| CMUCL: a high-performance, free Common Lisp implementation |
CMUCL is a free implementation of the Common Lisp programming language which runs on most major Unix platforms. It mainly conforms to the ANSI Common Lisp standard. Here is a summary of its main features:
CMUCL 20b prelease 1 has been released, in preparation for the upcoming 20b release. Therefore there will not be a 2010-08 snapshot.
Error handling has been added to external formats. Previously, all external formats would silently replace bad encodings with a suitable replacement character. Now, the user can specify how the errors are handled by using the :DECODING-ERROR and :ENCODING-ERROR parameters to OPEN. The default is the previous behavior.
For decoding-error, a character, symbol, or function can be given. If a character, then that character is used as the replacement character. For a symbol or function, it must be a function of 3 arguments: a message string, the offending octet (or nil), and the number of octets read in the encoding. If the function returns, it must be the codepoint of the desired replacement.
For encoding-error, a character, symbol, or function can be given. If a character, then that character is used as the replacement character. For a symbol or function, it must be a function of 2 arguments: a message string and the offending codepoint. If the function returns, it must be the codepoint of the desired replacement.
Common Lisp is well suited to large programming projects and explorative programming. The language has a dynamic semantics which distinguishes it from languages such as C and Ada. It features automatic memory management, an interactive incremental development environment, a module system, a large number of powerful data structures, a large standard library of useful functions, a sophisticated object system supporting multiple inheritance and generic functions, an exception system, user-defined types and a macro system which allows programmers to extend the language.
Pascal is for building pyramids -- imposing, breathtaking structures built by armies pushing heavy blocks into place. Lisp is for building organisms ...
Alan Perlis