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From: davis@ilog.fr (Harley Davis)
Subject: Re: Why do people like C? (Was: Comparison: Beta - Lisp)
In-Reply-To: simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk's message of Tue, 25 Oct 1994 19:22:44 GMT
Message-ID: <DAVIS.94Oct26095355@passy.ilog.fr>
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References: <Pine.A32.3.91.941014091539.42306C-100000@swim5.eng.sematech.org>
	<Cxxwx0.1nC@rheged.dircon.co.uk> <Cy1H5H.5I8@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
	<38icti$132@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <Cy8tty.6E2@rheged.dircon.co.uk>
Date: 26 Oct 1994 08:53:55 GMT


In article <Cy8tty.6E2@rheged.dircon.co.uk> simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke) writes:

   In article <38icti$132@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>,
   Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> wrote:
   >jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
   >
   >Can someone explain what the references to Lisp-2 are about?
   >I have seen some of the old Lisp-2 documents, and don't see any
   >interesting resemblance between Common Lisp and Lisp-2.  Can it be
   >a reference to the separate namespaces for functions and variables,
   >one of the things I like least about CL?  But in that CL resembles
   >Interlisp, and _doesn't_ resemble that other MIT product, Scheme.
   >

   I've sworn off writing anything in the least controversial for a
   fortnight, but I thought I'd answer this point. LISP1 and LISP2 (with
   the numbers normally subscripted, but that is hard to do in a
   plain-text mail message) are terms which have been fairly widely used
   (see papers by eg Gabriel) as shorthand to distinguish those LisPs
   (e.g. PSL, Interlisp, Scheme, EuLisp) which have a single namespace
   for code and data, and those (e.g. Common LISP) which have separate
   function and value namespaces. 

To be picky, it's not code vs. data - it's function bindings versus
variable bindings.  Data (including functional objects) don't have
namespaces; namespaces are only relevent when discussing bindings -
ie, mappings from names to values.  Having multiple namespaces in
conjunction with a module system that supports namespace-qualified
exports allows some degree of static checking of the use of names - a
static checking orthogonal to (but similar in value of) static type
checking.  Ilog Talk is one Lisp which supports this use of multiple
namespaces to reduce runtime errors.  See our paper "Talking About
Modules and Delivery", available in the LFP'94 proceedings or from our
WWW home page (http://www.ilog.fr/).

-- Harley Davis
-- 

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