T: a dialect of Lisp or LAMBDA: The ultimate software tool

ABSTRACT

The T project is an experiment in language design and implementation. Its purpose is to test the thesis developed by Steele and Sussman in their series of papers about the Scheme language: that Scheme may be used as the basis for a practical programming language of exceptional expressive power; and, that implementations of Scheme could perform better than other Lisp systems, and competitively with implementations of programming languages, such as C and Bliss, which are usually considered to be inherently more efficient than Lisp on conventional machine architectures. We are developing a portable implementation of T, currently targeted for the VAX under the Unix and VMS operating systems and for the Apollo, a MC68000-based workstation.

REFERENCES

• 1: Norman I. Adams and Jonathan A. Rees. The T Manual. Yale University, Department of Computer Science, New Haven, Connecticut, 1982. Pre-release Edition.
• 2: System Programmer's Reference Manual. Apollo Computer, Inc., 19 Alpha Road, Chelmsford, Massachusetts 01824, 1982.
• 3: Alan Bawden, Richard Greenblatt, Jack Holloway, Tom Knight, David Moon, and Daniel Weinreb. Lisp Machine progress report. AI Memo 444, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, August 1977.
• 4: Richard R. Burton , L. M. Masinter , Daniel G. Bobrow , Willie Sue Haugeland , Ronald M. Kaplan , B. A. Sheil, Overview and status of DoradoLisp, Proceedings of the 1980 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming, p.243-247, August 25-27, 1980, Stanford University, California, United States [doi>10.1145/800087.802812]
• 5: John K. Foderaro. The Franz Lisp manual: A document in four movements. Computer Science Research Group, University of California at Berkeley, 1980.
• 6: Rodney A. Brooks , Richard P. Gabriel , Guy L. Steele, Jr., S-1 Common Lisp implementation, Proceedings of the 1982 ACM symposium on LISP and functional programming, p.108-113, August 15-18, 1982, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/800068.802141]
• 7: Adele Goldberg and Alan Kay. Smalltalk-72 instruction manual. Technical Report, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, March 1976.
• 8: Martin L. Griss. Portable Standard LISP: A brief overview. Operating Note 58, University of Utah, Department of Computer Science, January 1982.
• 9: Brian W. Kernighan. Why Pascal is not my favorite programming language. Computing Science Technical Report 100, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, July 1981.
• 10: David A. Moon. Maclisp reference manual, revision 0. Project MAC, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1974.
• 11: J. Strother Moore II. The Interlisp Virtual Machine specification. Technical Report CSL 76-5, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, March 1979.
• 12: Kent M. Pitman, Special forms in Lisp, Proceedings of the 1980 ACM conference on LISP and functional programming, p.179-187, August 25-27, 1980, Stanford University, California, United States [doi>10.1145/800087.802804]
• 13: Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. and Gerald Jay Sussman. Lambda, the ultimate imperative. AI Memo 353, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 1976.
• 14: Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. Lambda, the ultimate declarative. AI Memo 379, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, November 1976.
• 15: Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. Data representation in PDP-10 Maclisp. AI Memo 420, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 1977.
• 16: Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. Fast arithmetic in Maclisp. AI Memo 421, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 1977.
• 17: Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. Debunking the expensive procedure call myth, or, procedure call implementations considered harmful, or, lambda: The ultimate goto. AI Memo 443, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, October 1977.
• 18: Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. and Gerald Jay Sussman. The revised report on Scheme, a dialect of Lisp. AI Memo 452, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 1978.
• 19: Guy Lewis Steele, Jr. and Gerald Jay Sussman. The art of the interpreter or, the modularity complex (parts zero, one, and two). AI Memo 453, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, May 1978.
• 20: Guy L. Steele, Jr., Rabbit: A Compiler for Scheme, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 1978
• 21: Guy L. Steele, Jr. and Scott E. Fahlman. Common Lisp reference manual. Spice Document S061, Computer Science Department, Carnegie-Mellon University, September 1981.
• 22: Guy L. Steele. Report on the 1980 Lisp Conference, Stanford Universty, August 25-27, 1980. ACM SIGPLAN Notices 17(3):22-35, March 1982.
• 23: Warren Teitelman. Interlisp Reference Manual. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, California, 1978.
• 24: Daniel Weinreb, Lisp machine manual, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1981
• 25: Jon L. White. Nil: A perspective. In 1979 Macsyma Users' Conference Proceedings. Macsyma User's Conference, Washington, D.C., June 1979.
• 26: William Allan Wulf , Richard K. Johnsson , Charles B. Weinstock , Steven O. Hobbs , Charles M. Geschke, The Design of an Optimizing Compiler, Elsevier Science Inc., New York, NY, 1975

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: T

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
  D.3 PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
      D.3.2 Language Classifications

          Nouns: LISP

General Terms:
Design, Languages