Re: Writing to buffer/file

[pjb@informatimago.com (Pascal J. Bourguignon)]

Michael Powe <michael+gnus@trollope.org> writes:

> I sort of took this up as a challenge after reading an article the
> other day comparing perl vs elisp for text processing, in which elisp
> was given the nod as the superior language.  I could write this text
> processor pretty easily in Python.  But it would not be nearly as
> compact as what I have so far.  


Locally (ie. for a small function like yours), lisp may not be more
concise or easier to use than perl or python.   But given the ability of
lisp for abstraction (data abstraction, and functional abstraction, most
languages have it, but lisp thanks to its homoiconicity and its macro,
provides also syntactic and metalinguistic abstraction), as soon as you
have more complex processing to implement, you can better factorize
things our, and obtain a more concise and cleaner way to express your
processings.  In the mean while, you will have developed a little
library or language designed to implement your specific kind of
processing.  (Or put to use an existing library or language extension).


See for example:
http://lichteblau.blogspot.com/2009/04/xslt-10-implemented-in-common-lisp.html
http://common-lisp.net/project/xuriella/



-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com