Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!dircon!rheged!simon
From: simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke)
Subject: Re: Common Lisp's dual name space
Message-ID: <Cz4MxK.4AM@rheged.dircon.co.uk>
Organization: none. Disorganization: total.
References: <38ofd8$set@edge.ercnet.com> <39e1rr$g1v@tools.near.net> <39q02q$sib@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <aldersonCz0wnD.Frx@netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 1994 23:36:55 GMT
Lines: 44

In article <aldersonCz0wnD.Frx@netcom.com>,
Richard M. Alderson III <alderson@netcom.com> wrote:
>In article <39q02q$sib@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au
>(Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>
>>barmar@nic.near.net (Barry Margolin) writes:
>>>A point I made in an earlier posting is that it's natural for humans to
>>>think of nouns and verbs as being independent.
>
>>There are two fairly obvious retorts to this.
>>(1) In an expression like (list 1 2 3), 'list' is functioning as a NOUN!
	(material deleted)
>>    Certainly, the best linguistic parallel for (list 1 2 3) is a noun
>>    phrase with 'list' as the head noun and 1, 2, 3 as complements or
>>    adjuncts.
>
>No, this is an imperative sentence, which can be translated into English as
>"Make me a list containing the three elements 1, 2, and 3 in order."
>

This is the crux of the disagreement. Do we feel that LisP, as a
language based on the expression of functions, is more nearly an
imperative language or a declarative language?

There is a distinct difference between the expression of a function,
and a means of evaluating that function. A function is just a mapping
between its domain and its range; I believe that mathematicians will
quite happily describe a function which they haven't a clue how to
evaluate.

LisP provides us with a general method of evaluating LisP expressions,
in the function EVAL. This maps expressions on to expressions. A
ProLog evaluator equally maps expressions onto expressions, but we
don't thereby infer that ProLog expressions are imperative. Neither
should we, in my opinion, see LisP as imperative.

In my view, there are no verbs in LisP. 


-- 
--------simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk

	to err is human, to lisp divine
				 ;; attributed to Kim Philby, oddly enough.
