picolisp.1 (2946B)
1 .\" 05nov11abu 2 .\" 3 .TH PICOLISP 1 "" "" "User Commands" 4 .SH NAME 5 pil, picolisp \- a fast, lightweight Lisp interpreter 6 .SH SYNOPSIS 7 .B pil 8 [arguments ...] [-] [arguments ...] [+] 9 .br 10 .B /installpath/bin/picolisp 11 [arguments ...] [-] [arguments ...] [+] 12 .SH DESCRIPTION 13 .B PicoLisp 14 is a Lisp interpreter with a small memory footprint, yet relatively high 15 execution speed. It combines an elegant and powerful language with built-in 16 database functionality. 17 .P 18 .B pil 19 is the startup front-end for the interpreter. It takes care of starting the 20 binary base system and loading a useful runtime environment. 21 .P 22 .B picolisp 23 is just the bare interpreter binary. It is usually called in stand-alone 24 scripts, using the she-bang notation in the first line, passing the minimal 25 environment in 26 .I lib.l 27 and loading additional files as needed: 28 .P 29 .RS 30 #!/usr/bin/picolisp /usr/lib/picolisp/lib.l 31 .RE 32 .RS 33 (load "@ext.l" "myfiles/lib.l" "myfiles/foo.l") 34 .RE 35 .RS 36 (do ... something ...) 37 .RE 38 .RS 39 (bye) 40 .RE 41 .SH INVOCATION 42 .B PicoLisp 43 has no pre-defined command line flags; applications are free to define their 44 own. Any built-in or user-level Lisp function can be invoked from the command 45 line by prefixing it with a hyphen. Examples for built-in functions useful in 46 this context are 47 .B version 48 (print the version number) or 49 .B bye 50 (exit the interpreter). Therefore, a minimal call to print the version number 51 and then immediately exit the interpreter would be: 52 .P 53 .RS 54 $ pil -version -bye 55 .RE 56 .P 57 Any other argument (not starting with a hyphen) should be the name of a file to 58 be loaded. If the first character of a path or file name is an at-mark, it 59 will be substituted with the path to the installation directory. 60 .P 61 All arguments are evaluated from left to right, then an interactive 62 .I read-eval-print 63 loop is entered (with a colon as prompt). 64 .P 65 A single hyphen stops the evaluation of the rest of the command line, so that 66 the remaining arguments may be processed under program control. 67 .P 68 If the very last command line argument is a single plus character, debugging 69 mode is switched on at interpreter startup, before evaluating any of the command 70 line arguments. A minimal interactive session is started with: 71 .P 72 .RS 73 $ pil + 74 .RE 75 .P 76 Here you can access the reference manual 77 .P 78 .RS 79 : (doc) 80 .RE 81 .P 82 and the online documentation for most functions, 83 .P 84 .RS 85 : (doc 'vi) 86 .RE 87 .P 88 or directly inspect their sources: 89 .P 90 .RS 91 : (vi 'doc) 92 .RE 93 .P 94 The interpreter can be terminated with 95 .P 96 .RS 97 : (bye) 98 .RE 99 .P 100 or by typing Ctrl-D. 101 .SH FILES 102 Runtime files are maintained in the ~/.pil directory: 103 .IP ~/.pil/tmp/<pid>/ 104 Process-local temporary directories 105 .IP ~/.pil/history 106 The line editor's history file 107 .SH BUGS 108 .B PicoLisp 109 doesn't try to protect you from every possible programming error ("You asked for 110 it, you got it"). 111 .SH AUTHOR 112 Alexander Burger <abu@software-lab.de> 113 .SH RESOURCES 114 .B Home page: 115 http://home.picolisp.com 116 .br 117 .B Download: 118 http://www.software-lab.de/down.html