.Lc F\s-2RANZ\s0\ L\s-2ISP\s0 1
was created as a tool to further research in Symbolic
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 the PDP-11 Lisp system which originally came
As it grew it adopted features of Maclisp and Lisp Machine Lisp
which enables our work to be shared with colleagues at
the Laboratory for Computer Science at M.I.T.
It is written almost entirely in the programming language C.
A small part is written in the assembly language for the current
host machine, a VAX 11/780, and part is written in Lisp.
is written in C, it is portable and easy to comprehend.
Any person with a good knowledge of C could understand the inner
in no more than a week of study.
is capable of running large lisp programs in a timesharing enviroment,
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 and Fortran 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 only to those maintaining
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 31, Sept. 1979).
In the second Movement we will look at the reader, garbage collector,
arrays and exception handling.
In the third Movement we will look at several large support packages
user, namely the trace package and compiler.
Finally the fourth movement is the 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 section 1.4 -- 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 \(sc X.Y 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 refered to
This is also used when one tests for equality of symbols using the
A symbol also has a hashlink used to link symbols together in the
oblist -- this field is inaccessable 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
A description of the oblist can be found in \(scX.Y.
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
list get putprop the symbol nil
function getd putd binary or
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 is as close as most lisp users want to get to a machine coded
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.
Althought the type of the
field of a binary type object is string, the object pointed to
by that field is not really a
string but is actually a sequence of machine instructions.
Objects of type binary are created by
Subpart name Get value Set value Type
discipline getdisc symbol
A fixnum is an integer constant in the range \(mi2\*[31\*] to
Small fixnums (-128 to 127) are stored in a special table so they needn't be
allocated each time one is needed.
A flonum is a double precision real number in the range
\(+-2.9\(mu10\*[-37\*] to \(+-1.7\(mu10\*[38\*].
There are approximately sixteen decimal digits of precision.
A bignum is an integer of potentially unbounded size.
When integer arithmetic exceeds the limits 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.
If the user chooses to rewrite the bignum package
The functions used for the extraction and modification of
parts of bignums may change from what is shown in the table sometime in
Subpart name Get value Set value Type
i car rplaca unboxed integer
A string is a null terminated sequence of characters.
Strings occur in the print names of atoms and the reader syntax
may be modified to recognize strings in the input.
The user is warned that strings are new to
and not all functions recognize them.
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).
Arrays are rather complicated types and are fully described in
An array consists of a block of contiguous data, a function
to reference that data and auxillary fields for use by the referencing
Since an array's referencing 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
The functions for the extraction of parts of an array
will most likely be changed from what is given
in the table in future releases
Subpart name Get value Set value Type
access function getaccess putaccess binary or list
auxillary 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 any type of Lisp object.
Value cells are created through the
.sh 2 Documentation Conventions.
The conventions used in the following chapters were designed to
give the maximum amount 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 and an underscore.
The letter 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 list whose car is lambda or lexpr)
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.
As an example, if we did not use the quoting convention then a
typical description would look like:
one plus the result of evaluating arg, which must evaluate to a number.
With the quoting convention we can describe this more simply as:
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 occurances of an argument of the
.sh 2 The\ state\ of\ F\s-2RANZ\s0\ L\s-2ISP\s0
is plagued by many functions which are rarely used and do very little.
These functions are noted in the document as being liable to disappear
They will be replaced by one or two all-purpose functions.
The lisp system was redesigned to make compiled lisp programs
smaller and faster and preliminary tests show that this is indeed the case.
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