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

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Simon Brooke 8a7a2a4e25 Started on generating defns, but it doesn't work yet. Also: downgraded to Clojure 1.8, because LightTable doesn't yet support 1.10		2019-08-17 15:48:03 +01:00
doc	Initial commit: It's sort-of beginning to work...	2019-08-14 16:38:26 +01:00
resources	Read works, print works, eval is horribly broken.	2019-08-15 21:14:17 +01:00
src/beowulf	Started on generating defns, but it doesn't work yet.	2019-08-17 15:48:03 +01:00
test/beowulf	Started on generating defns, but it doesn't work yet.	2019-08-17 15:48:03 +01:00
.gitignore	Initial commit: It's sort-of beginning to work...	2019-08-14 16:38:26 +01:00
CHANGELOG.md	Initial commit: It's sort-of beginning to work...	2019-08-14 16:38:26 +01:00
LICENSE	Initial commit: It's sort-of beginning to work...	2019-08-14 16:38:26 +01:00
project.clj	Started on generating defns, but it doesn't work yet.	2019-08-17 15:48:03 +01:00
README.md	Considerably improved REPL, with better parse error handling	2019-08-17 13:48:49 +01:00

README.md

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; but it's also available online.