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EuLisp

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Family
  
Lisp

Preview release
  
0.991 / 2010

OS
  
Linux

First appeared
  
1990

Typing discipline
  
strong, dynamic

Paradigm
  
multi-paradigm: functional, procedural, meta, object-oriented

EuLisp is a statically and dynamically scoped Lisp dialect developed by a loose formation of industrial and academic Lisp users and developers from around Europe. The standardizers intended to create a new Lisp "less encumbered by the past" (compared to Common Lisp), and not so minimalistic as Scheme. Another objective was to integrate the Object-oriented programming paradigm well.

Contents

Origin

Language definition process first began in a meeting in 1985 in Paris and took a long time. The complete specification and a first implementation (interpreted-only) was available in 1990.

Distinguishing features

Its primary characteristics are that it is a Lisp-1 (no separate function and variable namespaces), has a CLOS-style (Common Lisp Object System) generic-function type object-oriented system named TELOS (The EuLisp Object System) integrated from the ground up, has a built-in module system, and is defined in layers to promote the use of the Lisp on small, embedded hardware and educational machines. It supports continuations, though not as powerfully as Scheme. It has a simple lightweight process mechanism (threads).

Summary

  • A definition in levels, currently Level-0 and Level-1
  • Modules based on (non-first-class) lexical environments.
  • Lexically scoped, with dynamic binding available in Level-1.
  • A single name space for function and variable names (like Scheme).
  • Lightweight processes.
  • A fully integrated object system with single inheritance at Level-0 and multiple inheritance and meta-object protocol an Level-1.
  • An object-oriented condition system.

    • Implementations

    An early implementation of EuLisp was FEEL (Free and Eventually Eulisp). The successor to FEEL was Youtoo (interpreted and compiled versions), by University of Bath in the United Kingdom. An interpreter for the basic level of EuLisp, "level-0", was written by Russell Bradford in XScheme, an implementation of Scheme by David Michael Betz, originally called EuScheme but the most recent version is renamed EuXLisp [4] to avoid confusion. Also Eu2C [5], a EuLisp optimizing compiler, was created by Fraunhofer ISST under the APPLY project in Germany [6].

    A dialect of EuLisp was developed, called Plural EuLisp; it was EuLisp with parallel programming extensions.

    Example

    Example use of classes in the algorithm to solve the "Towers of Hanoi" problem.

    References

    EuLisp Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA