[no subject]

[JONL at MIT-MC (Jon L White)]

CC: (BUG LISP) at MIT-MC, (BUG LISPM) at MIT-MC, BSG at MIT-MC

    Date: 18 October 1979 21:34-EDT
    From: Glenn S. Burke <GSB at MIT-ML>
    Subject: format of (status features)

    The maclisp manual claims that (car (last (status features))) is
    the implementation name.  
Actually, it was meant to mean "name of operating system type", such
as TOPS-10, TOPS-20, TENEX, ITS, MULTICS . . .
			      I have also been under the impression
    that (cadr (reverse (status features))) was itself significant, ie
    the "machine identifier" or somesuch (eg "ML"), but i don't have
    an old manual handy to see if it actually claims this.  
This is not really a "feature" - it was used in the days when the
various ITS machines had to have different assemblies of LISP.  But
now, the same code is used on all three systems (yes, Virginia, we
don't make use of the fact that the KL10 has . . .)
							    I see however
    that multics maclisp now has "Maclisp" as the last element, and the
    lisp machine uses neither of those last elements.  It would be kind
    of nice if these items could be found by some means other than 
    enumeration.
This might seem a bug, if we would expect the last element to be the
supporting operating system name.