Re: [Gcl-devel] Common Lisp Standards

[Camm Maguire]

Greetings, and welcome to GCL.  

While I'm no standards expect, my summarized understanding is that the
first real language definition in wide use was known as CLtL1 after
Steele's first book.  This was a comparatively simple specification,
for which gcl (via its ancestors) was one of the early well known and
widely used implementations.  Most major lisp code in the open source
world today was written under this standard -- GCL compiles maxima,
ACL2, and Axiom in its CLtL1 mode for example.  CLtL2 came some time
later, and served as a turning point in the evolution of the ANSI
standard for lisp in 1994 (or 96?).  GCL also has a preliminary ANSI
build which is still a work in progress.  Some 95% of the roughly
14000 existing ansi compliance tests in the GCL source tree pass in
this build at the present time.  In general, GCL provides good
performance and excellent portability via its close relationship with
the gcc C compiler, as well as a long history of real world service.
Its current level of ansi compliance is not as advanced as some of the
other lisps, but this is changing quickly.

ftp.gnu.org has been having accessibility problems for some time.  Our
temporary distribution site is:

http://people.debian.org/~camm/gcl

Take care,

Kamil Ignacak <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello
> 
> I'm a begginer, so my question may be silly: can you explain me the
> differene between CLtL2 and ANSI standard?  Which one is more 
> important? And what about Hyper-Spec? Another standard? I've seen all 
> these three names in gcl-devel and I'm not pretty sure if gcl is going to 
> be ANSI-compatible or CLtL2-compatible?
> 
> Anyway, I'm going to choose some lisp environment and I'm looking for the 
> best one.
> 
> One more thing: I can't get the tarball with gcl-2.5.3 from 
> http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gcl/ !! (URL not found) date: 17 Oct 03
> 
> 
> Kamil Ignacak
> 
> address@hidden
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Gcl-devel mailing list
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> 
> 
> 

-- 
Camm Maguire                                            address@hidden
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