beowulf/README.md

1.4 KiB

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.

License

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