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- Path: rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!ma2s2!haible
- From: haible@ma2s2.mathematik.uni-karlsruhe.de (Bruno Haible)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: Why garbage collection?
- Date: 11 Feb 1996 02:17:36 GMT
- Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany
- Message-ID: <4fjjk0$r9m@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
- References: <4ecmfo$as9@news2.ios.com> <s08spgxh3r1.fsf@lox.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU> <823078760snz@wildcard.demon.co.uk> <4eqjlb$ig7@news.ox.ac.uk>
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- Keywords: gcl, clisp
- Originator: haible@ma2s2
-
- Daniel Barlow <barlow@xserver.sjc.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
- >
- > I don't know lisp. I've done little bits of elisp (but I understand that
- > that Doesn't Count) and I've played with scheme (actually guile), but
- > that's about all. I'd like to learn (curiosity value) but I'm
- > holding off until I can think of something to write in it. And until
- > I have more time.
-
- You can write any kind of non-trivial text/data/representation processing
- in Lisp. But you have to wait until you have _less_ time.
-
- For example, a couple of days ago I wrote a smallie which converts a
- unidiff (output of "diff -u") to the equivalent context diff (output
- of "diff -c3"), for readability.
-
- First wrote in Lisp, within 2 hours. Worked and still works fine.
-
- The rewrote it in C++. Took me more than a whole day. Mostly works,
- but the output contains garbled lines in rare cases. Hence the resulting
- program is useless unless I put several more hours of debugging into it.
-
- Needless to say, the C++ code is three times as large than the Lisp
- code, and therefore doesn't reflect the overall algorithm as well.
-
- Conclusion: The time you save by using a high-level language like Lisp and
- an interactive development environment is amazing. I wish to invite you:
- make the experience yourself, with a non-trivial program of yours.
-
- > The limiting factor is surely not cost. I have gcc and gcl on my
- > computer; they were both entirely free. In fact, I understand that gcl
- > comes precompiled as part of the popular Slackware Linux distribution.
- > I know of approximately one linux user who actually installed it (except
- > by accident). Why the low takeup?
-
- Maybe because gcl, as present in Slackware, is pretty spartanic:
- no command-line history (unless you use Emacs), CLOS not built-in,
- slow compiler. You should complement it with CLISP.
-
- Bruno
-
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