··········@righto.com (Ken Shirriff) writes:
> a) Open all files with the suffix ".abc". Look for all lines that
> contain a particular regular expression and print the matching parts.
>
> b) Read an XML file and print out all the text entities.
>
> c) Fetch a given web page, extract the links, and pipe the results
> into an external command.
I just thought I'd mention that none of these tasks are areas where
you can really expect Common Lisp to shine. The reason for this is
that each task is basically about interfacing other systems and
external formats, all of which spring out of a certain computer system
culture that is somewhat in opposition to that of Lisp. I'm not saying
these things cannot be done in Lisp (they can, and very well too), but
don't expect Lisp to behave as fluently out-of-the-box as other
languages and tools that are more integrated in the
unix/XML/etc. culture. For example, tasks such as a) is the exact
ra�son d'�tre of Perl, which is likely solve this much more
effortlessly than Lisp.
However (and also from what I can remember of reading of Paul Graham
that you mentioned), the Big Thing with Common Lisp is its strength in
allowing programmers to explore genuinely new and substantial software
ideas and implement them efficiently. This is something rather
different from gluing together pieces of existing systems. So my
advice to you would be to concentrate on learning Lisp on its own
terms, and forget about things such as file-system traversal until you
actually need it. The above tasks would be fine for learning e.g. Perl
or Python, but they are unlikely to help you "get" Lisp, in my
opinion.
--
Frode Vatvedt Fjeld
From: Friedrich Dominicus
Subject: Re: Getting started in Lisp: simple tasks
Date:
Message-ID: <87hdox9sy7.fsf@fbigm.here>
Frode Vatvedt Fjeld <······@cs.uit.no> writes:
> ··········@righto.com (Ken Shirriff) writes:
>
>> a) Open all files with the suffix ".abc". Look for all lines that
>> contain a particular regular expression and print the matching parts.
>>
>> b) Read an XML file and print out all the text entities.
>>
>> c) Fetch a given web page, extract the links, and pipe the results
>> into an external command.
>
> I just thought I'd mention that none of these tasks are areas where
> you can really expect Common Lisp to shine.
Well there exists little brother/sister Scheme and for that you
probabbly want to use SCSH....
and well I have to disagree a bit. As Edi has pointed out "use the
libraries" and you can extend what can be "useful" done with Common
Lisp. And one of the success stories for other languages are their
large supported libraries...
So the same should be allowed for Common Lisp
Regards
Friedrich
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