List Processing Capabilities

[Johann Hibschman]

Terry Reedy writes:

> "Jim Sabatke" <jsabatke at execpc.com> wrote in message
> news:39bcfac4$0$99040$726baab at news.execpc.com...
>> Are the list processing capabilities in Python sufficiently Lisp-like to
>> perform AI types of processing?

> I consider Python's list processing capabilities to be superior.  One thing
> to watch for is that Python is more oriented toward efficiently
> manipulating the tail of a list while Lisp addresses the front of a list.
> So (where '+_=' means 'more or less the appropriate equivalent'):

Well, this is a bit unfair to Lisp, since these are different data
structures.  The common lisp "vector" is most analagous to the Python
"list", and supports all of these functions as well as Python.

Not only that, but you get the full array of sequence functions, such
as concatenate, copy-seq, count, find, map, merge, position, reduce,
remove, remove-duplicates, sort, subseq, substitute, and so on.

It's the volume of pre-defined utility functions which make CL so good
at this sort of thing.  That and very good compilers.

-- 
Johann Hibschman                           johann at physics.berkeley.edu