Subject: Re: Deep Typing for Plain Old Lists - A new kind of LISP?
From: rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock)
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2004 22:27:47 -0500
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.scheme
Message-ID: <odGdnaDtkNuuba7cRVn-hA@speakeasy.net>
Pascal Costanza  <costanza@web.de> wrote:
+---------------
| I haven't read [Bill Birch's] paper (yet), but I think this example
| can already be tackled well with CLOS. You have to change the order
| of arguments and use APPLY to achieve the same effect that you describe.
+---------------

Why is that? The argument order (EVAL expression &OPTIONAL environment)
[where "a" in Bill's example is "environment", probably called "a" for
"alist"] has a long history in Lispy languages and tutorial interpreters
and it would be unfortunately confusing to reverse it unnecessarily.


-Rob

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