1This is GNU CLISP, an ANSI Common Lisp implementation.
2
3
4Availability
5============
6
7GNU CLISP is available via anonymous ftp (sources and selected binaries) from
8  <ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/clisp/>
9and its mirrors.
10More information at
11  <http://clisp.org/>,
12  <http://www.gnu.org/software/clisp/> and
13  <http://clisp.sourceforge.net/>.
14
15See file <resources.html> on these sites, e.g.
16  <http://clisp.org/resources.html>,
17where you will find links to general Common Lisp information
18and documentation, as well as CLISP-specific links.
19
20Mailing lists
21=============
22
23There are three mailing lists for users of CLISP.  You will find
24subscription information and archives on the homepage mentioned above.
25
26
27-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
28                        Common Lisp CLISP
29
30Common Lisp is
31  * a general-purpose programming language and an AI language
32  * interactive
33  * a Lisp for professional use
34
35Common Lisp programs are
36  * easy to test (interactive)
37  * easy to maintain (depending on programming style)
38  * portable across hardware/OS platforms and implementations
39    (there is a standard for the language and the library functions)
40
41Our Common Lisp CLISP
42  * needs only 4 MB of memory
43  * implements most of the ANSI standard (including CLOS),
44    as well as many extensions (including MOP)
45  * can call your preferred editor
46  * is freely redistributable
47
48Common Lisp provides
49  * clear syntax, carefully designed semantics
50  * several data types: numbers, strings, arrays, lists, characters, symbols,
51    structures, streams etc.
52  * runtime typing: the programmer need not bother about type declarations,
53    but he gets notified on type violations.
54  * many generic functions:
55    88 arithmetic functions for all kinds of numbers (integers, ratios,
56    floating point numbers, complex numbers),
57    44 search/filter/sort functions for lists, arrays and strings
58  * automatic memory management (garbage collection)
59  * packaging of programs into modules
60  * an object system, generic functions with powerful method combination
61  * macros: every programmer can make his own language extensions
62
63Our Common Lisp CLISP provides
64  * an interpreter
65  * a compiler which makes execution of programs 5 times faster
66  * all data types with unlimited size (the size need never be declared,
67    the size of lists and arrays may be changed dynamically)
68  * integers of arbitrary length, unlimited floating point number precision
69  * 800+ library functions and macros, 600+ of them written in C
70
71CLISP compares well with other ANSI CL implementations wrt performance
72in most areas, such as CLOS, I/O, lists, integer arithmetics (CLISP's
73bignum performance is better than that of some other CL implementations).
74The worst performance CLISP exhibits in the area of floating point
75arithmetics.  While showing nothing spectacularly bad and easily
76outperforming Java, Perl, TCL and any Scheme interpreter, CLISP is slower
77than another open-source CL implementation, CMU CL (http://www.cons.org/cmucl),
78which outperforms C and FORTRAN.  If your code is heavily numeric, you
79might prefer CMUCL, otherwise CLISP is a wise choice.
80
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