jolt/docs/spec
Yogthos e17bcfd0af clojure.string toString coercion; some-fn/ifn? reference semantics; misc host gaps
The clojure.string case fns and searches now take any Object s through its
toString like the reference's ^CharSequence signatures ((upper-case :kw) is
":KW", (capitalize 1) is "1"); nil throws, and a nil substr in
starts-with?/ends-with? throws. some-fn re-ported with the reference
arities: (some-fn) is an arity error and a no-match result is the last
predicate's own falsy value (false, not nil). ifn? covers multimethods,
promises (which are now invocable — calling one delivers, via a cold-path
invoke-arm registry that costs the hot dispatch nothing), and deftypes
implementing IFn's invoke.

One structural find on the way: defmulti/defmethod deferred inside a fn
body (the deftest pattern) interned/resolved in whatever namespace was
current when they RAN, not the one they were written in — the macros now
bake their expansion ns and the setups honor it.

Also: Boolean/Integer/Double wrapper ctors, primitive TYPE statics
(Integer/TYPE etc.), .reduce on collections (IReduce), and Long/TYPE.

cts baseline 5857 -> 5904 pass, 58 -> 28 errors, 57 baselined namespaces —
the string cluster, some-fn, ifn-qmark, boolean-qmark, and reduce
namespaces are all fully clean. 7 JVM-certified corpus rows; spec entry.
2026-07-02 11:38:37 -04:00
..
00-front-matter.md Docs: Chez-only, drop the Janet-era references and obsolete migration notes 2026-06-22 09:05:35 -04:00
02-reader.md Run core.memoize's test suite on jolt 2026-06-25 13:23:05 -04:00
03-special-forms.md spec: set! now supports deftype mutable fields 2026-06-22 01:19:21 -04:00
09-core-library.md clojure.string toString coercion; some-fn/ifn? reference semantics; misc host gaps 2026-07-02 11:38:37 -04:00
coverage.md Honor *print-length* / *print-level* / *default-data-reader-fn* 2026-06-26 19:04:42 -04:00
README.md Clean up codebase: rename stdlib layer, strip porting residue, fix tooling 2026-06-22 22:18:00 -04:00

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
02-reader.md token grammar + reader-macro catalog drafted
01, 0408 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
../grammar.ebnf reader surface syntax (EBNF), companion to 02-reader.md reference

Regenerate the dashboard after surface changes: python3 tools/spec_coverage.py (reads tools/clojuredocs-export.json and probes a working jolt checkout via bin/joltc).

Current numbers (2026-06-22)

Of the 694 clojure.core vars in the ClojureDocs inventory, jolt interns 574. Broadly:

  • 568 implemented in jolt and exercised by the behavioral suites
  • 6 implemented but not directly tested — each gets a test with its spec entry
  • 6 portable but absent from jolt's resolvable surface (the REPL history vars *1/*2/*3/*e, plus letfn/re-groups, which work but aren't interned where resolve can see them) — tracked as gaps
  • the rest classified host/JVM/concurrency (see the dashboard for the full per-var breakdown — it is the source of truth)

How this connects to the test suites

  • test/chez/corpus.edn — the host-neutral behavioral corpus, one row per case ({:suite :label :expected :actual}). The Chez compiler evaluates each case via host/chez/run-corpus.ss (run with make corpus), and test/conformance/certify.clj certifies every :expected against reference JVM Clojure (run with make certify). Spec entries cite these cases.
  • test/conformance/ — the certification tooling and classified divergences (certify.clj, known-divergences.edn); see its README.md and SPEC.md.
  • 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.