title: How many primitives does it take to build a LISP machine? Ten, seven or five?
body: <p>On this site they say there are 10 LISP primitives. 
  The primitives are: <code>atom, quote, eq, car, cdr, cons, cond, lambda, label, apply</code>.</p>
  
  <p><a href="http://hyperpolyglot.wikidot.com/lisp#ten-primitives" rel="noreferrer">http://hyperpolyglot.wikidot.com/lisp#ten-primitives</a> </p>
  
  <p>Stevey reckons there are seven (or five):</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Its part of the purity of the idea of LISP: you only need the seven (or is 
    it five?) primitives to build the full machine.
    <a href="http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptable-lisp.html" rel="noreferrer">http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptable-lisp.html</a> </p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>What is the minimum number of primitives to build a LISP machine (ie something that can run an eval/value function on LISP code)? (And which ones are they?)</p>
  
  <p>(I can understand you could live without <code>atom, label and apply</code>)</p>