davin.50webs.com/research Bringing to you notes for the ages        Main Menu          Research Projects         Photo Album            Curriculum Vitae      The Greatest Artists     Email Address       Computer Games          Web Design          Java Training Wheels      The Fly (A Story)      Political Activism   Scruff the Cat       My Life Story          Smoking Cessation          Other Links       Debugging Macros     String Class I     Linked List System I Java for C Programmers Naming Convention     String Class II         How I use m4              Strings III                 Symmetrical I/O             Linked Lists II      Run-Time Type Info   Virtual Methods      An Array System        Science & Religion            Submodes          Nested Packages      Memory Leaks    Garbage Collection      Internet & Poverty      What is Knowledge? Limits of Evolution   Emacs Additions      Function Plotter           Romantic Love        The Next Big Thing     Science Fiction     Faster Compilation Theory of Morality         Elisp Scoping               Elisp Advice         S.O.G.M. Pattern       Safe Properties         School Bullying          Charisma Control          Life and Death          Splitting Java          Multiple Ctors       Religious Beliefs         Conversation 1           Conversation 2        J.T.W. Language    Emacs Additions II      Build Counter             Relation Plotter          Lisp++ Language     Memory Leaks II   Super Constructors CRUD Implementation Order a Website Form There Is An Afterlife More Occam's Razor C to Java Translator Theory of Morality II

Abstract While spending seven months writing a computer game called R4: Rocketman in C++ I ran into some problems with the C++ language. From the lessons learnt from writing this large (approximately 25,000 lines of code) program I have worked out how to eliminate these problems with the C++ language by merging the best of C++ with the best of Lisp to produce a new language which I will call The Lisp++ Programming Language (at the risk of confusion with an unrelated software package called Lisp++) that as its name suggests combines the expressiveness of Lisp with the efficiency of C++. You can view the cover jacket of my book by clicking on the image on the right of this paragraph. You can view the actual book by clicking here. 1. Problems with C++ It is problematic how when the source code has more than one class, not all methods can be have their method bodies defined within the class that they belong to. Lisp++ emulates Java in this respect so that every method can be put directly inside a class. Here is an example of some code that won't compile under C++, but whose counterpart will compile under Java:

class B;

class A
{
public:
   int foo(B* b)
   {
      return b->x;
   }
};

class B
{
public:
   int x;
};
  

To get the above code to compile under C++, the definition of the method body of the foo method needs to be moved down to somewhere after the definition of the body of the B class like so:

int A::foo(B* b)
{
   return b->x;
}
  

• The preprocessor is poorly behaved in that it doesn't respect scoping rules and has other problems. Lisp++ provides a superior preprocessor.

2. How Lisp++ works

Lisp++ code resembles Lisp code. In Lisp++, the Emacs editor is used as a Lisp interpreter which compiles Lisp++ code into C++ code. Then the G++ compiler is used to compile C++ code into machine language code. The basis of the Lisp interpreter is a new Lisp function which I will call lisp++2c++ compiles every file in the directory variable *directory*. Here is an example of some Lisp++ code:

(cfunction (cret void) (cname my_function) (cargs)
 (s int x = 0;)
 (s foo(f (123 * 456) hello);)
 (s bar(f 123 (456 + 789) abc);)
 (cif (abc)
     (s dmp::cout << "abc\n";)
  celseif (def)
     (s dmp::cout << "def\n";)
  celseif (ghi)
     (s dmp::cout << "ghi\n";)
  celse
     (s dmp::cout << "jkl\n";))
  (cfor ((s int i=0;) (s i<10;) (s i++))
     (s dmp::cout << i << "\n";)))

void my_function()
{
   int x = 0;
   foo((123 * 456),hello);
   bar(123,(456 + 789),abc);
   if (abc)
   {
      dmp::cout << "abc\n";
   }
   else if (def)
   {
      dmp::cout << "def\n";
   }
   else if (ghi)
   {
      dmp::cout << "ghi\n";
   }
   else
   {
      dmp::cout << "jkl\n";
   }
   for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
   {
      dmp::cout << i << '\n';
   }
}