From: Toni
Subject: Advice for novice.
Date: 
Message-ID: <oo6430dsf6jffmt6aear2irk7fvs2tank9@4ax.com>
Hi,

I'd like to begin to learn Lisp, but I'd like to learn it just as
I have done with all other languages: by using it.

Problem is I don't find enough information to begin. I've been
reading the most basic tutorials and I think I would be able to
begin to do something, but I would like to find references on how
to use sockets and regular expressions. Not a tutorial on
sockets, I have been using them for some time, just a reference
on how to use them from Lisp; i.e.: do I need to load some
library? Does it already come in some (free) implementation?

I have also another question: One thing I really love about Perl
and Python is their portability; you can write on Windows /
deploy on Unix with minimum (if any) change. Is there some
implementation of Lisp that allows this?

TIA for answers

Toni
From: Henrik Motakef
Subject: Re: Advice for novice.
Date: 
Message-ID: <86u11p6c25.fsf@pokey.internal.henrik-motakef.de>
Toni <··············@hotmail.com> writes:

> Problem is I don't find enough information to begin. I've been
> reading the most basic tutorials and I think I would be able to
> begin to do something, but I would like to find references on how
> to use sockets and regular expressions. Not a tutorial on
> sockets, I have been using them for some time, just a reference
> on how to use them from Lisp; i.e.: do I need to load some
> library? Does it already come in some (free) implementation?

For regexps, use cl-ppcre. <http://www.weitz.de/cl-ppcre/>

How sockets are handled is implementation-dependent, but most if not
all implementations support them, usually wrapped in Lisp
streams. There are also some portability packages, for example in
CLOCC Port or as part of ACL-Compat.

SBCL has a sb-bsd-sockets contrib with a lower-level socket interface.

> I have also another question: One thing I really love about Perl
> and Python is their portability; you can write on Windows /
> deploy on Unix with minimum (if any) change. Is there some
> implementation of Lisp that allows this?

CLISP, LispWorks and Allegro CL all run on Windows and Unix, and there
are probably more. Additionally, it tends to be easy to write code
that works in many implementations.