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From: gjc@bu-cs.BU.EDU (George J. Carrette)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: Lisp for VAX/VMS
Message-ID: <27509@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 26 Jan 89 22:21:41 GMT
References: <299@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 35
In-reply-to: ian@mva.cs.liv.ac.uk's message of 24 Jan 89 21:25:04 GMT

The only free implementations of common-lisp-like Lisp for VAX/VMS that
I know of continues to be NIL from MIT. You used to be able to write
to the Laboratory of Computer Science at MIT to obtain NIL for a
distribution change of something like $100. However, I doubt that this
is still the case.

There is a circa-1983 release of NIL which can be obtained from
the National Energy Software Center. It will not run under VMS 4 or 5
as-is, but there are a couple trivial patches included in the release notes
that do make it work. The NESC distributes this to support the older
release of DOE-MACSYMA for the VAX. (The newer release uses DEC COMMON LISP).
If you ask the right questions you should be able to obtain *just* the
VAX-NIL tape without the Macsyma.

There are newer versions of NIL around, circa 1986/1987, but none in
the hands of any distribution centers I know of. I continue to use
one of these newer versions as a prototyping tool and for its
built-in Emacs editor, but I do not have a complete distribution kit
to offer. Even the circa-1983 version of NIL has significant efficiency
and language completeness advantages over the DEC COMMON LISP product,
although it does have storage management limitations (no gc!) that
would keep it from being a viable commercial product.

If you have a copy of the "Programmers Guide to Common Lisp" (or something)
by Tatar, published by DIGITAL PRESS, you will notice that
the author used NIL (while working for DEC), and aknowledges Glenn Burke!

 NATIONAL ENERGY SOFTWARE CENTER
 9700 SOUTH CASS AVE
 ARGONNE, IL 60439
 ORDERING INFO: 312-972-7250

Hope this helps. Maybe NIL will get sent to DECUS some day.

-gjc