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by Jtsummers 314 days ago
> In standard CL and Scheme, data structures are implemented at their base using cons cells

That's not true. Both CL and Scheme have other data structures besides cons cells, and that's been true for the Lisp family of languages for nearly 70 years now.

This bizarre belief that everything is a cons cell in Lisp and Scheme needs to go away.
1 comments
netbioserror 314 days ago
Thanks for courteously linking me to the relevant documents! Very productive and good-natured of you.
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Jtsummers 314 days ago
> Thanks for courteously linking me to the relevant documents! Very productive and good-natured of you.

Thanks for the sarcasm! Very productive and good-natured of you.

For your reference:

LISP 1.5 manual: https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP...

Arrays were present in 1960. Admittedly, not much else but clear evidence that even then it wasn't just cons cells.

https://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/Cont... - Common Lisp Hyper Spec which describes data structures other than lists and cons cells.

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netbioserror 314 days ago
For someone who initiated hostility, you're a dismal failure at supporting your arguments. I'm not reading two entire manuals to find the citations you're referring to and should've cited yourself.
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Jtsummers 314 days ago
> I'm not reading two entire manuals to find the citations you're referring to and should've cited yourself.

C-f that PDF for "array". For the other manual, I linked the TOC. It's right there on the page (arrays and hash tables, and you can follow up with structures and objects) and there's no reason to read the entire manual. I figured most people knew how to use a table of contents, I apologize if I expected too much from you.

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cess11 314 days ago
Flavors, from 1979 or so.

https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/MIT/nnnfl...

LOOPS, from about the same time.

https://interlisp.org/documentation/2024-loops-book-1.pdf

More general discussion in a OOPSLA contribution from 1986.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220817140051/https://interlisp...

The 1988 book about CLOS, the approach that was later accepted in ANSI Common Lisp.

https://doc.lagout.org/programmation/Lisp/Object-Oriented%20...

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