Re: How close is elisp to CL now?

[Matt Price]

how much closer does this get us to something like a 'concurrent
emacs', in which (e.g.) my emacs mailer can do background checks for
incoming mail while I am editing?  For the moment I've abandoned emacs
as a mail environment precisely because the lack of that feature so
often made my work grind to a halt.



On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Didier Verna <didier@didierverna.net> wrote:
> juliewith <galaxybeinglambda@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Not being proficient in Lisp but wanting to be, I was wondering if the
>> lexical scoping in 24.x has now pushed elisp closer to Common Lisp in
>> capabilities. If so how close? Could elisp now (potentially) do all
>> the "higher level" sorts of things CL does?
>
>   Lexical scope brings Emacs Lisp closer to *any* sane Lisp (which
>   should be lexically scoped by default[1]). This, in fact, has little
>   to do with Common Lisp. One could even argue that it is the opposite,
>   since one disctinctive feature of Common Lisp is precisely to offer
>   dynamic scoping, provided that you ask for it explicitely.
>
>   You may be interested in reading
>   http://random-state.net/features-of-common-lisp.html for a nice list
>   of Common Lisp features (some of them are arguably "general Lisp
>   features" rather than Common Lisp ones).
>
>
> Footnotes:
> [1]  Although honestly, in more than 15 years of elisp hacking, dynamic
> scope screwed me up less than a dozen times...
>
> --
> ELS 2013, June 3/4, Madrid, Spain:  http://els2013.european-lisp-symposium.org
>
> Scientific site:   http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier
> Music (Jazz) site: http://www.didierverna.com
>