Forked newLISP – Meet Rebel

[ufko]

Rebel is no longer newLISP-compatible.
The break is mainly about function naming,
not features.
From here on, Rebel goes its own way.

Ufko.

[hapco]

Hi ufko,

What broke? Will any modification of existing newlisp code allow it to run in rebel?

https://github.com/ufko-org/rebel/discussions gets a 404, btw.

[ufko]

Hi,

Nothing broke functionally. Rebel keeps the same
language semantics; the changes are primarily in
function naming, not in behavior.

Rebel intentionally diverged to establish a concise,
more Unix/C-like naming for core functions.

There are two straightforward options for existing
newLISP code:

 - Rename function calls to the new Rebel names.
 - Define aliases for the original names.

Both approaches are fully supported and idiomatic.

The authoritative reference is primes.h, which
documents the active Rebel interface and naming.
See the header comment for orientation:

https://github.com/ufko-org/rebel/blob/main/src/primes.h

For renamed functions, the original newLISP name
can usually be inferred from the C primitive name,
which has not changed so far.

For example, new fwrite maps to p_writeFile, meaning
the original function name was write-file.

Regarding GitHub discussions/issues: they were disabled
intentionally to keep development focused.

Ufko

[hapco]

Thanks, your post made it seem more drastic.

Just for the sake of discussion, though, I think I prefer write-file and append-file to fwrite and fappend. the latter might be more concise, but they are less expressive and not as natural to type. No biggie though. :-)

[ufko]

Hi.

Losing users who consider long function
names to be language expressiveness is,
in my view, an extremely drastic change.

Rebel is not a subject of discussion;
my post was only an announcement.

Ufko.

[hapco]

Ok, I apologize. I did say it was no big deal and I never said anything about losing me a a potential user. I'll continue to follow your project with interest and look forward to seeing what you can make of it.