Thread about Newlisp and Mathematica on comp.lang.lisp

Tim Johnson · Post by **Tim Johnson** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 2:08 am

Haven't time to fully digest this thread, but it may be
of interest to others.

The subject says it all, but I could add that no one
(so far) in the newsgroup has started foaming at the
mouth at the simple mention of newlisp. :-)
Cheers
Tim

Jeff · Post by **Jeff** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 11:55 am

Link?

HPW · Post by **HPW** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 12:11 pm

http://groups.google.de/group/comp.lang ... a9e7d52d4/

hsmyers · Post by **hsmyers** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 4:37 pm

Perhaps the reason they are not foaming at the mouth over newLISP is that they are foaming at the mouth over their notions of 'IP', .h files and algorithms. I've seen similar nonsense in weaving groups fretting over whether or not a weave pattern is IP...

Tim Johnson · Post by **Tim Johnson** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 6:18 pm

hsmyers wrote:Perhaps the reason they are not foaming at the mouth over newLISP is that they are foaming at the mouth over their notions of 'IP', .h files and algorithms. I've seen similar nonsense in weaving groups fretting over whether or not a weave pattern is IP...

I followed a "anti-newlisp" thread where one of the senior members
stepped in and said something like: "enough of this".

And I think the intervention was timely, because I was about ready
to post a comment about what "common" was a euphemism for
where I grew up. Hahaha! :-)

xytroxon · Post by **xytroxon** » Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:10 pm

I think they are more worried that Mathematica "did lists better" than CL rather than to worry about a mere mention of newLISP!!!

Part of the mystical allure of CL to the Wisp Lizards er. "Lisp Wizards" is that Lisp in general and CL in particular "is more mathematical" in form than other programming languages, hence "beautiful" or more/most ideal...

Mathematica, coming from the mathematical viewpoint, challenges this basic Lisp/CL belief system...

But this exellent Mathematica outline (referenced in the thread and listed below) is something that for a newbie (me) is missing from newLISP or CL or Scheme documentation... A comprehensive overview of the inter-relationship between all the list functionss...

( Of course this is a lot of work to produce... And I don't want to kill Lutz by working him 24 hour a day :)

But for us "woefully lost and fallen" newLISPer's, what is important here is what useful functions in these Mathematica list manipulation functions are missing from newLISP??? What on earth is a "riffle"??? And are the current newLISP list manipulation functions "complete" enough??? (Whatever "complete" means...)

http://reference.wolfram.com/mathematic ... ation.html

List Manipulation

Lists are central constructs in Mathematica, used to represent collections, arrays, sets and sequences of all kinds. Lists can have any structure and size, and can routinely involve even millions of elements. Well over a thousand built-in functions throughout Mathematica operate directly on lists, making lists a powerful vehicle for interoperability.

Constructing Lists »
{a,b,...} (List) — specify a list explicitly
Table — make a table of values of an expression
Array — make an array of any dimension from a function
Range ▪ SparseArray ▪ Tuples ▪ NestList ▪ Sow ▪ Reap ▪ ...

Elements of Lists »
list[[...]] (Part) parts or sequences of parts (;;), resettable with =
First ▪ Last ▪ Take ▪ Drop ▪ Extract ▪ Append ▪ ReplacePart ▪ ...
Select — select according to a function
Cases — give cases matching a pattern
Length ▪ Position ▪ MemberQ ▪ ...

Rearranging & Restructuring Lists »
Flatten — flatten out nested lists
Join ▪ Partition ▪ Transpose ▪ Reverse ▪ Sort ▪ Split ▪ Riffle ▪ ...

Applying Functions to Lists »
Map (/@) — map a function over a list: f/@{a, b, c}{f[a], f, f[c]}
Apply (@@, @@@) — apply a function to a list: f@@{a, b, c}f[a, b, c]
MapIndexed ▪ Scan ▪ Thread ▪ MapThread ▪ Outer ▪ FoldList ▪ ...

Math & Counting Operations »
{..}+{..}, etc. — automatically operate in parallel on list elements
Total ▪ Differences ▪ Tally ▪ Count ▪ BinCounts ▪ ...

Displaying & Visualizing Lists »
Column ▪ Row ▪ Grid ▪ ListPlot ▪ ArrayPlot ▪ ...

Importing & Exporting Lists »
Import ▪ Export ▪ "Table" ▪ "Text" ▪ "CSV" ▪ ...

-------
TUTORIALS

* Making Lists of Objects

* Getting Pieces of Lists

* Adding, Removing and Modifying List Elements

* Manipulating Lists by Their Indices

* Nested Lists

* Applying Functions to Parts of Expressions

* Testing and Searching List Elements
--------
MORE ABOUT

* Handling Arrays of Data

* Handling Numerical Data

* Operations on Vectors

* Matrix Operations

* Tensors

* General Expressions

* New in 6.0: Matrix & Linear Algebra Functions