Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!sytex!smcl
From: smcl@sytex.com (Scott McLoughlin)
Subject: Re: CL grammar ambiguities?
Message-ID: <09qD1c1w165w@sytex.com>
Sender: bbs@sytex.com
Organization: Sytex Access Ltd.
References: <WGD.95Feb10182248@martigny.ai.mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 1995 22:35:08 GMT
Lines: 32

wgd@zurich.ai.mit.edu (William G. Dubuque) writes:

[ discussion of ambiguous reader syntax deleted ]


> I would not be surprised if the lack of rigor here stems from the
> fact that most CL implementors never used a parser or lexer
> generator to generate a reader or lexer but instead compose these
> algorithms by hand. Use of a parser or lexer generate would help
> to uncover such ambiguities and imprecision.
> 
> -Bill

Howdy,
        Good point.  Are there any 100% portable CL sources
available that implement a Lisp reader and that are PD. Such
a beast could be very valuable to both the Lisp implementor
and user communities. Also a test file that would really
wring out a reader implementation. 
        Ideally, such a beast would be : (1) very well
commented (2) no implementation dependencies (3) somewhat
"dumbed down" to support various popular but "inferior
Lisp dialects (xlisp? elisp?...) (4) some comments on
how to speed up the implementation and where it matters
(5) pointers to relevant parts of CLtL2 and the ANS
spec and where they differ (if they differ).
      

=============================================
Scott McLoughlin
Conscious Computing
=============================================
