rlisp
ALGOL-style Standard Lisp dialect used by REDUCE
TLDR
SYNOPSIS
rlisp [options] [file]
DESCRIPTION
RLISP is an ALGOL-like surface syntax for Standard Lisp, used internally by the REDUCE computer algebra system. It provides Lisp semantics — symbolic expressions, lists, atoms, recursion — but with a more readable infix and keyword syntax (begin/end, if/then/else, for, while) instead of S-expressions.When invoked, rlisp starts an interactive read-eval-print loop. Statements are terminated by a semicolon (;) for normal output, or by a dollar sign ($) to suppress the printed result. From inside REDUCE you can switch to RLISP/symbolic mode with symbolic; and back with algebraic;.The binary is part of REDUCE and is normally built on top of either CSL (Codemist Standard Lisp) or PSL (Portable Standard Lisp); the available command-line options reflect the underlying Lisp engine.
PARAMETERS
--help
Show help text and exit.--version
Show version information.-v
Print extended startup banner; verbose mode.-q
Quiet mode: suppress echo and garbage-collector messages.-w
Force console (non-windowed) operation.--nogui
Force a console-style application.-K nnn
Set heap size in megabytes; the heap will not grow beyond nnn.-K nnn/ss
Set heap size and Lisp stack pages.-i file
Add a read-only image file to the search path.-o file
Set the output image file used by faslout.-D name=value
Pre-bind a Lisp variable from the command line.-l file
Redirect standard output to file.-r n,m
Seed the random number generator for reproducible runs.-z
Bootstrap mode: start without an image file.
CAVEATS
Statements must end with ; or $ — pressing Return alone does not execute. Variable and function names are case-insensitive (folded to upper case). On modern systems RLISP is mainly encountered as part of REDUCE: standalone use is uncommon outside the REDUCE source tree.
HISTORY
RLISP was developed in the early 1970s at the University of Utah (Anthony Hearn, Martin Griss, and others) as the implementation language for REDUCE, the symbolic computation system first released in 1968. RLISP '88 added structured programming features. REDUCE became free and open-source software in 2008 under the BSD licence and continues to ship with RLISP as both its implementation and its symbolic programming language.
