Lisp in TypeScript

This is a Lisp interpreter compatible with lisp-in-dart, lisp-in-cs and lisp-in-go.

I first wrote it six years ago (2016|H28) in TypeScript 1.7 and revised it slightly one year later (2017|H29) in TypeScript 2.2. It had been presented under the MIT License at http://www.oki-osk.jp/esc/typescript/lisp-en.html (broken link) until the spring of 2017|H29. I made the repository in GitHub four years ago (2018|H30).

Three yeares ago (2019|R1) I made use of BigInt if possible. If you run it on a recent Node.js, you will enjoy infinite-precision integers. I also revised REPL.

Now (2022|R4) I revised it again to make it run with Deno and recent Safari. Note that BigInt("+") returns 0n on the current Safari.

Just as lisp-in-dart, lisp-in-cs and lisp-in-go, this is a Lisp-1 with TCO (tail call optimization) and partially hygienic macros but being a subset of Common Lisp in a loose meaning. It is easy to write a nontrivial script which runs both in this and in Common Lisp. Examples are found in lisp-in-dart/examples.

How to run

Compile lisp.ts with Deno to get lisp.js, or just use examples/lisp.js, which I provided in the same way.

$ deno --version
deno 1.20.3 (release, x86_64-apple-darwin)
v8 10.0.139.6
typescript 4.6.2
$ deno bundle lisp.ts lisp.js
Check file:///Users/suzuki/tmp/lisp-in-typescript/lisp.ts
Bundle file:///Users/suzuki/tmp/lisp-in-typescript/lisp.ts
Emit "lisp.js" (39.84KB)
$ 

Run lisp.js with Node.js and Deno.

$ node --version
v17.8.0
$ node lisp.js
> (+ 5 6)
11
> `(a b ,(cons 'c 'd))
(a b (c . d))
> (list
  1
  2
  3)
(1 2 3)
> (defun fact (n)
     (if (= n 0)
         1
       (* n
          (fact (- n 1)) )))
fact
> (fact 100)
93326215443944152681699238856266700490715968264381621468592963895217599993229915
608941463976156518286253697920827223758251185210916864000000000000000000000000
> (dump)
(fact dotimes dolist while nconc last nreverse _nreverse assoc assq member memq
listp or mapcar and append _append letrec let when if equal /= <= >= > setcdr se
tcar null rem = identity print consp not cdddr cddar cdadr cdaar caddr cadar caa
dr caaar cddr cdar cadr caar defun defmacro *version* dump exit apply symbol-nam
e intern make-symbol gensym *gensym-counter* terpri princ prin1 truncate / - * +
 mod % < eql numberp stringp length rplacd rplaca list eq atom cons cdr car)
> *version*
(2.1 "TypeScript" "Nukata Lisp")
> (exit 0)
$

You can run it with Lisp script(s). If you put a "-" after the scripts, it will begin an interactive session after running the scripts.

$ cat examples/fib.l
(defun fib (n)
  (if (<= n 1)
      n
    (+ (fib (- n 1))
       (fib (- n 2)))))
$ deno run --allow-read lisp.js examples/fib.l -
> (fib 10)
55
> (fib 20)
6765
> (exit 0)
$ 

You can use lisp.js also from an HTML file to run the Lisp interpreter on Web browsers. See a simple example of exmples/run-on-web.html.

$ open examples/run-on-web.html

License

This is under the MIT License.