I think you're agonizingly close to the point the author is quoting Peter da Silva as trying to make in your last paragraph here. Roughly sketched - 1) text a

I think you're agonizingly close to the point the author is quoting Peter da Silva as trying to make in your last paragraph here. Roughly sketched - 1) text and file processing are very common tasks 2) Lisp is not especially suited at these tasks, though it is very well suited for some other tasks. 3) If a dialect of lisp more suited to these very common tasks were made, it would increase the popularity of Common Lisp for the tasks that it works well for by familiarizing people with it.