[Ecls-list] Re: merge with gcl

[Paul F. Dietz]

worm wrote:

> I am convinced that ECL is above GCL in all respects: ANSI 
> compatibility, speed (the bytecodes compiler is a must for a decent 
> lisp interpreter), maintainability (it is becoming easier to add new 
> features), features (take, for instance, multithreading) and 
> portability (it took me one day to finish the port to Alpha!). 

GCL's compiler is currently much more reliable than ECL's.(*)
This may be due to workout the compiler has received from the
packages that use gcl has the delivery platform, as well as due
to Camm's attention to compiler bugs revealed by recent
testing activities.

(*) The failure rate on the random tester is currently at
least four orders of magnitude higher on ecl than on gcl,
although this doesn't necessarily mean a large number of bugs
exist in ecl's compiler.  The random tester itself must
be run interpreted under ecl because of compiler bugs.

	Paul