Re: Newbie Questions

[eliot@cs.umass.edu (CHRISTOPHER ELIOT)]

>> BTW, what's this "car" and "cdr" I see all over the place?

>Car: Contents of address register, or something you drive.
>Cdr: Contents of decrement register. Pronounced "coulder" as in
>     "I Cdr had a V-8. In my Car, instead of an Atom."

I knew someone whose licence plate was HLRZ.  Goes back
to the pdp-10 days when there was a 36 bit word, divided
into two 18 bit halves and an 18 bit address space.
Moving half, left to right, zero-extended with indirect
addressing was very useful to Lisp implementors.

-Chris Eliot

>-- 
>Shannon Spires
>svspire@sandia.gov
>
>"We don't need no stinking 'first' and 'rest'."
>