Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Subject: CLtL2 is not official
Message-ID: <1991Apr3.060648.13283@Think.COM>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 91 06:06:48 GMT

I've seen a couple of references here to "Common Lisp: The Language, 2nd
Edition" this week that suggest to me that a reminder is in order.  First,
there was a reply in the comparison between Lucid and Franz that pointed
out that one of them is "only" conformant to CLtL1.  Tonight I saw a
posting looking for MS-DOS CL, "preferably CLtL2".

Folks, CLtL2 does not describe Common Lisp, unless you ignore all the parts
marked with change bars (except the notices of correction, which mark clear
errors in the original edition).  All the new material is simply a snapshot
of a work in progress, that being the ANSI CL standard.  No attempt was
made to coordinate the X3J13 process with Guy Steele's book revision
schedule; he simply incorporated all the votes that we'd taken at the time
of his deadline.  The purpose of including this stuff was to let Lisp users
and implementors who don't have representatives on the committee know where
the language is going so that they won't be caught completely by surprise,
not to define a new version of the language.  Read the preface to the 2nd
edition for more details on this point.  CLtL1 plus the corrections from
CLtL2 is the most correct definition of Common Lisp at this time.

--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar
