Article

Free access

A semantic comparison of LISP and SCHEME

Authors:

Steven S. Muchnick,

Uwe F. PlebanAuthors Info & Claims

LFP '80: Proceedings of the 1980 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming

Pages 56 - 64

https://doi.org/10.1145/800087.802790

Published: 25 August 1980 Publication History

Abstract

We review the features of some of the major dialects of LISP, show how they are reflected in denotational treatments of their semantics and draw a series of conclusions concerning semantic design of languages, program proving and optimization. We concentrate our attention on four dialects: (1) LISP 1.0 - approximating McCarthy's original design, (2) Modern LISP - approximating the major features of most current systems, (3) Funarg LISP - Modern LISP with upward and downward functional arguments, and (4) SCHEME - Steele and Sussman's lexically scoped dialect. LISP 1.0 and SCHEME are semantically tractable. In both cases it is possible to write a denotational semantics which exactly specifies the types of semantic objects being manipulated and the meaning of each valid syntactic construct. For modern LISP and Funarg LISP, on the other hand, we show that it is not possible to give a semantics which fully specifies the language and satisfies all the tenets of denotational semantics. However, we give a definition which rests on the foundational underpinnings of denotational semantics, thus guaranteeing that our semantic objects exist, and violates only the structural definition principle: that the meaning of a construct be defined in terms of the meanings of its parts. This has far-reaching significance for program proving, optimization and comprehensibility of programs.

References

[1]

Boyer, Robert S. & J. Strother Moore, Proving Theorems About LISP Functions, JACM, vol. 22, no. 1, Jan. 1975, pp. 129-144.]]

Digital Library

[2]

Doyle, Jon, Johan de Kleer, Gerald J. Sussman & Guy L. Steele, Explicit Control of Reasoning, Proc. Symp. on Artif. Intel. and Prog. Lang., SIGPLAN Notices, vol. 12, no. 8, Aug. 1977, pp. 116-125.]]

Digital Library

[3]

Gordon, Michael J.C., Operational Reasoning and Denotational Semantics, Memo AIM-264, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Stanford University, August 1975.]]

Digital Library

[4]

Gordon, Michael J.C., The Denotational Description of Programming Languages, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1979.]]

Digital Library

[5]

Jones, Neil D. & Steven S. Muchnick, Binding Time Optimization in Programming Languages, Conf. Rec. of Third ACM Symp. on Princ. of Prog. Lang., January 1976, pp. 77-94.]]

Digital Library

[6]

Jones, Neil D. & Steven S. Muchnick, Flow Analysis and Optimization of LISP-like Structures, Conf. Rec. of Sixth ACM Symp. on Princ. of Prog. Lang., January 1979, pp. 244-256.]]

Digital Library

[7]

Jones, Neil D., Steven S. Muchnick & David A. Schmidt, A Universal Compiler: Towards a Compiler Generator Based on Denotational Semantics, Technical Report IR-17, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark, December 1979.]]

[8]

McCarthy, John, Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine, Part I, CACM, vol. 3, no. 4, 1960, pp. 184-195.]]

Digital Library

[9]

McCarthy, John, Paul W. Abrahams, David J. Edwards, Timothy P. Hunt & Michael I. Levin, LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed., M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1965.]]

Digital Library

[10]

John McCarthy, History of LISP, SIGPLAN Notices, vol. 13, no. 8, August 1978, pp. 217-223.]]

Digital Library

[11]

Moon, David A., MACLISP Reference Manual, Revision 0, Project MAC, M.I.T., Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 1974.]]

[12]

Moore, J. Strother, Introducing Iteration into the Pure LISP Theorem Prover, IEEE Trans. on Software Eng., vol. SE-1, no. 3, September 1975, pp. 328-338.]]

Digital Library

[13]

Mosses, Peter D., Mathematical Semantics and Compiler Generation, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Oxford, 1975.]]

[14]

Pleban, Uwe F., The Standard Semantics of a Subset of SCHEME, a Dialect of LISP, Technical Report TR-79-3, Computer Science Department, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, July 1979.]]

[15]

Pleban, Uwe F., A Denotational Approach to Flow Analysis and Optimization of SCHEME, a Dialect of LISP, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, to appear in 1980.]]

[16]

Steele, Guy L., Jr. & Gerald J. Sussman, LAMBDA: The Ultimate Imperative, Memo 353, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, M.I.T., March 1976.]]

Digital Library

[17]

Steele, Guy L., Jr. & Gerald J. Sussman, Revised Report on SCHEME, a Dialect of LISP, Memo 452, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, M.I.T., January 1978.]]

[18]

Steele, Guy L., Jr., RABBIT: A Compiler for SCHEME, Technical Report AI-TR-474, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, M.I.T., May 1978.]]

Digital Library

[19]

Steele, Guy L., Jr. & Gerald J. Sussman, The Art of the Interpreter or, The Modularity Complex (Parts Zero, One, and Two), Memo 453, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, M.I.T., May 1978.]]

Digital Library

[20]

Stoy, Joseph E., Denotational Semantics: The Scott-Strachey Approach to Programming Language Theory, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1977.]]

Digital Library

[21]

Sussman, Gerald J. & Guy L. Steele, Jr., SCHEME: An Interpreter for Extended Lambda Calculus, Memo 349, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 1975.]]

Digital Library

[22]

Teitelman, Warren, InterLISP Reference Manual, Revised edition, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, California, 1975.]]

[23]

Tennent, Robert D., The Denotational Semantics of Programming Languages, CACM, vol. 19, 1976, pp. 437-453.]]

Digital Library

Cited By

Guigang ZWang SChengZhi XGong ZSheu P(2008)A Semantic Programming Language SPL+ - A Preliminary ReportProceedings of the 2008 20th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence - Volume 0210.1109/ICTAI.2008.104(274-281)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICTAI.2008.104
Padget J(2005)Escaping from intermediate expression swell: a continuing sagaComputer Algebra10.1007/3-540-11607-9_30(256-262)Online publication date: 28-May-2005
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-11607-9_30
Schmidt D(2000)Induction, Domains, CalculiHigher-Order and Symbolic Computation10.1023/A:101006612764413:1-2(89-101)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2000
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1023/A%3A1010066127644
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A semantic comparison of LISP and SCHEME
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Software functional properties
      1. Correctness
2. Theory of computation
  1. Logic
    1. Proof theory
  2. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program semantics
      1. Denotational semantics

Recommendations

Standard LISP (reprint)

When it was first formulated in 1960, (1) the programming language LISP was a truly machine independent language. However, even the earliest computer implementation encountered problems in input-output control and the handling of free variables which ...
On compiling embedded languages in LISP
LFP '80: Proceedings of the 1980 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming

In INTERLISP we find a number of embedded languages such as the iterative statement and the pattern match facility in the CLISP package, the editor and makefile languages and so forth. We will in this paper concentrate on the problem of extending the ...
Down with Emacs Lisp: dynamic scope analysis
ICFP '01: Proceedings of the sixth ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming

It is possible to translate code written in Emacs Lisp or another Lisp dialect which uses dynamic scoping to a more modern programming language with lexical scoping while largely preserving structure and readability of the code. The biggest obstacle to ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

LFP '80: Proceedings of the 1980 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming

August 1980

247 pages

ISBN:9781450373968

DOI:10.1145/800087

Copyright © 1980 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGPLAN: ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 25 August 1980

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Article

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 30 of 109 submissions, 28%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

17
Total Citations
View Citations
852
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)121
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)12

Reflects downloads up to 11 Aug 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Guigang ZWang SChengZhi XGong ZSheu P(2008)A Semantic Programming Language SPL+ - A Preliminary ReportProceedings of the 2008 20th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence - Volume 0210.1109/ICTAI.2008.104(274-281)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICTAI.2008.104
Padget J(2005)Escaping from intermediate expression swell: a continuing sagaComputer Algebra10.1007/3-540-11607-9_30(256-262)Online publication date: 28-May-2005
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-11607-9_30
Schmidt D(2000)Induction, Domains, CalculiHigher-Order and Symbolic Computation10.1023/A:101006612764413:1-2(89-101)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2000
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1023/A%3A1010066127644
Wand M(1998)The Theory of Fexprs is TrivialLisp and Symbolic Computation10.1023/A:100772063273410:3(189-199)Online publication date: 1-May-1998
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1023/A%3A1007720632734
Ramsdell J(1992)An operational semantics for SchemeACM SIGPLAN Lisp Pointers10.1145/1039991.1039992V:2(6-10)Online publication date: 1-Apr-1992
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1039991.1039992
Abelson HDybvig RHaynes CRozas GAdams NFriedman DKohlbecker ESteele GBartley DHalstead ROxley DSussman GBrooks GHanson CPitman KWand M(1991)Revised4 report on the algorithmic language schemeACM SIGPLAN Lisp Pointers10.1145/382130.382133IV:3(1-55)Online publication date: 1-Jul-1991
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/382130.382133
Kayser Avan Oorschot J(1990)DScheme, An Imbedable InterpreterDatabase and Expert Systems Applications10.1007/978-3-7091-7553-8_22(132-137)Online publication date: 1990
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-7553-8_22
Lovegrove GCurtis GFarrar R(1989)Welding advisory system for process selection “WASPS”Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Industrial and engineering applications of artificial intelligence and expert systems - Volume 110.1145/66617.66669(422-427)Online publication date: 6-Jun-1989
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/66617.66669
Olthoff WKempf J(1989)An algebraic specification of method combination for the Common Lisp Object SystemLisp and Symbolic Computation10.1007/BF018115362:2(115-152)Online publication date: Jun-1989
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01811536
Danvy OMalmkjaer KChailloux J(1988)Intensions and extensions in a reflective towerProceedings of the 1988 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming10.1145/62678.62725(327-341)Online publication date: 1-Jan-1988
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/62678.62725
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents