Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!defun.utah.edu!sandra
From: sandra%defun.utah.edu@wasatch.utah.edu (Sandra J Loosemore)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Common Lisp subsets - are there any?
Message-ID: <2234@wasatch.utah.edu>
Date: 23 Jul 89 23:56:09 GMT
References: <30255@cornell.UUCP> <398@odi.ODI.COM>
Sender: news@wasatch.utah.edu
Organization: PASS Research Group
Lines: 23

In article <398@odi.ODI.COM> dlw@odi.com writes:
>   Does there exist a standard or de facto subset of Common Lisp?
>
>No and no, last time I looked.  Perhaps someone who is current with
>the X3J13 meetings can report as to whether there is still a "subset"
>committee, and whether they have made progress.  Initial discussions
>showed that there are great differences of opinion about which
>features should be retained, and which removed, in a subset.

My impression is that subsets are a dead issue within X3J13.  I
personally thought it would have been nice to have one or more
standard subsets specified, but realistically I didn't see much chance
that we would ever agree on any particular subset.  Besides many
people being opposed to the whole idea of subsets, there didn't seem
to be any agreement among those who did want subsets on how to go
about dividing up the language.

There has been some talk that ISO might eventually standardize a
subset of ANSI Common Lisp, or divide it into kernel and library
parts, but I certainly don't expect that to happen anytime soon (if
ever).

-Sandra Loosemore (sandra@cs.utah.edu)