From: Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk>
Subject: Re: Java and Python have just discovered "record" type finally after 40 years.
Date: Mon, 15 May 2023 02:11:55 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87353ys8is.fsf@bsb.me.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: u3r3rr$2k5j4$1@dont-email.me
"Jeffrey R.Carter" <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.acm.org.not> writes:
> On 2023-05-14 17:14, Ben Bacarisse wrote:
>> I never saw a LISP S-expressions defined that way. Did this list really
>> no have a "dotted pair" as the basic structure with lists being simply a
>> special case?
>
> The book I learned from (/Let's Talk LISP/ by Laurent Siklóssy, 1976)
> introduces dotted pairs in chapter 10.7.1 (out of 12 chapters) on page 145
> (out of 213, excluding appendices and index). Chapter 10 deals with the
> internal representation of data in LISP. The implication is that they were
> not considered part of the normal use of the language.
Do you still have it? Does is discuss association lists? I'd call them
a normal part of LISP and it would be odd to force the associations to
be lists rather than pairs. Does Siklóssy imply that an ASSOC list is a
list of lists of length 2, or does he not discuss them until the very
end?
> S-expressions, on the other hand, are introduced in chapter 1.1 on page
> 2. The book also presents the grammar
>
> S-expression ::= atom | list
> list ::= '(' inside ')'
> inside ::= empty | S-expression | S-expression inside
> empty ::=
That's an interesting way to simplify things for the leaner though I
would not have chosen to use a term that already had another meaning by
1976. The author could have used something like L-expression and
avoided any future confusion.
--
Ben.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-05-15 1:11 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-05-12 17:50 Java and Python have just discovered "record" type finally after 40 years Nasser M. Abbasi
2023-05-12 18:58 ` richardthiebaud
2023-05-12 21:33 ` Jeffrey R.Carter
2023-05-13 7:13 ` Niklas Holsti
2023-05-13 11:18 ` Luke A. Guest
2023-05-13 16:53 ` Niklas Holsti
2023-05-14 6:46 ` J-P. Rosen
2023-05-14 7:20 ` Nasser M. Abbasi
2023-05-14 9:49 ` Luke A. Guest
2023-05-14 9:43 ` Luke A. Guest
2023-05-14 9:45 ` Luke A. Guest
2023-05-14 10:29 ` Niklas Holsti
2023-05-14 10:37 ` Ben Bacarisse
2023-05-14 10:39 ` Jeffrey R.Carter
2023-05-14 15:10 ` J-P. Rosen
2023-05-14 15:14 ` Ben Bacarisse
2023-05-14 16:56 ` Jeffrey R.Carter
2023-05-15 1:11 ` Ben Bacarisse [this message]
2023-05-15 10:44 ` Jeffrey R.Carter
2023-05-17 0:24 ` Ben Bacarisse
2023-05-14 12:46 ` Bill Findlay
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