Re: [Sexpr-users] Introduction

[matthew s. <mjs...@ma...>]

Hi!  I'm not sure how many other people have managed to subscribe to  
this list since I created it (not too long ago).

I'm glad you like the project -- I'm frequently working on it in my  
free time and it still gets used in quite a few projects at work.   
Actually, I am due to release a new version soon as I announced last  
month on the web page.

One thing that has been on hold for a little while that I'd still like  
to finish is a LISP-style interpreter based on this library that  
supports a very small subset of LISP.  If you'd like to hear about what  
I was thinking about for this I can send along my ideas.  Basically,  
make a very small, fast interpreter for things like arithmetic, lambda  
expressions, and a few useful intrinsics (like sorting, foldmap,  
etc...).  This could then be embedded in a server that uses  
s-expressions as it's communication protocol and is connected to other  
servers in a tree-like fashion.  As data passes through the tree,  
instead of retransmitting the s-expressions, they are manipulated and  
only the results are transmitted back up -- basically a reduction tree.

Another idea I would like to do soon is to connect this library to  
SML/NJ to convert s-expressions into ML lists.

Also, as for RMI and LISP, this is pretty much what the project this  
parser spun out of does.  S-expressions are pushed around the network,  
parsed, and then manipulated.  The only real difference is that instead  
of executing the s-expressions as LISP, they're treated as data  
structures for input to existing code.

Glad to hear from you.
-m


On Feb 21, 2004, at 9:50 AM, MJ Stahl wrote:

>
> Hello everyone. I am new to this project, and in turn to this list, so  
> I felt that I should introduce myself.
>
> My name is Mark Stahl, and I am currently attending university in  
> Savannah, GA.  I have a love for languages, and in turn Lisp.
>
> I wanted to thank you guys for implementing this package because I was  
> finding many projects that offered more than I needed for my work.   
> Many of the packages were implementations of large subsets of Scheme  
> or Common Lisp, and I only wanted the five special forms that John  
> McCarthy originally developed to bootstrap the first Lisp  
> implementation.  So again my thanks for your efforts in both  
> minimalism and simplicity.
>
> I plan on using this library to implement a module Lisp compiler and  
> interpreter.  I understand that many do not wish to program in Lisp  
> and would prefer to use a more algebraic language like C or Java, but  
> Lisp makes for a great language to implement other languages on top  
> of, and of course these new languages (through snarfing the underlying  
> architecture) have the potential to gain much of Lisp's power.
>
> The interpreter (virtual machine) will be implemented my like an SECD  
> machine. But I felt that implementing an interpreter as a monolithic  
> structure was a bad idea. For example, I wish to do a lot of  
> experimentation with different language contructs, such as immediate  
> and lazy evaluation, but I felt that adding both into the language  
> explicity would lead to an eventual bloat of the standard functions  
> within the core language. My goal is make the virtual machine, and in  
> turn the language, modular, much like the dynamic loading of device  
> drivers in the Linux kernel.
>
> I also want to extend this idea to remote packages, or remote function  
> calling.  I understand the RMI is nothing new, but Lisp offers a  
> larger potential when calling remote functions, and that is instead of  
> returning a value, the source of the function can be returned through  
> the use of a macro.
>
> I do apologize that I have babbled on too long, as my excitement has  
> gotten the best of me.
>
> Best regards,
>
> -M.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ---------
> M. J. Stahl
>
> "I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's."
> 	-- William Blake
>
>
>
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