LISP

This started out as a mere stub while I put together some more resources, and over the years became a quite large list of LISP/Scheme implementations I have kept an eye on (besides ).

Almost everybody has their own lisp implementation. Some programmers’ dogs and cats probably have their own lisp implementations as well. This is great, but too often I see people omit some of the obscure but critical features that make lisp uniquely wonderful. These include read macros like #. and backreferences, gensyms, and properly escaped symbol names. If you’re going to waste everybody’s time with yet another lisp, at least do it right damnit. (from the femtolisp README)

Resources

Category Date Link Notes
Common Lisp 2022 Steel Bank
Embeddable Common Lisp
2017 darkmatter

A notebook-style LISP environment

2015 Ceramic

An Electron wrapper for shipping desktop applications

2014 Clozure CL

Fast, runs on ARM, compiles down to native code, uses threads

McCLIM

A GUI toolkit for Common Lisp

SICL

A modular implementation of Common Lisp for mixing and matching.

Compilers 2024 kamikalisp

functional and concise Lisp inspired by Haskell and APL

2023 gdlisp

LISP for Godot

wisp (for WebAssembly)

A Lisp system for WebAssembly and native execution, written in Zig

slick

an S-expression syntax for Go

Easy-ISLisp

an interpreter and compiler for ISLisp

whiffle

a minimal Scheme-to-C compiler

guile-hoot

an AOT Scheme to WebAssembly compiler

cakelisp

a game development oriented LISP that transpiles to C

2022 Picolisp

an LLVM-backed runtime

2021 Kawa

a Scheme that runs on the JVM

hedgehog LISP

compiler and interpreter for embedded devices

ribbit

small and portable Scheme implementation with AOT compilation and 4K footprint

phel

a Clojure-inspired LISP that runs on top of PHP (of all things)

2020 wax

A tiny programming language that transpiles to C, C++, Java, TypeScript, Python, C#, Swift, Lua and WebAssembly

eslisp

a JavaScript preprocessor with sexps.

2019 Armed Bear

An interpreter and compiler that runs on the JVM

Ferret

A subset of Clojure that compiles down to C++ for embedded devices

Carp

another LISP that compiles to C, designed to work well for interactive and performance sensitive use cases like games, sound synthesis and visualizations.

Chez Scheme

a high-performance Scheme compiler

clojerl

Clojure atop Erlang

zylisp

An updated fork of gisp, an early compiler to Go

ale

a LISP environment in Go

2018 gerbil Scheme

a layer over Gambit

2016 rhine

A Clojure-inspired LISP that targets LLVM

Fennel

A compiler to Lua

Cyclone Scheme

Supports multiple native threads

Larceny Scheme

Compiles to Intel and ARM machine code

Wasp LISP

an interesting twist on special-purpose LISPs

Microscheme

A compiler for the Arduino

Chicken Scheme

One of the most well-known compilers

2015 chlorine

A subset of Clojure that compiles to JavaScript

cormanlisp

For Windows

2014 Hy

Compiles down to Python AST, with full interop

Pharen

Compiles to PHP

Wisp

Compiles to JavaScript, with Clojure syntax

gisp

Generates Go code via AST mapping mapping

psota

A Clojure compiler that targets the PyPy JIT

l2l

A compiler to Lua

Editors 2019 lem

a configurable editor with an optional Electron front-end

Environments 2023 Medley Interlisp

a recreation of the original LISP machine environments

Interpreters LCL

An implementation of Common Lisp targeting Lua

chibi-scheme

an embeddable Scheme interpreter

lone

designed to run directly on top of the Linux kernel without any dependencies, allows for standalone binaries

zuo

a tiny Racket for scripting (written in C)

nanoclj

a tiny Clojure interpreter

Gauche

an R7RS Scheme interpreter

2022 Arc

a LISP written in Racket

Bel

a LISP written in itself

L1

A LISP interpreter written in Go

jar.2.c

a mere snippet of C that won the IOCCC contest in… 1989

lisp-in-go

a 1-page LISP written in Go

minilisp

another small C-based interpreter

otus lisp

like owl, but with FFI. Has a WASM build.

owl

a Scheme interpreter written in C, that can apparently also compile to C

Kernel

a Scheme-like dialect of Lisp in which everything is a first-class object.

Z3S5

written in Go, and designed to be embeddable. Also part of a larger virtual LISP machine project.

2021 armpit Scheme

an ancient R7RS interpreter

S7 Scheme

a TinyScheme variant designed for embedding into other projects

arpilisp

A LISP interpreter for the Raspberry Pi, implemented in a single file of ARM assembly.

planck

A stand-alone ClojureScript REPL for macOS and Linux based on JavaScriptCore.

fe

an 800 LOC C interpreter

Blisp

statically typed, implemented in Rust

sectorlisp

A LISP interpreter that fits into a 512 byte boot sector

#Script Lisp

a .NET scripting LISP

2020 newLISP

Another interpreter

femtolisp

a tiny interpreter written in C

wisp

a tiny C++ implementation

Janet

a modernized LISP dialect with good C interop and a single standalone runtime binary

Guile

the GNU Scheme implementation, which has a JIT

2019 Kilo Lisp

a tiny interpreter

schemy

a .NET embeddable Scheme interpreter

Joker

a Clojure interpreter written in Go

2017 lumen

A hosted LISP for Lua and Javascript

2016 s9fes

A well-documented interpreter that can run on Plan9

uLisp

An interpreter for the Arduino, Adafruit M0/M4, Micro:bit, ESP8266/32, RISC-V, RP2040 and Teensy 4.x boards.

2014 IronScheme

Runs atop the .NET DLR

pixie

An RPython-based lightweight LISP

glisp

An embeddable Go interpreter that compiles to bytecode

Libraries 2020 puny-gui

a GUI toolkit for Janet

r-cade

a Racket library for doing simple retro-style games

2019 scheme-lib

A set of libraries for Chez

thunderchez

More libraries for Chez Scheme

Operating Systems 2023 ChrysaLisp

a fully self-contained hosted cross-platform OS written in LISP

Reference 2024 fennel-static-http

an example for creating a static Fennel binary

2021 Common Lisp Quick Reference

ten-page concise, printable reference

Practical Common Lisp

full online book

The Common Lisp Cookbook

community maintained

Tools slimv

a SLIME equivalent for vim

Alive

VS Code extension

2019 chez-exe

A tool to generate standalone executables with Chez

UI 2024 clog

a GUI library for Common Lisp

2021

A web-based GUI library for Common Lisp

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