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From: mac@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU (Alex Colvin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: lisp (Compatibility with Lisp)
Message-ID: <1937@uvacs.CS.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Date: Thu, 3-Sep-87 09:37:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: uvacs.1937
Posted: Thu Sep  3 09:37:19 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Sep-87 16:51:18 EDT
References: <855@tjalk.cs.vu.nl> <2683@hoptoad.uucp> <1519@sol.ARPA> <4776@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Organization: University of Virginia
Lines: 27
Summary: little idiosyncracies

In article <4776@sdcrdcf.UUCP>, darrelj@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Darrel VanBuer) writes:
> The essential framework of Lisp: cond, lambda, progn, setq, prog, function
> calls, car, cdr, cons, list, atom work pretty much the same in every lisp.

despite set vs. cset, function vs. variable binding (see theological dispute
on net.lang.lisp a few years ago)

> Still other common functions are known under different names:
set! reverse!

> Lisps vary wildly in extensions to lambda
who was it that had something like pattern matching in the lambda-binding?
i.e. list == (lambda x x), car == (lambda ((a . r)) a) etc.

> The parts of Lisp which you can expect to work the same everywhere is
> perhaps a Basic sized subset.
speaking of languages with dialects! Dartmouth vs. uSoft ("street") Basic.

> This has happened for several reasons.  Before common lisp, there was never
> any "official" standard.
despite Utah's proclamation of "Standard", then "Portable Standard" Lisp.

> [I have been involved in several translations between various lisp dialects,
> so am familiar with the range of differing similarities.  Generally, about
> 5% of the "features" actually used present real translation problems caused
> by radically different solutions to language features.]
sounds about right for most programs in most languages.