I currently own a copy of LISP (Winston, Klause and Horn) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201083191/qid=1087711047/sr=ka-2/ref... which I picked up only becuase it was a required text for a class I was taking. The text is comprehensive although for an introduction, I always felt that the Little Lisper was better. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0023397632/qid=1087710984/sr=1... Cheers. Jason. --- sageman@WPI.EDU wrote:

Hi. Well, I figure since Lisp is such an important language, especially in GNU/Linux systems (favorite of Stallman afterall) I should pose this question to this group. Basically I'm interested in learning Lisp and was wondering if anyone has some favorite or recommended books that describe the syntax of Lisp. Additionally books related to introductory artificial intelligence work, with algorithms, design issues, et cetera, especially books with example Lisp code would be very welcome. Thanks.

- Carlton Stedman II

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On 00:47 Sun 20 Jun , sageman@WPI.EDU wrote:

Hi. Well, I figure since Lisp is such an important language, especially in GNU/Linux systems (favorite of Stallman afterall) I should pose this question to this group. Basically I'm interested in learning Lisp and was wondering if anyone has some favorite or recommended books that describe the syntax of Lisp. Additionally books related to introductory artificial intelligence work, with algorithms, design issues, et cetera, especially books with example Lisp code would be very welcome. Thanks.

I have a love and hate relationship with Lisp. It's just that I'm *forced* to use Lisp/CLIPS/Jess for certain reasons ;) I'd recommend starting with the elm-art Lisp tutor which is great for learning the basic syntax and flows of Lisp. http://apsymac33.uni-trier.de:8080/art/login-e.html After you master that, everything becomes easier ;) Cheers, -- Chris Aniszczyk Gentoo Developer - http://www.gentoo.org - http://cia.navi.cx/stats/author/zx http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x274A275F

From: sageman@WPI.EDU

Hi. Well, I figure since Lisp is such an important language, especially in GNU/Linux systems (favorite of Stallman afterall) I should pose this question to this group. Basically I'm interested in learning Lisp and was wondering if anyone has some favorite or recommended books that describe the syntax of Lisp. Additionally books related to introductory artificial intelligence work, with algorithms, design issues, et cetera, especially books with example Lisp code would be very welcome. Thanks.

- Carlton Stedman II

Lisp---not just a language, it's a way of life. Lisp is about as old as any programming language still in use. It's about tied with Fortran, depending on what you count as a birthday, and now that Algol 60 is dead, the next older is probably at least ten year younger. As such, it has spawned many variations. The first worth noting is Lisp 1.5 (John McCarthy et.al. "The Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual, MIT Press). This is still in print and available from Amazon ($17), or you can see it on the Web (with slightly torqued formating) http://green.iis.nsk.su/~vp/doc/lisp1.5/mccarthy.html This will expand your mind in somewhat the same way as reading "The Federalist Papers". It gives you perspective on whence we came, and introduces themes that will be debated for decades. If you want to run the programs, the back of the book says the Lisp system is available from Stanford, but I think you might need an IBM 704 with a paper tape reader (that's a joke son). For actual running programs, you have several reasonable choices 1. Common Lisp 2. Scheme 3. EMACS Lisp Common Lisp was developed by in the late 1980's by a committee with the purpose of unifying the divergent variants of Lisp. It is, in a sense, the union of the various versions. Whatever someone though useful was added. It's a big language, and the standard reference is: Guy Steele Jr. "Common LISP, The Language, Second Ed." Digital Press This book is too fat, legalistic, and repetitious to use as an introduction, but it is the final answer for disputes between language lawyers. The graphs of complex transcendental functions on pages 315-336 are almost worth the price of admission alone. An hour spent staring at the pictures is worth half a semester class of complex variable theory. -- Scheme was developed in the late 1970's by Guy Steele and Gerald Sussman (later to be authors of the Common Lisp manual and SICP respectively). The approach was exactly opposite to Common Lisp. They say: Programming languages should be designed not by piling feature on top of feature, but by removing the weaknesses and restrictions that make additional features seem necessary. By learning the Scheme version of Lisp you will encounter the maximum number of elegant new concepts with a minimum of mundane cruft. The base language may be lacking some of the library procedures you need to deal with the crufty real world of programming, but there are quite a few implementation that add those extras. The standard reference is the fifth "Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme" (R5RS), which is available from http://www.schemers.org/ (click "standards"). This is only about 50 pages. I recommend printing it out and memorizing it. There is also a FAQ there that should answer some of your questions.

From: J Schonberg <schonm@yahoo.com>

I currently own a copy of LISP (Winston, Klause and Horn) which I picked up only becuase it was a required text for a class I was taking.

Try to contain your enthusiasm.

The text is comprehensive although for an introduction, I always felt that the Little Lisper was better.

I believe the latest edition is called "The Little Schemer" by Friedman and Felleisen. I don't have a copy handy, but it was used in a class for which I was Teaching Assistant some years ago. I remember the professor for the class saying: There are two text books for this class. The fat one that looks hard to read is the reference manual. Don't bother reading it all, just look up what you need to know when you have a problem. The little one that looks like a comic book is "The Little Lisper". Study it carefully; despite its appearance, all the deep concepts are in that one.

Cheers. Jason.

----

From: Gregory Boyce <gboyce@badbelly.com>

This book on LISP is referred to as one of the bibles of the Lisp/Scheme world, and is available for free from the MIT Press.

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/sicp.html

Gregory Boyce <gboyce@badbelly.com>

That's "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs". In Scheme circles "SICP" suffices to identify it. It is not a book to teach Scheme, but a book to teach programming, which uses Scheme as the vehicle. It does not go through the entire language. For example, hygenic macros and continuations are two features unique to Scheme that are not mentioned at all. On the other hand, what it does cover it does in depth. It starts telling you how to add two numbers, and about half way through has you writing a Scheme interpreter and adding features like lazy evaluation. For a description of the entire language as an introduction, rather than a reference manual, I recommend R. Kent Dybvig, "The Scheme Programming Language (ANSI Scheme)" Second edition, Prentice-Hall ---- Emacs Lisp was designed and implemented by our hero Richard Stallman and is an odd version of Lisp that is embedded in the Emacs text editor. If you are going to write much Lisp, you really want an editor that can balance parenthesis and indent code automatically. Emacs does that and more. In addition, Emacs is written in Lisp and can be extended and programmed by executing Emacs Lisp programs. Lewis, LaLiberte, Stallman, "The GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual" Free Software Foundation ---- There are odd versions of Lisp (or Scheme) embedded in the AutoCAD Computer Assisted Design program and in the GIMP graphic image manipulation program.

From: Chris Aniszczyk <zx@gentoo.org>

I have a love and hate relationship with Lisp. It's just that I'm *forced* to use Lisp/CLIPS/Jess for certain reasons ;)

Now that's something I haven't encountered before. I know a lot of people who say "I wish I could write Scheme, but my boss makes me use [Perl | C | PHP | ... }".

I'd recommend starting with the elm-art Lisp tutor which is great for learning the basic syntax and flows of Lisp.

http://apsymac33.uni-trier.de:8080/art/login-e.html

After you master that, everything becomes easier ;)

I didn't like that as a Lisp course, although I did have fun trying to read the comments from other "students" in Russian and German. It is too much pointing and clicking and answering stupid questions and too little information. The whole thing could be printed on twenty pages, but you would learn more by reading the first twenty pages of SICP. It doesn't even say what version of Lisp it is (it seems to be Common Lisp). Furthermore the grammar and spelling are marginal. elm-art> The Function FIRST expects one argument. This argument must elm-art> be a list, or rather an expression whose value is a list. The elm-art> moderation of the function to the particular datatype is also elm-art> denoted by a type restriction. Huh??

Cheers,

-- Chris Aniszczyk

Another book I have that is not without merit is Christian Queinnec, "Lisp In Small Pieces", Cambridge University (Note the recursive acronym) This discusses implementation techniques with reference to both Common Lisp and Scheme, although most of the time he uses his own odd version of Lisp. It collects a lot of folklore that would otherwise be scattered in a half century worth of obscure papers and manuals. Unfortunately, the "Small Pieces" don't always quite fit together, and sometimes you can feel the author (who is French) struggling to put things into English. -- Keith