mirror of
https://github.com/samsonjs/sectorlisp.git
synced 2026-03-25 09:05:48 +00:00
82 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
82 lines
2.8 KiB
Markdown
# sectorlisp
|
|
|
|
sectorlisp is a 512-byte implementation of LISP that's able to bootstrap
|
|
John McCarthy's meta-circular evaluator on bare metal.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
## Overview
|
|
|
|
LISP has been described as the [Maxwell's equations of
|
|
software](https://michaelnielsen.org/ddi/lisp-as-the-maxwells-equations-of-software/).
|
|
Yet there's been very little focus to date on reducing these equations
|
|
to their simplest possible form. Even the [original LISP
|
|
paper](https://people.cs.umass.edu/~emery/classes/cmpsci691st/readings/PL/LISP.pdf)
|
|
from the 1960's defines LISP with nonessential elements, e.g. `LABEL`.
|
|
|
|
This project aims to solve that by doing three things:
|
|
|
|
1. We provide a LISP implementation that's written in LISP, as a single
|
|
pure expression, using only the essential functions of the language.
|
|
See [lisp.lisp](lisp.lisp). It's the same meta-circular evaluator in
|
|
John McCarthy's paper from the 1960's, except with its bugs fixed,
|
|
dependencies included, and syntactic sugar removed.
|
|
|
|
2. We provide a readable portable C reference implementation to show how
|
|
the meta-circular evaluator can be natively bootstrapped on POSIX
|
|
conforming platforms, with a pleasant readline-like interface. See
|
|
[lisp.c](lisp.c).
|
|
|
|
2. We provide a 512-byte i8086 implementation of LISP that boots from
|
|
BIOS on personal computers. See [sectorlisp.S](sectorlisp.S). To the
|
|
best of our knowledge, this is the tiniest true LISP implementation
|
|
to date.
|
|
|
|
<p align="center">
|
|
<img alt="Binary Footprint Comparison" src="bin/footprint.png">
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
## Getting Started
|
|
|
|
See [lisp.lisp](lisp.lisp) for code examples that you can copy and paste
|
|
into your LISP REPL.
|
|
|
|
You can run the C implementation as follows:
|
|
|
|
```sh
|
|
$ make
|
|
$ ./lisp
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
After running `make` you should see a `sectorlisp.bin` file, which is a
|
|
master boot record you can put on a flopy disk and boot from BIOS. If
|
|
you would prefer to run it in an emulator, we recommend using
|
|
[Das Blinkenlights](https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/).
|
|
|
|
```sh
|
|
curl --compressed https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/blinkenlights-latest.com >blinkenlights.com
|
|
chmod +x blinkenlights.com
|
|
./blinkenlights.com -rt sectorlisp.bin
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Alternatively you may use QEMU as follows:
|
|
|
|
```sh
|
|
qemu-system-i386 -nographic -fda sectorlisp.bin
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Further information may be found on [our wiki](https://github.com/jart/sectorlisp/wiki).
|
|
|
|
## Demo
|
|
|
|
<p align="center">
|
|
<a href="https://youtu.be/hvTHZ6E0Abo">
|
|
<img alt="booting sectorlisp in emulator"
|
|
width="960" height="540" src="bin/sectorlisp.gif"></a>
|
|
</p>
|
|
|
|
The video above demonstrates how to boot sectorlisp in the blinkenlights
|
|
emulator, to bootstrap the meta-circular evaluator, which evaluates a
|
|
program for finding the first element in a tree.
|
|
|
|
You can [watch the full demo on YouTube](https://youtu.be/hvTHZ6E0Abo).
|