Lisp Machine Lisp is a

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their Syntax (programming languages), syntax (form) and semantics (computer science), semantics (meaning), usually def ...

, a

dialect A dialect is a Variety (linguistics), variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standard language, standardized varieties as well as Vernacular language, vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardize ...

of the language

Lisp Lisp (historically LISP, an abbreviation of "list processing") is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized Polish notation#Explanation, prefix notation. Originally specified in the late 1950s, ...

. A direct descendant of

Maclisp Maclisp (or MACLISP, sometimes styled MacLisp or MacLISP) is a programming language, a dialect of the language Lisp. It originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Project MAC (from which it derived its prefix) in the late 19 ...

, it was initially developed in the mid to late 1970s as the

system programming Systems programming, or system programming, is the activity of programming computer system software. The primary distinguishing characteristic of systems programming when compared to application programming is that application programming aims to ...

language for the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

(MIT) Lisp machines. Lisp Machine Lisp was also the Lisp dialect with the most influence on the design of

Common Lisp Common Lisp (CL) is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard document ''ANSI INCITS 226-1994 (S2018)'' (formerly ''X3.226-1994 (R1999)''). The Common Lisp HyperSpec, a hyperli ...

. Lisp Machine Lisp branched into three dialects.

Symbolics Symbolics, Inc., is a privately held American computer software maker that acquired the assets of the former manufacturing company of the identical name and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp (programming language), Lisp sy ...

named their variant ZetaLisp.

Lisp Machines Lisp Machines, Inc. was a company formed in 1979 by Richard Greenblatt of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to build Lisp machines. It was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. By 1979, the Lisp Machine Project at MIT, originated and he ...

, Inc. and later

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

(with the TI Explorer) would share a common code base, but their dialect of Lisp Machine Lisp would differ from the version maintained at the

MIT AI Lab Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman ( ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

and others.

Manual

The Lisp Machine Manual describes the Lisp Machine Lisp language in detail. The manual was popularly termed the ''Chine Nual'', because the full title was printed across the front and back covers such that only those letters appeared on the front. This name is sometimes further abbreviated by blending the two words into ''Chinual''.

Traits

Lisp Machine Lisp features include: * Support for

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impl ...

via an object system named

Flavors Flavour or flavor is either the sensory perception of taste or smell, or a flavoring in food that produces such perception. Flavour or flavor may also refer to: Science * Flavors (programming language), an early object-oriented extension to L ...

* Uses dynamic binding, but supports closures with a special construct * Integer numbers were read and printed in

octal Octal (base 8) is a numeral system with eight as the base. In the decimal system, each place is a power of ten. For example: : \mathbf_ = \mathbf \times 10^1 + \mathbf \times 10^0 In the octal system, each place is a power of eight. For ex ...

(base 8) by default * Dividing floating point numbers returned decimals, dividing integers returned

rational number In mathematics, a rational number is a number that can be expressed as the quotient or fraction of two integers, a numerator and a non-zero denominator . For example, is a rational number, as is every integer (for example, The set of all ...

s (

fractions A fraction (from , "broken") represents a part of a whole or, more generally, any number of equal parts. When spoken in everyday English, a fraction describes how many parts of a certain size there are, for example, one-half, eight-fifths, thre ...

)

References

Lisp programming language family Lisp (programming language) 1970s software Programming languages created in 1976 {{compu-lang-stub