Hello Konrad, to ensure I understand you right (I want to understand your words, so in this very moment I dont care about other wordings):
In a lazy lisp if and cond can be plain functions. But to define plain functions, or in any case somewhere, I need a special form. Is it that what you mean? (I'm always tempted to try and find the very basic blocks. But here this seems to be like looking for a root in a directed graph - it exists in special cases only.) Thank you, alux On 1 Jun., 10:44, Konrad Hinsen <konrad.hin...@fastmail.net> wrote: > 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. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
