''Common Lisp the Language'' is a

reference book A reference work is a work, such as a paper, book or periodical (or their electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information is intended to be found quickly when needed. Such works are usually ''referred'' to f ...

by Guy L. Steele about a set of

technical standard A technical standard is an established norm or requirement for a repeatable technical task which is applied to a common and repeated use of rules, conditions, guidelines or characteristics for products or related processes and production methods, ...

s and

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

s named

Common Lisp Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ''ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (S20018)'' (formerly ''X3.226-1994 (R1999)''). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperlinked HTML version, has been derived fro ...

History

Before standardizing

The first edition (Digital Press, 1984; ; 465 pages) was written by

Guy L. Steele Jr. Guy Lewis Steele Jr. (; born October 2, 1954) is an American computer scientist who has played an important role in designing and documenting several computer programming languages and technical standards. Biography Steele was born in Missouri ...

, Scott E. Fahlman,

Richard P. Gabriel Richard P. Gabriel (born 1949) is an American computer scientist known for his work in computing related to the programming language Lisp, and especially Common Lisp. His best known work was a 1990 essay "Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Bi ...

, David A. Moon, and Daniel L. Weinreb. It served as the basis for the Common Lisp technical standard by the

American National Standards Institute The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organi ...

(ANSI), and is thus termed ANSI Common Lisp.

During standardizing

The second edition (Digital Press, 1990; ; 1029 pages) was written by Guy L. Steele Jr. It reflected the then-current status of the standardizing process and documented important new features such as

Common Lisp Object System The Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) is the facility for object-oriented programming which is part of ANSI Common Lisp. CLOS is a powerful dynamic object system which differs radically from the OOP facilities found in more static languages such as ...

(CLOS), the loop macro, and conditions. It also has a chapter on series and generators.

After standardizing

The ANSI Common Lisp standard was published in 1994 and differs from the language

dialects The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...

described in ''Common Lisp the Language'' (1984) and ''Common Lisp the Language, Second Edition'' (1990). Substantive additions and deletions were made between the time of the Second Edition and the final version of ANSI Common Lisp. Also, series and generators were discussed in appendix matter of the Second Edition but were not a part of any working draft nor the final version of ANSI Common Lisp. Although ANSI Common Lisp and the language dialects described by the two editions of ''Common Lisp the Language'' differ, the ANSI Common Lisp specification indirectly acknowledges the practical importance of ''Common Lisp the Language'' (first and second edition) by explicitly suggesting the

reserved word In a computer language, a reserved word (also known as a reserved identifier) is a word that cannot be used as an identifier, such as the name of a variable, function, or label – it is "reserved from use". This is a syntactic definition, and a re ...

s (keywords) :cltl1 and :cltl2 for potential inclusion on the *features* list, allowing conditionals to be added to code that must interoperate between ANSI Common Lisp and those other dialects.

External links

Common Lisp the Language, 2nd Edition
Online

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

version. (Also provides several downloadable formats, including

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

sources.) ** Mirror sites (in case of standard site being offline) **
Mirror provided by lisp.se
**

Common Lisp publications 1984 non-fiction books 1990 non-fiction books Books by Guy L. Steele Jr. {{Compu-book-stub

History

Before standardizing

During standardizing

After standardizing

See also

External links