Matthias Buelow  <mkb@incubus.de> wrote:
+---------------
| kernmichel@yahoo.fr wrote:
| > Thanks for the advice, I have already found this book but thought it
| > was only the kind of book which explains "how to implement lisp in
| > lisp" (which won't help me as I'm learning Lisp at the same time I
| > implement the interpreter) 
| 
| It would help you more than you apparently can imagine at the moment.
+---------------

I second that: L.i.S.P. is *required* reading for anyone
who aspires to become a Lisp (or Scheme) implementer, IMHO.

Also, don't focus too much on interpreters per se. Lisp/Scheme
interpreters are a dime a dozen -- worse, there are literally
*dozens* of free, open-source, high-quality ones out there already
[not to mention quite a number of fine commercial ones], see
<http://community.schemewiki.org/?scheme-faq-standards#implementations>
and <http://www.cliki.net/Common%20Lisp%20implementation> and
<http://wiki.alu.org/Implementation>, just for starters.

But if you have any hope whatsoever for eventual commercial success
[and, frankly, you are currently a *LOOOooonnggg* way from that!], then
you *MUST* be able to compile to either native machine code (preferred)
or some relatively high-performance VM, such as Java or .NET.

Oh, and did I mention there are already *dozens* of free, open-source,
high-quality Lisp/Scheme compilers out there already [not to mention
quite a number of fine commercial ones], see above three URLs. ;-}  ;-}

Anyway, you should probably think about compiling from the beginning.
Besides the chapters in L.i.S.P., also be sure to read this:

    http://scheme2006.cs.uchicago.edu/11-ghuloum.pdf
    "An Incremental Approach to Compiler Construction"
    Abdulaziz Ghuloum
    2006 Scheme and Functional Programming Workshop


-Rob

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