SBCL User Manual

This manual is part of the SBCL software system. See the README file for more information.

This manual is largely derived from the manual for the CMU CL system, which was produced at Carnegie Mellon University and later released into the public domain. This manual is in the public domain and is provided with absolutely no warranty. See the COPYING and CREDITS files for more information.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Where To Go For More Information about Common Lisp in General
Where To Go For More Information About SBCL
Overview Of SBCL, How It Works And Where It Came From

2. The Compiler

Error Messages

The Parts of the Error Message
The Original and Actual Source
The Processing Path
Error Severity
Errors During Macroexpansion
Read Errors

The Compiler's Handling of Types

Implementation Limitations
Type Errors at Compile Time
Precise Type Checking
Weakened Type Checking
Getting Existing Programs to Run

Compiler Policy

Open Coding and Inline Expansion

3. Efficiency

4. Beyond The ANSI Standard

Non-Conformance With The ANSI Standard

Idiosyncrasies

Things Which Might Be In The Next ANSI Standard
Threading (a.k.a Multiprocessing)

5. The Foreign Function Interface

Introduction to the Foreign Function Interface

Foreign Types

Defining Foreign Types
Foreign Types and Lisp Types
Foreign Type Specifiers

Operations On Foreign Values

Accessing Foreign Values
Coercing Foreign Values
Foreign Dynamic Allocation

Foreign Variables

Local Foreign Variables
External Foreign Variables

Foreign Data Structure Examples

Loading Unix Object Files

Foreign Function Calls

The alien-funcall Primitive
The define-alien-routine Macro
define-alien-routine Example
Calling Lisp From C

Step-By-Step Example of the Foreign Function Interface

		Next
		Introduction