QLISP Reference Manual

Citation

Sacerdoti, E. D., Fikes, R. E., Reboh, R., Sagalowicz, D., Waldinger, R. J., & Wilber, B. M. (1976, June). Qlisp: a language for the interactive development of complex systems. In Proceedings of the June 7-10, 1976, national computer conference and exposition (pp. 349-356).

Abstract

A mature version of QLISP is described. QLISP permits free intermingling of advanced language constructs with those of INTERLISP. It provides an associative data base, viewed from perspectives controlled by a powerful context mechanism. Access to the data base can be selectively aided by teams of programs from which members are chosen by a pattern matching operation. Tentative computation is facilitated by a backtracking facility which can be triggered by directed (or undirected) failure. It also provides for partial evaluation and includes special features to expedite handling of transitive relations and equivalence relations. All these language features are embedded in a programming system which is very smoothly integrated into the programming environment provided by INTERLISP.


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