6 ms·

How long is the spec for CL? It surely is a tenth of the C++ spec.

by seabee 14y ago

jff 14y ago
It's a pretty damn thick book.
riffraff 14y ago
well the Common Lisp HyperSpec is, per wikipedia, "approximately 15MB of data in 2,300 files which contain approximately 105,000 hyperlinks". If this[0] is a valid copy of the spec and my calculation is right [1] then it's 1360 pages. Seems a lot, but I have no idea what the length of ANSI standards is. [0] http://quimby.gnus.org/circus/cl/ansi-cl/ http://quimby.gnus.org/circus/cl/ansi-cl/ a draft but i think close to the final thing [1] for i in `ls *.ps`; do gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=bbox $i 2>&1 | grep -c HiResBoundingBox; done | awk '{ sum += $1 } END { print sum }' , and each ps page is actually two
jules 14y ago
The CL spec is about 1000 pages printed, C++11 around 1300, but the CL spec is written in a more verbose style AFAIK. The R5RS Scheme specification is 50 pages.
- muuh-gnu 14y ago
  > The CL spec is about 1000 pages printed The spec covers not just the language itself, but the whole standard library. > The R5RS Scheme specification is 50 pages. And with those 50 pages, you can not do anything useful out of the box. Yeah, you can solve SICP excercises, but thats essentially it. All useful features are implementation specific, and the Scheme ecosystem is more fragmented than the Balkan. Scheme code is essentially non-portable amongst the 1001 existing implementation. You dont write "Scheme" directly. You write code either for "Guile" or for "Chicken" or "Bigloo". PLT doesnt even call their implementation Scheme any more, they call it Racket. You dont write Scheme, you write Racket. This leads to the question of why a standard was nescessary at all, if youre not standardizing a critical amount of features to enable portable code.
Someone 14y ago
"Common Lisp, the language", second edition, starts its appendices on page 923, its references on page 972 and ends on page 1027 (with an index of over 50 pages) "The C++ programming language", third edition, starts its appendices on page 791, its index on page 869, and ends on page 910. Both use about the same line spacing; the C++ book is about 10% wider and its lines are about 15% longer. It also has fewer comparisons with older omplementations such as MacLisp and Lisp Machine Lisp, and maybe a tiny bit less verbose. I do not think either is THE standard, but they should be representative. So, there is nowhere a factor of ten. Common Lisp is large partly because it has everything you would ever need (print the integer 4 as 'four', as 'fourth', as 'IV' or as 'iiii'? You got it. Pluralizing strings? You got it). The loop macro (a for loop on steroids, with all its positive and negative effects)? 38 pages. Pretty printing? 22 pages.
- reinhardt 14y ago
  This number apparently includes the standard library too. I wouldn't be surprised if, say, Python with its included batteries is even larger.

How long is the spec for CL? It surely is a tenth of the C++ spec.

by seabee 14y ago

How long is the spec for CL? It surely is a tenth of the C++ spec.

jff 14y ago

It's a pretty damn thick book.

riffraff 14y ago

well the Common Lisp HyperSpec is, per wikipedia, "approximately 15MB of data in 2,300 files which contain approximately 105,000 hyperlinks". If this[0] is a valid copy of the spec and my calculation is right [1] then it's 1360 pages. Seems a lot, but I have no idea what the length of ANSI standards is. [0] http://quimby.gnus.org/circus/cl/ansi-cl/ http://quimby.gnus.org/circus/cl/ansi-cl/ a draft but i think close to the final thing [1] for i in `ls *.ps`; do gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=bbox $i 2>&1 | grep -c HiResBoundingBox; done | awk '{ sum += $1 } END { print sum }' , and each ps page is actually two

jules 14y ago

The CL spec is about 1000 pages printed, C++11 around 1300, but the CL spec is written in a more verbose style AFAIK. The R5RS Scheme specification is 50 pages.

muuh-gnu 14y ago
> The CL spec is about 1000 pages printed The spec covers not just the language itself, but the whole standard library. > The R5RS Scheme specification is 50 pages. And with those 50 pages, you can not do anything useful out of the box. Yeah, you can solve SICP excercises, but thats essentially it. All useful features are implementation specific, and the Scheme ecosystem is more fragmented than the Balkan. Scheme code is essentially non-portable amongst the 1001 existing implementation. You dont write "Scheme" directly. You write code either for "Guile" or for "Chicken" or "Bigloo". PLT doesnt even call their implementation Scheme any more, they call it Racket. You dont write Scheme, you write Racket. This leads to the question of why a standard was nescessary at all, if youre not standardizing a critical amount of features to enable portable code.

Someone 14y ago

"Common Lisp, the language", second edition, starts its appendices on page 923, its references on page 972 and ends on page 1027 (with an index of over 50 pages) "The C++ programming language", third edition, starts its appendices on page 791, its index on page 869, and ends on page 910. Both use about the same line spacing; the C++ book is about 10% wider and its lines are about 15% longer. It also has fewer comparisons with older omplementations such as MacLisp and Lisp Machine Lisp, and maybe a tiny bit less verbose. I do not think either is THE standard, but they should be representative. So, there is nowhere a factor of ten. Common Lisp is large partly because it has everything you would ever need (print the integer 4 as 'four', as 'fourth', as 'IV' or as 'iiii'? You got it. Pluralizing strings? You got it). The loop macro (a for loop on steroids, with all its positive and negative effects)? 38 pages. Pretty printing? 22 pages.

reinhardt 14y ago
This number apparently includes the standard library too. I wouldn't be surprised if, say, Python with its included batteries is even larger.