Scheme vs. CommonLisp vs. the World

[Christopher J. Vogt]

At 6:44 PM -0500 5/12/97, Henry G. Baker wrote:
>> I think I can count on my hands how many people think
>> complex numbers should be retained in a new CL.
>
>I agree that complex numbers should _not_ be part of 'basic'/primitive
>Lisp, but it should be possible to program them as a library package
>on top.  Ditto for bignums.  (Ditto for multidimensional arrays and
>other arcania.)

I couldn't disagree more strongly.  IMHO Bignums is one of the top 10
reasons why Lisp is a superior language.  It is all too easy to see
integers overflow 32 bits, and wreak havoc.  I'm not against the concept of
having a "core" Lisp, but I think it would be a big mistake to leave out
bignum support.

>
>Indeed, one of my complaints in 'Equal Rights' was the inability in CL
>to define a new _functional_ type and have it compare correctly.  All
>of the CL defstruct and CLOS types were forced by the CL standard to
>be mutable (nonfunctional) types.
>
>--
>Henry Baker
>www/ftp directory URL:
>ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hb/hbaker/home.html


Christopher (Chris) J. Vogt
mailto:vogt@novia.net
Omaha, NE
http://www.novia.net/~vogt/