Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: davis@ilog.fr (Harley Davis)
Subject: Re: Common Lisp's dual name space
In-Reply-To: simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk's message of Fri, 11 Nov 1994 23:36:55 GMT
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References: <38ofd8$set@edge.ercnet.com> <39e1rr$g1v@tools.near.net>
	<39q02q$sib@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <aldersonCz0wnD.Frx@netcom.com>
	<Cz4MxK.4AM@rheged.dircon.co.uk>
Date: 13 Nov 1994 19:20:24 GMT


In article <Cz4MxK.4AM@rheged.dircon.co.uk> simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke) writes:

   >>There are two fairly obvious retorts to this.
   >>(1) In an expression like (list 1 2 3), 'list' is functioning as a NOUN!
	   (material deleted)
   >>    Certainly, the best linguistic parallel for (list 1 2 3) is a noun
   >>    phrase with 'list' as the head noun and 1, 2, 3 as complements or
   >>    adjuncts.
   >
   >No, this is an imperative sentence, which can be translated into English as
   >"Make me a list containing the three elements 1, 2, and 3 in order."
   >

   This is the crux of the disagreement. Do we feel that LisP, as a
   language based on the expression of functions, is more nearly an
   imperative language or a declarative language?

This isn't the crux of the issue.  The crux of the issue is (or should
be) which namespace system is more practical for quickly writing
bug-free programs.  This linguistic business is an amusing sideshow as
far as I can tell.

-- Harley Davis
-- 

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