From: Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@...>
Date: 2006-07-25T20:24:03+09:00
Subject: Re: RLisp - Lisp naturally embedded in Ruby

"Tomasz Wegrzanowski" <tomasz.wegrzanowski@gmail.com> writes:

> On 7/24/06, William James <w_a_x_man@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > ; Configure the server
>> > (let config [Hash new])
>>
>> Please don't use "let" for this.  "setq" or "define"
>> would be much better.

BTW, compare with Basic's LET.  }}}:-)
Personally, I'd prefer setf.

> Now I know perfectly well that let is used in different way in other
> dialects of Lisp ;-), but I think this is way nicer. And it's less cryptic
> than setq (a big win); define is a bit too long, but the main problem is
> that it suggests global assignment, while (let x y) in RLisp rebinds
> x in local environment. Local environments are introduced
> by lambda/defsyntax, but I guess RLisp should also provide explicit
> (local ...)

Your implementation of scope gives me a headache. ;-) Is it newLisp
inspired?

[snip]
> And while I don't have much experience with Lisps, I have a lot experience
> with Objective Caml I really really totally *hate* let introducing
> extra indentation level
> and I think it obfuscates many otherwise clean programs for no real gain.

Funny, that's one of the things I like about Lisp and Scheme...

> I you can easily do have:
>
> ; No support for local yet, so let's emulate it
> (defsyntax local args
>  `((lambda () ,@args))
> )
> ; Arc-like let
> (defsyntax local-let args
>  `(local
>     (let ',[args get 0] ,[args get 1])
> �@  ,@(tl (tl args))
>  )
> )
>
> And use local-let like Arc's if you really like it. Or even define Scheme-like
> one, but I think nobody's going to actually defend it against Arc's.

BTW, did you consider adding hygienic macros?

-- 
Christian Neukirchen  <chneukirchen@gmail.com>  http://chneukirchen.org