On Jan 12, 2008 1:44 PM, David Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, Jan 12, 2008 at 12:22:42PM -0800, SJS wrote: > > >> Since lisp compiles incrementally, this can be a little unclear. > > > >Um, that's not a /requirement/ for LISP, is it? > > Yes, for anything that would be called Lisp. But, it's fairly loose as to > what "compile" means. A naive implementation could just leave the code in > SEXP form, and run that as part of evaluation.
I do not know about LISP but I have written a _lot_ of FORTH code in the past. One extremely powerful feature of FORTH is the ability to interrupt the compiler and then run _any_ FORTH program one wishes, including deep introspection of the existing code in order to compute anything, and then to return to compiling using the result that has been computed. To say this is powerful is a serious understatement. I am not quite sure just how such things are done (if at all) in more conventional languages though I suspect that it is something advanced LISPers do all of the time. What say you? BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
