From: UnixPoet
Subject: Lisp newbe - need some expert advice
Date:
Message-ID: <4220f167_1@127.0.0.1>
Hi all,
I've been C++ programmer for few years and have recently fallen in
love with Lisp :)
I have googled around but there are some questions which are still
bugging me:
1 - is there a standard socket interface which is portable across
Corman/Clisp/CMUCL/SBCL? ACL-Compat seems close. What do most people
use for network access?
2 - possible to call POSIX routines? fork() for example. I was
planning on writing a daemon in Lisp which forks. I specifically need
to fork - threads are not good for what I have in mind.
3 - Is there a cross-platform Lisp which I can embed in C/C++
applications? A scheme interpreter would be fine as well. Lua is an
excellent implementation and easy to embed - I am really hoping to
find a Lisp equivalent.
4 - All te GUI binding dont seem to have been updated recently. Are
there maintained Qt bindings?
5 - What other Lisp forums would you recommend?
6 - AFAIK only Corman generates exes. Can Unix ports generate
executables/shared libs as well?
I would really love to use Lisp in real-world situations. Using it as
scripting language for my existing apps would be a wonderful first
start.
thanks,
Brian
Posted Via Usenet.com Premium Usenet Newsgroup Services
----------------------------------------------------------
** SPEED ** RETENTION ** COMPLETION ** ANONYMITY **
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.usenet.com
UnixPoet wrote:
> 1 - is there a standard socket interface which is portable across
> Corman/Clisp/CMUCL/SBCL? ACL-Compat seems close. What do most people
> use for network access?
Try looking at trivial-sockets (http://www.cliki.net/trivial-sockets).
If that's too trivial, I suggest looking at implementation-specific
stuff, or maybe ACL-compat.
> 3 - Is there a cross-platform Lisp which I can embed in C/C++
> applications? A scheme interpreter would be fine as well. Lua is an
> excellent implementation and easy to embed - I am really hoping to
> find a Lisp equivalent.
Have you looked at ECL? It was written for embedding. I've also heard
good things about CLISP.
> 6 - AFAIK only Corman generates exes. Can Unix ports generate
> executables/shared libs as well?
LispWorks, ACL, and GCL can all generate EXEs on Windows. On Unix,
various programs have various ways of generating executable files. I
think SBCL can do it, GCL can, other lisps may be able to (although it
isn't as important because of shell script abilities on Unix), and the
commercial lisps can all do it.
> I would really love to use Lisp in real-world situations. Using it as
> scripting language for my existing apps would be a wonderful first
> start.
Good luck, and welcome!
-Peter
·········@unixpoet-dot-com.no-spam.invalid (UnixPoet) writes:
> 1 - is there a standard socket interface which is portable across
> Corman/Clisp/CMUCL/SBCL? ACL-Compat seems close. What do most people
> use for network access?
No, unfortunately not. This is one of my current gripes about the
state of Lisp. Most people seem to use ACL-Compat or to use
conditional code to work around the differences. ACL-Compat is not
fully complete for all platforms and there are some things that are
simply not supportable on a given platform given the ommisions in its
particular API. That said, people have worked around it. Not an
optimal situation by any means, but still workable.
> 2 - possible to call POSIX routines? fork() for example. I was
> planning on writing a daemon in Lisp which forks. I specifically need
> to fork - threads are not good for what I have in mind.
Depends on the particular implementation. These are not standardized
but most good implementations will have some way to access a general
POSIX API.
> 3 - Is there a cross-platform Lisp which I can embed in C/C++
> applications? A scheme interpreter would be fine as well. Lua is an
> excellent implementation and easy to embed - I am really hoping to
> find a Lisp equivalent.
I would look at CLISP or ECL.
> 4 - All te GUI binding dont seem to have been updated recently. Are
> there maintained Qt bindings?
Good question. There was some recent work on GTK+ bindings, but I
haven't seen anything on Qt.
> 5 - What other Lisp forums would you recommend?
IRC (#lisp on freenode.net)
> 6 - AFAIK only Corman generates exes. Can Unix ports generate
> executables/shared libs as well?
Depends on the implementation. The commercial ones (e.g. Lispworks)
can definitely generate a single-file executable. The standard answer
here is whether you really care that it's a single file? You can
certainly create a shell script or even rename the CL binary itself to
give the same illusion, with a core file being loaded much like a
standard DLL would be. If the goal is to enable a user to execute a
single command from the command line and not have to pass in a bunch
of CL-specific flags and such, this can definitely be done with most
of the systems out there.
> I would really love to use Lisp in real-world situations. Using it as
> scripting language for my existing apps would be a wonderful first
> start.
Go for it!
--
Dave Roberts
dave -remove- AT findinglisp DoT com
http://www.findinglisp.com/
·········@unixpoet-dot-com.no-spam.invalid (UnixPoet) writes:
> 4 - All te GUI binding dont seem to have been updated recently. Are
> there maintained Qt bindings?
I don't know about Qt bindings. But there are at least cells-gtk,
lambda-gtk and McCLIM (all on common-lisp.net) that are actively
maintained.
Andras
·········@unixpoet-dot-com.no-spam.invalid (UnixPoet) writes:
> 1 - is there a standard socket interface which is portable across
> Corman/Clisp/CMUCL/SBCL? ACL-Compat seems close. What do most people
> use for network access?
Another socket interface is the one provided by CLOCC:
http://clocc.sourceforge.net
in src/port/net.lisp.
> 2 - possible to call POSIX routines? fork() for example. I was
There are number of options. SBCL:
http://sbcl.sourceforge.net
provides an interface in module sb-posix (see contrib/sb-posix in the
source tree). See also:
Common-Lisp-POSIX
http://www.cliki.net/Common-Lisp-POSIX
Generalities about the Common-Lisp-POSIX API
http://www.cliki.net/cl-posix-generalities
Osicat
http://www.cliki.net/Osicat
kmrcl
http://www.cliki.net/kmrcl
> 5 - What other Lisp forums would you recommend?
This is not a forum, but is a very useful source of Lisp information
anyway:
Planet Lisp
http://planet.lisp.org
> 6 - AFAIK only Corman generates exes. Can Unix ports generate
> executables/shared libs as well?
Most Lisp implementations have a system-specific way of delivering
"standalone" applications, but at times in a format that does not look
like a typical executable file for the target operating system. More
details are provided in the documentation that comes with the Lisp
implementations.
Paolo
--
Lisp Propulsion Laboratory log - http://www.paoloamoroso.it/log
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface