LISP LORE: A GUIDE TO PROGRAMMING THE LISP MACHINE SECOND EDITION LISP LORE: A GUIDE TO PROGRAMMING THE LISP MACHINE SECOND EDITION by Hank Bromley AT&T Bell Laboratories and Richard Lamson Symbolics, Inc. KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS Boston/DordrechtiLancaster Distributors for North America: Kluwer Academic Publishers 101 Philip Drive Assinippi Park Norwell, Massachusetts 02061, USA Distributors for the UK and Ireland: Kluwer Academic Publishers MTP Press Limited Falcon House, Queen Square Lancaster, LAI IRN, UNITED KINGDOM Distributors for all other countries: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group Distribution Centre Post Office Box 322 3300 AH Dordrecht, THE NETHERLANDS Consulting Editor: Tom M. Mitchell Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bromley, Hank. Lisp lore. Includes index. I. LISP (Computer program language) 1. Lamson, Richard. II. Title. QA76.73.L23B75 1987 005.13 '3 87-3639 ISBN-I3: 978-1-4612-9189-3 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4613-1991-7 001: 10.1007/978-1-4613-1991-7 The Lexical Scoping example on page 52 is quoted from Symbolics Common Lisp: Language Concepts, Copyright © 1986 by Symbolics, Inc. Reprinted by permission. Definitions from The Hacker's Dictionary Copyright © 1983 by Guy L. Steele. Reprinted by permission. Copyright © 1987 by Kluwer Academic Publishers Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1987 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 101 Philip Drive, Assinippi Park, Norwell, MA 02061. Text masters produced on Symbolics 3600™-family computers and printed on Symbolics LGP2 Laser Graphics Printers. Table of Contents Page Preface to the First Edition xiii Preface to the Second Edition xvii L Introduction 1 2. Getting Started on the Lisp Machine 7 2.1 Why Use a Lisp Machine? 7 2.1.1 Why This Book? 8 2.1.2 Looking Ahead 9 2.2 The Keyboard 11 2.3 Typing to a Lisp Listener 13 2.4 Getting Around the Environment 15 2.5 The Mouse 17 2.5.1 The System Menu 18 2.6 The Monitor 19 2.7 The Editor 21 2.8 The Compiler and the Debugger 23 2.9 Getting Started 24 2.9.1 Bringing the Machine up 25 2.9.2 Logging in 27 2.10 A Word About Work Style 30 2.11 This and That 31 2.11.1 Problem Reporting 31 2.11.2 Backup 32 2.12 Problem Set #1 33 3. Flow of Control 37 vi Lisp Lore 3.1 Conditionals 37 3.2 Blocks and Exits 40 3.3 Nonlocal Exits 41 3.4 Iteration 42 3.4.1 Mapping 44 3.4.2 Do 45 3.4.3 Loop 47 3.4.4 Implicit Iteration 51 3.5 Lexical Scoping 52 3.6 Macros 53 3.7 Unwind-protect 55 3.8 Fun and Games 57 3.9 Problem Set 58 4. More on Navigating the Lisp Machine 67 4.1 The Scheduler and Processes 67 4.2 Windows 73 4.3 Debugging 80 4.4 The Input Editor and Histories 83 4.5 Mouse Sensitivity 86 4.6 Poking Around 90 4.7 Fun and Games 92 4.8 Problem Set 94 5. What's a Flavor? 97 5.1 Instance Variables 98 5.2 Methods 99 5.3 Making Instances 101 5.4 Initial Values for Instance Variables 102 5.5 Methods for Make-instance 105 5.6 Mixing Flavors 105 5.7 Combined Methods 108 5.8 Whoppers 111 Table of Contents vii 5.9 Internal Interfaces 115 5.10 Vanilla Flavor 115 5.11 The Flavor Examiner Tools 116 5.12 Message Passing 117 5.13 The Window System 120 5.14 Fun and Games 121 5.15 Problem Set 122 6. User Interface 131 6.1 Program Frameworks: an Overview 132 6.2 Defuring Commands 135 6.3 The Redisplay 137 6.4 Presentation Types 138 6.5 Mouse Sensitivity 141 6.5.1 Mouse Sensitivity - the Easy Part 142 6.5.2 Mouse Gesture Translations 144 6.6 Fun and Games 147 7. The Graph Example 149 7.1 The Nodes and Arcs 150 7.2 The Presentation Types 154 7.3 The Display 155 7.4 The Commands 157 7.5 The Mouse Gesture Translators 157 7.6 The Program 159 7.7 Problem Set 169 8. Streams and Files 173 8.1 Streams 174 8.1.1 Standard Stream Operations 175 8.1.2 Special-purpose Operations 177 8.1.3 Standard Streams 179 8.2 Accessing Files and Directories 180 viii Lisp Lore 8.2.1 Open and Other Functions for Operating 181 on Files 8.2.2 Directories 184 8.3 Pathnames 184 8.3.1 Component Values 187 8.3.2 Case in Pathnames 189 8.3.3 Defaults and Merging 190 8.3.4 Pathname Functions and Methods 191 8.3.5 Logical Pathnames 195 8.4 Making Other I/O Streams 198 8.5 Fun and Games 199 8.6 Problem Set 201 9. The Calculator Example 205 9.1 The Program Frame 205 9.2 The Redisplay 207 9.3 The Command-definition Macrology 209 9.4 The Program 210 9.5 Fun and Games 214 10. Systems, Storage and Errors 217 10.1 Systems 217 10.1.1 Defining a System 218 10.1.2 Compiling and Loading Systems 221 10.1.3 Patching a System 222 10.2 Storage Allocation 224 10.2.1 Allocation and the Garbage Collector 224 10.2.2 Areas 226 10.2.3 Resources 227 10.2.4 Stack Allocation 231 10.3 Condition Handling 233 10.3.1 Signalling Conditions 234 10.3.2 Handling Conditions 235 Table of Contents ix 10.3.3 Creating New Condition Flavors 236 10.3.4 Restart Handlers 237 10.3.5 Proceeding 238 10.3.6 A Few Examples 239 10.4 Fun and Games 243 11. The Card Game Example 245 11.1 Card Definitions 246 11.2 Presentation Types 248 11.3 Card Places 249 11.3.1 Basic Places 249 11.3.2 Presentation 250 11.3.3 Caching 251 11.3.4 Stacked Places 251 11.4 The Interactive Program 252 11.4.1 Games 253 11.4.2 Place Display 255 11.5 The Program 256 11.6 Problem Set 278 11.7 Fun and Games 278 12. More Advanced Use of the Editor 279 12.1 ICeyboard ~acros 280 12.2 Writing New Commands 282 12.2.1 Zwei Data Structure 282 12.2.2 Command Tables and Command 286 Definition 12.2.3 Reading From the ~ini-buffer 289 12.2.4 A Real Example 290 12.3 Learning ~ore About the Editor 290 12.4 Fun and Games 291 12.5 Problem Set 292 x Lisp Lore 13. A Quick Look At the Network 299 13.1 The Gee-whiz Look 299 13.1.1 What is a Network? 300 13.1.2 Levels of Abstraction 302 13.2 The Generic Network System 305 13.2.1 How Does Path-finding Work? 306 13.2.2 How Does Service Invocation Work? 307 13.2.3 Other GNS Functions 307 13.3 The Namespace System 308 13.4 Examples of the Use of the Generic Network 310 System 13.4.1 Time of Day 310 13.4.2 Who's Logged in 311 13.4.3 Mail Delivery 311 13.5 Writing Your Own Network Software 314 13.5.1 Writing Your Own User End 317 13.5.2 Writing Your Own Server End 317 13.5.3 Sample User and Server Definition 318 APPENDIX A. Basic Zmacs Commands 325 Index 331 List of Figures Figure 1. Transitions among window states 76 Figure 2. Flavor inheritance hierarchy for 107 si:indirect-escape-input-stream. Figure 3. Structure of combined method 114 Figure 4. Grapher program display window 151 Figure 5. A Sample SYS:SITE;SYS. TRANSLATIONS 197 Figure 6. Calculator program display window 206 Figure 7. Card game program display window 247 Figure 8. Standard medium and protocol for Alert 302 Farmers. Figure 9. All possible implementations of Alert 303 Farmers.