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Re: Backquote history



I'm glad to hear that we are not alone in having some arguments about
Backquote. There's been some back-and-forth about the Interlisp version,
with a variety of different opinions and implementations.

Recently, Warren Teitelman returned to me a document I had written in
1972 describing a number of features I had added to Lisp/360 at Stanford
in 1971 (with advice from Sridharan.)

Among the various packages was a backquote-like facility.

JonL had dismissed a number of my arguments as those of a "latecomer",
but he threw me out of his office when I suggested I might have even
INVENTED the idea.

It would be quite likely that this was something that Sridharan or I had
seen elsewhere, but it is also possible that this was something that
migrated out of Lisp/360, or that, being an obvious idea, it had arisen
spontaneously in a number of different contexts.

I was wondering if any of the examples you saw might pre-date 1972.

Larry