Re: [stack] In praise of Prolog

Manfred Von Thun scripsit:

> Prolog (like Joy) has the wonderful capability of allowing one to
> look at the bodies of definitions (by "clause"), doing something with
> these bodies and constructing something that can later be executed (by
> "call"). Languages such as the Algol descendents cannot do this. I do
> not know whether (the interpreted implementations of) the Lisps can
> (John Cowan: ?).

Very few Lisps allow you to recover the source form of a definition
from its executable form (decompiling), but essentially all allow you
to evaluate source at run time, and some allow you to go from source to
executable form at run time (compiling).  Even Lisp interpreters
generally do at least some compiling (expanding macros, for example).

-- 
John Cowan                                [email protected]
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, LOTR:FOTR