Skip to main content

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Required fields*

4
  • Hmm. I think the key to this response is the notion that EVAL is not the interpreter. This fact I know, and I understand about implementing EVAL in terms of compile. The incremental approach is probably the key, and maybe my missing link. I think I grasp how this can be done when incremental compilation is possible, but what about in a situation where one write's a compiler where the source language is Lisp and the target is C? It doesn't seem like you can simply do compile the code and call. Commented Aug 16, 2011 at 11:02
  • @Andrew Gwozdziewycz: There are Common Lisp implementations like GCL and ECL, which are using compilation to C. The compiler generates C code, calls the C compiler and then can load the generated machine code. All the more interesting Common Lisp implementations can load machine code into a running Lisp. Some implementations will instead run the macro interpreted, until its compiled version is loaded. Other may compile to C, but additionally have a byte-code machine and can also compile to byte-code, which gets executed by a virtual machine. Commented Aug 16, 2011 at 11:18
  • OK. So, incremental is the key regardless. Thanks so much! Commented Aug 16, 2011 at 11:24
  • @RainerJoswig Does Lisp compilers compile code at runtime ? Or does it take a source and compile it to machine code ? But then, how does a macro deal with its parameters if some of them are not lisp forms, but symbols with values availables at runtime only ? Commented Nov 16, 2012 at 1:40