[plt-scheme] Smallest set of operators

I interpreted 'implement' differently than you.  I don't believe
'implement' necessarily means 'with a level of indirection similar to
an interpreter/compiler'.  It remains for Paulo to explain which way
he meant, but I believe my interpretation is consistent with his
question and his responses.

--Carl

On 2/2/07, Robby Findler <robby.findler at gmail.com> wrote:
> Paulo explicitly said "implement" when asked, not the below (but those
> pointers were also provided to him, in Matthias's original reply).
>
> Robby
>
> On 2/2/07, Carl Eastlund <cce at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> > On 2/2/07, Paulo J. Matos <pocm at soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> > >
> > > I'm really sorry but I really can't grasp what's so hard to understand
> > > in my question. I keep saying that the set of primitive values (let's
> > > call it this instead of operators) needs to belong to scheme. So, no
> > > C, no lambda calculus, no whatever complicated name, logic or
> > > calculus... Scheme!!! You get a set of scheme primitives to implement
> > > the rest of the language. Which ones do you pick for a minimal set???
> > > Is this too vague?
> >
> > Well it seems clear to me what you mean.  You want to start with a
> > minimal subset of Scheme such that you can introduce the rest of the
> > standard Scheme bindings just by programming in that subset.  So C
> > isn't good enough because it's not a subset of Scheme, the lambda
> > calculus isn't good enough because it can simulate, but not provide,
> > the Scheme primitives, and so forth.
> >
> > In general, you'll need the most primitive constructors, accessors,
> > and mutators for primitive types, the most expressive constructs for
> > control flow (conditionals, continuations, etc.) and data flow
> > (multiple values, etc.), and of course the macro system.  Some
> > features might be expressible as others, but fundamental types that
> > are guaranteed to be distinct must be provided natively, and
> > fundamental language operations can't be simulated.
> >
> > I don't know that my answer is terribly illuminating - these
> > guidelines seem pretty obvious to me - and I'm not going to take the
> > time to actually go through the list and pick a "basis" for the
> > bindings.  But this is the general process I'd go through if I did.
> >
> > --
> > Carl Eastlund