Car and cdr (Re: Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme)

[John M. Gamble]

In article <87k775jlki.fsf at thalassa.informatimago.com>,
Pascal Bourguignon  <spam at thalassa.informatimago.com> wrote:
>Pascal Costanza <costanza at web.de> writes:
>
>> Hartmann Schaffer wrote:
>> 
>>  > In article <bmgh32$1a32$1 at f1node01.rhrz.uni-bonn.de>,
>>  >     Pascal Costanza <costanza at web.de> writes:
>>  >
>>  >> ...
>>  >> I think that's the essential point here. The advantage of the
>>     names car and cdr is that they _don't_ mean anything specific.
>>  >
>>  >
>>  >
>>  > gdee, you should read early lisp history ;-).  car and cdr ha[d|ve] a
>>  > very specific meaning
>> 
>> 
>> Yes, but noone (noone at all) refers to that meaning anymore. It's a
>> historical accident that doesn't really matter anymore when developing
>> code.
>
>Indeed.  Had the first lisp been  programmed on a 680x0, we would have
>d0 and d1 instead of car and  cdr, or worse, had it been done on 8086,
>we would have ax and bx...
>

I think you mean "cd0 and cd1" and "cax and cbx".  The Cs in car
and cdr mean "contents".  For that matter, the Rs mean register,
so i suppose it would go "cd0r", "cd1r", etc.

-- 
	-john

February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.