.\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved. The Berkeley software License Agreement
.\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
.\" @(#)ch1.n 6.1 (Berkeley) %G%
.\" $Header: ch1.n,v 1.3 83/07/27 15:11:17 layer Exp $
.Lc \s+2F\s-2RANZ\s0\ L\s-2ISP\s0\s-2 1
was created as a tool to further research in symbolic and
and programming languages at the University of California
\*[\(dg\*]It is rumored that this name has something to do with Franz
Liszt [F\fIr\fPa\*:nts List] (1811-1886) a Hungarian composer
These allegations have never been proven.
Its roots are in a PDP-11 Lisp system which originally came
As it grew it adopted features of Maclisp and Lisp Machine Lisp.
Substantial compatibility with other Lisp dialects
(Interlisp, UCILisp, CMULisp) is achieved by
means of support packages and compiler switches.
is written almost entirely in the programming language C.
Of course, it has been greatly extended by additions written
A small part is written in the assembly language for the current
host machines, VAXen and a couple of flavors of 68000.
is written in C, it is relatively portable and easy to comprehend.
is capable of running large lisp programs in a timesharing environment,
has facilities for arrays and user defined structures,
has a user controlled reader with character and word macro capabilities,
and can interact directly with compiled Lisp, C, Fortran, and Pascal code.
This document is a reference manual for the
It is not a Lisp primer or introduction to the language.
Some parts will be of interest primarily to those maintaining
There is an additional document entitled
\fIThe Franz Lisp System,\fp
by John Foderaro, which partially describes the system implementation.
as delivered by Berkeley, includes all source code
and machine readable version of this manual and system document.
The system document is in a single file named "franz.n" in
This document is divided into four Movements.
In the first one we will attempt to describe the language of
precisely and completely as it now stands (Opus 38.69, June 1983).
In the second Movement we will look at the reader, function types,
arrays and exception handling.
In the third Movement we will look at several large support packages
user, namely the trace package, compiler, fixit and stepping package.
Finally the fourth movement contains an index into the other movements.
In the rest of this chapter we shall examine the data types of
The conventions used in the description of the
functions will be given in \(sc1.3 -- it is very important that
these conventions are understood.
In this section we shall look in detail at each type and if a type is
divisible we shall look inside it.
which will return the type name of a lisp object.
name for that type and we will use this name and this name only in
the manual to avoid confusing the reader.
The types are listed in terms of importance rather than alphabetically.
This is the name we use to describe any Lisp object.
will never return `lispval'.
This object corresponds to a variable in most other programming languages.
It may have a value or may be `unbound'.
meaning that its current value is stored
away somewhere and the symbol is given a new value for the duration of a
When the Lisp processor leaves that context, the
symbol's current value is thrown
away and its old value is restored.
This function binding is static; it cannot be lambda bound.
Whenever the symbol is used in the functional position of a Lisp expression
the function binding of the symbol is examined (see Chapter 4 for more
another static data structure.
The property list consists of a list of an even number of elements,
considered to be grouped as pairs.
The first element of the pair is the
Each symbol has a print name
which is how this symbol is accessed from input and referred to
A symbol also has a hashlink used to link symbols together in the
oblist -- this field is inaccessible to the lisp user.
Symbols are created by the reader and by the functions
and therefore two symbols with the same print name are
usually the exact same object (they are
Symbols which are not on the oblist are said to be
creates uninterned symbols while
Subpart name Get value Set value Type
property plist setplist list or nil
function getd putd array, binary, list
print name get_pname string
A list cell has two parts, called the car and cdr.
List cells are created by the function
Subpart name Get value Set value Type
This type acts as a function header for machine coded functions.
It has two parts, a pointer to the start of the function and a
symbol whose print name describes the
determines whether the arguments to this function will be evaluated
before this function is called.
If the discipline is a string (specifically
"\fIinteger-function\fP",
"\fIdouble-c-function\fP",
or "\fIvector-c-function\fP"
a foreign subroutine or function (see \(sc8.5 for more details on this).
field of a binary type object is usually \fBstring\fP or \fBother\fP,
is actually a sequence of machine instructions.
Objects of type binary are created by
Subpart name Get value Set value Type
entry getentry string or fixnum
discipline getdisc putdisc symbol or fixnum
A fixnum is an integer constant in the range \(mi2\*[31\*] to
Small fixnums (-1024 to 1023) are stored in a special table so they needn't be
allocated each time one is needed.
In principle, the range for fixnums is machine dependent, although
all current implementations for franz have this range.
A flonum is a double precision real number. On the VAX,
\(+-2.9\(mu10\*[-37\*] to \(+-1.7\(mu10\*[38\*].
There are approximately sixteen decimal digits of precision.
Other machines may have other ranges.
A bignum is an integer of potentially unbounded size.
When integer arithmetic exceeds the limits of fixnums mentioned above,
the calculation is automatically done with bignums.
Should calculation with bignums give a result which can be represented
as a fixnum, then the fixnum representation will be used\*[\(dg\*].
\*[\(dg\*]The current algorithms for integer arithmetic operations will return
(in certain cases) a result
between \(+-2\*[30\*] and 2\*[31\*] as a bignum although this
could be represented as a fixnum.
This contraction is known as
Many Lisp functions assume that integers are normalized.
Bignums are composed of a sequence of
cells and a cell known as an
The user should consider a
structure indivisible and use functions such as
A string is a null terminated sequence of characters.
Most functions of symbols which operate on the symbol's print name will
The default reader syntax is set so that
a sequence of characters surrounded by double quotes is a string.
A port is a structure which the system I/O routines can reference to
transfer data between the Lisp system and external media.
Unlike other Lisp objects there are a very limited number of ports (20).
function prints a port as a percent sign followed by the name of the file it
is connected to (if the port was opened by \fIfileopen, infile, or outfile\fP).
binds the symbol \fBpiport\fP to a port attached to the standard input stream.
This port prints as %$stdin.
There are ports connected to the standard output and error streams,
which print as %$stdout and %$stderr.
This is discussed in more detail at the beginning of Chapter 5.
Vectors are indexed sequences of data.
They can be used to implement a notion of user-defined types
via their associated property list.
They make \fBhunks\fP (see below) logically unnecessary, although hunks are very
efficiently garbage collected.
There is a second kind of vector, called an immediate-vector,
which stores binary data.
The name that the function \fItype\fP returns for immediate-vectors
Immediate-vectors could be used to implement strings and block-flonum arrays,
Vectors are discussed in chapter 9.
be used to create vectors.
Subpart name Get value Set value Type
datum[\fIi\fP] vref vset lispval
property vprop vsetprop lispval
Arrays are rather complicated types and are fully described in
An array consists of a block of contiguous data, a function
to access that data, and auxiliary fields for use by the accessing
Since an array's accessing function is created by the user, an array can
have any form the user chooses (e.g. n-dimensional, triangular, or hash
Arrays are created by the function
Subpart name Get value Set value Type
access function getaccess putaccess binary, list
auxiliary getaux putaux lispval
data arrayref replace block of contiguous
length getlength putlength fixnum
delta getdelta putdelta fixnum
A value cell contains a pointer to a lispval.
This type is used mainly by arrays of general lisp objects.
Value cells are created with the
A value cell containing a pointer to the symbol `foo' is printed
A hunk is a vector of from 1 to 128 lispvals.
Once a hunk is created (by
it cannot grow or shrink.
The access time for an element of a hunk is slower than a list cell element
but faster than an array.
Hunks are really only allocated in sizes which are powers of two, but
can appear to the user to be any size in the 1 to 128 range.
Users of hunks must realize that \fI(not\ (atom\ 'lispval))\fP
Most lisp systems do not have a direct test for a list cell and instead use
the above test and assume that
to check for a list cell.
Although hunks are not list cells, you can still access the first two
and you can access any hunk element with
\*[\(dg\*]In a hunk, the function
references the first element
You can set the value of the first two elements of a hunk with
and you can set the value of any element of the hunk with
A hunk is printed by printing its contents surrounded by { and }.
However a hunk cannot be read in in this way in the standard lisp system.
It is easy to write a reader macro to do this if desired.
Occasionally, you can obtain a pointer to storage not allocated
by the lisp system. One example of this is the entry field of
functions written in C. Such objects are classified as of type
Foreign functions which call malloc to allocate their own space,
may also inadvertantly create such objects.
The garbage collector is supposed to ignore such objects.
.sh 2 Documentation Conventions.
The conventions used in the following chapters were designed to
give a great deal of information in a brief
The first line of a function description contains the function
name in \fBbold\ face\fP and then lists the arguments, if any.
The arguments all have names which begin with a letter or letters and
The letter(s) gives the allowable type(s) for that argument according to
s symbol (although nil may not be allowed)
l list (although nil may be allowed)
n number (fixnum, flonum, bignum)
i integer (fixnum, bignum)
u function type (either binary or lambda body)
In the first line of a function description,
those arguments preceded by a quote mark are evaluated (usually
before the function is called).
The quoting convention is used so that we can give a name to the result of
evaluating the argument and we can describe the allowable types.
If an argument is not quoted it does not mean that that argument will
not be evaluated, but rather that
if it is evaluated, the time at which it is evaluated
will be specifically mentioned in the function description.
Optional arguments are surrounded by square brackets.
An ellipsis (...) means zero or more occurrences of an argument of the
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