CLISP manual page

• Name
• Synopsis
• Description
• Options
• Reference
• Use
• Files
• Environment
• See also
• Bugs
• Projects
• Authors

Name

CLISP - ANSI Common Lisp compiler, debugger and interpreter.

Synopsis

clisp [ -h | --help ] [ --version ] [ --license ] [ -B lisplibdir ] [ -K linking-set ] [ -M memfile ] [ -m memsize ] [ -L language ] [ -N localedir ] [ -Edomain encoding ] [ -q | --quiet | --silent ] [ -interactive-debug ] [ -w ] [ -I ] [ -ansi ] [ -traditional ] [ -p packagename ] [ -C ] [ -norc ] [ -i initfile ... ] [ -c [ -l ] lispfile [ -o outputfile ] ... ] [ -x expression ] [ lispfile [ argument ... ] ]

Description

Invokes the Common Lisp interpreter and compiler. Invoked without arguments, executes the read-eval-print loop, in which expressions are in turn read from standard input, evaluated by the lisp interpreter, and their results output to standard output. Invoked with -c, compiles the specified lisp files to a bytecode that can be executed more efficiently.

Options

-h, --help

Displays a help message on how to use clisp.

--version

Displays the clisp version number, as given by the function call (lisp-implementation-version).

--license

Displays a summary of the licensing information, the GNU GPL.

-B lisplibdir

Specifies the installation directory. This is the directory containing the linking sets and other data files. This option is normally not necessary, because the installation directory is already built-in in the clisp executable. Directory lisplibdir can be changed dynamically using the symbol-macro *lib-directory*.

-K linking-set

Specifies the linking set to be run. This is a directory containing at least a main executable and an initial memory image. Possible values are base, full. The default is base.

-M memfile

Specifies the initial memory image. This must be a memory dump produced by the saveinitmem function. It may have been compressed using GNU gzip.

-m memsize

Sets the amount of memory clisp tries to grab on startup. The amount may be given as

• nnnnnnn (measured in bytes),
• nnnn K or nnnn KB (measured in kilobytes) or
• n M or n MB (measured in megabytes).

Default is 2 megabytes. The argument is constrained above 100 KB. This version of clisp is not likely to actually use the entire memsize since garbage collection will periodically reduce the amount of used memory. It is therefore common to specify 10 MB even if only 2 MB are going to be used.

-L language

Specifies the language clisp uses to communicate with the user. This may be english. The language may be changed dynamically using the symbol macro *current-language*,

-N localedir

Specifies the base directory of locale files. clisp will search its message catalogs in localedir/language/LC_MESSAGES/clisp.mo. This directory may be changed dynamically using the symbol macro *current-language*,

-Edomain encoding

Specifies the encoding used for a given domain, overriding the default which depends on the environment variables LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG. domain can be

file,

affecting *default-file-encoding*, or

pathname,

affecting *pathname-encoding*, or

terminal,

affecting *terminal-encoding*, or

foreign,

affecting *foreign-encoding*, or

misc,

affecting *misc-encoding*.

blank,

affecting all of the above.

Note that these values cannot be saved in a memory image. You have to use the init file to set them on startup.

-q, --quiet, --silent

Quiet: clisp displays no banner at startup and no good-bye message when quitting.

-interactive-debug

Override the batch mode imposed by -c, -x, and lispfile and allow interactive handling of ASSERT and friends.

-w

Wait for a keypress after program termination.

-I

Be ILISP friendly. ILISP is an alternative Emacs interface to Common Lisp systems. With this option, clisp interacts in a way that ILISP can deal with. Currently the only effect of this is that unnecessary prompts are not suppressed. Furthermore, the GNU readline library treats Tab as a normal self-inserting character, so you should always use this option when you invoke CLISP from Emacs.

-ansi

ANSI CL compliant: comply with the ANSI CL specification even where clisp has been traditionally different. It sets the symbol macro *ansi* to t. See "Maximum ANSI CL compliance", for details.

-traditional

Traditional: reverses the residual effects of -ansi in the saved image.

-p packagename

At startup the value of the variable *package* will be set to the package named packagename. The default is the package which was active when the image was saved, normally USER.

-C

Compile when loading: At startup the value of the variable *load-compiling* will be set to t. Code being loaded will then be compiled on the fly. This results in slower loading, but faster execution.

-norc

Normally clisp loads a user run control (RC) file on startup (this happens after the -C option is processed). The file loaded is ${HOME}/.clisprc.lisp or ${HOME}/.clisprc.fas, whichever is newest. This option, -norc, prevents loading of the RC file.

-i initfile ...

Specifies initialization files to be loaded at startup. These should be lisp files (source or compiled). Several -i options can be given; all the specified files will be loaded in order.

-c lispfile ...

Compiles the specified lispfiles to bytecode (*.fas). The compiled files can then be loaded instead of the sources to gain efficiency.

-o outputfile

Specifies the output file or directory for the compilation of the last specified lispfile.

-l

A bytecode listing (*.lis) of the files being compiled will be produced. Useful only for debugging purposes. See the documentation of compile-file for details.

-x expressions

Executes a series of arbitrary expressions instead of a read-eval-print loop. The values of the expressions will be output to standard output. Due to the argument processing done by the shell, the expressions must be enclosed in double quotes, and double quotes and backslashes must be preceded by backslashes.

lispfile [ argument ... ]

Loads and executes a lispfile. There will be no read-eval-print loop. Before lispfile is loaded, the variable *args* will be bound to a list of strings, representing the arguments. The first line of lispfile may start with #!, thus permitting clisp to be used as a script interpreter. If lispfile is -, the standard input is used instead of a file. If lispfile is an empty string "", the rest of the arguments is still available in *args*, for parsing by the init-function of the current image. This option must be the last one. No RC file will be executed.

Reference

The language implemented mostly conforms to

ANSI Common Lisp standard X3.226-1994

available online as the

Common Lisp HyperSpec ("CLHS" for short)

which supersedes the earlier specifications

Guy L. Steele Jr.: Common Lisp - The Language. Digital Press. 2nd edition 1990, 1032 pages. ("CLtL2" for short)

and

Guy L. Steele Jr.: Common Lisp - The Language. Digital Press. 1st edition 1984, 465 pages. ("CLtL1" for short)

Use

help

to get some on-line help.

(apropos name)

lists the symbols related to name.

(exit) or (quit) or (bye)

to quit clisp.

EOF (Ctrl-D)

to leave the current read-eval-print loop.

arrow keys

for editing and viewing the input history, using GNU readline.

Tab key

Context sensitive:

• If you are in the "function position" (in the first symbol after an opening paren or in the first symbol after a #'), the completion is limited to the symbols that name functions.
• If you are in the "filename position" (inside a string after #P), the completion is done across file names, bash-style.
• If you have not started typing the next symbol (i.e., you are at a whitespace), the current function or macro is DESCRIBEd.
• Otherwise, the symbol you are currently typing is completed.

Files

clisp

startup driver (a script or an executable)

lisp.run

main executable (runtime)

lispinit.mem

initial memory image

config.lisp

site-dependent configuration

*.lisp

lisp source

*.fas

lisp code, compiled by clisp

*.lib

lisp source library information, generated and used by the clisp compiler

*.c

C code, compiled from lisp source by clisp (for the FFI)

Environment

CLISP_LANGUAGE

specifies the language clisp uses to communicate with the user. The value may be english, german, french, spanish, dutch, russian, and defaults to english. The -L option can be used to override this environment variable.

LC_CTYPE

specifies the locale which determines the character set in use. The value can be of the form language or language_country or language_country.charset, where language is a two-letter ISO 639 language code (lower case), country is a two-letter ISO 3166 country code (upper case). charset is an optional character set specification, and needs normally not be given because the character set can be inferred from the language and country.

LANG

specifies the language clisp uses to communicate with the user, unless it is already specified through the environment variable CLISP_LANGUAGE or the -L option. It also specifies the locale determining the character set in use, unless already specified through the environment variable LC_CTYPE. The value may begin with a two-letter ISO 639 language code, for example en, de, fr.

HOME and USER (Unix implementation only)

are used for determining the value of the function user-homedir-pathname

SHELL (Unix implementation only)

is used to find the interactive command interpreter called by (shell).

TERM

determines the screen size recognized by the pretty printer.

See also

impnotes.html, cmucl(1), emacs(1), xemacs(1).

Bugs

When you encounter a bug in clisp, please report it to the CLISP mailing list or the SourceForge bug tracker.

When submitting a bug report, please specify the following information:

1. What is your platform ("uname -a" on a Unix system)? Compiler version? LIBC version (on Linux)?
2. Where did you get the sources? When? (Absolute dates are preferred over the relative ones).
3. How did you build clisp? (What command, options &c.) Please do a clean build (remove your build directory and build clisp with "./configure --build build" or at least do a "make distclean" before "make"). If you are reporting a crash (segmentation fault, bus error, core dump etc), please do "./configure --with-debug --build build-g" and report the backtrace.
4. If you are using pre-built binaries, the problem is likely to be in the incompatibilities between the platform on which the binary was built and yours; please try compiling the sources.
5. What is the output of "clisp --version"?
6. Please supply the full output (copy and paste) of all the error messages, as well as detailed instructions on how to reproduce them.

Known bugs, some of which may be platform-dependent, include

• Not all extensions from ANSI CL are supported.
• No on-line documentation beyond apropos and describe is available.

Projects

• Write on-line documentation.
• Enhance the compiler so that it can inline local functions.
• Specify a portable set of window and graphics operations.
• Add Multi-Threading capabilities, via OS threads.

Authors

Bruno Haible and Michael Stoll.

See COPYRIGHT for the list of other contributors.