Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/26/83; site ihnss.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxi!mhuxa!houxm!ihnp4!ihnss!knudsen
From: knudsen@ihnss.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: I/O, and are Function Calls part of language?
Message-ID: <1664@ihnss.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Sep-83 18:27:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihnss.1664
Posted: Fri Sep  2 18:27:17 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Sep-83 11:04:55 EDT
Organization: BTL Naperville, Il.
Lines: 13

In the great "does C have I/O" discussion, someone claimed that
function calls don't really count as part of the language.
Actually, anything can be done as a fuction call, so it should
be possible to create a language with no syntax at all (except
function calls)!  Is this then a language?
Such a language was developed at MIT back int the late 50's for
artificial intelligence work.  It spread to Calif. (Irvine)
and recently MIT even built machines just to execute this beast.
Of course the lack of syntax makes for a lot of (((((())))))))
and hard to read, etc. (yes, they've added infix operations,
and the COND isn't really just a function call).

SO, is LISP a language?  :-)   mike k