Slides of the talk "A micro manual for LISP - Not the whole truth"

lisp.org

Hello!

I’m Jaseem Abid

2009 - ‘13 Batch @jaseemabid gh/jaseemabid

A micro manual for LISP - Not the whole truth

LISP

“Uncle” John McCarthy

LOTS OF SILLY PARENTHESIS

(clojure.core/equiv
 [this__6437__auto__ G__1329]
 (clojure.core/boolean
  (clojure.core/or
   (clojure.core/identical? this__6437__auto__ G__1329)
   (clojure.core/when
    (clojure.core/identical?
     (clojure.core/class this__6437__auto__)
     (clojure.core/class G__1329))
    (clojure.core/let
     [G__1329 G__1329]
     (clojure.core/and
      (clojure.core/= name (. G__1329 -name))
      (clojure.core/= __extmap (. G__1329 __extmap))))))))

But it’s not not just that!

• Code == Data
• Meta programming, aka Macros
• Control flows. Laziness, Continuations
• Ubiquitous

Today’s Agenda

The Meta Circular evaluator

Symbolic expressions, aka sexp

Atoms

hello my_name T NIL

Lists

(add 20 30)

(quote friends Merry Pippin Sam)

10 rules to bind them!

1. QUOTE

(quote "Hello World")

'("Hello World")

2. CAR

==> (car '(one two three))

one

3. CDR

==> (cdr '(one two three))

(two three)

4. CONS

==> (cons 'one '(ring to bind them))

(one ring to bind them)

5. EQUAL

==> (equal 'one (car '(one two theee)))
T

==> (equal 'hello 'world)
NIL

6. ATOM

==> (atom 'hello)

T

==> (atom 42)

NIL

7. COND

(cond
  ((< n 0) "negative")
  ((> n 0) "positive"))

8. VARIABLES

pi

9. LAMBDA

(lambda (n)
  (cond
    ((< n 0) "negative")
    ((> n 0) "positive")))

10. LABELS, The hard one!

Substitution

Pre defined functions

list, null, cadr

The evaluator

Not the whole truth

References

• The paper, http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/pub/misc/micromanualLISP.pdf
• PWL Bangalore, http://www.meetup.com/Papers-we-love-Bangalore/events/196358812/
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1591112

Thank you!

Oh. some more!

PapersWeLove.org