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From: wallacethinmi...@eircom.net (Russell Wallace)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Why some people think that Scheme is not a Lisp
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Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 09:51:05 GMT
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On 10 Sep 2003 11:53:25 +0300, Janis Dzerins <jo...@latnet.lv> wrote:

>If arrays and hash tables can be used instead of mutable lists, then
>they can be used instead of immutable lists too (just don't modify
>them).  So by your logic there's no need for lists at all?

Except that to define arrays and hash tables, you need to have some
notion of values, and you can't use arrays and hash tables for this
without getting a circular definition. If you have immutable lists and
a finite alphabet of characters, you can define strings, symbols and
numbers in terms of these; as far as I can see, this gets you the
cleanest semantics while still providing all the important
capabilities.

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