A Universe in 99 Lines: Learning by Writing a Lisp Interpreter

One of the greatest charms of Lisp is that implementing the language itself is easy and educational.

Learning from Implementation

• A working Lisp in just 99 lines of C
• The core of S-expression parsing and evaluation (Eval)
• Garbage Collection (GC) and environment management

In this article, we unravel how programming languages work through extremely small Lisp implementations.

References

• tinylisp - Lisp in 99 lines of C — An ideal way to learn the structure of a Lisp interpreter from a minimal implementation.
• Build Your Own Lisp — A step-by-step guide to building your own programming language in C.
• sectorlisp - Bootstrapping LISP in a Boot Sector — Lisp in 512 bytes. The ultimate example of minimal primitives and metacircular evaluation.
• Wisp - A light Lisp written in C++ — A lightweight implementation example in modern C++.
• LispE - Full-fledged Lisp interpreter — A showcase of feature-rich Lisp implementations with lazy evaluation and pattern matching.
• SBCL - Steel Bank Common Lisp — The standard for pragmatic Lisp development and a reference for high-performance compilers.
• Pile Programming Language — Lisp on the JVM. Integration of Java interoperability with modern features.