Re: lisp style question

[Rivka Miller]

On Dec 2 2010, 5:11 pm, Katalin Sinkov <lispstyl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 2, 12:50 am, "Frode V. Fjeld" <fr...@netfonds.no> wrote:
>
> > Katalin Sinkov <lispstyl...@gmail.com> writes:
> > > In the {} world I would return a small table like
>
> > > width   1
> > > height  2
> > > weight  3
>
> > Typically in Lisp you'd return either a property or association list.
>
> > I.e: (WIDTH 1 HEIGHT 2 WEIGHT 3) with accessor GETF,
>
> > or ((WIDTH . 1) (HEIGHT . 2) (WEIGHT . 3)) with accessor ASSOC.
>
> > --
> > Frode V. Fjeld
>
> Of all the four or five replies, I found yours most helpful although
> brief. This is perhaps due to me being a beginner, although the
> replies seem very promising and I am desirous of understanding them. I
> have just read the paper by McCarthy and the micro manual.

> assoc. and pair. are the most elementary of the functions, although
> not primitive and used in evaluator for working the symbol table.

> but beyond this, i could not understand your post.

> what is an "assoc list" and "a property list" and their difference ?

> what is "setf" and how to write it in terms of the elementary
> functions, car/cdr/cons/quote/cond/atom/eq ?

I have a few questions about this post from the past that I stumbled.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/fe797358c6550f1d/

Are these "car/cdr/cons/quote/cond/atom?/eq?" the only seven
primitives needed to describe a minimal lisp?

What about the values NIL or can it be described as () and is implicit
in cons - and how?

In addition, are not the concepts, lambda, and label needed as
primitives to define the auxiliary functions assoc. and pair. to
access and construct the environment? If that the primitive lambda is
an abstraction specifier (for free variable binding specification),
then it cannot be used as a function identifier or an operation name.

> how to conveniently costruct the list that goes with getf ?

> Presently I use the emacs IDE only and restricted to elisp, though i
> can (require 'cl) so what are
> the correponding operation in elisp ?
>
> what are the corresponding functions to defclass/defstruct in elisp ?
> I assume people are assuming CL.
>
> Could you comment a little on the post of Captain Obvious and Pascal
> Bourguignon ?
>
> The former has "values" and the latter has "make-volume" and colons.
> How did the constructor "make-volume" come to be ?
>
> Is it a feature in elisp ?
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> Katalin

Thanks.
Rivka