I was the one mentioning triple-quotes because it was one of the few Python features i could think of that was better than Lisps.
> For me python is 'strong OOP' scripting language in first place. > Inheritance, generalization and every kind of abstractions togeteher > with clean and simple syntax make python perfect language for medium > size "scripting" projects (ie just explore the code and add your > features, no messing with compilers). The Common-Lisp object systems has all and more OO-features, some which you never probably have thought of before. Here's one: Inheritance lets you specialise a method so a rectangle and a circle can have a different Draw method. If you wouldn't have OO you would need a function with if statements to dispatch on thing, if thing=rectange then drawRectangle if thing=circle then drawCircle. What if you want a draw method that takes a thing and a backend, then you need if statements again, draw(self,backend): if backend == postscript do one thing else do another. Maybe you can solve this with multiple inheritance, creating RectangePostscript and CirclePostscript objects. Lisp supports multiple inheritance too, but also multimethods which allow a looser coupling between objects and dispatching on all parameters, not only the first parameter (self in python speak). Just define one method draw(rectange,postscript) and another draw(rectangle, pdf) > Exceptions, finally/except blocks, Lisp has a unique exception system. Say ReadHtmlTag throws an exception deep down in your system, UnexpectedChar. In Lisp you can define recovery strategies all over your system. the IgnoreAttribute recovery strategy can be in the same method as ReadHtmlTag. You can have another ways to recover, IgnoreFile, or ReparseFile higher up in your program. When you catch the error at the highest point in you main function, you can choose which recovery you want to use. Either IgnoreAttribute and continue in the ReadHtmlTag method or ReparseFile in the ParseFile method. The stack and variables will be there right as when the error occurred. If I write a library I don't have to guess if the users of my library wan't me to show a nice GUI error message, ignore the error or whatever. I provide all options and let they choose. > automatic reference counts and destructors make it easy to > write "robust" code. No, Lisp doesn't have anything like that. There is a thing called the garbage collector however, I think it exists in other languages. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
