2224e40afc
The lexical-syntax chapter, granularity modeled on jank's 62-file per-construct reader corpus: token grammar (whitespace/comments, collections with read-time duplicate checks, numbers incl. the N/M tower question, symbols/keywords incl. ::auto-resolution, strings/chars), the quote-family sugars, the full #-dispatch catalog with normative entries (anonymous fn %-derivation, discard composition, reader conditionals, symbolic floats, tagged literals), and the syntax-quote contract (core/alias/current-ns qualification, template-stable gensyms, ~' idiom, distribution through collections). Adapting the corpus surfaced and filed three findings, recorded as labeled divergences/UNVERIFIED in the chapter: nested syntax-quote doesn't collapse (S25, (= "meow" ```"meow") is false), #inst reads as a bare string (identity data reader, no instant type), and jolt satisfies :clj in reader conditionals (feature-key policy under review). reader-forms-spec gains 11 chapter-cited rows (discard stacking, ##Inf/ ##-Inf/##NaN, :default conditionals, qualified var-quote identity, gensym stability within vs across templates) — all passing. |
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| .. | ||
| 00-front-matter.md | ||
| 02-reader.md | ||
| 03-special-forms.md | ||
| 09-core-library.md | ||
| coverage.md | ||
| README.md | ||
The Clojure Language Specification (Draft)
A normative, implementation-independent specification of the Clojure
language, developed alongside jolt's self-hosted compiler and validated by
its executable conformance suites. Why: Clojure has no spec — every
alternative implementation re-derives semantics from the reference
implementation and folklore. See the RFC for motivation, scope, evidence
sources, and process: ../rfc/0001-language-specification.md.
Documents
| Doc | Content | Status |
|---|---|---|
00-front-matter.md |
conformance terms, entry format, host classification | drafted |
01-evaluation.md … 08-macros.md |
see chapter plan in front matter | planned |
03-special-forms.md |
special-form catalog + normative exemplars (if, let*) |
exemplars |
09-core-library.md |
per-var entry format + exemplars (first, reduce, parse-uuid) |
exemplars |
coverage.md |
generated dashboard over the 694-var surface | generated |
Regenerate the dashboard after surface changes:
python3 tools/spec_coverage.py (requires clojuredocs-export.json in the
repo root and a working jolt checkout).
Current numbers (2026-06-10)
Of the 694 clojure.core vars in the ClojureDocs inventory:
- 380 implemented in jolt and exercised by the behavioral suites
- 154 implemented but not directly tested — each gets a test with its spec entry
- 35 portable but missing from jolt (
parse-long/parse-double/parse-boolean,update-keys/update-vals,macroexpand,time,partitionv/partitionv-all/splitv-at,with-redefs,with-open, reader fns, ns-introspection stragglers, …) — tracked as implementation gaps - 22 resolvable in code but invisible to ns introspection
(
resolve/ns-publicscan't see seed-fallback names likecompare,gensym,type) — a conformance finding in its own right - the rest classified host/JVM/concurrency (see dashboard)
How this connects to the test suites
test/integration/conformance-test.janet— 302 assertions, each run through three independent execution paths (interpreter, bootstrap compiler, self-hosted compiler) that must agree. Spec entries cite these.test/spec/*.janet— ~1,500 behavioral cases organized by topic.vendor/clojure-test-suite— the cross-dialect suite (≥4081 assertions passing); dialect splits there are classification evidence.- jank's per-construct corpus (
~/src/jank/compiler+runtime/test/jank) is the granularity model for §2/§3 conformance.
The invariant: every numbered normative statement names its conformance test, or is marked UNVERIFIED. The spec cannot drift from the implementations that check it.