# beowulf

LISP 1.5 is to all Lisp dialects as Beowulf is to Emglish literature.

## What this is

A work-in-progress towards an implementation of Lisp 1.5 in Clojure. The
objective is to build a complete and accurate implementation of Lisp 1.5
as described in the manual, with, in so far as is possible, exactly the
same bahaviour; the only intended deviation is that the parser reads
'mexprs' (meta language expressions) as well as sexprs.

## BUT WHY?!!?!

Because.

Because Lisp is the only computer language worth learning, and if a thing
is worth learning, it's worth learning properly; which means going back to
the beginning and trying to understand that.

Because there is, so far as I know, no working implementation of Lisp 1.5
for modern machines.

Because I'm barking mad, and this is therapy.

## Installation

Download from http://example.com/FIXME.

## Usage

`java -jar beowulf-0.1.0-standalone.jar`

This will start a Lisp 1.5 read/eval/print loop (REPL).

To end a session, type `quit` at the command prompt.

## Learning Lisp 1.5

The `Lisp 1.5 Programmer's Manual` is still
[in print, ISBN 13 978-0-262-13011-0](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/lisp-15-programmers-manual); but it's also
[available online](http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/book/LISP%201.5%20Programmers%20Manual.pdf).

## License

Copyright © 2019 Simon Brooke. Licensed under the GNU General Public License,
version 2.0 or (at your option) any later version.