MLisp
- "MLisp" is also another name for Mocklisp, a stripped-down version of Lisp used as an extension language in Gosling Emacs.
MLISP is a variant of Lisp with an Algol-like syntax based on M-Expressions, which were the function syntax in the original description of Lisp by John McCarthy. McCarthy's M-expressions were never implemented in an exact form.<ref>Enea, Horace (1968) MLISP CS-TR-68-92.pdf</ref>
MLISP was first implemented for the IBM 360 by Horace Enea and then reimplemented for the PDP 10 by David Canfield Smith. This second implementation also supported a special kind of lambdas ("FEXPR"), which do not evaluate their arguments. As in Lisp-1 or Scheme, there was a single namespace for variables and functions.<ref>Smith, David Canfield (1970) MLISP USERS' MANUAL Smith-MLISP-AIM-84.pdf (recommended first)</ref>
While MLISP was just a preprocessor with an alternative, more reader-friendly syntax for Lisp, the descendant MLISP 2 introduced new concepts:<ref>Smith, David Canfield and Enea, Horace J. (1973) MLISP 2 CS-TR-73-356.pdf</ref>
- interactive interpretation of programs instead of compilation
- extensibility with a syntax description language (see hygienic macros)
- pattern matching
- backtracking by the use of closures on a stack and indices for continuations<ref>Smith, David Canfield and Enea, Horace J. (1973) Backtracking in MLISP2: an efficient backtracking method for LISP 074.pdf</ref>
MLISP2 was called a transitional language by the authors. Larry Tesler improved the pattern matching system to implement a successor language called LISP70, which was only completed to a preliminary version. Though this path of LISP evolution is widely neglected, it resembles some features, later found in ML or Scheme.<ref>Tesler, Lawrence G., Smith, David Canfield and Enea, Horace J. (1973) The LISP70 pattern matching system 073.pdf</ref>
M-LISP (MetaLISP) by Robert Muller is an unrelated language from 1989–1992. It was "a hybrid of M-expression LISP and Scheme".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite thesis</ref>
See alsoEdit
There have been multiple implementations of infix-notation Lisps and Lisp-like or Lisp-derived languages. Some notable examples include: