Is Haskell a Lisp?

Question

I\'ve been reading The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming by Doets and Eijck 2004. It seems to be a well respected book, but I was struck when it claims that Haske

Answer 1

What people define as a lisp varies. The original specification for a lisp didn't mention macros at all and only defined a small list of primitive function, which, if my memory serves me, are the following:

• cons
• car
• cdr
• cond
• eq
• atom
• and
• or
• not
• nil

This might not be the full list, or it might have few additional members, but in any case, John McCarthy's original specification was very small.

If you define a lisp as any language that defines all of those functions, then most modern languages are lisps, including haskell.

A more strict and modern definition of a lisp is as follows:

• eager evaluation
• dynamic typing
• impure functional
• macros
• focus on lists as primary data structure

Haskell doesn't fit the first 3, it's macros (template haskell) don't follow the code-is-data paradigm, and while lists are very important, they're not the primary data structure.

So I would say no, Haskell is not a lisp.