Language Guide¶
Hello World¶
As any good programming language documentation should, let’s start with hello world:
(define main
(lambda (args)
(print "hello world")))
Here we see many of the normal expectations from a hello world: a function
declaration and a print statement. define binds a name to any value you’d
like. In this case, we’re binding the symbol main to be a function.
Functions are declared using the lambda statement. They are enclosed in
parentheses, and first contain a list of arguments, then an expression that is
their implementation. Our main function simply prints a string. We can run
this script using the bin/runfile utility bundled with funlisp:
$ make bin/runfile
# some make output
$ bin/runfile scripts/hello_world.lisp
hello world
Types¶
To accelerate our learning, try compiling the REPL. You might need to install libedit to build it.
$ make bin/repl
# some make output
$ bin/repl
>
Like most REPLs, this takes a line at a time, executes it, and prints the result. We’ll use this for demonstrating some of funlisp’s types.
> 5
5
> "blah"
blah
The two most obvious data types are the integer and string, as you can see above.
> 'hello
hello
> '(1 2 3)
(1 2 3 )
Above are two less obvious types, the “symbol” and the “list”. Symbols are like strings, but they are used to bind names to values in lisp. Lists are the fundamental data structure of funlisp, used to hold both data and code! Both of those had quotes in front of them. Quoting in this way prevents funlisp from evaluating them, since symbols and lists behave a bit differently when they’re evaluated:
> hello
error: symbol not found in scope
The symbol was looked up in the scope, but it turns out that there’s no
hello in scope. However, we know several things that are in the scope, from
our hello world program:
> define
<builtin function define>
> lambda
<builtin function lambda>
> print
<builtin function print>
Neat! The symbols are names for builtin functions.
Lists behave in a special way when evaluated too. Funlisp tries to “call” the first item on the list, with the other items as arguments. We saw this with hello world as well:
> (1 2)
error: not callable!
> (print 2)
2
Turns out that “1” is not callable, but the function attached to the print
symbol is!
Integer Functions¶
So, we’ve seen some neat tricks with the four basic builtin types. Now let’s see how to manipulate integers:
> (+ 1 1)
2
> (- 5 1)
4
> (/ 4 3)
1
> (* 2 2)
4
Those basic arithmetic functions behave like any other function call. They look a bit odd because we expect arithmetic operators to be in the middle of an expression, but you’ll get used to it!
> (= 5 5)
1
> (> 5 6)
0
> (<= 4 5)
1
Comparison operators look like that too. They return integers, which are used for conditionals in funlisp the same way that C does.
Control Flow¶
Speaking of control-flow, funlisp has a handy if statement:
> (if (= 5 4) (print "impossible") (print "boring"))
boring
Since we try to make everything in funlisp into an expression, if statements must have both a “value if true” and a “value if false”. You cannot leave out the else.
Funlisp also has the cond statement, which allows you to test whether one of
several conditions match. To test this out, we’ll define some functions that use
cond.
(define divisible
(lambda (number by)
(= number (* by (/ number by)))))
(define talk-about-numbers
(lambda (number)
(cond
((divisible number 2) (print "The number " number " is even!"))
((divisible number 3) (print "It may not be even, but " number " is divisible by 3!"))
(1 (print "The number " number " is odd, and not even divisible by 3.")))))
Don’t worry about the function stuff, we’ll revisit it later. Next is an example using these functions in the interpreter.
> (talk-about-numbers 6)
The number 6 is even!
> (talk-about-numbers 5)
The number 5 is odd, and not even divisible by 3.
> (talk-about-numbers 9)
It may not be even, but 9 is divisible by 3!
The cond statement can use “1” as a default truth condition. However, it need not have a default case - when cond falls through, it returns nil, the empty list.
Funlisp doesn’t currently have any form of iteration. However, it supports recursion, which is a very powerful way of iterating, and handling objects like lists.
Functions and Recursion¶
We’ve already seen the lambda syntax of creating functions for our hello world. Now let’s check out some others:
> (define double (lambda (x) (* 2 x)))
<lambda function>
> (double 2)
4
We can recursively call our own function, for great good:
(define factorial
(lambda (x)
(if (= 0 x)
1
(* x (factorial (- x 1))))))
We can also use that capability to process a list of elements:
(define increment-all
(lambda (x)
(if (null? x)
'()
(cons (+ 1 x) (increment-all (cdr x))))))
Oops, looks like I’ve introduced you to cons and cdr. These are from a family of list processing functions that do the following:
(cons x l)- put x at the beginning of list l(car l)- return the first item in l(cdr l)- return the elements after the first one in l
Scoping¶
Sometimes, you want to evaluate a value once, and save it for use multiple
times. You can achieve this with let. Let has the syntax (let BINDING-LIST
expressions...). BINDING-LIST is a list of pairs, mapping a symbol to a value.
Here’s an example:
> (let ((x (+ 5 5)) (y (- x 2))) (+ x y))
18
Here the binding list contains the pair (x (+ 5 5)), mapping x to the
evaluated value 10. The next binding, (y (- x 2)) maps y to 8. Notice that
the second binding may refer to the earlier one in the list. This can happen in
reverse as well, if for example the first binding is a function:
> (let ((return1 (lambda () x)) (x 1)) (return1))
1
This needlessly complicated piece of work shows that the lambda bound to
return1 can access the name x, if it accesses it after x is bound.
Higher Order Functions¶
Now that we’ve incremented each item in a list, what if we want to decrement?
We’d have to rewrite the whole function again, replacing the plus with a minus.
Thankfully, we can do a better job, using map:
(define increment-all (lambda (l) (map (lambda (x) (+ 1 x) l))))
Map is a function which takes another function, as well as a list of items, and applies it to each item, returning the list of results.
We also have access to the reduce function, which applies that function to the list in pairs:
> (reduce + '(1 2 3))
6
Macros + Advanced Quoting¶
Funlisp provisionally supports some more powerful features of lisp: macros and
quoting. Macros are similar to functions which take un-evaluated code
(s-expressions), and return new code. Since code is represented as lists of
symbols internally, it can be manipulated quite nicely with lisp code as well.
The result is capable of defining syntatic shortcuts and other niceties. Here is
an example that takes the common (define function-name (lambda (args) ...))
pattern and shortens it into a more convenient construct: (defun name (args)
...).
(define defun (macro (name args code)
(list 'define name (list 'lambda args code))))
This uses the (list) builtin which constructs a list from evaluated
expressions. The first argument, name is a symbol representing the name of
the function. It gets substituted after the define symbol. The remaining
arguments are part of the lambda declaration and get substituted later. The
result is a macro that you can use to define functions like this:
(defun +1 (n) (+ n 1))
However, you can see that it would get a bit cumbersome to use the list
builtin everywhere, so a more advanced quoting system exists. In this
“quasiquoting” system allows you to quote most of the data using a backtick, but
“turn off” quoting for certain parts using a comma. Here is the same macro
rewritten:
(define defun (macro (name args code)
`(define ,name (lambda ,args ,code))))
You can see this is shorter and less error-prone. Simply write the code the way you’d like to see it, but use commas to substitute evaluated values.
Warning
While macros are usually evaluated at compile/parse time, funlisp currently evaluates them after the fact – just before the code is about to be run. Further, funlisp evaluates the macros each time they are used, rather than once only. The result is that macros are slightly less efficient than one might expect. But, you’re not using funlisp for its efficiency, right?
The End¶
This is the end of our short guide to funlisp. Hopefully as time goes by, the language will grow, and maybe even obtain a standard library! But for now, funlisp remains sleek and small.
Comments¶
Line comments are created in funlisp by starting them with a semicolon (
;). Everything after that, until the end of the line, is ignored by the parser. Here are some examples: