Lisper repo

Repo for a implementation of lisp, following the buildyourownlisp.com tutorial.

Features

• Single byte strings
• Simple file IO operations with strings
• Q-expression operations (expressions that does not automatically get evaluated)
• Source file import
• User defined functions and lambdas
• User defined immutable values
• Read Eval Print Loop (REPL) support
• Cross OS portablity (Can be compiled to run on Windows, Mac OS or Linux)

Setup

The repo contains a makefile with the following phony targets:

• all (default target) compiles the interpreter lisper
• clean removes the object files and the interpreter
• debug compiles the interpreter in debug mode by adding in debug symbols in the object files and exposes the _DEBUG macro symbol to the C preprocessor

By default, the makefile compilation exposes the _ARCHLINUX macro symbol to the preprocessor to enable compilation of the interpreter on the Arch Linux distribution. This symbol can be turned off by setting the environmental variable SYMBOLS to the empty string, to enable Mac OS or other Linux support. The code can also be compiled with Visual Basic under Windows.

Usage

Like the Python interpreter, the Lisper interpreter works in two ways; by running as a REPL or evaluating source files. To use the REPL simply invoke the intepreter:

./lisper

This will drop you into a interactive session that can be exited by invoking the exit 0 expression or pressing Ctrl+C . To evaluate source files, simply add the filenames as command line arguments to the interpreter invocation:

./lisper mysource.lspr

The examples directory in the repo contains some example source files that can be run in this manner.

./lisper --help

Lists the command line options and usage available.