CLISP manual page

Name

 clisp - Common Lisp language interpreter and compiler

Synopsis

 clisp [ -h | --help ] [ --version ] [ --license ] [ -B lisplibdir ] [ -M memfile ] [ -m memsize ] [ -L language ] [ -N localedir ] [ -Edomain encoding ] [ -q | --quiet | --silent ] [ -w ] [ -I ] [ -a ] [ -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 a 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, the specified lisp files are compiled 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.

-M memfile
Specifies the initial memory image. This must be a memory dump produced by the saveinitmem function.

-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.

-N localedir
Specifies the base directory of locale files. clisp will search its message catalogs in localedir/language/LC_MESSAGES/clisp.mo.

-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*.

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

-w
Wait for 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.

-a
ANSI CL compliant: Comply with the ANSI CL specification even on those issues where ANSI CL is broken. This option is provided for maximum portability of Lisp programs, and is not useful for actual everyday work. It sets the variable *package* to COMMON-LISP-USER and the symbol macro *ansi* to t. See impnotes.html, section "Maximum ANSI CL compliance", for details.

-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, or COMMON-LISP-USER if the option -a was specified.

-C
Compile when load: 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 _clisprc.lsp or _clisprc.fas in the home directory (user-homedir-pathname), 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. If lispfile is -, the standard input is used instead of a file. 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 http://www.x3.org/tc_home/j13sd4.htm
available online as the
Common Lisp HyperSpec http://www.harlequin.com/education/books/HyperSpec/ ("CLHS" for short)
which supersedes the earlier specifications
Guy L. Steele Jr.: Common Lisp - The Language. Digital Press. 2nd edition 1990, 1032 pages. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/html/cltl/cltl2.html ("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 relating to name.

(exit) or (quit) or (bye)
to quit clisp.

Files
main executable

lispinit.mem
initial memory image

config.lsp
site-dependent configuration

*.lsp
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

Environment
CLISP_LANGUAGE
specifies the language clisp uses to communicate with the user. The value may be english, deutsch, francais 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.

See also

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

Bugs

Projects

Authors

 Bruno Haible <haible@clisp.cons.org> and Michael Stoll.

CLISP manual page
Bruno Haible <haible@clisp.cons.org>

Last modified: 18 July 1999.