Language Independent Arithmetic

Dear all

Apologies for the multiple postings, but I would like to ask for help on a – ahem – little project that could be a fun (and useful) thing to do.

A few of you may have noticed the paper I published at ELS 2020.  The paper is available at

https://www.zenodo.org/record/3759522

doi: 10.5281/zenodo.3759522

I have a inkling that at least one old-timer liked the paper 😊

In the paper, I advocate for a “sub-standard” that clarified and interpreted the provisions made for Common Lisp by the “Language Independent Arithmetic” IEC standards.

The paper is a summary.  I have already started work on a full fledged “specification” (it is already 60-ish pages long) but there are way too many details I either do not fully understand or for which it would be much better if agreed upon by a few interested parties.

So, given that the starting points are essentially the LIA specs and the C library spec, if you feel like participating in fleshing out the full spec, please say so.

The only constraint I would like to pose is that the specification should be such: i.e., a specification.  I believe that “an implementation for X” (X being your favorite CL) would not be all that helpful.

All the best

Marco

Marco Antoniotti
DISCo, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

+39 02 6448 7901

bimib.disco.unimib.it