How many primitives does it take to build a LISP machine? Ten, seven or five?

Question

On this site they say there are 10 LISP primitives. The primitives are: atom, quote, eq, car, cdr, cons, cond, lambda, label, apply.

http://hyperpolygl

Answer 1

This faq states:

There is no single "best" minimal set of primitives; it all depends on the implementation. For example, even something as basic as numbers need not be primitive, and can be represented as lists. One possible set of primitives might include CAR, CDR, and CONS for manipulation of S-expressions, READ and PRINT for the input/output of S-expressions and APPLY and EVAL for the guts of an interpreter. But then you might want to add LAMBDA for functions, EQ for equality, COND for conditionals, SET for assignment, and DEFUN for definitions. QUOTE might come in handy as well.

That comes from the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Melon website.