CLHS: About the Common Lisp HyperSpec (TM)

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## About the Common Lisp HyperSpec (TM)

This page contains the following kinds of information:

- Icon Key
- Abstract
- Authorship Information
- Important Legal Notices
- Trivia
- Bug Reports

## Icon Key

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## Abstract

Lisp is a family of languages with a long history. Early key ideas in Lisp were developed by John McCarthy in 1956. Many important dialects, languages and embedded systems have emerged from this work.

In 1981, representatives of several major dialects began to pool their efforts to design Common Lisp, an `industrial strength' dialect of Lisp that would provide stability for commercial applications.

The initial design of Common Lisp was well received, and in 1986 X3J13 was formed to transform this work into a formal standard. The resulting design, X3.226-1994, is a standard for Common Lisp--not for the entire Lisp family.

The Common Lisp standard improves on earlier Common Lisp work by placing much greater emphasis on portability, clarifying many aspects of compilation semantics, and adding several major pieces of new functionality: an object-oriented programming system, a condition handling system, an improved iteration facility, and better support for large character sets.

## Authorship Information

The Common Lisp HyperSpec is not the ANSI Common Lisp standard, but is based on that standard (with permission from ANSI and X3).

As an official reference to the Common Lisp language, hardcopy documentation of ANSI Common Lisp, (American National Standard X3.226) from ANSI is always definitive.

The hypertext markup for this document was created by Kent Pitman, with the aid of a custom program written in ANSI Common Lisp and created specifically for this task. Funding for the markup task was provided by and copyright of the result is owned by LispWorks Ltd.

Some additional design documents have been included in marked up form and cross-referenced which are not part of the standard but may be useful in understanding it. Plaintext versions of these documents, which offer a useful historical perspective, are available to anyone by anonymous public FTP from `ftp://parcftp.xerox.com/pub/cl/cleanup/`.

The Java applet used in the Symbol Index (visible only in some browsers) was written by Evan Williams. Its copyright is owned by LispWorks Ltd.

## Important Legal Notices

### Copyright and Conditions of Use

Copyright 1996-2005, LispWorks Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

The HTML hypertext markup that implements the hypertext features of these World Wide Web pages of the Common Lisp specification, collectively the Common Lisp HyperSpec, is the property of LispWorks Ltd.

Distribution of the Common Lisp HyperSpec as a hypertext document on the Internet does not constitute consent to any use of the underlying hypertext markup for redistribution of any kind, commercial or otherwise, either via the Internet or using some other form of distribution, in hypertext or otherwise.

Permission to copy, distribute, display, and transmit the Common Lisp HyperSpec is granted provided that copies are not made or distributed or displayed or transmitted for direct commercial advantage, that notice is given that copying, distribution, display, and/or transmission is by permission of LispWorks Ltd., and that any copy made is COMPLETE and UNMODIFIED. IN PARTICULAR, the material that MUST appear in the copy includes:

1. this copyright notice and its date;
2. the main index page, `../Front/index.htm`;
3. all HTML pages to which the main index page links using relative links;
4. all graphical (GIF) images to which it links using relative links, such as the LispWorks logo that appears on each page; and
5. all hypertext links, relative or absolute, such as the link to `http://www.lispworks.com/` that appears on each page.

Permissions related to performance and to creation of derivative works are expressly NOT granted.

Permission to make partial copies is expressly NOT granted, EXCEPT that limited permission is granted to transmit and display a partial copy the Common Lisp HyperSpec for the ordinary purpose of direct viewing by a human being in the usual manner that hypertext browsers permit the viewing of such a complete document, provided that no recopying, redistribution, redisplay, or retransmission is made of any such partial copy.

Permission to make modified copies is expressly NOT granted.

Permission to add or replace any links or any graphical images to any of these pages is expressly NOT granted.

Permission to use any of the included graphical (GIF) images in any document other than the Common Lisp HyperSpec is expressly NOT granted.

### Acknowledgments

Parts of this work incorporate material taken from American National Standard X3.226, copyright 1994, and is used with permission of the X3 Secretariat, ITI, 1250 Eye St., NW., Suite 200, Washington, DC 20005 and of the copyright holder, American National Standards Institute. ANSI/X3.226 was developed by Technical Committee X3J13, Common Lisp.

Copies of the ANSI/X3.226 standard may be purchased from the American National Standards Institute, 11 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.

### Restricted Rights Legend

The Common Lisp HyperSpec is subject to the following Restricted Rights Legend:

> ``Use, duplication, or disclosure by the United States Government is subject to the restrictions set forth in (i) FAR 52.227-14 Alt III, (ii) FAR 52.227-19, (iii) DFARS 252.7013(c)(1)(ii), or (iv) the accompanying license Agreement, as applicable. For purposes of the FAR, the Software shall be deemed to be ``unpublished'' and licensed with disclosure prohibitions, rights reserved under the copyright laws of the United States. LispWorks Ltd., St John's Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WS, England.''

### Warranty disclaimer

THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT WILL LISPWORKS BE LIABLE FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES RESULTING FROM ANY INACCURACY OR ERROR IN THIS DOCUMENT, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

### Additional Disclaimers

Not all notations in that TeX-based document were possible to represent exactly in HTML, although an attempt has been made to be as accurate as possible. Nevertheless, the process of translation was heuristic, and discrepancies might have resulted. Formally, the official ANSI printed document is always the definitive reference.

The X3J13 issue documents are not part of the standard and are provided purely for historical perspective. It is possible that some of the documents, as included, are not the final form that X3J13 voted, or that some which were voted were omitted, or that references from these documents into the source text are not complete, or that some edits prescribed by these documents were incorrectly implemented, or that other discrepancies exist between these documents and the specification. These documents have no formal weight, and in all cases, the hardcopy specification is definitive.

### Trademarks

LispWorks and Liquid Common Lisp are registered trademarks of LispWorks Ltd.

The LispWorks logo and Common Lisp HyperSpec are trademarks of LispWorks Ltd.

All other brand and product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

## Trivia

The Common Lisp HyperSpec consumes approximately 15MB of disk storage in about 2300 files. It contains approximately 110,000 hyperlinks.

## Bug Reports

Reports of discrepancies between the Common Lisp HyperSpec and the hardcopy form may be sent to Kent Pitman <kmp@lispworks.com>.

Reports of bugs in the specification itself should be addressed to subcommittee X3J13.

Copyright 1996-2005, LispWorks Ltd. All Rights Reserved.