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From: Sergiu Ivanov <sivanov@colimite.fr>
To: "(" <paren@disroot.org>
Cc: "Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>, jgart <jgart@dismail.de>,
	help-guix@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Trivia question: What does the "G" in G-expressions stand for?
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2022 18:15:04 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87h70u6rfp.fsf@colimite.fr> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CN6FVV155WG8.1XJVGYTIRP54T@guix-aspire>

"(" <paren@disroot.org> [2022-09-26T17:31:03+0200]:
> On Mon Sep 26, 2022 at 9:48 AM BST, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> No, it stands for “G”, just like the “s” in “s-expression” stands for
>> nothing (AFAIK).  :-)
>
> Don't quote me on this, but i'm pretty sure it originally stood
> for "symbolic" (so "symbolic expression").

I know that Wikipedia is not a scientifically sound source, but:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-expression

and in particular:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive/recursive.html

John McCarthy, Recursive Functions of *Symbolic Expressions* and Their
Computation by Machine

Now, this shows a relationship, but doesn't show direction/causality:
maybe somebody just invented "symbolic" for s, after s-expressions were
introduced :D

--
Sergiu


  reply	other threads:[~2022-09-26 16:23 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-09-17 15:37 Trivia question: What does the "G" in G-expressions stand for? jgart
2022-09-17 18:01 ` Edouard Klein
2022-09-17 18:20   ` jgart
2022-09-18 15:11     ` jgart
2022-09-26  8:48       ` Ludovic Courtès
2022-09-26  9:19         ` Ekaitz Zarraga
2022-09-26 11:00           ` zimoun
2022-09-26 15:31           ` (
2022-10-03 21:11           ` Ludovic Courtès
2022-10-04 18:37             ` (
2022-10-04 21:36               ` jgart
2022-09-26 15:31         ` (
2022-09-26 16:15           ` Sergiu Ivanov [this message]
2022-09-26 16:55             ` Felix Lechner via
2022-09-28 15:18             ` jgart

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