I'd commend to the LISP hackers' attention the compiler "Stalin" by Jeff Syskind, who last I knew was at Purdue. I'm uncertain the extent to which the compiler is available, but I imagine if you look around (for example find Syskind's home page) you will find papers or or pointers. My erstwhile collaborator Kevin Lang, initially a skeptic on the subject, ran extensive tests on Stalin and concluded the compiled code was substantially faster than compiled C and C++, even on problems where this was quite surprising. It's possible Kevin published something on these tests.
The above is about all I know on the subject, so please don't ask for more details. The above was roughly 10 yrs ago. At the time, both Syskind and Kevin (and me) were at the NEC Research Institute. Presumably there is a catch or you would all be using Stalin ;^( Philip> On 3/23/07, Samantha Atknis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> 8,Fast where most of the processing is done. >> >> In the language or in things written in the language or both? Lisp >> has been interpreted and compiled simultaneously and nearly >> seamlessly for 20 years and has efficiency approaching compiled C >> in many problem domains. Philip> Samantha, you need to provide me with references if you want Philip> me to believe this. No LISP compiler has ever been optimized Philip> to any serious degree AFAIK. The nature of the language makes Philip> it difficult to write efficient code in the first place. And Philip> I suspect that these "many problem domains" don't include any Philip> that involve numeric calculations. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
