On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 9:55 PM, Anton Vodonosov <avodono...@yandex.ru>wrote:
> In theory CL core consists of 25 special operators + build-in data types.
> Everything else
> is a library. So when porting to a new platform, theoretically, all we
> need to reimplement
> is a compiler understanding 25 operators + some build-in functions
> representing datatypes
> (make-array, aref, cons, etc) and some basic reader, allowing to read the
> source code of the library.
>
That is indeed the theory. In practice much of the library deals with
operating system stuff: memory allocation, files, etc. That forces a low
level implementation of several core structures. Moreover, several
functions are critical for performance and are also hard-coded to make
bootstrapping faster.
> How close this theoretical view to practice? We now have several
> open-source CL implementations.
> If one wants to create a Javascript port, what else he must be prepared to
> solve?
>
ECL is pretty well isolated: the C library works like the lisp API and
offers a number of functions that one may start with. Many of those
functions could _nowadays_ be ported back to Common Lisp, using the fact
that the compiler is more efficient. But there are critical things, such as
the filesystem, running processes, or I/O operations, that would be hard to
implement from scratch.
Perhaps Christian could comment, given that he is using the ECL Common Lisp
base to implement a LLVM-based Common Lisp implementation
Juanjo
--
Instituto de Física Fundamental, CSIC
c/ Serrano, 113b, Madrid 28006 (Spain)
http://juanjose.garciaripoll.googlepages.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Precog is a next-generation analytics platform capable of advanced
analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes APIs for building
apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. Developers can use
our toolset for easy data analysis & visualization. Get a free account!
http://www2.precog.com/precogplatform/slashdotnewsletter
_______________________________________________
Ecls-list mailing list
Ecls-list@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ecls-list
