Subject: Re: Why some people think that Scheme is not a Lisp
From: rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock)
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2003 05:27:25 -0500
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <hO6cnTv0V9eQ0_2iXTWc-w@speakeasy.net>
Kent M Pitman  <pitman@world.std.com> wrote:
+---------------
| rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) writes:
| > ...as a SWAG [] one could write the spec for [a workable subset
| > of Common Lisp] in the same ~50 pages as the Scheme spec...
| 
| I've actually engaged serious people on a discussion of this and it usually
| comes down to that even those who are of a mind to try get saddened and
| give up when they find that the number of lines of denotational semantics
| will increase. ... I personaly find a denotational semantics redundant...
+---------------

Ditto. In my hypothetical CL subset spec vs. Scheme spec comparison I
was counting only the core "human readable" part of the spec, not the
"Formal syntax and semantics" backend of the Scheme spec -- especially
since the "rules" of CL subsetting say that the semantics of whatever
is included in the subset must be the same as full CL, and therefore
a CL subset spec writer would presumably simply point to the ANSI spec
for that!  [How's that for wiggling out of it?]  ;-}  ;-}


-Rob

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