Re: What's wrong with Common Lisp's lambda ?

Thank for reply, I was scared a bit :)

Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
"Karol Skocik" <Karol.Skocik@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

Hi,
I have just read this article:

http://www.ddj.com/184404384;jsessionid=KLMB3AY1Q0DHQQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?_requestid=71496

and in the section "Impact of Logic", I saw this :

Scheme, a dialect of Lisp which got lambda right (Guy Steele and Gerald
Sussman, 1975; http://www.schemers .org/).

I am a happy CL lambda user, and can't find something wrong in CL's
lambda...

Could some functional guru explain me what they meant?

COMMON-LISP:LAMBDA is ok.
Common Lisp is a dialect of Lisp which got lambda right too.


The lambda in LISP 1.5 and before had some problems. Namely, it
didn't create a lexical scope, like in Scheme and Common Lisp,
nor a closure.

See: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/node4.html

d. Free variables. In all innocence, James R. Slagle programmed
the following LISP function definition and complained when it
didn't work right:

The object of the function is to find a subexpression of x
satisfying p[x] and return f[x]. If the search is
unsuccessful, then the continuation function u[] of no
arguments is to be computed and its value returned. The
difficulty was that when an inner recursion occurred, the
value of car[x] wanted was the outer value, but the inner
value was actually used. In modern terminology, lexical
scoping was wanted, and dynamic scoping was obtained.


The lambda of emacs lisp is still 'broken'.

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/

"Logiciels libres : nourris au code source sans farine animale."

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: quote semantics
    ... with some useful work on Lisp libraries, if you fall that way GTF ... ask for that one, too, whether it was all that related to the Lambda ... And certainly CL took influence from Scheme, ... claim that this community, which is entirely composed of people who, ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme
    ... > not a dialect of Lisp but a separate Lisp-like language. ... Scheme", "Scheme is a statically scoped and properly tail-recursive ... The Scheme community has the SRFI process for developing additional ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: What is the main advantage of macros over functions?
    ... if one is allergic to reading Lambda one may better not use ... Lisp authors, doesn't help you much, I'd say. ... >> Readmacros are a completely different mechanism. ... Macros and Readmacros ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Whats wrong with Common Lisps lambda ?
    ... |> Scheme, a dialect of Lisp which got lambda right (Guy Steele and Gerald ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Whats wrong with Common Lisps lambda ?
    ... Scheme, a dialect of Lisp which got lambda right (Guy Steele and Gerald ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)