Bob Rogers wrote: > From: Uri Guttman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:18:07 -0400 > > . . . perl is both an interpreter and compiler. this is a common > statement but what does it mean? why are somethings only an > interpreter or compiler? why is script used when perl is a > programming language? > > Lisp goes even farther down the road of blurring the boundary between > interpreter and compiler than Perl does. You can even run code at read > time, when the program is being parsed by the compiler (or interpreter). > Some people aren't aware that Lisp is primarily a compiled language > (which I bet is also true for Perl). Even so, nobody thinks Lisp is a > "scripting language." Go figure.
Lisp Machine programmers did! Lisp is a little weak at character manipulation compared to the languages we think of as scripting languages -- especially Perl which has regular expressions as a language construct. (Modern Lisps do have strings as a native character type -- I remember the days when they didn't and character manipulation was a real hack -- but Perl is still easier for that sort of thing.) Most dialects don't really facilitate the processing of command line arguments. And historically the implementations were a bit heavyweight to load for short-term tasks like you would use a scripting language for. _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
