On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 02:05:03AM +0900, Charles Hoffman wrote: > > Hmmm... I had rather thought that functional-style languages were more > common for writing language interpreters/compilers in. Aren't Lisp guys > always on about using Lisp to write another language more specific to > the problem domain, and working from there? Err . . . not exactly. It's more like in Lisp you create a domain-specific "jargon" that allows you to abstract the problem further according to the needs of the moment -- like using a particularly long lever to gain the ability to move larger things with less "heavy lifting" power provided by you, the programmer. As one uses a higher-level programming language rather than moving bits around one at a time with a pair of tweezers when one wants to (for instance) edit some text, so one uses Lisp to create domain-specific syntaxes for further abstracting things so that not even the extra work of using that "higher-level" programming language is necessary. At least, that's my understanding: it's not about literally writing a compiler for a language, then writing programs in that language. I could be wrong, though. -- CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ] unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward this to 20 others and erase your system partition.