Terry Reedy tjreedy at udel.edu
Tue Sep 12 12:45:17 EDT 2000

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"Jim Sabatke" <jsabatke at execpc.com> wrote in message
news:39bcfac4$0$99040$726baab at news.execpc.com...
> Are the list processing capabilities in Python sufficiently Lisp-like to
> perform AI types of processing?

I consider Python's list processing capabilities to be superior.  One thing
to watch for is that Python is more oriented toward efficiently
manipulating the tail of a list while Lisp addresses the front of a list.
So (where '+_=' means 'more or less the appropriate equivalent'):

(cons item list)             +_= list.append(item)
(head list) =? (car list) +_= list[-1] (also list.pop())
(tail list) =? (cdr list)   +_= list[:-1] (also a side-effect of
list.pop())

Python's direct indexing replaces cddddar-type constructions and are much
clearer.
Python's slicing would require a pair of reverses to simulate in at least
some dialects of Lisp.  As others already noted, what you lose is
data/program equivalence.

Terry J. Reedy

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