Search found 35 matches

by tayssir
Tue Feb 09, 2010 6:38 am
Forum: Common Lisp
Topic: "what will happen when i do..."
Replies: 9
Views: 13333

Re: "what will happen when i do..."

But, regarding possibility, Lisp machines used to represent lists as a mix of arrays and linked lists. Small lists were stored like an array, larger lists would have a small array of, e.g., 5 elements, then a pointer to the next sequence of elements in that list. So your idea is not that far from r...
by tayssir
Tue Feb 02, 2010 10:21 am
Forum: Common Lisp
Topic: "what will happen when i do..."
Replies: 9
Views: 13333

Re: "what will happen when i do..."

Some main suggestions offered in these situations, which may be helpful: Note that Common Lisp has built-in tools like DISASSEMBLE (lets you see what your code compiles to), and you can supply various hints (like "this is a small integer which fits in a word") which an enlightened compiler...
by tayssir
Tue Feb 02, 2010 9:17 am
Forum: Common Lisp
Topic: I dont get Macros
Replies: 31
Views: 40772

Re: I dont get Macros

You'll likely use far more macros than you write. From DEFUN to LOOP, you already use all sorts of macros someone wrote, particularly those which are so broadly useful that they're well-debugged and documented. And when you delve into various domains, you'll run into domain-specific macros. Like wit...
by tayssir
Wed Oct 21, 2009 11:56 am
Forum: Emacs
Topic: Can open two Aquamacs at the same time?
Replies: 4
Views: 13920

Re: Can open two Aquamacs at the same time?

Dunno for Aquamacs, but for normal Emacs, I have a shell script which executes:

Code: Select all

/path/to/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs &
by tayssir
Wed Jul 22, 2009 1:19 am
Forum: Common Lisp
Topic: Where to start?
Replies: 20
Views: 43777

Re: Where to start?

It's a reasonable request; I felt rather liberated programming in Java using something like notepad . I'd want a usable commandline REPL. If you're running CLisp, I recall it has a usable commandline built in, with history and whatnot. For others, like Clojure or SBCL, rlwrap should give you this. (...
by tayssir
Mon Jul 20, 2009 4:36 pm
Forum: Common Lisp
Topic: Experience of Learning Lisp
Replies: 52
Views: 1985033

Re: Experience of Learning Lisp

But he is making of this more of an issue than it really is, this is really no big deal, because every mature programmer knows about that and that is easily avoidable. Maybe. I'm surely putting Lisp under a microscope. You may see more bizarre things if you do this with an organism rather than a br...
by tayssir
Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:58 am
Forum: Common Lisp
Topic: Experience of Learning Lisp
Replies: 52
Views: 1985033

Re: Experience of Learning Lisp

Sorry, but I think this is all impractical nitpicking (I meant to put in some harsher phrase here but reconsidered). Good thing you spare us the pejoratives, as you may otherwise be moderated, and I'd rather you not be. This alternative passive-aggressive path (telling me about the flames you wish ...
by tayssir
Mon Jul 20, 2009 12:48 am
Forum: Common Lisp
Topic: Experience of Learning Lisp
Replies: 52
Views: 1985033

Re: Experience of Learning Lisp

CL-USER> (defvar *foo* '((:a . 1) (:b . 2))) ;; “I just sensed a glitch in the Matrix.” ... It's undefined to destructively modify "literals" like quoted lists. Judging by the prompt in front, your "literal" was defined at the REPL, so it's perfectly well defined, but in any...
by tayssir
Sun Jul 19, 2009 6:45 am
Forum: Common Lisp
Topic: Experience of Learning Lisp
Replies: 52
Views: 1985033

Re: Experience of Learning Lisp

Before I spend more of my time answering further, no one responded to this claim: CL-USER> (defvar *foo* '((:a . 1) (:b . 2))) Ok, so they're playing with this table, and soon attempt to set the value of one of the keys via a destructive operation like (setf (cdr ...)). Like in the Hyperspec. Oops. ...
by tayssir
Sat Jul 18, 2009 1:06 pm
Forum: Common Lisp
Topic: Experience of Learning Lisp
Replies: 52
Views: 1985033

Re: Experience of Learning Lisp

I disagree, with all the respect. People use alists when either the "table" is small or when you need to traverse it frequently. Hashtables are used quite often when the problem is accessing values related to keys. In other words, alist is a sequence and hashtable is a table. Walking thro...