From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: evaluating numbers Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 23:23:01 -0400 Message-ID: References: <875zjw2emg.fsf@gmx.net> <618B38D9-CD34-4200-8CA1-1A6B0922A83A@traduction-libre.org> <871ruk2d3f.fsf@gmx.net> <3C929D7B-1C10-4713-9EDA-55C80FC36AD8@traduction-libre.org> <835zjvg385.fsf@gnu.org> <83sgmyd6rw.fsf@gnu.org> <835zjucwbz.fsf@gnu.org> <628A3663-BDD3-47C5-B4F4-E260FD900691@traduction-libre.org> <83o8xla50f.fsf@gnu.org> <831rua95mg.fsf@gnu.org> <4801DEB3-937A-4777-8E99-C2CA2234F8A0@traduction-libre.org> <83eeya5yl6.fsf@gnu.org> <83imnl2sxk.fsf@gnu.org> <164231EC-D3B8-455C-8C11-AF033FB48699@traduction-libre.org> <83368n3b2y.fsf@gnu.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="ciao.gmane.io:159.69.161.202"; logging-data="126380"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Wed Apr 29 05:24:01 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jTdKL-000Wil-M1 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Wed, 29 Apr 2020 05:24:01 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:59358 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jTdKK-0000B8-JF for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 28 Apr 2020 23:24:00 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:54022) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jTdJQ-0007e6-2X for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 28 Apr 2020 23:23:12 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:46514) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jTdJP-0006Ff-Oi; Tue, 28 Apr 2020 23:23:03 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1jTdJN-0006Il-Nm; Tue, 28 Apr 2020 23:23:01 -0400 In-Reply-To: <83368n3b2y.fsf@gnu.org> (message from Eli Zaretskii on Tue, 28 Apr 2020 18:05:09 +0300) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:248067 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > Is that the reason why characters are integers in emacs lisp too ? > If you are asking why this happened historically, then I don't know: I > wasn't there. Maybe Richard can answer that. I decided to represent characters using integers that just to keep Emacs simple and small. In the 1980s, people wanted to run Emacs on machines with 1 meg of memory and a hard limit on process size. I had to work hard to make that operate at all. A separate character type would have required a number of extra conversion and test functions as well as read and print support. Those space considerations are no longer significant. But there may be another problem: whether there is room in the representation of Lisp_Object for another type. -- Dr Richard Stallman Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)