Clozure CL Documentation

Clozure CL is a fast, mature, open source Common Lisp implementation that runs on Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and Windows. Clozure CL was forked from Macintosh Common Lisp (MCL) in 1998 and the development has been entirely separate since.

When it was forked from MCL in 1998, the new Lisp was named OpenMCL. Subsequently, Clozure renamed its Lisp to Clozure CL, partly because its ancestor MCL has been released as open source. Clozure thought it might be confusing for users if there were two independent open-source projects with such similar names. The new name also reflects Clozure CL's current status as the flagship product of Clozure Associates.

Furthermore, the new name refers to Clozure CL's ancestry: in its early years, MCL was known as Coral Common Lisp, or "CCL". For years the package that contains most of Clozure CL's implementation-specific symbols has been named "CCL", an acronym that once stood for the name of the Lisp product. It seems fitting that "CCL" once again stands for the name of the product.

Some commands and source files may still refer to "OpenMCL" instead of Clozure CL.

Clozure CL compiles to native code and supports multithreading using native OS threads. It includes a foreign-function interface, and supports both Lisp code that calls external code, and external code that calls Lisp code. Clozure CL can create standalone executables on all supported platforms.

On Mac OS X, Clozure CL supports building GUI applications that use OS X's native Cocoa frameworks, and the OS X distributions include an IDE written with Cocoa, and distributed with complete sources.

On all supported platforms, Clozure CL can run as a command-line process, or as an inferior Emacs process using either SLIME or ILISP.

Features of Clozure CL include

Although it's an open-source project, available free of charge under a liberal license, Clozure CL is also a fully-supported product of Clozure Associates. Clozure continues to extend, improve, and develop Clozure CL in response to customer and user needs, and offers full support and development services for Clozure CL.

As of this writing, Clozure CL 1.7 is the latest release; it was made in August 2011. For up-to-date information about releases, please see http://ccl.clozure.com/.

Clozure CL 1.7 runs on the following platforms:

There are three ways to obtain Clozure CL. For Mac OS X, there are disk images that can be used to install Clozure CL in the usual Macintosh way. For other OSes, Subversion is the best way to obtain Clozure CL. Mac OS X users can also use Subversion if they prefer. Tarballs are available for those who prefer them, but if you have Subversion installed, it is simpler and more flexible to use Subversion than tarballs.

There are three popular ways to use Clozure CL: as a stand-alone double-clickable application (Mac OS X only), as a command-line application, or with Emacs and SLIME.

The following sections describe these options.

shell> svn
        

Type 'svn help' for usage
        

-bash: svn: command not found
        

svn co http://svn.clozure.com/publicsvn/openmcl/trunk/darwinx86/ccl
         

svn co http://svn.clozure.com/publicsvn/openmcl/release/1.7/darwinx86/ccl
          

joe> cd /path/to/installed/ccl
joe:ccl> ./kernel-filename --no-init
Welcome to Clozure Common Lisp Version [...]
? (rebuild-ccl :full t)
<...lots of compilation output...>
? (quit)
joe:ccl>
    

apt-get install build-essential

joe:ccl> ./dx86cl64 --no-init
Welcome to Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.7  (DarwinX8664)!
? (rebuild-ccl :full t)
Rebuilding Clozure Common Lisp using Version 1.7  (DarwinX8664)
;Building lisp-kernel ...
;Kernel built successfully.
;Compiling <...>
;Loading <...>

<...lots of compilation output...>

;Wrote bootstrapping image: #P"/Users/joe/ccl/x86-boot64.image"
;Wrote heap image: #P"/Users/joe/ccl/dx86cl64.image"
NIL
? (quit)
joe:ccl>
    

joe:ccl> rm dx86cl*
joe:ccl> svn update
<... lots of Subversion output...>
joe:ccl> ./dx86cl64 --no-init
Welcome to Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.7  (DarwinX8664)!
? (rebuild-ccl :full t)
<... lots of compilation output...>
? (quit)
joe:ccl> 

    

Sometimes it's convenient to use Clozure CL from a Unix shell command line. This is especially true when using Clozure CL as a way to run Common Lisp utilities.

shell> ccl
Welcome to Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.7  (DarwinX8632)!
?
      

? (probe-file "ccl:level-1;level-1.lisp")  ;returns the physical pathname of the file
#P"/Users/joe/my_lisp_stuff/ccl/level-1/level-1.lisp"
      

shell> ccl [args ...]

By default Clozure CL tries to load the file "home:ccl-init.lisp" or the compiled "home:ccl-init.fasl" upon starting up. Clozure CL does this by executing (load "home:ccl-init"). If it's unable to load the file (for example because the file doesn't exist), Clozure CL doesn't signal an error or warning, it just completes its startup normally.

On Unix systems, if "ccl-init.lisp" is not present, Clozure CL will look for ".ccl-init.lisp" (post 1.2 versions only).

The "home:" prefix to the filename is a Common Lisp logical host, which Clozure CL initializes to refer to your home directory. Clozure CL therefore looks for either of the files ~/ccl-init.lisp or ~/ccl-init.fasl.

Because the init file is loaded the same way as normal Lisp code is, you can put anything you want in it. For example, you can change the working directory, and load packages that you use frequently.

To suppress the loading of this init-file, invoke Clozure CL with the --no-init option.

When using Clozure CL from the command line, the following options may be used to modify its behavior. The exact set of Clozure CL command-line arguments may vary per platform and slowly changes over time. The current set of command line options may be retrieved by using the --help option.

The --load and --eval options can each be provided multiple times. They're executed in the order specified on the command line, after the init file (if there is one) is loaded and before the toplevel read-eval-print loop is entered.

Finally, any arguments following the pseudo-argument -- are not processed, and are made available to Lisp as the value of ccl:*unprocessed-command-line-arguments*.

SLIME (see the SLIME web page) is an Emacs mode for interacting with Common Lisp systems. Clozure CL is well-supported by SLIME.

See the InstallingSlime topic on the Clozure CL wiki for some tips on how to get SLIME running with Clozure CL.

A number (ok, a small number), of example programs are distributed in the "ccl:examples;" directory of the source distribution. See the README-OPENMCL-EXAMPLES text file in that directory for information about prerequisites and usage.

Some of the example programs are derived from C examples in textbooks, etc.; in those cases, the original author and work are cited in the source code.

Unless the original author or contributor claims other rights, you're free to incorporate any of this example code or derivative thereof in any of your own works without restriction. In doing so, you agree that the code was provided "as is", and that no other party is legally or otherwise responsible for any consequences of your decision to use it.

If you've developed Clozure CL examples that you'd like to see added to the distribution, please send mail to the Clozure CL mailing lists. Any such contributions would be welcome and appreciated (as would bug fixes and improvements to the existing examples.)

The following terms are used in subsequent sections; it may be helpful to refer to these definitions.

fasl files are the object files produced by compile-file. fasl files store the machine code associated with function definitions and the external representation of other lisp objects in a compact, machine-readable form. fasl is short for “FASt Loading”. Clozure CL uses different pathname types (extensions) to name fasl files on different platforms; see Table 3.1, “Platform-specific filename conventions”

The Lisp kernel is a C program with a fair amount of platform-specific assembly language code. Its basic job is to map a lisp heap image into memory, transfer control to some compiled lisp code that the image contains, handle any exceptions that occur during the execution of that lisp code, and provide various other forms of runtime support for that code. Clozure CL uses different filenames to name the lisp kernel files on different platforms; see Table 3.1, “Platform-specific filename conventions”.

A heap image is a file that can be quickly mapped into a process's address space. Conceptually, it's not too different from an executable file or shared library in the OS's native format (ELF or Mach-O/dyld format); for historical reasons, Clozure CL's own heap images are in their own (fairly simple) format. The term full heap image refers to a heap image file that contains all of the code and data that comprise Clozure CL. Clozure CL uses different filenames to name the standard full heap image files on different platforms; see Table 3.1, “Platform-specific filename conventions”.

A bootstrapping image is a minimal heap image used in the process of building Clozure CL itself. The bootstrapping image contains just enough code to load the rest of Clozure CL from fasl files. It may help to think of the bootstrapping image as the egg and the full heap image as the chicken. Clozure CL uses different filenames to name the standard bootstrapping image files on different platforms; see Table 3.1, “Platform-specific filename conventions” .

Each supported platform (and possibly a few as-yet-unsupported ones) has a uniquely named subdirectory of ccl/lisp-kernel/; each such contains a Makefile and may contain some auxiliary files (linker scripts, etc.) that are used to build the lisp kernel on a particular platform.The platform-specific name of the kernel build directory is described in Table 3.1, “Platform-specific filename conventions”.

At a given time, there are generally two versions of Clozure CL that you might want to use (and therefore might want to build from source):

All versions are available for download from svn.clozure.com via the Subversion source control system.

For example, to get a released version (1.7 in this example), use a command like:

svn co http://svn.clozure.com/publicsvn/openmcl/release/1.7/xxx/ccl

To get the trunk version, use:

svn co http://svn.clozure.com/publicsvn/openmcl/trunk/xxx/ccl

Change the xxx to one of the following names: darwinx86, linuxx86, freebsdx86, solarisx86, windows, linuxppc, or darwinppc.

Tarball distributions of released versions are also available for download via ftp from: ftp://clozure.com/pub/release/. For additional information about availability of source and distributions see the Clozure CL Trac.

Subversion client programs are pre-installed on Mac OS X 10.5 and later and are typically either pre-installed or readily available on Linux and FreeBSD platforms. The Subversion web page contains links to Subversion client programs for many platforms. Users of Mac OS X 10.4 or later can also install Subversion clients via Fink or MacPorts. On Debian Linux (and on related Linux distros such as Ubuntu) run apt-get install subversion or equivalent in the command-line or interactive package manager.

The Clozure CL kernel can be built with the following widely available tools:

In general, the more recent the versions of those tools, the better; some versions of gcc 3.x on Linux have difficulty compiling some of the kernel source code correctly (so gcc 4.0 should be used, if possible.) On Mac OS X, the versions of the tools distributed with Xcode should work fine; on Linux, the versions of the tools installed with the OS (or available through its package management system) should work fine if they're "recent enough". On FreeBSD, the installed version of the m4 program doesn't support some features that the kernel build process depends on; the GNU version of the m4 macroprocessor (called gm4 on FreeBSD) should be installed.

You now have everything you need. Start up Clozure CL with the -n or --no-init option to avoid potential interference from code in your init file, and evaluate the following form to bring your Lisp system up to date.

? (ccl:rebuild-ccl :full t)
    

That call to the function rebuild-ccl performs the following steps:

If all goes well, it'll all happen without user intervention and with some simple progress messages. If anything goes wrong during execution of either of the external processes, the process output is displayed as part of a lisp error message.

rebuild-ccl is essentially just a short cut for running all the individual steps involved in rebuilding the system. You can also execute these steps individually, as described below.

The Lisp kernel is the executable that you run to use Lisp. It doesn't actually contain the entire Lisp implementation; rather, it loads a heap image which contains the specifics—the "library", as it might be called if this was a C program. The kernel also provides runtime support to the heap image, such as garbage collection, memory allocation, exception handling, and the OS interface.

The Lisp kernel file has different names on different platforms. See Table 3.1, “Platform-specific filename conventions”. On all platforms the lisp kernel sources reside in ccl/lisp-kernel.

This section gives directions on how to rebuild the Lisp kernel from its source code. Most Clozure CL users will rarely have to do this. You probably will only need to do it if you are attempting to port Clozure CL to a new architecture or extend or enhance its kernel in some way. As mentioned above, this step happens automatically when you do

? (rebuild-ccl :full t)
      

shell> cd ccl/lisp-kernel/PLATFORM
shell> make
	    

The initial heap image is loaded by the Lisp kernel, and provides most of the language implementation The heap image captures the entire state of a running Lisp (except for external resources, such as open files and TCP sockets). After it is loaded, the contents of the new Lisp process's memory are exactly the same as those of the old Lisp process when the image was created.

The heap image is how we get around the fact that we can't run Lisp code until we have a working Lisp implementation, and we can't make our Lisp implementation work until we can run Lisp code. Since the heap image already contains a fully-working implementation, all we need to do is load it into memory and start using it.

If you're building a new version of Clozure CL, you need to build a new heap image.

(You might also wish to build a heap image if you have a large program that is very complicated or time-consuming to load, so that you will be able to load it once, save an image, and thenceforth never have to load it again. At any time, a heap image capturing the entire memory state of a running Lisp can be created by calling the function ccl:save-application.)

shell> ccl
Welcome to Clozure CL .... !
?
	  

? (ccl:xload-level-0)
	  

? (ccl:xload-level-0 :force)
      

? (ccl:compile-ccl)
	  

$ cd ccl                        # wherever your ccl directory is
$ ./KERNEL --image-name BOOT_IMAGE --no-init
	  

? (ccl:save-application "image_name") ; Overwriting the existing heap image
	  

The Common Lisp standard allows considerable latitude in the details of an implementation, and each particular Common Lisp system has some idiosyncrasies. This chapter describes ordinary user-level features of Clozure CL, including features that may be part of the Common Lisp standard, but which may have quirks or details in the Clozure CL implementation that are not described by the standard. It also describes extensions to the standard; that is, features of Clozure CL that are not part of the Common Lisp standard at all.

Clozure CL's tracing facility is invoked by an extended version of the Common Lisp trace macro. Extensions allow tracing of methods, as well as finer control over tracing actions.

TRACE {keyword global-value}* {spec | (spec {keyword local-value}*)}* [Macro]

The trace macro encapsulates the functions named by specs, causing trace actions to take place on entry and exit from each function. The default actions print a message on function entry and exit. Keyword/value options can be used to specify changes in the default behavior.

Invoking (trace) without arguments returns a list of functions being traced.

A spec is either a symbol that is the name of a function, or an expression of the form (setf symbol), or a specific method of a generic function in the form (:method gf-name {qualifier}* ({specializer}*)), where a specializer can be the name of a class or an EQL specializer.

A spec can also be a string naming a package, or equivalently a list (:package package-name), in order to request that all functions in the package to be traced.

By default, whenever a traced function is entered or exited, a short message is printed on *trace-output* showing the arguments on entry and values on exit. Options specified as key/value pairs can be used to modify this behavior. Options preceding the function specs apply to all the functions being traced. Options specified along with a spec apply to that spec only and override any global options. The following options are supported:

CCL:*TRACE-LEVEL* [Variable]

Variable bound to the current nesting level during execution of before and after trace actions. The default printing actions use it to determine the amount of indentation.

CCL:*TRACE-MAX-INDENT* [Variable]

The default before and after print actions will not indent by more than the value of ccl:*trace-max-indent* regardless of the current trace level.

CCL:TRACE-FUNCTION spec &key {keyword value}* [Function]

This is a functional version of the TRACE macro. spec and keywords are as for TRACE, except that all arguments are evaluated.

CCL:*TRACE-PRINT-LEVEL* [Variable]

The default print actions bind CL:*PRINT-LEVEL* to this value while printing. Note that this rebinding is only in effect during the default entry and exit messages. It does not apply to printing of :print-before/:print-after forms or any explicit printing done by user code.

CCL:*TRACE-PRINT-LENGTH* [Variable]

The default print actions bind CL:*PRINT-LENGTH* to this value while printing. Note that this rebinding is only in effect during the default entry and exit messages. It does not apply to printing of :print-before/:print-after forms or any explicit printing done by user code.

CCL:*TRACE-BAR-FREQUENCY* [Variable]

By default, this is nil. If non-nil it should be a integer, and the default entry and exit messages will print a | instead of space every this many levels of indentation.

The advise macro can be thought of as a more general version of trace. It allows code that you specify to run before, after, or around a given function, for the purpose of changing the behavior of the function. Each piece of added code is called a piece of advice. Each piece of advice has a unique name, so that you can have multiple pieces of advice on the same function, including multiple :before, :after, and :around pieces of advice.

The :name and :when keywords serve to identify the piece of advice. A later call to advise with the same values of :name and :when will replace the existing piece of advice; a call with different values will not.

(advise foo (if (some #'(lambda (n) (not (numberp n))) arglist)
	      0
	      (:do-it))
	:when :around :name :zero-if-not-nums)
	

(advise foo (if (some #'(lambda (n) (not (numberp n))) arglist)
	      (return 0))
	:when :before :name :zero-if-not-nums)
	

Clozure CL's DIRECTORY function accepts the following implementation-dependent keyword arguments:

All characters and strings in Clozure CL fully support Unicode by using UTF-32. There is only one CHARACTER type and one STRING type in Clozure CL. There has been a lot of discussion about this decision which can be found by searching the openmcl-devel archives at http://clozure.com/pipermail/openmcl-devel/. Suffice it to say that we decided that the simplicity and speed advantages of only supporting UTF-32 outweigh the space disadvantage.

In release 1.2 and later, Clozure CL supports memory-mapped files. On operating systems that support memory-mapped files (including Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD), the operating system can arrange for a range of virtual memory addresses to refer to the contents of an open file. As long as the file remains open, programs can read values from the file by reading addresses in the mapped range.

Using memory-mapped files may in some cases be more efficient than reading the contents of a file into a data structure in memory.

Clozure CL provides the functions CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-IVECTOR and CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-OCTET-VECTOR to support memory-mapping. These functions return vectors whose contents are the contents of memory-mapped files. Reading an element of such a vector returns data from the corresponding position in the file.

Without memory-mapped files, a common idiom for reading the contents of files might be something like this:

(let* ((stream (open pathname :direction :input :element-type '(unsigned-byte 8)))
       (vector (make-array (file-size-to-vector-size stream)
                           :element-type '(unsigned-byte 8))))
  (read-sequence vector stream))
    

Using a memory-mapped files has a result that is the same in that, like the above example, it returns a vector whose contents are the same as the contents of the file. It differs in that the above example creates a new vector in memory and copies the file's contents into it; using a memory-mapped file instead arranges for the vector's elements to point to the file's contents on disk directly, without copying them into memory first.

The vectors returned by CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-IVECTOR and CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-OCTET-VECTOR are read-only; any attempt to change an element of a vector returned by these functions results in a memory-access error. Clozure CL does not currently support writing data to memory-mapped files.

Vectors created by CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-IVECTOR and CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-OCTET-VECTOR are required to respect Clozure CL's limit on the total size of an array. That means that you cannot use these functions to create a vector longer than ARRAY-TOTAL-SIZE-LIMIT, even if the filesystem supports file sizes that are larger. The value of ARRAY-TOTAL-SIZE-LIMIT is (EXPT 2 24) on 32-but platforms; and (EXPT 2 56) on 64-bit platforms.

CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-IVECTOR pathname element-type [Function]

The map-file-to-ivector function tries to open the file at pathname for reading. If successful, the function maps the file's contents to a range of virtual addresses. If successful, it returns a read-only vector whose element-type is given by element-type, and whose contents are the contents of the memory-mapped file.

The returned vector is a displaced-array whose element-type is (UPGRADED-ARRAY-ELEMENT-TYPE element-type). The target of the displaced array is a vector of type (SIMPLE-ARRAY element-type (*)) whose elements are the contents of the memory-mapped file.

Because of alignment issues, the mapped file's contents start a few bytes (4 bytes on 32-bit platforms, 8 bytes on 64-bit platforms) into the vector. The displaced array returned by CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-IVECTOR hides this overhead, but it's usually more efficient to operate on the underlying simple 1-dimensional array. Given a displaced array (like the value returned by CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-IVECTOR), the function ARRAY-DISPLACEMENT returns the underlying array and the displacement index in elements.

Currently, Clozure CL supports only read operations on memory-mapped files. If you try to change the contents of an array returned by map-file-to-ivector, Clozure CL signals a memory error.

CCL:UNMAP-IVECTOR displaced-array [Function]

If the argument is a displaced-array returned by map-file-to-ivector, and if it has not yet been unmapped by this function, then unmap-ivector undoes the memory mapping, closes the mapped file, and changes the displaced-array so that its target is an empty vector (of length zero).

CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-OCTET-VECTOR pathname [Function]

This function is a synonym for (CCL:MAP-FILE-TO-IVECTOR pathname '(UNSIGNED-BYTE 8)) It is provided as a convenience for the common case of memory-mapping a file as a vector of bytes.

CCL:UNMAP-OCTET-VECTOR displaced-array [Function]

This function is a synonym for (CCL:UNMAP-IVECTOR)

Clozure CL supports the definition of static variables, whose values are the same across threads, and which may not be dynamically bound. The value of a static variable is thus the same across all threads; changing the value in one thread changes it for all threads.

Attempting to dynamically rebind a static variable (for instance, by using LET, or using the variable name as a parameter in a LAMBDA form) signals an error. Static variables are shared global resources; a dynamic binding is private to a single thread.

Static variables therefore provide a simple way to share mutable state across threads. They also provide a simple way to introduce race conditions and obscure bugs into your code, since every thread reads and writes the same instance of a given static variable. You must take care, therefore, in how you change the values of static variables, and use normal multithreaded programming techniques, such as locks or semaphores, to protect against race conditions.

In Clozure CL, access to a static variable is usually faster than access to a special variable that has not been declared static.

DEFSTATIC var value &key doc-string [Macro]

Proclaims the variable special, assigns the variable the supplied value, and assigns the doc-string to the variable's VARIABLE documentation. Marks the variable static, preventing any attempt to dynamically rebind it. Any attempt to dynamically rebind var signals an error.

Clozure CL provides the function CCL:SAVE-APPLICATION, which creates a file containing an archived Lisp memory image.

Clozure CL consists of a small executable called the Lisp kernel, which implements the very lowest level features of the Lisp system, and an image, which contains the in-memory representation of most of the Lisp system, including functions, data structures, variables, and so on. When you start Clozure CL, you are launching the kernel, which then locates and reads an image file, restoring the archived image in memory. Once the image is fully restored, the Lisp system is running.

Using CCL:SAVE-APPLICATION, you can create a file that contains a modified image, one that includes any changes you've made to the running Lisp system. If you later pass your image file to the Clozure CL kernel as a command-line parameter, it then loads your image file instead of its default one, and Clozure CL starts up with your modifications.

If this scenario seems to you like a convenient way to create an application, that's just as intended. You can create an application by modifying the running Lisp until it does what you want, then use CCL:SAVE-APPLICATION to preserve your changes and later load them for use.

In fact, you can go further than that. You can replace Clozure CL's toplevel function with your own, and then, when the image is loaded, the Lisp system immediately performs your tasks rather than the default tasks that make it a Lisp development system. If you save an image in which you have done this, the resulting Lisp system is your tool rather than a Lisp development system.

You can go a step further still. You can tell CCL:SAVE-APPLICATION to prepend the Lisp kernel to the image file. Doing this makes the resulting image into a self-contained executable binary. When you run the resulting file, the Lisp kernel immediately loads the attached image file and runs your saved system. The Lisp system that starts up can have any behavior you choose. It can be a Lisp development system, but with your customizations; or it can immediately perform some task of your design, making it a specialized tool rather than a general development system.

In other words, you can develop any application you like by interactively modifying Clozure CL until it does what you want, then using CCL:SAVE-APPLICATION to preserve your changes in an executable image.

On Mac OS X, the application builder uses CCL:SAVE-APPLICATION to create the executable portion of the application bundle. Double-clicking the application bundle runs the executable image created by CCL:SAVE-APPLICATION.

Also on Mac OS X, Clozure CL supports an object type called MACPTR, which is the type of pointers into the foreign (Mac OS) heap. Examples of commonly-user MACPTR objects are Cocoa windows and other dynamically-allocated Mac OS system objects.

Because a MACPTR object is a pointer into a foreign heap that exists for the lifetime of the running Lisp process, and because a saved image is used by loading it into a brand new Lisp process, saved MACPTR objects cannot be relied on to point to the same things when reconstituted from a saved image. In fact, a restored MACPTR object might point to anything at all—for example an arbitrary location in the middle of a block of code, or a completely nonexistent virtual address.

For that reason, CCL:SAVE-APPLICATION converts all MACPTR objects to DEAD-MACPTR objects when writing them to an image file. A DEAD-MACPTR is functionally identical to a MACPTR, except that code that operates on MACPTR objects distinguishes them from DEAD-MACPTR objects and can handle them appropriately—signaling errors, for example.

As of Clozure CL 1.2, there is one exception to the conversion of MACPTR to DEAD-MACPTR objects: a MACPTR object that points to the address 0 is not converted, because address 0 can always be relied upon to refer to the same thing.

As of Clozure CL 1.2, the constant CCL:+NULL-PTR+ refers to a MACPTR object that points to address 0.

On all supported platforms, you can use CCL:SAVE-APPLICATION to create a command-line tool that runs the same way any command-line program does. Alternatively, if you choose not to prepend the kernel, you can save an image and then later run it by passing it as a command-line parameter to the ccl or ccl64 script.

SAVE-APPLICATION filename &key toplevel-function init-file error-handler application-class clear-clos-caches (purify t) impurify (mode #o644) prepend-kernel native [Function]

Multiple fasl files can be concatenated into a single file.

In Clozure CL, the Common Lisp types short-float and single-float are implemented as IEEE single precision values; double-float and long-float are IEEE double precision values. On 64-bit platforms, single-floats are immediate values (like fixnums and characters).

Floating-point exceptions are generally enabled and detected. By default, threads start up with overflow, division-by-zero, and invalid enabled, and the rounding mode is set to nearest. The functions SET-FPU-MODE and GET-FPU-MODE provide user control over floating-point behavior.

As of release 1.4, Clozure CL provides a way for lisp objects to be watched so that a condition will be signaled when a thread attempts to write to the watched object. For a certain class of bugs (someone is changing this value, but I don't know who), this can be extremely helpful.

? (defvar *s* "xxxxx")
*S*
? (watch *s*)
"xxxxx"
? (setf (char *s* 3) #\o)
> Error: Write to watched uvector "xxxxx" at index 3
>        Faulting instruction: (movl (% eax) (@ -5 (% r15) (% rcx)))
> While executing: SET-CHAR, in process listener(1).
> Type :POP to abort, :R for a list of available restarts.
> Type :? for other options.

    

? (defclass foo ()
    (slot-a slot-b slot-c))
#<STANDARD-CLASS FOO>
? (defvar *a-foo* (make-instance 'foo))
*A-FOO*
? (watch *a-foo*)
#<SLOT-VECTOR #xDB00D>
;;; Note that WATCH has watched the internal slot-vector object
? (setf (slot-value *a-foo* 'slot-a) 'foo)
> Error: Write to watched uvector #<SLOT-VECTOR #xDB00D> at index 1
>        Faulting instruction: (movq (% rsi) (@ -5 (% r8) (% rdi)))
> While executing: %MAYBE-STD-SETF-SLOT-VALUE-USING-CLASS, in process listener(1).
> Type :POP to abort, :R for a list of available restarts.
> Type :? for other options.

    

1 > (uvref (write-to-watched-object-object *break-condition*) 0)
#<FOO #x30004113502D>
1 > (describe *)
#<FOO #x30004113502D>
Class: #<STANDARD-CLASS FOO>
Wrapper: #<CLASS-WRAPPER FOO #x300041135EBD>
Instance slots
SLOT-A: #<Unbound>
SLOT-B: #<Unbound>
SLOT-C: #<Unbound>
1 >
 
    

?  (defvar *f* (make-array '(2 3) :element-type 'double-float))
*F*
? (watch *f*)
#(0.0D0 0.0D0 0.0D0 0.0D0 0.0D0 0.0D0)
;;; Note that the above vector is the underlying data-vector for the array
? (setf (aref *f* 1 2) pi)
> Error: Write to watched uvector #<VECTOR 6 type DOUBLE-FLOAT, simple> at index 5
>        Faulting instruction: (movq (% rax) (@ -5 (% r8) (% rdi)))
> While executing: ASET, in process listener(1).
> Type :POP to abort, :R for a list of available restarts.
> Type :? for other options.
1 > 
  

? (defvar *h* (make-hash-table))
*H*
? (setf (gethash 'noise *h*) 'feep)
FEEP
? (watch *h*)
#<HASH-TABLE-VECTOR #xDD00D>
;;; underlying hash-table-vector
? (setf (gethash 'noise *h*) 'ding)
> Error: Write to watched uvector #<HASH-TABLE-VECTOR #xDD00D> at index 35
>        Faulting instruction: (lock)
>          (cmpxchgq (% rsi) (@ (% r8) (% rdx)))
> While executing: %STORE-NODE-CONDITIONAL, in process listener(1).
> Type :POP to abort, :R for a list of available restarts.
> Type :? for other options.
;;; see what value is being replaced...
1 > (uvref (write-to-watched-object-object *break-condition*) 35)
FEEP
;;; backtrace shows useful context
1 > :b
*(1A109F8) : 0 (%STORE-NODE-CONDITIONAL ???) NIL
 (1A10A50) : 1 (LOCK-FREE-PUTHASH NOISE #<HASH-TABLE :TEST EQL size 1/60 #x30004117D47D> DING) 653
 (1A10AC8) : 2 (CALL-CHECK-REGS PUTHASH NOISE #<HASH-TABLE :TEST EQL size 1/60 #x30004117D47D> DING) 229
 (1A10B00) : 3 (TOPLEVEL-EVAL (SETF (GETHASH # *H*) 'DING) NIL) 709
 ...
  

? (defun watch-list (list)
    (maplist #'watch list))
WATCH-LIST
? (defvar *l* (list 1 2 3))
*L*
? (watch-list *l*)
((1 2 3) (2 3) (3))
? (setf (nth 2 *l*) 'foo)
> Error: Write to the CAR of watched cons cell (3)
>        Faulting instruction: (movq (% rsi) (@ 5 (% rdi)))
> While executing: %SETNTH, in process listener(1).
> Type :POP to abort, :R for a list of available restarts.
> Type :? for other options.
  

Clozure CL ships with the complete source code for an integrated development environment written using Cocoa on Mac OS X. This chapter describes how to build and use that environment, referred to hereafter simply as "the IDE".

The IDE provides a programmable text editor, listener windows, an inspector for Lisp data structures, and a means of easily building a Cocoa application in Lisp. In addition, its source code provides an example of a fairly complex Cocoa application written in Lisp.

The current version of the IDE has seen the addition of numerous features and many bugfixes. Although it's by no means a finished product, we hope it will prove more useful than previous versions, and we plan additional work on the IDE for future releases.

Building the Clozure CL IDE is now a very simple process.

For example, assuming that the Clozure CL distribution is installed in "/usr/local/ccl", the following sequence of shell interactions builds the IDE:

oshirion:ccl mikel$ ccl64
Welcome to Clozure Common Lisp Version 1.2-r9198M-trunk  (DarwinX8664)!
? (require :cocoa-application)
;Loading #P"ccl:cocoa-ide;fasls;cocoa-utils.dx64fsl.newest"...
;Loading #P"ccl:cocoa-ide;fasls;cocoa-defaults.dx64fsl.newest"...

[...many lines of "Compiling" and "Loading" omitted...]

Saving application to /usr/local/ccl/Clozure CL.app/

oshirion:ccl mikel$ 

    

Clozure CL compiles and loads the various subsystems that make up the IDE, then constructs a Cocoa application bundle named "Clozure CL.app" and saves the Lisp image into it. Normally Clozure CL creates the application bundle in the root directory of the Clozure CL distribution.

After it has been built, you can run the "Clozure CL.app" application normally, by double-clicking its icon. When launched, the IDE initially displays a single listener window that you can use to interact with Lisp. You can type Lisp expressions for evaluation at the prompt in the listener window. You can also use Hemlock editing commands to edit the text of expressions in the listener window.

Clozure CL builds the IDE from sources in the "objc-bridge" and "cocoa-ide" directories in the Clozure CL distribution. The IDE as a whole is a relatively complicated application, and is probably not the best place to look when you are first trying to understand how to build Cocoa applications. For that, you might benefit more from the examples in the "examples/cocoa/" directory. Once you are familiar with those examples, though, and have some experience building your own application features using Cocoa and the Objective-C bridge, you might browse through the IDE sources to see how it implements its features.

The search path for Clozure CL's REQUIRE feature includes the "objc-bridge" and "cocoa-ide" directories. You can load features defined in these directories by using REQUIRE. For example, if you want to use the Cocoa features of Clozure CL from a terminal session (or from an Emacs session using SLIME or ILISP), you can evaluate (require :cocoa).

One important feature of the IDE currently has no Cocoa user interface: the application builder. The application builder constructs a Cocoa application bundle that runs a Lisp image when double-clicked. You can use the application builder to create Cocoa applications in Lisp. These applications are exactly like Cocoa applications created with XCode and Objective-C, except that they are written in Lisp.

To make the application builder available, evaluate the expression (require :build-application). Clozure CL loads the required subsystems, if necessary.

BUILD-APPLICATION &key (name "MyApplication") (type-string "APPL") (creator-string "OMCL") (directory (current-directory)) (copy-ide-resources t) (info-plist NIL) (nibfiles NIL) (main-nib-name NIL) (application-class 'GUI::COCOA-APPLICATION) (toplevel-function NIL) [Function]

The build-application function constructs an application bundle, populates it with the files needed to satisfy Mac OS X that the bundle is a launchable application, and saves an executable Lisp image to the proper subdirectory of the bundle. Assuming that the saved Lisp image contains correct code, a user can subsequently launch the resulting Cocoa application by double-clicking its icon in the Finder, and the saved Lisp environment runs.

The keyword arguments control various aspects of application bundle as BUILD-APPLICATION builds it.

BUILD-APPLICATION creates a folder named "name.app" in the directory directory. Inside that folder, it creates the "Contents" folder that Mac OS X application bundles are expected to contain, and populates it with the "MacOS" and "Resources" folders, and the "Info.plist" and "PkgInfo" files that must be present in a working application bundle. It takes the contents of the "Info.plist" and "PkgInfo" files from the parameters to BUILD-APPLICATION. If copy-ide-resources is true then it copies the contents of the "Resources" folder from the "Resources" folder of the running IDE.

The work needed to produce a running Cocoa application is very minimal. In fact, if you supply BUILD-APPLICATION with a valid nibfile and pathnames, it builds a running Cocoa application that displays your UI. It doesn't need you to write any code at all to do this. Of course, the resulting application doesn't do anything apart from displaying the UI defined in the nibfile. If you want your UI to accomplish anything, you need to write the code to handle its events. But the path to a running application with your UI in it is very short indeed.

Please note that BUILD-APPLICATION is a work in progress. It can easily build a working Cocoa application, but it still has limitations that may in some cases prove inconvenient. For example, in the current version it provides no easy way to specify an application delegate different from the default. If you find the current limitations of BUILD-APPLICATION too restrictive, and want to try extending it for your use, you can find the source code for it in "ccl/cocoa-ide/build-application.lisp". You can see the default values used to populate the "Info.plist" file in "ccl/cocoa-ide/builder-utilities.lisp".

For more information on how to use BUILD-APPLICATION, see the Currency Converter example in "ccl/examples/cocoa/currency-converter/".

ccl -b -e "(require :cocoa)" -e "(require :build-application)" -e "(ccl::build-application :name \"Foo\")"
      

Hemlock is the text editor used in Clozure CL. It was originally based on the CMU Hemlock editor, but has since diverged from it in various ways. We continue to call the editor part of our IDE Hemlock to give credit where credit is due, but we make no attempt at source or API compatibility with the original Hemlock.

Like the code, this documentation is based on the original Hemlock documentation, modified as necessary.

Hemlock follows in the tradition of Emacs-compatible editors, with a rich set of extensible commands. This document describes the API for implementing new commands. The basic editor consists of a set of Lisp utility functions for manipulating buffers and the other data structures of the editor. All user level commands are written in terms of these functions. To find out how to define commands see Commands.

In Hemlock, text is represented as a sequence of lines. Newline characters are never stored but are implicit between lines. The implicit newline character is treated as the single character #\Newline by the text primitives.

Text is broken into lines when it is first introduced into Hemlock. Text enters Hemlock from the outside world in two ways: reading a file, or pasting text from the system clipboard. Hemlock uses heuristics (which should be documented here!) to decide what newline convention to use to convert the incoming text into its internal representation as a sequence of lines. Similarly it uses heuristics (which should be documented here!) to convert the internal representation into a string with embedded newlines in order to write a file or paste a region into the clipboard.

A buffer is an object consisting of:

Because of the way Hemlock is currently integrated in Cocoa, all modifications to buffer contents must take place in the GUI thread. Hemlock commands always run in the GUI thread, so most of the time you do not need to worry about it. If you are running code in another thread that needs to modify a buffer, you should perform that action using gui::execute-in-gui or gui::queue-for-gui.

There are no intrinsic limitations on examining buffers from any thread, however, Hemlock currently does no locking, so you risk seeing the buffer in an inconsistent state if you look at it outside the GUI thread.

(buffer-start-mark buffer )  <==>  (region-start (buffer-region buffer))

(buffer-end-mark buffer )  <==>  (region-end (buffer-region buffer))

A note on marks and text alteration: :temporary marks are invalid after any change has been made to the buffer the mark points to; it is an error to use a temporary mark after such a change has been made.

If text is deleted which has permanent marks pointing into it then they are left pointing to the position where the text was.

(same-line-p a b) <==> (eq (mark-line a) (mark-line b))

Hemlock implements a system of variables separate from normal Lisp variables for the following reasons:

(add-hook delete-buffer-hook 'remove-buffer-from-menu)
(add-hook (variable-hooks 'check-mail-interval)
          'reschedule-mail-check)