On 1 Jun 2010, at 09:18, alux wrote:
So, if you have lazy-eval, there's no need for special-forms.
This is obviousely correct for if / cond.
If you define special forms as in Common Lisp (that's something I
learned from this discussion), yes. If you define special forms as I
think Clojure does (in fact, I can't find any definition, just a
list), then it's not true. With lazy evaluation, "if" could become a
plain function, but it would still have to be a built-in function that
one could not express in the language itself, unless some other choice
primitive or a suitable data structure exists. The notion of a
primitive operation always remains.
Looking into the other special forms ( http://clojure.org/
special_forms
), I wouldnt know how to implement all of them. Certainly there is,
unknownst to me, a bunch of literature about (sets of) primitives that
cannot e replaced - literature hints anybody?
For Lisp-like languages, the best starting point is SICP (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html
). For a more in-depth treatment of implementation issues, I'd
continue with Christian Queinnec's "Lisp in Small Pieces" (http://pagesperso-systeme.lip6.fr/Christian.Queinnec/WWW/LiSP.html
).
Konrad.
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