Lisp isn't a large language, it's a small language with a large library.

nabla9 · on June 21, 2019

I think comp.lang.lisp had this discussion 10 years ago and the "core language" semantics of Common Lisp is something like 25-30 functions/operators. Rest of the language could be a separated into libraries.

But even with the all those 'libraries' COMMON-LISP package has just 978 external symbols.

kazinator · on June 22, 2019

In TXR Lisp, I seem to have nearly double that in the analogous public library package called usr:

  1> (len (keep-if [orf boundp mboundp fboundp] (package-symbols 'usr)))
  1713

That's just a one-man project coming up to ten years two months hence.

That doesn't count any structure types or their slot names, FFI types, and local macros involved in syntaxes like awk and such.

I would say that Common Lisp shows amazing restraint, given its scope and number of people involved.

ska · on June 21, 2019

Common lisp is large-ish at least.

pfdietz · on June 21, 2019

Common Lisp is small enough that one person could write a reasonably complete test suite for it in his spare time.

deckard1 · on June 21, 2019

I'm not sure too many people could write a test suite for LOOP in his spare time. Never mind the rest of the trickier parts of the language such as MOP, CLOS, packages, conditions, restarts, etc. etc.

pfdietz · on June 21, 2019

https://github.com/pfdietz/ansi-test

>.>

zimpenfish · on June 22, 2019

> in his spare time

I don't wanna be -that guy- but ... github lists 5 contributors on that repo. "his" is doing a lot of work in your claim there.

pfdietz · on June 22, 2019

I stopped working on that for a number of years, and others maintained it, but the original test suite was just mine. Look at the ILC 2005 paper in the doc/ directory there.

ska · on June 21, 2019

maybe medium? Compare to scheme... this is why I said large-ish, not large. There are lot's of corners to get into in CL.