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From: macrakis@osf.org (Stavros Macrakis)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: scheme [Re: What does an anti-perl look like]
Message-ID: <MACRAKIS.91Jun27231936@next15.osf.org>
Date: 28 Jun 91 03:19:36 GMT
References: <4601@optima.cs.arizona.edu> <1991Jun26.223026.13792@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
	<603@smds.UUCP>
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Organization: OSF Research Institute
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In-reply-to: sw@smds.UUCP's message of 27 Jun 91 20:01:38 GMT

In article <603@smds.UUCP> sw@smds.UUCP (Stephen E. Witham) suggests
adding more conventional syntax on top of a Scheme-like semantic base.

Algol-like syntax has gone with Lisp-like languages in several
different projects:

 -- Lisp 2.0 was a pretty standard Lisp inside, with Algol syntax outside.

 -- ECL (or EL/1) had an Algol-like syntax, a Lisp-like approach to
    the language environment (interpreter with compatible compiler,
    program represented as linked-list data structures available to
    other programs, dynamic scoping, ...) and an original approach to
    dynamic data typing (types as data, etc.).

 -- The Macsyma user language was fairly Algol-like on the outside,
    very Lisp-like on the inside.  (Macsyma is a large symbolic
    algebra system.)

Of course, all of this depends on what you call `Algol-like' and what
you call `Lisp-like'.  If you're not careful, you end up calling every
expression-oriented language with a tree-like internal form Lisp-like,
and every language with begin-end blocks Algol-like.

Perhaps Scheme ought to be called Algol-like for that matter, since
Algol had static scoping since the beginning, and Algol 68 even
introduced first-class closures....

And oh, yes, I agree with Witham that there's more to Lisp's syntax
than S-expressions: you've got to count all the special forms as part
of the syntax to be fair....  One of the advantages of Scheme is that
it reduces the number of these.

	-s

** I don't have bibliographies, but here are some pointers:

For Lisp 2.0: see Jean Sammet's Programming Languages: History and
	Fundamentals

For ECL: Ben Wegbreit's papers in CACM around 1970-75.

For Macsyma: Macsyma Users' Manual (I don't think the language was
	described in any detail in the published papers).