mirror of
https://gitlab.com/vindarel/ciel.git
synced 2026-01-15 05:41:19 -08:00
88 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
88 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
# CIEL
|
|
|
|
CIEL is a collection of useful libraries.
|
|
|
|
It's Common Lisp, batteries included.
|
|
|
|
Questions, doubts? See the [FAQ](FAQ.md).
|
|
|
|
Status: it's very much a work in progress, but it should always be usable from master.
|
|
|
|
## Rationale
|
|
|
|
One of our goals is to make Common Lisp useful out of the box for
|
|
mundane tasks -by today's standards.
|
|
|
|
Consequently, **we ship libraries** to
|
|
handle JSON and CSV, as well as others to ease string manipulation,
|
|
to have regular expressions out of the box, for threads and
|
|
jobs scheduling, for HTTP and URI handling, to create simple GUIs with
|
|
Ltk, and so on. You can of course do all this without CIEL, but
|
|
then you'd have to install the library manager (Quicklisp) first and load these libraries
|
|
into your Lisp image every time you start it. Now, you have them at
|
|
your fingertips whenever you start CIEL. Some of the libraries we bring in are for extending the language
|
|
syntax a bit. For example, we include the `Trivia` library for
|
|
pattern matching.
|
|
|
|
We also aim to **soften the irritating parts of standard Common Lisp**.
|
|
A famous one, puzzling for beginners and non-optimal for seasoned
|
|
lispers, is the creation of hash-tables. We include the `dict` function
|
|
from the Serapeum library (which we enhanced further with a pull request):
|
|
|
|
|
|
~~~lisp
|
|
CIEL-USER> (dict :a 1 :b 2 :c 3)
|
|
~~~
|
|
|
|
which prints:
|
|
|
|
~~~lisp
|
|
(dict
|
|
:A 1
|
|
:B 2
|
|
:C 3
|
|
)
|
|
~~~
|
|
|
|
In standard Common Lisp, the equivalent is more convoluted:
|
|
|
|
~~~lisp
|
|
(let ((ht (make-hash-table :test 'equal)))
|
|
(setf (gethash :a ht) 1)
|
|
(setf (gethash :b ht) 2)
|
|
(setf (gethash :c ht) 3)
|
|
ht)
|
|
;; #<HASH-TABLE :TEST EQUAL :COUNT 3 {1006CE5613}>
|
|
;; (and we don't get a readable representation, so our example is not even equivalent)
|
|
~~~
|
|
|
|
We **add missing functions**. For example, after you used `parse-integer`, you are probably looking for a `parse-float` function… but you can't find it, because it isn't defined by the standard. You must install a third-party library. Now you have it.
|
|
|
|
We **enhance the docstrings** of built-in functions and macros with more
|
|
explanations and examples, so you don't have to reach to external
|
|
documentation just yet in order to understand and try out things like
|
|
`mapcar` or `loop` (look 'ma, LOOP has no docstring by default).
|
|
|
|
Moreover, we want to bring a **user friendly REPL on the terminal**,
|
|
with bells and whistles useful to the developer and people living in a
|
|
terminal window. For example, our [repl for the terminal](repl.md) has readline support, multi-line editing, optional syntax highlighting, a shell passthrough, and more goodies.
|
|
|
|
|
|
*We are only started. You can sponsor us [on GitHub sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/vindarel/)*
|
|
|
|
[](https://ko-fi.com/K3K828W0V)
|
|
|
|
|
|
# Install
|
|
|
|
Let's get started. See the [installation instructions](install.md).
|
|
|
|
|
|
# Final words
|
|
|
|
That was your life in CL:
|
|
|
|
<p align="center"><img src="before.jpeg" /></p>
|
|
and now:
|
|
|
|
<p align="center"><img src="after-plus.jpeg" /></p>
|