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Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme

Jon S. Anthony j-anthony at rcn.com
Thu Oct 9 16:25:22 EDT 2003 
"Andrew Dalke" <adalke at mindspring.com> writes:

> Pascal Costanza:
> > So what's the result of ("one" - "two") then? ;)
> 
> It's undefined on strings -- a type error.  Having + doesn't
> mean that - must exist.

No, but it makes the semantics odd for an operation named by "+".  Of
course it may not be obvious what the semantics should be, but then
the semantics of "hi" + "there" isn't obvious either.


> (A more interesting question would be to ask what
> the result of  "throne" - "one" is.  But again, a type error.)

Why?  This seems like a likely candidate for a string -.


> I understand your point of view.  OTOH, it's like when I used to
> work with C.  It was standardized, but required that I download
> a slew of packages in order to do things.

That's why there are _implementations_.  It's odd that the obvious
distinction between "compiler" (or interpreter or whatever) and
"language" is so hard to grasp.


> appropriate.  I know there are good reasons for a standard to
> leave out useful packages, but I know there are good reasons for
> an implementation to include a large number of useful packages.

Wow, this actually sounds right.


> Is there a free Lisp/Scheme implementation I can experiment with
> which include in the distribution (without downloading extra
> packages; a "moby" distribution in xemacs speak):
>  - unicode
>  - xml processing (to some structure which I can use XPath on)
>  - HTTP-1.1 (client and server)
>  - URI processing, including support for opening and reading from
>         http:, file:, and https:
>  - regular expressions on both 8-bit bytes and unicode
>  - XML-RPC
>  - calling "external" applications (like system and popen do for C)
>  - POP3 and mailbox processing

Yes. Allegro CL (ACL) for one.


> As far as I can tell, there isn't.  I'll need to mix and match packages

You obviously can't "tell" too well.


> > (Apart from that, Jython also doesn't provide everything that Python
> > provides, right?)
> 
> No, but there is a good overlap.  I believe all of the above are
> supported on both implementations.

Interaction with Java (to access it's libararies and whatnot) is also
in ACL.


> Which Common Lisp *distribution* provides the above?  I

One is pointed out above.


/Jon
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