Re: lisp

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu>]

    Is lisp available for linux?

Here is information on four:

Emacs Lisp runs under GNU/Linux.  It has lots and lots written for it,
including an excellent Mayan calendar, for those of you who cannot do
without, not to mention an editor. :-)

Useful manuals, in addition to the Emacs manual:

[from the GNUs Bulletin]

    `Programming in Emacs Lisp: An Introduction' (Edition 1.03) is for
    people who are not necessarily interested in programming, but who
    do want to customize or extend their computing environment. If you
    read it in Emacs under Info mode, you can run the sample programs
    directly.

    The `GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual' (Edition 2.4 for Version
    19.29) covers this programming language in depth, including data
    types, control structures, functions, macros, syntax tables,
    searching/matching, modes, windows, keymaps, byte compilation, and
    the operating system interface.


Also, FSF distributes two versions of Common Lisp:

   * CLISP

     CLISP is a Common Lisp implementation by Bruno Haible and Michael
     Stoll.  It mostly supports the Lisp described by `Common LISP:
     The Language (2nd edition)' and the ANSI Common Lisp standard.
     CLISP includes an interpreter, a byte-compiler, a large subset of
     CLOS, a foreign language interface and, for some machines, a
     screen editor.  The user interface language (English, German,
     French) is chooseable at run time.  Major packages that run in
     CLISP include CLX & Garnet.  CLISP needs only 2 MB of memory &
     runs on many microcomputers (including MS-DOS systems, OS/2,
     Atari ST, Amiga 500-4000, Acorn RISC PC) & Unix-like systems
     (GNU/Linux, Sun4, SVR4, SGI, HP-UX, DEC Alpha, NeXTstep &
     others).

   * GNU Common Lisp

     GNU Common Lisp (GCL) has a compiler and interpreter for Common
     Lisp.  It used to be known as Kyoto Common Lisp.  It is very
     portable and extremely efficient on a wide class of applications.
     It compares favorably in performance with commercial Lisps on
     several large theorem-prover and symbolic algebra systems. It
     supports the CLtL1 specification but is moving towards the
     proposed ANSI definition.  GCL compiles to C and then uses the
     native optimizing C compilers (e.g., GCC).  A function with a
     fixed number of args and one value turns into a C function of the
     same number of args, returning one value, so GCL is maximally
     efficient on such calls.  It has a conservative garbage collector
     which allows great freedom for the C compiler to put Lisp values
     in arbitrary registers.  It has a source level Lisp debugger for
     interpreted code, with display of source code in an Emacs window.
     Its profiling tools (based on the C profiling tools) count
     function calls and the time spent in each function. CLX works
     with GCL.

     There is now a built-in interface with the TK widget system.  It
     runs in a separate process so that users may monitor progress on
     Lisp computations or interact with running computations via a
     windowing interface.

     There is also an Xlib interface via C (xgcl-2).  PCL runs with
     GCL.  GCL version 2.0 is released under the GNU Library General
     Public License.

     ** PCL 

     PCL is a free implementation of a large subset of CLOS, the
     Common Lisp Object System.  It runs under both GCL and CLISP,
     mentioned above.

   * SCM

     SCM is an IEEE P1178 & R4RS compliant version of Scheme written
     in C.  SCM runs on Amiga, Atari-ST, MS-DOS, OS/2, NOS/VE, Unicos,
     VMS, Unix & similar systems.

     JACAL runs under SCM.  JACAL is a symbolic mathematics system for
     the manipulation/simplification of equations, single &
     multiple-valued algebraic expressions made up of numbers,
     variables, radicals, differential operators, & algebraic &
     holonomic functions.  Vectors, matrices, & tensors of these
     objects are supported.