Dave Lawrence (12/29/88)
I would post this to a gnu.* group except I'm not even sure what they
are. Our site doesn't get them. Some day, I hope.
Could someone please summarize to me the basic differences between Common
Lisp and Emacs Lisp (and perhaps some side-bars on Liszt). Is Emacs mostly
upwardly compatible with common? I did notice that I couldn't do `cadr'
as one primitive; I had to split it into `car (cdr'.
Where is a good place to get comprehensive info on the primitives of Emacs
Lisp? There wasn't anything like what I wanted in the Info structure,
although I must admit that I found many interesting things while looking for
it. C-h f and C-h v are good for finding the names of functions and
variables that I've seen, but there must be a better way than pushing through
tons of code to figure it all out.
Can someone please help?
By the way, I've long wondered what Emacs stands for (I know what GNU means,
and I also know that Emacs has been around longer than the FSF); any
help on that?
Thanks
Dave
--
tale@rpitsmts.bitnet, tale%mts@rpitsgw.rpi.edu, tale@pawl.rpi.edurlk@think.com (Robert Krawitz) (12/30/88)
In article <2198@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU>, Dave Lawrence writes:
]Could someone please summarize to me the basic differences between Common
]Lisp and Emacs Lisp (and perhaps some side-bars on Liszt). Is Emacs mostly
]upwardly compatible with common? I did notice that I couldn't do `cadr'
]as one primitive; I had to split it into `car (cdr'.
Common Lisp and Emacs Lisp are completely different creatures. Emacs
lisp has lots of editing features (it is, after all, intended for
extending an editor), but it's missing a pile of CL features (floating
point numbers, most reader macros, most extended data types). There
is a CL quasi-compatibility package that provides structs and a lot of
control structure (and some other features) that makes emacs lisp a
lot easier to use. The nastiest incompatibility, in my opinion, is
that CL is generally case insensitive while EL is case sensitive.
This makes it very difficult for emacs lisp to read common lisp code,
which is useful on occasion.
]Where is a good place to get comprehensive info on the primitives of Emacs
]Lisp? There wasn't anything like what I wanted in the Info structure,
]although I must admit that I found many interesting things while looking for
]it. C-h f and C-h v are good for finding the names of functions and
]variables that I've seen, but there must be a better way than pushing through
]tons of code to figure it all out.
There is an emacs lisp programmers' manual; contact Dan LaLiberte
(liberte@a.cs.uiuc.edu) for details. M-x apropos is a good tool; it
takes a string as an argument and returns a buffer containing all
symbols containing the string and one line of documentation for each.
]By the way, I've long wondered what Emacs stands for
Editing MACroS. What became ITS emacs was originally various
collections of macros for TECO; RMS collected them and reworked the
result into the first emacs. GNU Emacs is RMS's second or third emacs
(I don't know how much he had to do with zwei, the Lisp Machine
editor).
--
harvard >>>>>> | Robert Krawitz <rlk@think.com>
bloom-beacon > |think!rlk
topaz >>>>>>>> . rlk@a.HASA.disorgawm@gould.doc.ic.ac.uk (Aled Morris) (01/03/89)
>By the way, I've long wondered what Emacs stands for
Eight Megabytes And Constantly Swapping, of course :-)
Aled
mail: awm@doc.ic.ac.uk | Department of Computing
uucp: ..!ukc!icdoc!awm | Imperial College
talk: 01-589-5111x5085 | 180 Queens Gate, London SW7 2BZmcdaniel@uicsrd.csrd.uiuc.edu (01/07/89)
>By the way, I've long wondered what Emacs stands for
Escape Meta Alt Control Shift
:-)