Lisp Resources and Links

Common Lisp at UH

• Using SSH to UHunix:
  1. Connect to UHUnix using SSH (if you do not have SSH or another secure terminal program installed, get it from UH ITS (information technology services) and install it.
  2. connect to uhunix.hawaii.edu
  3. cd to the directory where your ics313 files are
  4. type the entire path to lisp
     /opt/acl60/alisp
     you should see a lisp process start in the current window. Note that this is an older version of ACL than the trial one for PCs.

     You can create an alias to the executable with
     alias alisp /opt/acl60/alisp
     Thereafter, you can simply type alisp to start Lisp.

     • Alternatively, you may create an alias for lisp by typing on the keyboard (or putting in your .login file)
       alias lisp /opt/acl60/alisp
       and then start lisp with lisp
     
     This will start common lisp in the current window.
• Common Lisp on UH Uhix without SLIME: web page:
  • acl_hints.html
  • Save this in your .clinit.cl file (from Franz)
  • Or this version .clinit.cl (from David Chin)
  • A list of emacs/acl key bindings
  • To start Lisp in an emacs window
    • Create a file in your home directory called .emacs (dot emacs) if you don't already have one. Put the following lines in that file:

      (setq inferior-lisp-program "/opt/acl60/alisp")      ; necessary
      (global-set-key "\C-x\C-l" `run-lisp)                ; optional key bindings
      (global-set-key "\C-xd" `lisp-eval-defun)            ; optional  ""
      (global-set-key "\C-x\C-d" `lisp-eval-defun-and-go)  ; optional  ""

      To start a Lisp process from within emacs, type
      Meta-X run-lisp or C-x C-l
      Many more commands are available in the Unix and emacs help files.
    • Identify your files with the information in the header line for lisp files if your name is not in the file.
    • For examples of functions, see selection statements selection.lisp, recursive functions recurse.lisp beer.lisp using princ and terpri, beer-format.lisp same function using format for output or selection.lisp

  Common Lisp for home

  Try Franz's Allegro Common Lisp (franz.com), Lispworks (lispworks.com) lisp or GNU CLISP (free software founmdation sfs.org).
  • Franz, Inc. - commercial and trial versions of common lisp -- http://www.franz.com
  • GNU compiler and interpreter for common lisp -- www.clisp.org
  • Xanalys/Lispworks - commercial and trial versions of common lisp -- http://www.lispworks.com
  • CMUCL - Free implementation of Common Lisp from Carnegie Mellon -- http://www.cons.org/cmucl/

  Common Lisp Resources

  • Common Lisp Quick Reference (CLQR) http://clqr.boundp.org/ , Local copy (pdf) .
  • Common Lisp the Language, Second edition http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node1.html
  • Ansi common lisp specification online from Xanalys/Lispworks http://www.lispworks.com/reference/HyperSpec/Front/Contents.htm
  • "Common Lisp: A gentle introduction to Symbolic Computation" by David S. Touretzky (pdf)[out of print] (local copy)
  • Practical Common Lisp textbook and code http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/
  • Complete specification for Common Lisp in HTML http://www.lispworks.com/reference/HyperSpec/Front/index.htm from Xanalys.
  • Put the following information in the header of your lisp files
  • Practical Lisp Programming Online pages http://www.cliki.net/Practical%20Lisp%20Programming
  • The Association of Lisp Users (http://www..alu.org)
  • Lisp Resource Kit - with bootable Linux CD image (700 MB) is available at:
    http://www.common-lisp.net/project/lisp-res-kit/ This is old and may not work.

Example programs

• Towers of hanoi program in lisp (Hanoi.lisp)
• Lisp structure drawing program (sdraw.lisp)
• describe function The function describe takes a symbol argument (quoted function name) and returns the documentation string and other properties of the symbol.
  For example (describe 'sumcube) ==> SUMCUBE is a SYMBOL.
  It is unbound.
  It is INTERNAL in the COMMON-LISP-USER package.
  Its function binding is #
  The function takes arguments (X Y)
  Its property list has these indicator/value pairs:
  EXCL::%FUN-DOCUMENTATION "Returns the sum of arguments cubed"
  CL-USER(28):
  
• Example programs in Common Lisp are available in the assignments directory. Lisp includes recursion, iteration, the towers of Hanoi problem, the N-Queens problem, and state space searches in the sssearch directory.
• Note: the concatenate function in Common Lisp takes any number of arguments (in contrast to princ) and returns them in a specified format, eg.
  (concatenate (quote string) "A" " " "C" " " "B" )
  ==> "A C B"
  which can be passed to princ.
  To convert a number to a string (for use in concatenate, for example), use
  (princ-to-string 99)
  ==> "99"
  

General Lisp Programming Resources

• Compact Common Lisp Quick Reference http://www2.hawaii.edu/~nreed/ics313/lisp/clqr-1.pdf (pdf)
• A discussion of Lisp for C programmers http://www2.hawaii.edu/~nreed/ics313/lisp/lispbook.pdf (pdf) (postscript)
• http://www.DynamicLearningCenter.com -- A new resource from Franz, Inc for learning Common Lisp interactively.
• Common Lisp Resources on the Web, Amant & Young, Intelligence, V. 12, No. 3, pp. 21-23 (handout)
• Basic Lisp Techniques (pdf)
• Adaptive Software Article
• Tutorial on Good Lisp Programming Style, Peter Norvig (postscript) or (pdf)
• Loving Lisp - The Savy Programmer's Secret Weapon by Mark Watson - book + code html to download
• Text version of Richard Stallman's historical/hysterical talk/flame at the International Lisp Conference in 2002 in SanFrancisco. It is at http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html
• Examples of defining and using structures Common Lisp Object System examples

Lisp compared to other languages

• http://userpages.umbc.edu/~bcorfm1/C++-vs-Lisp.html

Scheme Resources

• http://userpages.umbc.edu/~bcorfm1/C++-vs-Lisp.html
• The 90 Minute Scheme to C compiler
  http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/%7Eboucherd/mslug/meetings/20041020/minutes-en.html
  from '(Montreal Scheme/Lisp User Group) 20/10/2004 Meeting
  Marc Feeley gave us another really good presentation. It was more technical than the previous ones, but it was definitely worth it. (I think this may set the tone for future presentations... we'll see!)
  Marc showed us how to write a simple Scheme to C compiler, in Scheme. In only 90 minutes! And although not supporting the whole Scheme standard, the compiler supports fully optimized proper tail calls, continuations, and (of course) full closures. The compiler is implemented using two important compilation techniques for functional languages: closure conversion and CPS-conversion.
  The presentation is available in PDF format. The source code of the whole compiler is available here, as well as a few test programs: test1.scm, test2.scm, and test3.scm.
• http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/HTML/r5rs.html

Intelligent Agent Programming in Lisp

• Intelligent Agents - Chapter 2 of Russell and Norvig’s text "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach". (pdf).
• Overview of R & N Agent code from AI, A Modern Approach link
• LISA - Intelligent Software Agents for Common Lisp -- LISA environment.

Go to the Course homepage

(c) N. E. Reed, 2003