -- Dennis Ritchie