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Book Description
This is a comprehensive account of the semantics and the implementation of the whole Lisp family of languages, namely Lisp, Scheme and related dialects. It describes 11 interpreters and 2 compilers, including very recent techniques of interpretation and compilation. The book is in two parts. The first starts from a simple evaluation function and enriches it with multiple name spaces, continuations and side-effects with commented variants, while at the same time the language used to define these features is reduced to a simple lambda-calculus. Denotational semantics is then naturally introduced. The second part focuses more on implementation techniques and discusses precompilation for fast interpretation: threaded code or bytecode; compilation towards C. Some extensions are also described such as dynamic evaluation, reflection, macros and objects. This will become the new standard reference for people wanting to know more about the Lisp family of languages: how they work, how they are implemented, what their variants are and why such variants exist. The full code is supplied (and also available over the Net). A large bibliography is given as well as a considerable number of exercises. Thus it may also be used by students to accompany second courses on Lisp or Scheme.

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

First Sentence:
THIS chapter introduces a basic interpreter that will serve as the foundation for most of this book.  Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): ( learn more )
incorrect arity, env fenv, mutable global variables, env deny, current lexical environment, macro factorial, toplevel loop, function funcall, arity tail, cdr env, env variables values, function calling protocol, special form lambda, macro expander, cdr exps, env names values, cdr tree, cdr names, unsigned long number, exogenous mode, value arity, cdr fields, new special form, car exps, preceding interpreter Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): ( learn more )
Exercises Exercise, Recommended Reading, Meroon Meroon, Caml Light, Common Loops, Polygon Point New!
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4 Reviews 5 star :  (4) 4 star :    (0) 3 star :    (0) 2 star :    (0) 1 star :    (0)           Average Customer Review ( 4 customer reviews )		Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   48 of 49 people found the following review helpful: The best book available on Lisp implementation , December 22, 1999 By  Peter Norvig (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews    This review is from: Lisp in Small Pieces (Hardcover) This is an excellent book on Lisp implementation. You'll get a lot out of it, whether you are interested in writing compilers and interpreters (for Lisp or any language) or whether you just want to see how Lisp works. It is the modern day successor to Allen's "Anatomy of Lisp".   24 of 24 people found the following review helpful: Good book on functional languages. , November 28, 1999 By  Ray Dillinger (San Francisco Bay Area) - See all my reviews This review is from: Lisp in Small Pieces (Hardcover)