A "Lisp Machine" and cons cells

From: neo88 (solo88_at_truevine.net)
Date: 08/24/04 

Date: 23 Aug 2004 17:08:48 -0700

Since Lisp is a language that is mainly used to manipulate symbols, indeed,
I suppose you could say that that is all it really does it manipulate
symbols, I wondered if it would be possible to do a few things with this
apparent advantage of Lisp.

1) Cons cells - Since I know that cons cells are the lowest form of Lisp
that is actually what we can call Lisp, I was wondering if it was possible
to stop the translation of cons cells into machine form. Why would I want
to do this? Well, I think that computers are very good at manipulating
symbols as well as a programming language is, independent of that languages
implementation. So I want to create a "Lisp Machine" I guess you could say
somewhat similar to what Frank Buss is trying to do in hardware, yet different
in the sense that I'm more concerned with the hardware processing and
manipulating symbols only (in this case Lisp symbols in the form of cons
cells).

2) This said, is it possible to create a machine that manipulates symbols only?
I suppose this is rather like a Turing Machine, yet more advanced. For
now, I'm only worryed about Lisp symbols, although I suppose it would
be an intresting extension to make the machine manipulate any symbol(s)
we wish it to. I don't really mean doing this in the sense of a concrete
computer that can do it, I don't have that kind of time or resources. I
just was looking into this as more of a thought experiment, actually to
make a point to a friend. Although, if there is an easy way to implement this
idea of a symbol-processing machine cheaply, and fast, I might look into
it a bit more. Right now, as many of you know, I am a wee bit preoccupied
with writing a bot in Lisp, and learning the language itself. Unfortanly,
school starts wedensday, which will inhibit my study of Lisp rather
annoyingly. :-(
Anyways, thanks for reading this, and please feel free to give me more
ideas and suggestions, as well as reassuring me that this is a feasible
and worthwhile thought experiment. TIA. 

-- 
May the Source be with you.
neo88 (Philip Haddad)

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