help-gnu-emacs
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: How close is elisp to CL now?


From: Pascal J. Bourguignon
Subject: Re: How close is elisp to CL now?
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:41:33 +0100
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.2 (gnu/linux)

juliewith <galaxybeinglambda@gmail.com> writes:

> Not being proficient in Lisp but wanting to be, I was wondering if the
> lexical scoping in 24.x has now pushed elisp closer to Common Lisp in
> capabilities. If so how close? Could elisp now (potentially) do all the
> "higher level" sorts of things CL does?

Quite far, actually.

But with some work, you can get more closer to CL just writing elisp
code.

The main road block is the lack of reader macros, or otherwise lack of a
hook into the emacs lisp reader, to implement reading qualified symbols
(and other CL reader macros).

But apart from reading qualified symbols, CL packages could be
implemented now just with emacs lisp code (using obarrays).

However a lot is still missing:

True structures and CLOS objects.  (They're simulated at the elisp level
with vectors).

Multidimensional arrays.

bignums, ratios, simple-floats, single-floats, double-floats,
long-floats, complexes.

Etc.


But IMO, it would be simplier and will give a better results (both
technically and politically) to reimplement the emacs VM (all the GNU
emacs C code) in Common Lisp, than to Common-lispify GNU emacs. 

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.


reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]