Experience with an Uncommon Lisp (1986) [pdf]

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/319838.319849

by mepian • 2 years ago

87 22 2 years ago

dl.acm.org

andsoitis• 2 years ago

When our development process began, there was ferment in the Lisp community. One of the more important events relat- ing to the design of the new IBM Research Lisp system was the publication of the Bobrow and Wegbreit paper [Bobrow and Wegbreit 1973] proposing a new control structure, the spaghetti stack. We immediately seized on the elegance and flexibilityof this idea.

A key component of this model of computation was the con- cept of the saved state, a data object which captured both the set of current variable bindings (the environment) and the current call chain and point of execution (the control). We have used saved states (state descriptors) extensively, both as a form of continuation and as a component of closures.

antonvs2• 2 years ago

there was ferment in the Lisp community.

This is the same as saying "the Lisp community existed."

lisper• 2 years ago

No, it is saying that the community was coming up with a lot of remarkably good ideas.

digdugdirk• 2 years ago

That sounds really interesting, in a way I cannot begin to comprehend.

Can someone please translate into more common vernacular?

JimmyRuska• 2 years ago

Sounds like an implementation for how to managing scopes using stack frames with some state machine like elements to it

volemo• 2 years ago

Can someone please translate into more common vernacular?

If I were to read that, it’d be common lisp. :D

rurban• 2 years ago

setjmp/longjmp if the states were not on the stack. (of course nobody would be so crazy to actually use longjmp, just properly save the stack state: env and control)

if jumping back into inner states (i.e. out of control stacks), the stack frame needs to be preserved also. as in call/cc later.

ustad• 2 years ago

Could not find the actual paper but the figures look cool: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-model-and-stack-impl...

mainland• 2 years ago

Here is a copy of what looks to be the original report: <https://wellcomecollection.org/works/seuuc6a5>

Here is a link to the version published with the ACM: <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/362375.362379>

_delirium• 2 years ago

Is that kind of like a reified version of Scheme's call/cc?

pmcjones3• 2 years ago

More on YKTLISP (and its predecessor) here:

https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/ibm_lisp_...

lispm2• 2 years ago

Looks like this was an application: YES/MVS https://cdn.aaai.org/AAAI/1984/AAAI84-032.pdf

About Lispedit: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1006142.1006164

pmcjones3• 2 years ago

Thanks; I added citations for both of those.

pjmlp• 2 years ago

Love the technical stuff on the paper related to compiler implementation, inline Assembly and debugging capabilities.

Experience with an Uncommon Lisp (1986) [pdf]

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