RE: [Axiom-developer] Re: learning Lisp

[Bill Page]

Tim,

On December 5, 2005 11:22 PM you wrote:
> 
> Ralf Hemmecke wrote: 
> > Could somebody enlighten me... Why would an ordinary Axiom 
> > user ever want to enter LISP commands into Axiom? What would
> > be reasonable things that cannot be done in the SPAD interpreter
> > itself?
> 
> an ordinary user wouldn't want to do this (which is why it 
> isn't documented)

I know you know that that is a *very* poor reason for not
documenting it! :)

> but it is useful for two other class of users, the person 
> doing maintenance on the interpreter and the advanced spad
> programmer who is writing $LISP based functions.
> 

If I set $dalymode then:

(xxx ...)

is just a shorthand for

)lisp (xxx ...)

isn't it? So this is just a matter of convenience, not a
significant new kind of functionality for the interpreter. But
$dalymode cannot be set true always because there is a small
possibility that (xxx ...) should really be interpreted as an
Axiom expression, right?

Regards,
Bill Page.