Of Lisp and little sleep...the little monstrous questions that nag me.

I am currently reading a new Perl book that states that Perl is more
like Lisp than C. The author goes on to state that of the 7 items
listed [http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html], Perl shares 6 of them.

This prompted a deep furroughing in my brow. "I wonder?" wondered I.
"Does Tcl also share 6 of the 7 traits  that set Lisp apart?". I am
sure this is not a new thought on my part with "nothing new under the
sun" and all that. Still I wondered. Yes I did.  : )

He goes on to say that Perl is coded in a "C" manner because it was
conceived, bred and taught in a "C" manner (he took longer to say it of
course). Might the same be said of Tcl?

Oh yes, I have had little sleep...  : )

Robert

P.S. Maybe when I am in this kind of mood I could do a strange and
fanciful Tcl tutorial like the Ruby folks have.

<sigzero@gmail.com> wrote
> I am currently reading a new Perl book that states that Perl is more
> like Lisp than C. The author goes on to state that of the 7 items
> listed [http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html], Perl shares 6 of them.
>
> This prompted a deep furroughing in my brow. "I wonder?" wondered I.
> "Does Tcl also share 6 of the 7 traits that set Lisp apart?". I am
> sure this is not a new thought on my part with "nothing new under
> the sun" and all that. Still I wondered. Yes I did.  : )

Perl like Lisp?  Hm.

Looking at the "9 new things in Lisp" at
http://www.paulgraham.com/diff.html, I would say that Tcl has (1)
conditionals, (2) function types, (3) recursion, (4) a new concept of
variables, (6) programs composed of expressions, and (9) the whole
language is always available.  I don't think that you could say that
Tcl has (5) garbage collection (unless you're just talking about
reference counted Tcl_Objs) or (7) a symbol type (unless that is
really Tcl_Obj's internal rep) or (8) a notations for code (unless
you're talking about a byte-code compiler).

I'm not a Lisp guy, but Paul Graham is, and he says that nobody has
(8) and (9), so I'd go with that.

Bob
--
Bob Techentin                   techentin.robert@NOSPAMmayo.edu
Mayo Foundation                                 (507) 538-5495
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