KEY BENEFIT: Teaching users new and more powerful ways of thinking about programs, this two-in-one text contains a tutorial—full of examples—that explains all the essential concepts of Lisp programming, plus an up-to-date summary of ANSI Common Lisp, listing every operator in the language. Informative and fun, it gives users everything they need to start writing programs in Lisp both efficiently and effectively, and highlights such innovative Lisp features as automatic memory management, manifest typing, closures, and more. Dividing material into two parts, the tutorial half of the book covers subject-by-subject the essential core of Common Lisp, and sums up lessons of preceding chapters in two examples of real applications: a backward-chainer, and an embedded language for object-oriented programming. Consisting of three appendices, the summary half of the book gives source code for a selection of widely used Common Lisp operators, with definitions that offer a comprehensive explanation of the language and provide a rich source of real examples; summarizes some differences between ANSI Common Lisp and Common Lisp as it was originally defined in 1984; and contains a concise description of every function, macro, and special operator in ANSI Common Lisp. The book concludes with a section of notes containing clarifications, references, and additional code. For computer programmers.

An introduction to Lisp programming, incorporating a tutorial on essential concepts and a reference describing every operator in the language, for students and professional programmers. Details concepts in specialized data structures, functions, macros, and input/output, explains the Common Lisp Object System, and features 20 program examples. Reference appendices cover debugging, Lisp in Lisp, and changes to Common Lisp. Assumes no experience with a programming language, although some is helpful.
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Teaching users new and more powerful ways of thinking about programs, this two-in-one text contains a tutorial--full of examples--that explains all the essential concepts of Lisp programming, plus an up-to-date summary of ANSI Common Lisp. Informative and fun, it gives users everything they need to start writing programs in Lisp and highlights innovative Lisp features.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 401-414) and index.