Taking baby steps with Lisp

Lisp can be both fascinating and frustrating. Fascinating, because you can write compact code to solve really complex problems. Frustrating, because you can easily get lost in its maze of parentheses. I, for one, have been truly smitten by Lisp. My initial encounter with Lisp did not yield much success as I tried to come to terms with its strange syntax. The books I read on the Lisp language typically gloss over the exotic features of Lisp like writing Lisp code to solve the Towers of Hanoi or the Eight Queens problem. They talk about functions returning functions, back quotes and macros that can make your head spin.

I found this approach extremely difficult to digest the language. So I decided to view Lisp through the eyes of any other regular programming language like C, C++,, Java, Perl, Python or Ruby. I was keen on being able to do regular things with Lisp before I try out its unique features. So I decided to investigate Lisp from this view point and learn how to make Lisp do mundane things like an assignment, conditional, loop, array, input and output etc.

This post is centered on this fact.

Assignment statement

The most fundamental requirement for any language is to perform an assignment. For e.g. these are assignment statements in Lisp and its equivalent in C for e.g.

$ (setf x 5)                                                         - - - > ; $ x = 5

$ (setf x (+  (* y 2) (* z 8))                               - - - ->  $x = 2y + 8z

Conditional statement

There are a couple of forms of conditional statement in Lisp. The most basic is the ‘if’ statement which is special case. You can do if-then-else without the possibility of if-then-else if-else if - else

if (condition) statement else-statement

In Lisp this is written as

$(setf x 5)

$ (if (= x 5)

(setf x  (+ x 5))

(setf  (- x 6)))

10

In C this equivalent to

$ x = 5

$ if (x == 5)

x = x + 5;

else

x = x -6;

However Lisp allows the if-then-else if – else if –else through the use of the COND statement

So we could write

$ (setf x 10)

$ (cond ((< x 5) (setf x (+ x 8)) (setf y (* 2 y)))

((= x 10) (setf x (* x 2)))

(t (setf x 8)))

20

The above statement in C would be

$ x = 2

$ y = 10

$ if (x < 5)

{

x = x + 8;

y = 2 * y;

}

else if (x == 10)

{

x = x * 2;

}

else

x = 8;

Loops

Lisp has many forms of loops dotimes, dolist, do , loop for etc. I found the following most intuitive and best to get started with

$  (setf x 5)

$ (let ((i 0))

(loop

(setf y (* x i))

(when (> i 10) (return))

(print i) (prin1 y)

(incf i

)))

In C this could be written as

$ x = 5

(for i = 0; i < 10; i++)

{

y = x * i

printf(“%d %d\n”,i,y);

}

Another easy looping construct in C is

(loop for x from 2 to 10 by 3

do (print x))

In C this would be

(for x=2; x < 10; x = x+3)

print x;

Arrays

To create an array of 10 elements with initial value of 20

(setf numarray (make-array 10 :initial-element 20))

#(20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20)

To read an array element it is

$ (aref  numarray 3)                    - - -    numarray[3]

For e.g.

(setf x (* 2 (aref numarray 4)))     - - - -   x = numarray[4] * 2

Functions

(defun square (x)

(* x x))

This is the same as

int square (x)

{

return (x * x)

}

While in C you would invoke the function as

y = square (8)

In Lisp you would write as

(setf y (square 8))

Note: In Lisp the function is invoked as (function arg1 arg2… argn) instead of (function (arg1 arg2  … argn))

Structures

a) Create a global variable *db*

(defvar *db* nil)

b) Make a function to add an employee

$(defun make-emp (name age title)

(list :name name :age age :title title))

$(add-emp (make-emp "ganesh" 49 "manager"))

$(add-emp (make-emp "manish" 50 "gm"))

$(add-emp (make-emp "ram" 46 "vp"))

$ (dump-db)

For a more complete and excellent post on managing a simple DB looks at Practical Common Lisp by Peter Siebel

Reading and writing to standard output

To write to standard output you can use

(print “This is a test”) or

(print ‘(This is a test))

To read from standard input use

(let ((temp 0))

(print '(Enter temp))

(setf temp (read))

(print (append '(the temp is) (list temp))))

Reading and writing to a file

The typical way to do this is to use

a) Read

(with-open-file (stream "C:\\acl82express\\lisp\\count.cl")

(do ((line (read-line stream nil)

(read-line stream nil)))

((null line))

(print line)))

b) Write

(with-open-file (stream "C:\\acl82express\\lisp\\test.txt"

:direction :output

:if-exists :supersede)

(write-line "test" stream)

nil)

I found the following construct a lot easier

(let ((in (open "C:\\acl82express\\lisp\\count.cl" :if-does-not-exist nil)))

(when in

(loop for line = (read-line in nil)

while line do (format t "~a~%" line))

(close in)))

With the above you can get started on Lisp. However with just the above constructs the code one writes will be very “non-Lispy”. Anyway this is definitely a start.