STELLA - A Lisp-Like Language for Symbolic Programming with Delivery in Common Lisp, C++, and Java

Abstract : We describe STELLA,1 a strongly typed, object-oriented, Lisp-like language, designed to facilitate symbolic programming tasks in artificial intelligence applications. STELLA preserves those features of Common Lisp deemed essential for symbolic programming such as built-in support for dynamic data structures, heterogeneous collections, first-class symbols, powerful iteration constructs, name spaces, an object-oriented type system with a meta-object protocol, exception handling, and language extensibility through macros, but without compromising execution speed, interoperability with non-STELLA programs, and platform independence. STELLA programs are translated into a target language such as C++, Common Lisp, or Java, and then compiled with the native target language compiler to generate executable code. The language constructs of STELLA are restricted to those that can be translated directly into native constructs of the intended target languages, thus enabling the generation of highly efficient as well as readable code.