Content-Type: text/html

# LISP/Talk

HomePage | LISP | RecentChanges | Preferences
You can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project

Page for discussion about the LISP page.

"The language is still in use in 2001 and is therefore the oldest programming language still currently in use (as of writing in 2001)."

Actually Fortran is older by about 2 years, and is still in serious use. Not many (if any) modern Fortran programs are actually compatible with the original version of Fortran, but that is probably true for LISP as well.

Cobol is still used to some extent and is about the same age as LISP. I could probably be talked into believing LISP is a few months older.

There may be a few ALGOL programs still out there doing useful work in some obscure part of Europe, and again, ALGOL is about the same age as LISP, perhaps slightly older.

Yes, I deliberately stuck my neck out on that one. It did cause me to go and do some research though. You didn't even attempt to back up your Fortran claim but it appears to be true! --drj

''CAR (Contents of Address Register) and CDR (Contents of Address Register) are the operations for returning the head and tail of a list respectively. ''

Do CAR and CDR really stand for the same thing? (I don't know much about list, having read something about it in a Sci. Am. article about it over a decade ago, and not much since) --dja

No, CDR stands for Contents of Data Register. Typo/thinko. Fixed. Ta. --drj

Function CAR in LISP program returns the first element in a list.

       (car '(a b c d))
       Returns a

Function CDR would return everything but the first element in a list.

       (cdr '(a b c d))
       returns (b c d)

There are of course many variations of this.

       (cadr '(a b c d))
       Returns b

Working from the inside out is the same as (car (cdr '(a b c d)))

HomePage | LISP | RecentChanges | Preferences
You can edit this page right now! It's a free, community project
Edit text of this page | View other revisions
Last edited August 3, 2001 3:02 pm (diff)
Search: