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From: cjeffery@CS.ARIZONA.EDU (Clinton Jeffery)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.icon
Subject: ideas from the icon language applied to scheme
Message-ID: <9103050015.AA21315@cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 5 Mar 91 00:15:59 GMT
References: <1991Mar4.225707.12864@midway.uchicago.edu>
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>In response to people comparing Scheme and Icon, Richard notes that:
>The fact that Icon isn't interpreted per se does get in the way of
>Icon code executing code.

Icon's virtual machine architecture does not rule out a true
interpreter.  For instance, most implementations of the SmallTalk
language use a virtual machine, but the SmallTalk environment comes
with an interpreter.  A SmallTalk guru could provide some useful
suggestions in this discussion, I think.

A by-product of my own research this year is a "multi-program interpreter",
a version of iconx that allows mulitple icon programs to be loaded into a
single execution of the virtual machine.  This would allow further
improvements to the kind of "Icon interpreter written in Icon" programs
that were posted last year by various members of this group.