RubyLisp

A LISP in pure Ruby

• Lisp-1
• Dynamically scoped (closures)
• Macros
• Interop
• REPL
• Use lambdas as Ruby blocks
• Variable argument functions

Run bin/ruby_lisp to get a REPL, or pass it a filename to execute the file

Example:

(rb-require "net/http")

(defun uri (u)
  (rb-send-const 'Kernel 'URI u))

(defun http-get (u)
  (rb-send-const 'Net::HTTP 'get_response (uri u)))

(let ((response (http-get "http://devblog.arnebrasseur.net")))
  (println (rb-send response 'body)))

There are two interop primitives, rb-const and rb-send, for example println is implemented as

(defun println (expr)
  (rb-send (rb-const 'Kernel) 'puts expr))

Have a look at bootstrap.rl for convenience functions built on top of these two, like require, rb-new and rb-send-const.

This is a minimal implementation, mostly intended for education. It complements my talk Growing a LISP.

Missing features

Lots, obviously, but the ones that would be most useful to have:

• comments
• backquotes

License

GNU General Public License v3