Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!imagine!Dave
From: Dave Lawrence
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: GNU Emacs Lisp
Summary: how different?
Message-ID: <2198@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>
Date: 28 Dec 88 23:20:02 GMT
Sender: news@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU
Reply-To: tale@pawl.rpi.edu
Organization: The Octagon Room
Lines: 26

I would post this to a gnu.* group except I'm not even sure what they
are.  Our site doesn't get them.   Some day, I hope.

Could someone please summarize to me the basic differences between Common
Lisp and Emacs Lisp (and perhaps some side-bars on Liszt).  Is Emacs mostly
upwardly compatible with common?  I did notice that I couldn't do `cadr'
as one primitive; I had to split it into `car (cdr'.  

Where is a good place to get comprehensive info on the primitives of Emacs
Lisp?   There wasn't anything like what I wanted in the Info structure, 
although I must admit that I found many interesting things while looking for
it.  C-h f and C-h v are good for finding the names of functions and
variables that I've seen, but there must be a better way than pushing through
tons of code to figure it all out.
 
Can someone please help?
 
By the way, I've long wondered what Emacs stands for (I know what GNU means,
and I also know that Emacs has been around longer than the FSF); any
help on that?
 
Thanks
 
Dave
--
      tale@rpitsmts.bitnet, tale%mts@rpitsgw.rpi.edu, tale@pawl.rpi.edu