Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ncar!gatech!udel!burdvax!fritzson@prc.unisys.com From: fritzson@prc.unisys.com (Richard Fritzson) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Information on Lisp Interpreters/Compilers Message-ID: <9288@burdvax.PRC.Unisys.COM> Date: 17 Feb 89 13:52:57 GMT References: <105@innovus.UUCP> Sender: news@PRC.Unisys.COM Reply-To: fritzson@prc.unisys.com (Richard Fritzson) Organization: Unisys - Paoli Research Center Paoli, PA Lines: 38 In-reply-to: jac@paul.rutgers.edu (J. A. Chandross) In article , jac@paul (J. A. Chandross) writes: >I am interested in writing a Lisp interpreter. > >I would greatly appreciate references to papers which describe how an byte- >coded interpreter and simple compiler are organized. Even better would be >a Lisp written in a high-level language (other than Lisp for obvious reasons). > >I know this stuff exists, I just don't know where to look for it. I've check >out numerous programming language survey books, the source for Berkeley Franz, >Gnu Emacs' mock-Lisp, X-Lisp etc, but I haven't found a good reference to an >implementation guide yet. Surely there are tech reports from the late sixties >or early seventies which deal with this sort of thing? > I don't think its obvious why you don't want a Lisp written in Lisp. About ten years ago I implemented a lexically scoped Lisp and based it primarily on the Steele and Sussman MIT tech reports entitled "The Art of the Interpreter or, The Modularity Complex (Parts Zero, One, and Two)" and the LAMBDA series of reports and the reports on the early SCHEME chips. (all late seventies reports) The style of programming they adhered to in these documents made it possible to move from the Lisp code to any other programming language. They did not, for example, implement recursion by using recursion; it was done explicitly, with stacks. I don't believe that material was turned into a book. But some of it, I think, and many of the ideas, wound up in the textbook "The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" by Abelson and Sussman. If you want the tech reports and can't find them just from my vague allusions, write to me and I'll send you the exact references. -Rich Fritzson -Rich Fritzson INTERNET: fritzson@prc.unisys.com UUCP: {sdcrdcf,psuvax1,cbmvax}!burdvax!fritzson