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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Subject: Re: Looking for MACLSP
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References: <gsharp.2.0030C335@primenet.com> <aldersonD2MArJ.331@netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 1995 18:12:02 GMT
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In article <aldersonD2MArJ.331@netcom.com> alderson@netcom.com writes:
>In article <gsharp.2.0030C335@primenet.com> gsharp@primenet.com (Greg Sharp)
>writes:
>
>>I am looking for a version of Lisp called "MACLSP" - it was around in the 
>>early seventies.  Is there a current flavor of Lisp that comes close to this 
>>(has statements like "FEXPR" and "declare")?
>
>Ah, MACLISP!  Filenames were constrained to be six characters long on all
>PDP-10 operating systems (although Tops-20 eventually went to 39).  It was
>available on ITS (MIT), WAITS (Stanford), TENEX, and Tops-20 for certain; I
>simply don't know if it ran on Tops-10.  It was also available on Multics
>(courtesy of Bernie G., I think).
>
>I seem to recall that Franz Lisp started out as a port of MACLISP to Unix; it
>may have had FEXPRs--yup, I just checked the first edition of _LISPcraft_ by
>Wilensky, which used Franz, and FEXPRs are discussed on pg. 161.

I don't think Franz started as a port of MacLisp.  After all, what
would it port?  The PDP-11 assembly code?  PL/1 (from the Multics
version)?  (OK, the compilers were in Lisp; but the Franz compiler
looks like a different program.)  However, Franz was fairly
compatible w/ MacLisp.  It even had "hunks".

>FEXPR was the way to define what is called a "special form" in Common Lisp.
>
>The usual reason given for the lack of FEXPR in Common Lisp is that the same
>results can be achieved via macros, which MACLISP also had.

There's also an argument that *some* of the results (or FEXPRs) are
undesirable.  (E.g. they make life difficult for code-walkers and,
indeed, for the compiler.)

-- jeff
