On Tuesday 29 April 2008 14:22, Jochen Theodorou wrote: > Randall R Schulz schrieb: > > Hi, > > > > I don't know if this question is appropriate, so if not, please > > ignore it and accept my apologies for being off-topic. > > > > > > I am setting out to add scriptability to a largish and relatively > > mature, though still evolving, Java application. The application is > > a theorem prover and it operates on formulas expressed in the CLIF > > notation, about which it's enough to know that it's syntactically a > > Lisp-like language. > > > > Because of this I'd like to use a Lisp dialect to add scripting. > > Right now, I'm looking mostly at SISC and Kawa. > > Lisp-like language in the sense of having lots of ( and ), or do you > also have macros?
CLIF is to Lisp as Java is to C++. That is, if you blur your eyes, you can't tell them apart. Otherwise they have nothing in common. (Actually, Java has a lot more in common with C++ than CLIF does with Lisp.) One reason I'm looking to Lisp or Scheme as the scripting language is that I don't want a lot of disparate syntaxes in my system. The other is that I'm fond of Lisp as a language. [ As an aside, my application supports user-definable search heuristics. They are specified in a Lisp-y manner, too, even though that's done with a separate Lisp reader and data structure library and a purpose-built compiler and evaluator. Unfortunately, the Lisp reader library has no evaluator, it just reads and write (Common) Lisp lists and atoms, so it's not an option as far as my scripting needs go. But the nice part is that users don't know that. They just see lots of S-Expressions. ] > > So my question is this: What sort of analysis should I be making to > > select between these two? > > > > ... > > maybe you should simply give both a try and take what felt to be the > best. Maybe asking for help on the mailing list of these languages > would help too, especially if you describe your language and what you > need. I am sure they can tell you where a possible problem hides. Well, we're a very small operation with more to do than we can really accomplish, so I don't have the luxury of running competitive implementations. I have to do my best to choose correctly up front. > > Lastly, if there are other Lisp-like scripting languages that > > integrate well with Java, I'd like to hear about them, too. My > > research suggests that while many such projects have been created, > > not many are actively developed or are very complete > > implementations of Lisp (or Scheme). > > how complete does it have to be? I'm inclined to say not very, but I have a niggling feeling that it would be a mistake to choose something that is only a toy fragment of a real language. SISC and Kawa both purport to be complete or near-complete R5RS implementations, and while that's not a first-order requirement, it is nice and I think it could turn out to be serendipitous to have a full implementation. (Is it contradictory or oxymoronic to antipicate serendipity?) > bye blackdrag Randall Schulz --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JVM Languages" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jvm-languages?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
