Re: Lisp's QUOTE and Mathematica's "Hold"

Richard Fateman wrote:
> All of
> JH's maunderings about macros and how that is what
> mathematica does, and therefore that is how lisp does
> something,

You are misrepresenting me. I was not trying to infer how Lisp evaluates
code, I was trying to find out if quote and eval could be useful for
writing an embedded Mathematica-like DSL in Lisp. It seems that they are
not, and the next most obvious Lisp implementation is essentially the same
as other languages. So macros are the only remaining point of interest.

> is basically wrong. Mathematica doesn't need
> or use macros, and neither does a computer algebra system
> written in Lisp, simulating Mathematica.

Not macros, functions mapping ASTs to ASTs. They are the core of Mathematica
and a language that provided this functionality clearly and efficiently
would be of great use in this kind of work.

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
http://www.ffconsultancy.com
.

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