Subject: Re: What does LISP stand for? From: Erik Naggum <clerik@naggum.no> Date: 1997/08/20 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3081081436091335@naggum.no> * William Paul Vrotney -> Rainer Joswig | Please study the Common Lisp literature. : | The Common Lisp hierarchy falls under only two super types, ATOM and | LIST. this is getting to the point of being embarrassingly ridiculous. you're mistaken, and that's it. if you think you are not mistaken, stop repeating yourself and start quoting the ANSI standard to support your position. | The original question was about Lisp not Common Lisp. the original question was "what does LISP stand for". why do you insist on answering a totally different question? "LISP" stands for exactly the same in _your_ favorite Lisp as in Common Lisp. get a grip. | How many times in this newsgroup do we have to point out that there is a | difference? "have to"? "we"? _zero_ would be a good number. | > (type-of 3) -> fixnum | > (type-of (find-class 'standard-class)) -> standard-class | > | > Both of the above are also atoms. | | Confirming what I said above. look, you aren't this stupid. get off the prestige and realize that what you said is in fact _untrue_, namely that Common Lisp has "atom" and "list" as an exhaustive partioning of its types. note that the () is both an atom and a list, so they aren't mutually exclusive in the first place, but let's pretend you meant "cons" instead of "list". `atom' as a type specifier is _identical_ to (not cons), causing your claim to become the meaningless tautology: "Lisp is exhaustively partitioned into the types `cons' and `not cons'." why you keep harping on this is beyond me. relax, cut the need to maintain your prestige, and admit your mistakes. you can't save face by _not_ admitting this mistake, but you _can_ save face if you stop repeating these mistaken beliefs about what Common Lisp does and just say "sorry". it's clear that you don't like Common Lisp, but I suggest you make an effort to learn it before you keep embarrassing yourself more. visiting http://www.harlequin.com/books/HyperSpec/ is a good start. Guy Steele's Common Lisp the Language, 2nd edition, is another good start. you will find that `atom' is _not_ a fundamental type. #\Erik -- man who cooks while hacking eats food that has died twice.