GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation
This file documents the GNU Emacs Common Lisp emulation package.
Copyright © 1993, 2001–2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual”, and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.
(a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and modify this GNU manual.”
Table of Contents
- 1 Overview
- 2 Program Structure
- 3 Predicates
- 4 Control Structure
- 5 Macros
- 6 Declarations
- 7 Symbols
- 8 Numbers
- 9 Sequences
- 10 Lists
- 11 Structures
- 12 Assertions and Errors
- Appendix A Efficiency Concerns
- Appendix B Common Lisp Compatibility
- Appendix C Porting Common Lisp
- Appendix D Obsolete Features
- Appendix E GNU Free Documentation License
- Function Index
- Variable Index
- Concept Index
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1 Overview
This document describes a set of Emacs Lisp facilities borrowed from Common Lisp. All the facilities are described here in detail. While this document does not assume any prior knowledge of Common Lisp, it does assume a basic familiarity with Emacs Lisp.
Common Lisp is a huge language, and Common Lisp systems tend to be massive and extremely complex. Emacs Lisp, by contrast, is rather minimalist in the choice of Lisp features it offers the programmer. As Emacs Lisp programmers have grown in number, and the applications they write have grown more ambitious, it has become clear that Emacs Lisp could benefit from many of the conveniences of Common Lisp.
The CL package adds a number of Common Lisp functions and control structures to Emacs Lisp. While not a 100% complete implementation of Common Lisp, it adds enough functionality to make Emacs Lisp programming significantly more convenient.
Some Common Lisp features have been omitted from this package for various reasons:
- Some features are too complex or bulky relative to their benefit to Emacs Lisp programmers. CLOS and Common Lisp streams are fine examples of this group. (The separate package EIEIO implements a subset of CLOS functionality. See Introduction in EIEIO.)
- Other features cannot be implemented without modification to the Emacs Lisp interpreter itself, such as multiple return values, case-insensitive symbols, and complex numbers. This package generally makes no attempt to emulate these features.
This package was originally written by Dave Gillespie, daveg@synaptics.com, as a total rewrite of an earlier 1986 cl.el package by Cesar Quiroz. Care has been taken to ensure that each function is defined efficiently, concisely, and with minimal impact on the rest of the Emacs environment. Stefan Monnier added the file cl-lib.el and rationalized the namespace for Emacs 24.3.
Next: Organization, Up: Overview [Contents][Index]
1.1 Usage
This package is distributed with Emacs, so there is no need to install any additional files in order to start using it. Lisp code that uses features from this package should simply include at the beginning:
(require 'cl-lib)
You may wish to add such a statement to your init file, if you make frequent use of features from this package.
Code that only uses macros from this package can enclose the above in
eval-when-compile
. Internally, this library is divided into
several files, see Organization. Your code should only ever load
the main cl-lib file, which will load the others as needed.
Next: Naming Conventions, Previous: Usage, Up: Overview [Contents][Index]
1.2 Organization
The Common Lisp package is organized into four main files:
- cl-lib.el
This is the main file, which contains basic functions and information about the package. This file is relatively compact.
- cl-extra.el
This file contains the larger, more complex or unusual functions. It is kept separate so that packages which only want to use Common Lisp fundamentals like the
cl-incf
function won’t need to pay the overhead of loading the more advanced functions.- cl-seq.el
This file contains most of the advanced functions for operating on sequences or lists, such as
cl-delete-if
andcl-assoc
.- cl-macs.el
This file contains the features that are macros instead of functions. Macros expand when the caller is compiled, not when it is run, so the macros generally only need to be present when the byte-compiler is running (or when the macros are used in uncompiled code). Most of the macros of this package are isolated in cl-macs.el so that they won’t take up memory unless you are compiling.
The file cl-lib.el includes all necessary autoload
commands for the functions and macros in the other three files.
All you have to do is (require 'cl-lib)
, and cl-lib.el
will take care of pulling in the other files when they are
needed.
There is another file, cl.el, which was the main entry point to
this package prior to Emacs 24.3. Nowadays, it is replaced by
cl-lib.el. The two provide the same features (in most cases),
but use different function names (in fact, cl.el mainly just
defines aliases to the cl-lib.el definitions). Where
cl-lib.el defines a function called, for example,
cl-incf
, cl.el uses the same name but without the
‘cl-’ prefix, e.g., incf
in this example. There are a few
exceptions to this. First, functions such as cl-defun
where
the unprefixed version was already used for a standard Emacs Lisp
function. In such cases, the cl.el version adds a ‘*’
suffix, e.g., defun*
. Second, there are some obsolete features
that are only implemented in cl.el, not in cl-lib.el,
because they are replaced by other standard Emacs Lisp features.
Finally, in a very few cases the old cl.el versions do not
behave in exactly the same way as the cl-lib.el versions.
See Obsolete Features.
The old file cl.el, as well as the even older cl-compat.el, are deprecated and will be removed in a future version of Emacs. Any existing code that uses them should be updated to use cl-lib.el instead.
Previous: Organization, Up: Overview [Contents][Index]
1.3 Naming Conventions
Except where noted, all functions defined by this package have the same calling conventions as their Common Lisp counterparts, and names that are those of Common Lisp plus a ‘cl-’ prefix.
Internal function and variable names in the package are prefixed
by cl--
. Here is a complete list of functions prefixed by
cl-
that were not taken from Common Lisp:
cl-callf cl-callf2 cl-defsubst cl-letf cl-letf*
The following simple functions and macros are defined in cl-lib.el; they do not cause other components like cl-extra to be loaded.
cl-evenp cl-oddp cl-minusp cl-plusp cl-endp cl-subst cl-copy-list cl-list* cl-ldiff cl-rest cl-decf [1] cl-incf [1] cl-acons cl-adjoin [2] cl-pairlis cl-pushnew [1,2] cl-declaim cl-proclaim cl-caaar…cl-cddddr cl-first…cl-tenth cl-mapcar [3]
[1] Only when place is a plain variable name.
[2] Only if :test
is eq
, equal
, or unspecified,
and :key
is not used.
[3] Only for one sequence argument or two list arguments.
Next: Predicates, Previous: Overview, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
2 Program Structure
This section describes features of this package that have to
do with programs as a whole: advanced argument lists for functions,
and the cl-eval-when
construct.
Next: Time of Evaluation, Up: Program Structure [Contents][Index]
2.1 Argument Lists
Emacs Lisp’s notation for argument lists of functions is a subset of
the Common Lisp notation. As well as the familiar &optional
and &rest
markers, Common Lisp allows you to specify default
values for optional arguments, and it provides the additional markers
&key
and &aux
.
Since argument parsing is built-in to Emacs, there is no way for this package to implement Common Lisp argument lists seamlessly. Instead, this package defines alternates for several Lisp forms which you must use if you need Common Lisp argument lists.
- Macro: cl-defun name arglist body… ¶
This form is identical to the regular
defun
form, except that arglist is allowed to be a full Common Lisp argument list. Also, the function body is enclosed in an implicit block called name; see Blocks and Exits.
- Macro: cl-iter-defun name arglist body… ¶
This form is identical to the regular
iter-defun
form, except that arglist is allowed to be a full Common Lisp argument list. Also, the function body is enclosed in an implicit block called name; see Blocks and Exits.
- Macro: cl-defsubst name arglist body… ¶
This is just like
cl-defun
, except that the function that is defined is automatically proclaimedinline
, i.e., calls to it may be expanded into in-line code by the byte compiler. This is analogous to thedefsubst
form;cl-defsubst
uses a different method (compiler macros) which works in all versions of Emacs, and also generates somewhat more efficient inline expansions. In particular,cl-defsubst
arranges for the processing of keyword arguments, default values, etc., to be done at compile-time whenever possible.
- Macro: cl-defmacro name arglist body… ¶
This is identical to the regular
defmacro
form, except that arglist is allowed to be a full Common Lisp argument list. The&environment
keyword is supported as described in Steele’s book Common Lisp, the Language. The&whole
keyword is supported only within destructured lists (see below); top-level&whole
cannot be implemented with the current Emacs Lisp interpreter. The macro expander body is enclosed in an implicit block called name.
- Macro: cl-function symbol-or-lambda ¶
This is identical to the regular
function
form, except that if the argument is alambda
form then that form may use a full Common Lisp argument list.
Also, all forms (such as cl-flet
and cl-labels
) defined
in this package that include arglists in their syntax allow
full Common Lisp argument lists.
Note that it is not necessary to use cl-defun
in
order to have access to most CL features in your function.
These features are always present; cl-defun
’s only
difference from defun
is its more flexible argument
lists and its implicit block.
The full form of a Common Lisp argument list is
(var… &optional (var initform svar)… &rest var &key ((keyword var) initform svar)… &aux (var initform)…)
Each of the five argument list sections is optional. The svar, initform, and keyword parts are optional; if they are omitted, then ‘(var)’ may be written simply ‘var’.
The first section consists of zero or more required arguments. These arguments must always be specified in a call to the function; there is no difference between Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp as far as required arguments are concerned.
The second section consists of optional arguments. These
arguments may be specified in the function call; if they are not,
initform specifies the default value used for the argument.
(No initform means to use nil
as the default.) The
initform is evaluated with the bindings for the preceding
arguments already established; (a &optional (b (1+ a)))
matches one or two arguments, with the second argument defaulting
to one plus the first argument. If the svar is specified,
it is an auxiliary variable which is bound to t
if the optional
argument was specified, or to nil
if the argument was omitted.
If you don’t use an svar, then there will be no way for your
function to tell whether it was called with no argument, or with
the default value passed explicitly as an argument.
The third section consists of a single rest argument. If
more arguments were passed to the function than are accounted for
by the required and optional arguments, those extra arguments are
collected into a list and bound to the “rest” argument variable.
Common Lisp’s &rest
is equivalent to that of Emacs Lisp.
Common Lisp accepts &body
as a synonym for &rest
in
macro contexts; this package accepts it all the time.
The fourth section consists of keyword arguments. These are optional arguments which are specified by name rather than positionally in the argument list. For example,
(cl-defun foo (a &optional b &key c d (e 17)))
defines a function which may be called with one, two, or more
arguments. The first two arguments are bound to a
and
b
in the usual way. The remaining arguments must be
pairs of the form :c
, :d
, or :e
followed
by the value to be bound to the corresponding argument variable.
(Symbols whose names begin with a colon are called keywords,
and they are self-quoting in the same way as nil
and
t
.)
For example, the call (foo 1 2 :d 3 :c 4)
sets the five
arguments to 1, 2, 4, 3, and 17, respectively. If the same keyword
appears more than once in the function call, the first occurrence
takes precedence over the later ones. Note that it is not possible
to specify keyword arguments without specifying the optional
argument b
as well, since (foo 1 :c 2)
would bind
b
to the keyword :c
, then signal an error because
2
is not a valid keyword.
You can also explicitly specify the keyword argument; it need not be simply the variable name prefixed with a colon. For example,
(cl-defun bar (&key (a 1) ((baz b) 4)))
specifies a keyword :a
that sets the variable a
with
default value 1, as well as a keyword baz
that sets the
variable b
with default value 4. In this case, because
baz
is not self-quoting, you must quote it explicitly in the
function call, like this:
(bar :a 10 'baz 42)
Ordinarily, it is an error to pass an unrecognized keyword to
a function, e.g., (foo 1 2 :c 3 :goober 4)
. You can ask
Lisp to ignore unrecognized keywords, either by adding the
marker &allow-other-keys
after the keyword section
of the argument list, or by specifying an :allow-other-keys
argument in the call whose value is non-nil
. If the
function uses both &rest
and &key
at the same time,
the “rest” argument is bound to the keyword list as it appears
in the call. For example:
(cl-defun find-thing (thing thing-list &rest rest &key need &allow-other-keys) (or (apply 'cl-member thing thing-list :allow-other-keys t rest) (if need (error "Thing not found"))))
This function takes a :need
keyword argument, but also
accepts other keyword arguments which are passed on to the
cl-member
function. allow-other-keys
is used to
keep both find-thing
and cl-member
from complaining
about each others’ keywords in the arguments.
The fifth section of the argument list consists of auxiliary
variables. These are not really arguments at all, but simply
variables which are bound to nil
or to the specified
initforms during execution of the function. There is no
difference between the following two functions, except for a
matter of stylistic taste:
(cl-defun foo (a b &aux (c (+ a b)) d) body) (cl-defun foo (a b) (let ((c (+ a b)) d) body))
Argument lists support destructuring. In Common Lisp,
destructuring is only allowed with defmacro
; this package
allows it with cl-defun
and other argument lists as well.
In destructuring, any argument variable (var in the above
example) can be replaced by a list of variables, or more generally,
a recursive argument list. The corresponding argument value must
be a list whose elements match this recursive argument list.
For example:
(cl-defmacro dolist ((var listform &optional resultform) &rest body) …)
This says that the first argument of dolist
must be a list
of two or three items; if there are other arguments as well as this
list, they are stored in body
. All features allowed in
regular argument lists are allowed in these recursive argument lists.
In addition, the clause ‘&whole var’ is allowed at the
front of a recursive argument list. It binds var to the
whole list being matched; thus (&whole all a b)
matches
a list of two things, with a
bound to the first thing,
b
bound to the second thing, and all
bound to the
list itself. (Common Lisp allows &whole
in top-level
defmacro
argument lists as well, but Emacs Lisp does not
support this usage.)
One last feature of destructuring is that the argument list may be
dotted, so that the argument list (a b . c)
is functionally
equivalent to (a b &rest c)
.
If the optimization quality safety
is set to 0
(see Declarations), error checking for wrong number of
arguments and invalid keyword arguments is disabled. By default,
argument lists are rigorously checked.
Previous: Argument Lists, Up: Program Structure [Contents][Index]
2.2 Time of Evaluation
Normally, the byte-compiler does not actually execute the forms in
a file it compiles. For example, if a file contains (setq foo t)
,
the act of compiling it will not actually set foo
to t
.
This is true even if the setq
was a top-level form (i.e., not
enclosed in a defun
or other form). Sometimes, though, you
would like to have certain top-level forms evaluated at compile-time.
For example, the compiler effectively evaluates defmacro
forms
at compile-time so that later parts of the file can refer to the
macros that are defined.
- Macro: cl-eval-when (situations…) forms… ¶
This form controls when the body forms are evaluated. The situations list may contain any set of the symbols
compile
,load
, andeval
(or their long-winded ANSI equivalents,:compile-toplevel
,:load-toplevel
, and:execute
).The
cl-eval-when
form is handled differently depending on whether or not it is being compiled as a top-level form. Specifically, it gets special treatment if it is being compiled by a command such asbyte-compile-file
which compiles files or buffers of code, and it appears either literally at the top level of the file or inside a top-levelprogn
.For compiled top-level
cl-eval-when
s, the body forms are executed at compile-time ifcompile
is in the situations list, and the forms are written out to the file (to be executed at load-time) ifload
is in the situations list.For non-compiled-top-level forms, only the
eval
situation is relevant. (This includes forms executed by the interpreter, forms compiled withbyte-compile
rather thanbyte-compile-file
, and non-top-level forms.) Thecl-eval-when
acts like aprogn
ifeval
is specified, and likenil
(ignoring the body forms) if not.The rules become more subtle when
cl-eval-when
s are nested; consult Steele (second edition) for the gruesome details (and some gruesome examples).Some simple examples:
;; Top-level forms in foo.el: (cl-eval-when (compile) (setq foo1 'bar)) (cl-eval-when (load) (setq foo2 'bar)) (cl-eval-when (compile load) (setq foo3 'bar)) (cl-eval-when (eval) (setq foo4 'bar)) (cl-eval-when (eval compile) (setq foo5 'bar)) (cl-eval-when (eval load) (setq foo6 'bar)) (cl-eval-when (eval compile load) (setq foo7 'bar))
When foo.el is compiled, these variables will be set during the compilation itself:
foo1 foo3 foo5 foo7 ; 'compile'
When foo.elc is loaded, these variables will be set:
foo2 foo3 foo6 foo7 ; 'load'
And if foo.el is loaded uncompiled, these variables will be set:
foo4 foo5 foo6 foo7 ; 'eval'
If these seven
cl-eval-when
s had been, say, inside adefun
, then the first three would have been equivalent tonil
and the last four would have been equivalent to the correspondingsetq
s.Note that
(cl-eval-when (load eval) …)
is equivalent to(progn …)
in all contexts. The compiler treats certain top-level forms, likedefmacro
(sort-of) andrequire
, as if they were wrapped in(cl-eval-when (compile load eval) …)
.
Emacs includes two special forms related to cl-eval-when
.
See Eval During Compile in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
One of these, eval-when-compile
, is not quite equivalent to
any cl-eval-when
construct and is described below.
The other form, (eval-and-compile …)
, is exactly
equivalent to ‘(cl-eval-when (compile load eval) …)’.
- Macro: eval-when-compile forms… ¶
The forms are evaluated at compile-time; at execution time, this form acts like a quoted constant of the resulting value. Used at top-level,
eval-when-compile
is just like ‘eval-when (compile eval)’. In other contexts,eval-when-compile
allows code to be evaluated once at compile-time for efficiency or other reasons.This form is similar to the ‘#.’ syntax of true Common Lisp.
- Macro: cl-load-time-value form ¶
The form is evaluated at load-time; at execution time, this form acts like a quoted constant of the resulting value.
Early Common Lisp had a ‘#,’ syntax that was similar to this, but ANSI Common Lisp replaced it with
load-time-value
and gave it more well-defined semantics.In a compiled file,
cl-load-time-value
arranges for form to be evaluated when the .elc file is loaded and then used as if it were a quoted constant. In code compiled bybyte-compile
rather thanbyte-compile-file
, the effect is identical toeval-when-compile
. In uncompiled code, botheval-when-compile
andcl-load-time-value
act exactly likeprogn
.(defun report () (insert "This function was executed on: " (current-time-string) ", compiled on: " (eval-when-compile (current-time-string)) ;; or '#.(current-time-string) in real Common Lisp ", and loaded on: " (cl-load-time-value (current-time-string))))
Byte-compiled, the above defun will result in the following code (or its compiled equivalent, of course) in the .elc file:
(setq --temp-- (current-time-string)) (defun report () (insert "This function was executed on: " (current-time-string) ", compiled on: " '"Wed Oct 31 16:32:28 2012" ", and loaded on: " --temp--))
Next: Control Structure, Previous: Program Structure, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
3 Predicates
This section describes functions for testing whether various facts are true or false.
Next: Equality Predicates, Up: Predicates [Contents][Index]
3.1 Type Predicates
- Function: cl-typep object type ¶
Check if object is of type type, where type is a (quoted) type name of the sort used by Common Lisp. For example,
(cl-typep foo 'integer)
is equivalent to(integerp foo)
.
The type argument to the above function is either a symbol or a list beginning with a symbol.
- If the type name is a symbol, Emacs appends ‘-p’ to the symbol name to form the name of a predicate function for testing the type. (Built-in predicates whose names end in ‘p’ rather than ‘-p’ are used when appropriate.)
- The type symbol
t
stands for the union of all types.(cl-typep object t)
is always true. Likewise, the type symbolnil
stands for nothing at all, and(cl-typep object nil)
is always false. - The type symbol
null
represents the symbolnil
. Thus(cl-typep object 'null)
is equivalent to(null object)
. - The type symbol
atom
represents all objects that are not cons cells. Thus(cl-typep object 'atom)
is equivalent to(atom object)
. - The type symbol
real
is a synonym fornumber
, andfixnum
is a synonym forinteger
. - The type symbols
character
andstring-char
match integers in the range from 0 to 255. - The type list
(integer low high)
represents all integers between low and high, inclusive. Either bound may be a list of a single integer to specify an exclusive limit, or a*
to specify no limit. The type(integer * *)
is thus equivalent tointeger
. - Likewise, lists beginning with
float
,real
, ornumber
represent numbers of that type falling in a particular range. - Lists beginning with
and
,or
, andnot
form combinations of types. For example,(or integer (float 0 *))
represents all objects that are integers or non-negative floats. - Lists beginning with
member
orcl-member
represent objectseql
to any of the following values. For example,(member 1 2 3 4)
is equivalent to(integer 1 4)
, and(member nil)
is equivalent tonull
. - Lists of the form
(satisfies predicate)
represent all objects for which predicate returns true when called with that object as an argument.
The following function and macro (not technically predicates) are
related to cl-typep
.
- Function: cl-coerce object type ¶
This function attempts to convert object to the specified type. If object is already of that type as determined by
cl-typep
, it is simply returned. Otherwise, certain types of conversions will be made: If type is any sequence type (string
,list
, etc.) then object will be converted to that type if possible. If type ischaracter
, then strings of length one and symbols with one-character names can be coerced. If type isfloat
, then integers can be coerced in versions of Emacs that support floats. In all other circumstances,cl-coerce
signals an error.
- Macro: cl-deftype name arglist forms… ¶
This macro defines a new type called name. It is similar to
defmacro
in many ways; when name is encountered as a type name, the body forms are evaluated and should return a type specifier that is equivalent to the type. The arglist is a Common Lisp argument list of the sort accepted bycl-defmacro
. The type specifier ‘(name args…)’ is expanded by calling the expander with those arguments; the type symbol ‘name’ is expanded by calling the expander with no arguments. The arglist is processed the same as forcl-defmacro
except that optional arguments without explicit defaults use*
instead ofnil
as the “default” default. Some examples:(cl-deftype null () '(satisfies null)) ; predefined (cl-deftype list () '(or null cons)) ; predefined (cl-deftype unsigned-byte (&optional bits) (list 'integer 0 (if (eq bits '*) bits (1- (ash 1 bits))))) (unsigned-byte 8) ≡ (integer 0 255) (unsigned-byte) ≡ (integer 0 *) unsigned-byte ≡ (integer 0 *)
The last example shows how the Common Lisp
unsigned-byte
type specifier could be implemented if desired; this package does not implementunsigned-byte
by default.
The cl-typecase
(see Conditionals) and cl-check-type
(see Assertions and Errors) macros also use type names. The cl-map
,
cl-concatenate
, and cl-merge
functions take type-name
arguments to specify the type of sequence to return. See Sequences.
Previous: Type Predicates, Up: Predicates [Contents][Index]
3.2 Equality Predicates
This package defines the Common Lisp predicate cl-equalp
.
- Function: cl-equalp a b ¶
This function is a more flexible version of
equal
. In particular, it compares strings case-insensitively, and it compares numbers without regard to type (so that(cl-equalp 3 3.0)
is true). Vectors and conses are compared recursively. All other objects are compared as if byequal
.This function differs from Common Lisp
equalp
in several respects. First, Common Lisp’sequalp
also compares characters case-insensitively, which would be impractical in this package since Emacs does not distinguish between integers and characters. In keeping with the idea that strings are less vector-like in Emacs Lisp, this package’scl-equalp
also will not compare strings against vectors of integers.
Also note that the Common Lisp functions member
and assoc
use eql
to compare elements, whereas Emacs Lisp follows the
MacLisp tradition and uses equal
for these two functions.
The functions cl-member
and cl-assoc
use eql
,
as in Common Lisp. The standard Emacs Lisp functions memq
and
assq
use eq
, and the standard memql
uses eql
.
Next: Macros, Previous: Predicates, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
4 Control Structure
The features described in the following sections implement
various advanced control structures, including extensions to the
standard setf
facility, and a number of looping and conditional
constructs.
- Assignment
- Generalized Variables
- Variable Bindings
- Conditionals
- Blocks and Exits
- Iteration
- Loop Facility
- Multiple Values
- Macro-Writing Macros
Next: Generalized Variables, Up: Control Structure [Contents][Index]
4.1 Assignment
The cl-psetq
form is just like setq
, except that multiple
assignments are done in parallel rather than sequentially.
- Macro: cl-psetq [symbol form]… ¶
This special form (actually a macro) is used to assign to several variables simultaneously. Given only one symbol and form, it has the same effect as
setq
. Given several symbol and form pairs, it evaluates all the forms in advance and then stores the corresponding variables afterwards.(setq x 2 y 3) (setq x (+ x y) y (* x y)) x ⇒ 5 y ;
y
was computed afterx
was set. ⇒ 15 (setq x 2 y 3) (cl-psetq x (+ x y) y (* x y)) x ⇒ 5 y ;y
was computed beforex
was set. ⇒ 6The simplest use of
cl-psetq
is(cl-psetq x y y x)
, which exchanges the values of two variables. (Thecl-rotatef
form provides an even more convenient way to swap two variables; see Modify Macros.)cl-psetq
always returnsnil
.
Next: Variable Bindings, Previous: Assignment, Up: Control Structure [Contents][Index]
4.2 Generalized Variables
A generalized variable or place form is one of the many places in Lisp memory where values can be stored. The simplest place form is a regular Lisp variable. But the CARs and CDRs of lists, elements of arrays, properties of symbols, and many other locations are also places where Lisp values are stored. For basic information, see Generalized Variables in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. This package provides several additional features related to generalized variables.
Next: Modify Macros, Up: Generalized Variables [Contents][Index]
4.2.1 Setf Extensions
Several standard (e.g., car
) and Emacs-specific
(e.g., window-point
) Lisp functions are setf
-able by default.
This package defines setf
handlers for several additional functions:
- Functions from this package:
cl-rest cl-subseq cl-get cl-getf cl-caaar…cl-cddddr cl-first…cl-tenth
Note that for
cl-getf
(as fornthcdr
), the list argument of the function must itself be a valid place form. - A macro call, in which case the macro is expanded and
setf
is applied to the resulting form.
The setf
macro takes care to evaluate all subforms in
the proper left-to-right order; for example,
(setf (aref vec (cl-incf i)) i)
looks like it will evaluate (cl-incf i)
exactly once, before the
following access to i
; the setf
expander will insert
temporary variables as necessary to ensure that it does in fact work
this way no matter what setf-method is defined for aref
.
(In this case, aset
would be used and no such steps would
be necessary since aset
takes its arguments in a convenient
order.)
However, if the place form is a macro which explicitly evaluates its arguments in an unusual order, this unusual order will be preserved. Adapting an example from Steele, given
(defmacro wrong-order (x y) (list 'aref y x))
the form (setf (wrong-order a b) 17)
will
evaluate b first, then a, just as in an actual call
to wrong-order
.
Previous: Setf Extensions, Up: Generalized Variables [Contents][Index]
4.2.2 Modify Macros
This package defines a number of macros that operate on generalized variables. Many are interesting and useful even when the place is just a variable name.
- Macro: cl-psetf [place form]… ¶
This macro is to
setf
whatcl-psetq
is tosetq
: When several places and forms are involved, the assignments take place in parallel rather than sequentially. Specifically, all subforms are evaluated from left to right, then all the assignments are done (in an undefined order).
- Macro: cl-incf place &optional x ¶
This macro increments the number stored in place by one, or by x if specified. The incremented value is returned. For example,
(cl-incf i)
is equivalent to(setq i (1+ i))
, and(cl-incf (car x) 2)
is equivalent to(setcar x (+ (car x) 2))
.As with
setf
, care is taken to preserve the “apparent” order of evaluation. For example,(cl-incf (aref vec (cl-incf i)))
appears to increment
i
once, then increment the element ofvec
addressed byi
; this is indeed exactly what it does, which means the above form is not equivalent to the “obvious” expansion,(setf (aref vec (cl-incf i)) (1+ (aref vec (cl-incf i)))) ; wrong!
but rather to something more like
(let ((temp (cl-incf i))) (setf (aref vec temp) (1+ (aref vec temp))))
Again, all of this is taken care of automatically by
cl-incf
and the other generalized-variable macros.As a more Emacs-specific example of
cl-incf
, the expression(cl-incf (point) n)
is essentially equivalent to(forward-char n)
.
- Macro: cl-decf place &optional x ¶
This macro decrements the number stored in place by one, or by x if specified.
- Macro: cl-pushnew x place &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This macro inserts x at the front of the list stored in place, but only if x isn’t present in the list already. The optional keyword arguments are interpreted in the same way as for
cl-adjoin
. See Lists as Sets.
- Macro: cl-shiftf place… newvalue ¶
This macro shifts the places left by one, shifting in the value of newvalue (which may be any Lisp expression, not just a generalized variable), and returning the value shifted out of the first place. Thus,
(cl-shiftf a b c d)
is equivalent to(prog1 a (cl-psetf a b b c c d))
except that the subforms of a, b, and c are actually evaluated only once each and in the apparent order.
- Macro: cl-rotatef place… ¶
This macro rotates the places left by one in circular fashion. Thus,
(cl-rotatef a b c d)
is equivalent to(cl-psetf a b b c c d d a)
except for the evaluation of subforms.
cl-rotatef
always returnsnil
. Note that(cl-rotatef a b)
conveniently exchanges a and b.
The following macros were invented for this package; they have no analogues in Common Lisp.
- Macro: cl-letf (bindings…) forms… ¶
This macro is analogous to
let
, but for generalized variables rather than just symbols. Each binding should be of the form(place value)
; the original contents of the places are saved, the values are stored in them, and then the body forms are executed. Afterwards, the places are set back to their original saved contents. This cleanup happens even if the forms exit irregularly due to athrow
or an error.For example,
(cl-letf (((point) (point-min)) (a 17)) …)
moves point in the current buffer to the beginning of the buffer, and also binds
a
to 17 (as if by a normallet
, sincea
is just a regular variable). After the body exits,a
is set back to its original value and point is moved back to its original position.Note that
cl-letf
on(point)
is not quite like asave-excursion
, as the latter effectively saves a marker which tracks insertions and deletions in the buffer. Actually, acl-letf
of(point-marker)
is much closer to this behavior. (point
andpoint-marker
are equivalent assetf
places; each will accept either an integer or a marker as the stored value.)Like in the case of
let
, the value forms are evaluated in the order they appear, but the order of bindings is unspecified. Therefore, avoid binding the same place more than once in a singlecl-letf
form.Since generalized variables look like lists,
let
’s shorthand of using ‘foo’ for ‘(foo nil)’ as a binding would be ambiguous incl-letf
and is not allowed.However, a binding specifier may be a one-element list ‘(place)’, which is similar to ‘(place place)’. In other words, the place is not disturbed on entry to the body, and the only effect of the
cl-letf
is to restore the original value of place afterwards.Note that in this case, and in fact almost every case, place must have a well-defined value outside the
cl-letf
body. There is essentially only one exception to this, which is place a plain variable with a specified value (such as(a 17)
in the above example).
- Macro: cl-letf* (bindings…) forms… ¶
This macro is to
cl-letf
whatlet*
is tolet
: It does the bindings in sequential rather than parallel order.
- Macro: cl-callf function place args… ¶
This is the “generic” modify macro. It calls function, which should be an unquoted function name, macro name, or lambda. It passes place and args as arguments, and assigns the result back to place. For example,
(cl-incf place n)
is the same as(cl-callf + place n)
. Some more examples:(cl-callf abs my-number) (cl-callf concat (buffer-name) "<" (number-to-string n) ">") (cl-callf cl-union happy-people (list joe bob) :test 'same-person)
Note again that
cl-callf
is an extension to standard Common Lisp.
- Macro: cl-callf2 function arg1 place args… ¶
This macro is like
cl-callf
, except that place is the second argument of function rather than the first. For example,(push x place)
is equivalent to(cl-callf2 cons x place)
.
The cl-callf
and cl-callf2
macros serve as building
blocks for other macros like cl-incf
, and cl-pushnew
.
The cl-letf
and cl-letf*
macros are used in the processing
of symbol macros; see Macro Bindings.
- Macro: with-memoization place code… ¶
This macro provides a simple way to do memoization. code is evaluated and then stashed in place. If place’s value is non-
nil
, return that value instead of evaluating code.
Next: Conditionals, Previous: Generalized Variables, Up: Control Structure [Contents][Index]
4.3 Variable Bindings
These Lisp forms make bindings to variables and function names,
analogous to Lisp’s built-in let
form.
See Modify Macros, for the cl-letf
and cl-letf*
forms which
are also related to variable bindings.
Next: Function Bindings, Up: Variable Bindings [Contents][Index]
4.3.1 Dynamic Bindings
The standard let
form binds variables whose names are known
at compile-time. The cl-progv
form provides an easy way to
bind variables whose names are computed at run-time.
- Macro: cl-progv symbols values forms… ¶
This form establishes
let
-style variable bindings on a set of variables computed at run-time. The expressions symbols and values are evaluated, and must return lists of symbols and values, respectively. The symbols are bound to the corresponding values for the duration of the body forms. If values is shorter than symbols, the last few symbols are bound tonil
. If symbols is shorter than values, the excess values are ignored.
Next: Macro Bindings, Previous: Dynamic Bindings, Up: Variable Bindings [Contents][Index]
4.3.2 Function Bindings
These forms make let
-like bindings to functions instead
of variables.
- Macro: cl-flet (bindings…) forms… ¶
This form establishes
let
-style bindings for functions rather than values. Each binding must be a list of one of two forms: either(name expr)
or(name arglist body…)
. The name is the name of the function, expr is an expression which returns the function value to which the corresponding name should be bound, and arglist and body are the argument list and the body of the function to bind to name. Within forms, any reference to the function name uses the local definition provided by bindings instead of the global one.A “reference” to a function name is either a call to that function, or a use of its name quoted by
function
to be passed on to, say,mapcar
.The bindings are lexical in scope. This means that all references to the named functions must appear physically within forms.
Functions defined by
cl-flet
may use the full Common Lisp argument notation supported bycl-defun
; also, the function body is enclosed in an implicit block as if bycl-defun
. See Program Structure.Note that the cl.el version of this macro behaves slightly differently. In particular, its binding is dynamic rather than lexical. See Obsolete Macros.
- Macro: cl-labels (bindings…) forms… ¶
The
cl-labels
form is likecl-flet
, except that the function bindings can be recursive. The scoping is lexical, but you can only capture functions in closures iflexical-binding
ist
. See Closures in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, and Using Lexical Binding in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.Lexical scoping means that all references to the named functions must appear physically within the body of the
cl-labels
form. References may appear both in the body forms ofcl-labels
itself, and in the bodies of the functions themselves. Thus,cl-labels
can define local recursive functions, or mutually-recursive sets of functions.Note that the cl.el version of this macro behaves slightly differently. See Obsolete Macros.
Previous: Function Bindings, Up: Variable Bindings [Contents][Index]
4.3.3 Macro Bindings
These forms create local macros and “symbol macros”.
- Macro: cl-macrolet (bindings…) forms… ¶
This form is analogous to
cl-flet
, but for macros instead of functions. Each binding is a list of the same form as the arguments tocl-defmacro
(i.e., a macro name, argument list, and macro-expander forms). The macro is defined accordingly for use within the body of thecl-macrolet
.Because of the nature of macros,
cl-macrolet
is always lexically scoped. Thecl-macrolet
binding will affect only calls that appear physically within the body forms, possibly after expansion of other macros in the body. Calls ofcl-macrolet
bound macros are expanded in the global environment.
- Macro: cl-symbol-macrolet (bindings…) forms… ¶
This form creates symbol macros, which are macros that look like variable references rather than function calls. Each binding is a list ‘(var expansion)’; any reference to var within the body forms is replaced by expansion.
(setq bar '(5 . 9)) (cl-symbol-macrolet ((foo (car bar))) (cl-incf foo)) bar ⇒ (6 . 9)
A
setq
of a symbol macro is treated the same as asetf
. I.e.,(setq foo 4)
in the above would be equivalent to(setf foo 4)
, which in turn expands to(setf (car bar) 4)
. Alet
(orlet*
,lambda
, ...) binding of the same symbol will locally shadow the symbol macro as is the case in Common Lisp.There is no analogue of
defmacro
for symbol macros; all symbol macros are local. A typical use ofcl-symbol-macrolet
is in the expansion of another macro:(cl-defmacro my-dolist ((x list) &rest body) (let ((var (cl-gensym))) (list 'cl-loop 'for var 'on list 'do (cl-list* 'cl-symbol-macrolet (list (list x (list 'car var))) body)))) (setq mylist '(1 2 3 4)) (my-dolist (x mylist) (cl-incf x)) mylist ⇒ (2 3 4 5)
In this example, the
my-dolist
macro is similar todolist
(see Iteration) except that the variablex
becomes a true reference onto the elements of the list. Themy-dolist
call shown here expands to(cl-loop for G1234 on mylist do (cl-symbol-macrolet ((x (car G1234))) (cl-incf x)))
which in turn expands to
(cl-loop for G1234 on mylist do (cl-incf (car G1234)))
See Loop Facility, for a description of the
cl-loop
macro. This package defines a nonstandardin-ref
loop clause that works much likemy-dolist
.
Next: Blocks and Exits, Previous: Variable Bindings, Up: Control Structure [Contents][Index]
4.4 Conditionals
These conditional forms augment Emacs Lisp’s simple if
,
and
, or
, and cond
forms.
- Macro: cl-case keyform clause… ¶
This macro evaluates keyform, then compares it with the key values listed in the various clauses. Whichever clause matches the key is executed; comparison is done by
eql
. If no clause matches, thecl-case
form returnsnil
. The clauses are of the form(keylist body-forms…)
where keylist is a list of key values. If there is exactly one value, and it is not a cons cell or the symbol
nil
ort
, then it can be used by itself as a keylist without being enclosed in a list. All key values in thecl-case
form must be distinct. The final clauses may uset
in place of a keylist to indicate a default clause that should be taken if none of the other clauses match. (The symbolotherwise
is also recognized in place oft
. To make a clause that matches the actual symbolt
,nil
, orotherwise
, enclose the symbol in a list.)For example, this expression reads a keystroke, then does one of four things depending on whether it is an ‘a’, a ‘b’, a RET or C-j, or anything else.
(cl-case (read-char) (?a (do-a-thing)) (?b (do-b-thing)) ((?\r ?\n) (do-ret-thing)) (t (do-other-thing)))
- Macro: cl-ecase keyform clause… ¶
This macro is just like
cl-case
, except that if the key does not match any of the clauses, an error is signaled rather than simply returningnil
.
- Macro: cl-typecase keyform clause… ¶
This macro is a version of
cl-case
that checks for types rather than values. Each clause is of the form ‘(type body…)’. See Type Predicates, for a description of type specifiers. For example,(cl-typecase x (integer (munch-integer x)) (float (munch-float x)) (string (munch-integer (string-to-number x))) (t (munch-anything x)))
The type specifier
t
matches any type of object; the wordotherwise
is also allowed. To make one clause match any of several types, use an(or …)
type specifier.
- Macro: cl-etypecase keyform clause… ¶
This macro is just like
cl-typecase
, except that if the key does not match any of the clauses, an error is signaled rather than simply returningnil
.
Next: Iteration, Previous: Conditionals, Up: Control Structure [Contents][Index]
4.5 Blocks and Exits
Common Lisp blocks provide a non-local exit mechanism very
similar to catch
and throw
, with lexical scoping.
This package actually implements cl-block
in terms of catch
; however, the lexical scoping allows the
byte-compiler to omit the costly catch
step if the
body of the block does not actually cl-return-from
the block.
- Macro: cl-block name forms… ¶
The forms are evaluated as if by a
progn
. However, if any of the forms execute(cl-return-from name)
, they will jump out and return directly from thecl-block
form. Thecl-block
returns the result of the last form unless acl-return-from
occurs.The
cl-block
/cl-return-from
mechanism is quite similar to thecatch
/throw
mechanism. The main differences are that block names are unevaluated symbols, rather than forms (such as quoted symbols) that evaluate to a tag at run-time; and also that blocks are always lexically scoped. In a dynamically scopedcatch
, functions called from thecatch
body can alsothrow
to thecatch
. This is not an option forcl-block
, where thecl-return-from
referring to a block name must appear physically within the forms that make up the body of the block. They may not appear within other called functions, although they may appear within macro expansions orlambda
s in the body. Block names andcatch
names form independent name-spaces.In true Common Lisp,
defun
anddefmacro
surround the function or expander bodies with implicit blocks with the same name as the function or macro. This does not occur in Emacs Lisp, but this package providescl-defun
andcl-defmacro
forms, which do create the implicit block.The Common Lisp looping constructs defined by this package, such as
cl-loop
andcl-dolist
, also create implicit blocks just as in Common Lisp.Because they are implemented in terms of Emacs Lisp’s
catch
andthrow
, blocks have the same overhead as actualcatch
constructs (roughly two function calls). However, the byte compiler will optimize away thecatch
if the block does not in fact contain anycl-return
orcl-return-from
calls that jump to it. This means thatcl-do
loops andcl-defun
functions that don’t usecl-return
don’t pay the overhead to support it.
- Macro: cl-return-from name [result] ¶
This macro returns from the block named name, which must be an (unevaluated) symbol. If a result form is specified, it is evaluated to produce the result returned from the
block
. Otherwise,nil
is returned.
- Macro: cl-return [result] ¶
This macro is exactly like
(cl-return-from nil result)
. Common Lisp loops likecl-do
andcl-dolist
implicitly enclose themselves innil
blocks.
- Macro: cl-tagbody &rest labels-or-statements ¶
This macro executes statements while allowing for control transfer to user-defined labels. Each element of labels-or-statements can be either a label (an integer or a symbol), or a cons-cell (a statement). This distinction is made before macroexpansion. Statements are executed in sequence, discarding any return value. Any statement can transfer control at any time to the statements that follow one of the labels with the special form
(go label)
. Labels have lexical scope and dynamic extent.
Next: Loop Facility, Previous: Blocks and Exits, Up: Control Structure [Contents][Index]
4.6 Iteration
The macros described here provide more sophisticated, high-level looping constructs to complement Emacs Lisp’s basic loop forms (see Iteration in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
- Macro: cl-loop forms… ¶
This package supports both the simple, old-style meaning of
loop
and the extremely powerful and flexible feature known as the Loop Facility or Loop Macro. This more advanced facility is discussed in the following section; see Loop Facility. The simple form ofloop
is described here.If
cl-loop
is followed by zero or more Lisp expressions, then(cl-loop exprs…)
simply creates an infinite loop executing the expressions over and over. The loop is enclosed in an implicitnil
block. Thus,(cl-loop (foo) (if (no-more) (return 72)) (bar))
is exactly equivalent to
(cl-block nil (while t (foo) (if (no-more) (return 72)) (bar)))
If any of the expressions are plain symbols, the loop is instead interpreted as a Loop Macro specification as described later. (This is not a restriction in practice, since a plain symbol in the above notation would simply access and throw away the value of a variable.)
- Macro: cl-do (spec…) (end-test [result…]) forms… ¶
This macro creates a general iterative loop. Each spec is of the form
(var [init [step]])
The loop works as follows: First, each var is bound to the associated init value as if by a
let
form. Then, in each iteration of the loop, the end-test is evaluated; if true, the loop is finished. Otherwise, the body forms are evaluated, then each var is set to the associated step expression (as if by acl-psetq
form) and the next iteration begins. Once the end-test becomes true, the result forms are evaluated (with the vars still bound to their values) to produce the result returned bycl-do
.The entire
cl-do
loop is enclosed in an implicitnil
block, so that you can use(cl-return)
to break out of the loop at any time.If there are no result forms, the loop returns
nil
. If a given var has no step form, it is bound to its init value but not otherwise modified during thecl-do
loop (unless the code explicitly modifies it); this case is just a shorthand for putting a(let ((var init)) …)
around the loop. If init is also omitted it defaults tonil
, and in this case a plain ‘var’ can be used in place of ‘(var)’, again following the analogy withlet
.This example (from Steele) illustrates a loop that applies the function
f
to successive pairs of values from the listsfoo
andbar
; it is equivalent to the call(cl-mapcar 'f foo bar)
. Note that this loop has no body forms at all, performing all its work as side effects of the rest of the loop.(cl-do ((x foo (cdr x)) (y bar (cdr y)) (z nil (cons (f (car x) (car y)) z))) ((or (null x) (null y)) (nreverse z)))
- Macro: cl-do* (spec…) (end-test [result…]) forms… ¶
This is to
cl-do
whatlet*
is tolet
. In particular, the initial values are bound as if bylet*
rather thanlet
, and the steps are assigned as if bysetq
rather thancl-psetq
.Here is another way to write the above loop:
(cl-do* ((xp foo (cdr xp)) (yp bar (cdr yp)) (x (car xp) (car xp)) (y (car yp) (car yp)) z) ((or (null xp) (null yp)) (nreverse z)) (push (f x y) z))
- Macro: cl-dolist (var list [result]) forms… ¶
This is exactly like the standard Emacs Lisp macro
dolist
, but surrounds the loop with an implicitnil
block.
- Macro: cl-dotimes (var count [result]) forms… ¶
This is exactly like the standard Emacs Lisp macro
dotimes
, but surrounds the loop with an implicitnil
block. The body is executed with var bound to the integers from zero (inclusive) to count (exclusive), in turn. Then the result form is evaluated with var bound to the total number of iterations that were done (i.e.,(max 0 count)
) to get the return value for the loop form. Use of result is deprecated.
- Macro: cl-do-symbols (var [obarray [result]]) forms… ¶
This loop iterates over all interned symbols. If obarray is specified and is not
nil
, it loops over all symbols in that obarray. For each symbol, the body forms are evaluated with var bound to that symbol. The symbols are visited in an unspecified order. Afterward the result form, if any, is evaluated (with var bound tonil
) to get the return value. The loop is surrounded by an implicitnil
block.
- Macro: cl-do-all-symbols (var [result]) forms… ¶
This is identical to
cl-do-symbols
except that the obarray argument is omitted; it always iterates over the default obarray.
See Mapping over Sequences, for some more functions for iterating over vectors or lists.
Next: Multiple Values, Previous: Iteration, Up: Control Structure [Contents][Index]
4.7 Loop Facility
A common complaint with Lisp’s traditional looping constructs was
that they were either too simple and limited, such as dotimes
or while
, or too unreadable and obscure, like Common Lisp’s
do
loop.
To remedy this, Common Lisp added a construct called the “Loop
Facility” or “loop
macro”, with an easy-to-use but very
powerful and expressive syntax.
Next: Loop Examples, Up: Loop Facility [Contents][Index]
4.7.1 Loop Basics
The cl-loop
macro essentially creates a mini-language within
Lisp that is specially tailored for describing loops. While this
language is a little strange-looking by the standards of regular Lisp,
it turns out to be very easy to learn and well-suited to its purpose.
Since cl-loop
is a macro, all parsing of the loop language
takes place at byte-compile time; compiled cl-loop
s are just
as efficient as the equivalent while
loops written longhand.
- Macro: cl-loop clauses… ¶
A loop construct consists of a series of clauses, each introduced by a symbol like
for
ordo
. Clauses are simply strung together in the argument list ofcl-loop
, with minimal extra parentheses. The various types of clauses specify initializations, such as the binding of temporary variables, actions to be taken in the loop, stepping actions, and final cleanup.Common Lisp specifies a certain general order of clauses in a loop:
(loop name-clause var-clauses… action-clauses…)
The name-clause optionally gives a name to the implicit block that surrounds the loop. By default, the implicit block is named
nil
. The var-clauses specify what variables should be bound during the loop, and how they should be modified or iterated throughout the course of the loop. The action-clauses are things to be done during the loop, such as computing, collecting, and returning values.The Emacs version of the
cl-loop
macro is less restrictive about the order of clauses, but things will behave most predictably if you put the variable-binding clauseswith
,for
, andrepeat
before the action clauses. As in Common Lisp,initially
andfinally
clauses can go anywhere.Loops generally return
nil
by default, but you can cause them to return a value by using an accumulation clause likecollect
, an end-test clause likealways
, or an explicitreturn
clause to jump out of the implicit block. (Because the loop body is enclosed in an implicit block, you can also use regular Lispcl-return
orcl-return-from
to break out of the loop.)
The following sections give some examples of the loop macro in action, and describe the particular loop clauses in great detail. Consult the second edition of Steele for additional discussion and examples.
Next: For Clauses, Previous: Loop Basics, Up: Loop Facility [Contents][Index]
4.7.2 Loop Examples
Before listing the full set of clauses that are allowed, let’s
look at a few example loops just to get a feel for the cl-loop
language.
(cl-loop for buf in (buffer-list) collect (buffer-file-name buf))
This loop iterates over all Emacs buffers, using the list
returned by buffer-list
. For each buffer buf,
it calls buffer-file-name
and collects the results into
a list, which is then returned from the cl-loop
construct.
The result is a list of the file names of all the buffers in
Emacs’s memory. The words for
, in
, and collect
are reserved words in the cl-loop
language.
(cl-loop repeat 20 do (insert "Yowsa\n"))
This loop inserts the phrase “Yowsa” twenty times in the current buffer.
(cl-loop until (eobp) do (munch-line) (forward-line 1))
This loop calls munch-line
on every line until the end
of the buffer. If point is already at the end of the buffer,
the loop exits immediately.
(cl-loop do (munch-line) until (eobp) do (forward-line 1))
This loop is similar to the above one, except that munch-line
is always called at least once.
(cl-loop for x from 1 to 100 for y = (* x x) until (>= y 729) finally return (list x (= y 729)))
This more complicated loop searches for a number x
whose
square is 729. For safety’s sake it only examines x
values up to 100; dropping the phrase ‘to 100’ would
cause the loop to count upwards with no limit. The second
for
clause defines y
to be the square of x
within the loop; the expression after the =
sign is
reevaluated each time through the loop. The until
clause gives a condition for terminating the loop, and the
finally
clause says what to do when the loop finishes.
(This particular example was written less concisely than it
could have been, just for the sake of illustration.)
Note that even though this loop contains three clauses (two
for
s and an until
) that would have been enough to
define loops all by themselves, it still creates a single loop
rather than some sort of triple-nested loop. You must explicitly
nest your cl-loop
constructs if you want nested loops.
Next: Iteration Clauses, Previous: Loop Examples, Up: Loop Facility [Contents][Index]
4.7.3 For Clauses
Most loops are governed by one or more for
clauses.
A for
clause simultaneously describes variables to be
bound, how those variables are to be stepped during the loop,
and usually an end condition based on those variables.
The word as
is a synonym for the word for
. This
word is followed by a variable name, then a word like from
or across
that describes the kind of iteration desired.
In Common Lisp, the phrase being the
sometimes precedes
the type of iteration; in this package both being
and
the
are optional. The word each
is a synonym
for the
, and the word that follows it may be singular
or plural: ‘for x being the elements of y’ or
‘for x being each element of y’. Which form you use
is purely a matter of style.
The variable is bound around the loop as if by let
:
(setq i 'happy) (cl-loop for i from 1 to 10 do (do-something-with i)) i ⇒ happy
for var from expr1 to expr2 by expr3
This type of
for
clause creates a counting loop. Each of the three sub-terms is optional, though there must be at least one term so that the clause is marked as a counting clause.The three expressions are the starting value, the ending value, and the step value, respectively, of the variable. The loop counts upwards by default (expr3 must be positive), from expr1 to expr2 inclusively. If you omit the
from
term, the loop counts from zero; if you omit theto
term, the loop counts forever without stopping (unless stopped by some other loop clause, of course); if you omit theby
term, the loop counts in steps of one.You can replace the word
from
withupfrom
ordownfrom
to indicate the direction of the loop. Likewise, you can replaceto
withupto
ordownto
. For example, ‘for x from 5 downto 1’ executes five times withx
taking on the integers from 5 down to 1 in turn. Also, you can replaceto
withbelow
orabove
, which are likeupto
anddownto
respectively except that they are exclusive rather than inclusive limits:(cl-loop for x to 10 collect x) ⇒ (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10) (cl-loop for x below 10 collect x) ⇒ (0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9)
The
by
value is always positive, even for downward-counting loops. Some sort offrom
value is required for downward loops; ‘for x downto 5’ is not a valid loop clause all by itself.for var in list by function
This clause iterates var over all the elements of list, in turn. If you specify the
by
term, then function is used to traverse the list instead ofcdr
; it must be a function taking one argument. For example:(cl-loop for x in '(1 2 3 4 5 6) collect (* x x)) ⇒ (1 4 9 16 25 36) (cl-loop for x in '(1 2 3 4 5 6) by 'cddr collect (* x x)) ⇒ (1 9 25)
for var on list by function
This clause iterates var over all the cons cells of list.
(cl-loop for x on '(1 2 3 4) collect x) ⇒ ((1 2 3 4) (2 3 4) (3 4) (4))
for var in-ref list by function
This is like a regular
in
clause, but var becomes asetf
-able “reference” onto the elements of the list rather than just a temporary variable. For example,(cl-loop for x in-ref my-list do (cl-incf x))
increments every element of
my-list
in place. This clause is an extension to standard Common Lisp.for var across array
This clause iterates var over all the elements of array, which may be a vector or a string.
(cl-loop for x across "aeiou" do (use-vowel (char-to-string x)))
for var across-ref array
This clause iterates over an array, with var a
setf
-able reference onto the elements; seein-ref
above.for var being the elements of sequence
This clause iterates over the elements of sequence, which may be a list, vector, or string. Since the type must be determined at run-time, this is somewhat less efficient than
in
oracross
. The clause may be followed by the additional term ‘using (index var2)’ to cause var2 to be bound to the successive indices (starting at 0) of the elements.This clause type is taken from older versions of the
loop
macro, and is not present in modern Common Lisp. The ‘using (sequence …)’ term of the older macros is not supported.for var being the elements of-ref sequence
This clause iterates over a sequence, with var a
setf
-able reference onto the elements; seein-ref
above.for var being the symbols [of obarray]
This clause iterates over symbols, either over all interned symbols or over all symbols in obarray. The loop is executed with var bound to each symbol in turn. The symbols are visited in an unspecified order.
As an example,
(cl-loop for sym being the symbols when (fboundp sym) when (string-match "^map" (symbol-name sym)) collect sym)
returns a list of all the functions whose names begin with ‘map’.
The Common Lisp words
external-symbols
andpresent-symbols
are also recognized but are equivalent tosymbols
in Emacs Lisp.Due to a minor implementation restriction, it will not work to have more than one
for
clause iterating over symbols, hash tables, keymaps, overlays, or intervals in a givencl-loop
. Fortunately, it would rarely if ever be useful to do so. It is valid to mix one of these types of clauses with other clauses likefor … to
orwhile
.for var being the hash-keys of hash-table
for var being the hash-values of hash-table
This clause iterates over the entries in hash-table with var bound to each key, or value. A ‘using’ clause can bind a second variable to the opposite part.
(cl-loop for k being the hash-keys of h using (hash-values v) do (message "key %S -> value %S" k v))
for var being the key-codes of keymap
for var being the key-bindings of keymap
This clause iterates over the entries in keymap. The iteration does not enter nested keymaps but does enter inherited (parent) keymaps. A
using
clause can access both the codes and the bindings together.(cl-loop for c being the key-codes of (current-local-map) using (key-bindings b) do (message "key %S -> binding %S" c b))
for var being the key-seqs of keymap
This clause iterates over all key sequences defined by keymap and its nested keymaps, where var takes on values which are vectors. The strings or vectors are reused for each iteration, so you must copy them if you wish to keep them permanently. You can add a ‘using (key-bindings …)’ clause to get the command bindings as well.
for var being the overlays [of buffer] …
This clause iterates over the “overlays” of a buffer (the clause
extents
is synonymous withoverlays
). If theof
term is omitted, the current buffer is used. This clause also accepts optional ‘from pos’ and ‘to pos’ terms, limiting the clause to overlays which overlap the specified region.for var being the intervals [of object] …
This clause iterates over all intervals of a buffer or string with constant text properties. The variable var will be bound to conses of start and end positions, where one start position is always equal to the previous end position. The clause allows
of
,from
,to
, andproperty
terms, where the latter term restricts the search to just the specified property. Theof
term may specify either a buffer or a string. See (elisp)Text Properties.for var being the frames
This clause iterates over all Emacs frames. The clause
screens
is a synonym forframes
. The frames are visited innext-frame
order starting fromselected-frame
.for var being the windows [of frame]
This clause iterates over the windows (in the Emacs sense) of the current frame, or of the specified frame. It visits windows in
next-window
order starting fromselected-window
(orframe-selected-window
if you specify frame). This clause treats the minibuffer window in the same way asnext-window
does. For greater flexibility, consider usingwalk-windows
instead.for var being the buffers
This clause iterates over all buffers in Emacs. It is equivalent to ‘for var in (buffer-list)’.
for var = expr1 then expr2
This clause does a general iteration. The first time through the loop, var will be bound to expr1. On the second and successive iterations it will be set by evaluating expr2 (which may refer to the old value of var). For example, these two loops are effectively the same:
(cl-loop for x on my-list by 'cddr do …) (cl-loop for x = my-list then (cddr x) while x do …)
Note that this type of
for
clause does not imply any sort of terminating condition; the above example combines it with awhile
clause to tell when to end the loop.If you omit the
then
term, expr1 is used both for the initial setting and for successive settings:(cl-loop for x = (random) when (> x 0) return x)
This loop keeps taking random numbers from the
(random)
function until it gets a positive one, which it then returns.
If you include several for
clauses in a row, they are
treated sequentially (as if by let*
and setq
).
You can instead use the word and
to link the clauses,
in which case they are processed in parallel (as if by let
and cl-psetq
).
(cl-loop for x below 5 for y = nil then x collect (list x y)) ⇒ ((0 nil) (1 1) (2 2) (3 3) (4 4)) (cl-loop for x below 5 and y = nil then x collect (list x y)) ⇒ ((0 nil) (1 0) (2 1) (3 2) (4 3))
In the first loop, y
is set based on the value of x
that was just set by the previous clause; in the second loop,
x
and y
are set simultaneously so y
is set
based on the value of x
left over from the previous time
through the loop.
Another feature of the cl-loop
macro is destructuring,
similar in concept to the destructuring provided by defmacro
(see Argument Lists).
The var part of any for
clause can be given as a list
of variables instead of a single variable. The values produced
during loop execution must be lists; the values in the lists are
stored in the corresponding variables.
(cl-loop for (x y) in '((2 3) (4 5) (6 7)) collect (+ x y)) ⇒ (5 9 13)
In loop destructuring, if there are more values than variables
the trailing values are ignored, and if there are more variables
than values the trailing variables get the value nil
.
If nil
is used as a variable name, the corresponding
values are ignored. Destructuring may be nested, and dotted
lists of variables like (x . y)
are allowed, so for example
to process an alist
(cl-loop for (key . value) in '((a . 1) (b . 2)) collect value) ⇒ (1 2)
Next: Accumulation Clauses, Previous: For Clauses, Up: Loop Facility [Contents][Index]
4.7.4 Iteration Clauses
Aside from for
clauses, there are several other loop clauses
that control the way the loop operates. They might be used by
themselves, or in conjunction with one or more for
clauses.
repeat integer
This clause simply counts up to the specified number using an internal temporary variable. The loops
(cl-loop repeat (1+ n) do …) (cl-loop for temp to n do …)
are identical except that the second one forces you to choose a name for a variable you aren’t actually going to use.
while condition
This clause stops the loop when the specified condition (any Lisp expression) becomes
nil
. For example, the following two loops are equivalent, except for the implicitnil
block that surrounds the second one:(while cond forms…) (cl-loop while cond do forms…)
until condition
This clause stops the loop when the specified condition is true, i.e., non-
nil
.always condition
This clause stops the loop when the specified condition is
nil
. Unlikewhile
, it stops the loop usingreturn nil
so that thefinally
clauses are not executed. If all the conditions were non-nil
, the loop returnst
:(if (cl-loop for size in size-list always (> size 10)) (only-big-sizes) (some-small-sizes))
never condition
This clause is like
always
, except that the loop returnst
if all conditions were false, ornil
otherwise.thereis condition
This clause stops the loop when the specified form is non-
nil
; in this case, it returns that non-nil
value. If all the values werenil
, the loop returnsnil
.iter-by iterator
This clause iterates over the values from the specified form, an iterator object. See (see Generators in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual).
Next: Other Clauses, Previous: Iteration Clauses, Up: Loop Facility [Contents][Index]
4.7.5 Accumulation Clauses
These clauses cause the loop to accumulate information about the
specified Lisp form. The accumulated result is returned
from the loop unless overridden, say, by a return
clause.
collect form
This clause collects the values of form into a list. Several examples of
collect
appear elsewhere in this manual.The word
collecting
is a synonym forcollect
, and likewise for the other accumulation clauses.append form
This clause collects lists of values into a result list using
append
.nconc form
This clause collects lists of values into a result list by destructively modifying the lists rather than copying them.
concat form
This clause concatenates the values of the specified form into a string. (It and the following clause are extensions to standard Common Lisp.)
vconcat form
This clause concatenates the values of the specified form into a vector.
count form
This clause counts the number of times the specified form evaluates to a non-
nil
value.sum form
This clause accumulates the sum of the values of the specified form, which must evaluate to a number.
maximize form
This clause accumulates the maximum value of the specified form, which must evaluate to a number. The return value is undefined if
maximize
is executed zero times.minimize form
This clause accumulates the minimum value of the specified form.
Accumulation clauses can be followed by ‘into var’ to
cause the data to be collected into variable var (which is
automatically let
-bound during the loop) rather than an
unnamed temporary variable. Also, into
accumulations do
not automatically imply a return value. The loop must use some
explicit mechanism, such as finally return
, to return
the accumulated result.
It is valid for several accumulation clauses of the same type to accumulate into the same place. From Steele:
(cl-loop for name in '(fred sue alice joe june) for kids in '((bob ken) () () (kris sunshine) ()) collect name append kids) ⇒ (fred bob ken sue alice joe kris sunshine june)
Previous: Accumulation Clauses, Up: Loop Facility [Contents][Index]
4.7.6 Other Clauses
This section describes the remaining loop clauses.
with var = value
This clause binds a variable to a value around the loop, but otherwise leaves the variable alone during the loop. The following loops are basically equivalent:
(cl-loop with x = 17 do …) (let ((x 17)) (cl-loop do …)) (cl-loop for x = 17 then x do …)
Naturally, the variable var might be used for some purpose in the rest of the loop. For example:
(cl-loop for x in my-list with res = nil do (push x res) finally return res)
This loop inserts the elements of
my-list
at the front of a new list being accumulated inres
, then returns the listres
at the end of the loop. The effect is similar to that of acollect
clause, but the list gets reversed by virtue of the fact that elements are being pushed onto the front ofres
rather than the end.If you omit the
=
term, the variable is initialized tonil
. (Thus the ‘= nil’ in the above example is unnecessary.)Bindings made by
with
are sequential by default, as if bylet*
. Just likefor
clauses,with
clauses can be linked withand
to cause the bindings to be made bylet
instead.if condition clause
This clause executes the following loop clause only if the specified condition is true. The following clause should be an accumulation,
do
,return
,if
, orunless
clause. Several clauses may be linked by separating them withand
. These clauses may be followed byelse
and a clause or clauses to execute if the condition was false. The whole construct may optionally be followed by the wordend
(which may be used to disambiguate anelse
orand
in a nestedif
).The actual non-
nil
value of the condition form is available by the nameit
in the “then” part. For example:(setq funny-numbers '(6 13 -1)) ⇒ (6 13 -1) (cl-loop for x below 10 if (cl-oddp x) collect x into odds and if (memq x funny-numbers) return (cdr it) end else collect x into evens finally return (vector odds evens)) ⇒ [(1 3 5 7 9) (0 2 4 6 8)] (setq funny-numbers '(6 7 13 -1)) ⇒ (6 7 13 -1) (cl-loop <same thing again>) ⇒ (13 -1)
Note the use of
and
to put two clauses into the “then” part, one of which is itself anif
clause. Note also thatend
, while normally optional, was necessary here to make it clear that theelse
refers to the outermostif
clause. In the first case, the loop returns a vector of lists of the odd and even values of x. In the second case, the odd number 7 is one of thefunny-numbers
so the loop returns early; the actual returned value is based on the result of thememq
call.when condition clause
This clause is just a synonym for
if
.unless condition clause
The
unless
clause is just likeif
except that the sense of the condition is reversed.named name
This clause gives a name other than
nil
to the implicit block surrounding the loop. The name is the symbol to be used as the block name.initially [do] forms…
This keyword introduces one or more Lisp forms which will be executed before the loop itself begins (but after any variables requested by
for
orwith
have been bound to their initial values).initially
clauses can appear anywhere; if there are several, they are executed in the order they appear in the loop. The keyworddo
is optional.finally [do] forms…
This introduces Lisp forms which will be executed after the loop finishes (say, on request of a
for
orwhile
).initially
andfinally
clauses may appear anywhere in the loop construct, but they are executed (in the specified order) at the beginning or end, respectively, of the loop.finally return form
This says that form should be executed after the loop is done to obtain a return value. (Without this, or some other clause like
collect
orreturn
, the loop will simply returnnil
.) Variables bound byfor
,with
, orinto
will still contain their final values when form is executed.do forms…
The word
do
may be followed by any number of Lisp expressions which are executed as an implicitprogn
in the body of the loop. Many of the examples in this section illustrate the use ofdo
.return form
This clause causes the loop to return immediately. The following Lisp form is evaluated to give the return value of the loop form. The
finally
clauses, if any, are not executed. Of course,return
is generally used inside anif
orunless
, as its use in a top-level loop clause would mean the loop would never get to “loop” more than once.The clause ‘return form’ is equivalent to ‘do (cl-return form)’ (or
cl-return-from
if the loop was named). Thereturn
clause is implemented a bit more efficiently, though.
While there is no high-level way to add user extensions to cl-loop
,
this package does offer two properties called cl-loop-handler
and cl-loop-for-handler
which are functions to be called when a
given symbol is encountered as a top-level loop clause or for
clause, respectively. Consult the source code in file
cl-macs.el for details.
This package’s cl-loop
macro is compatible with that of Common
Lisp, except that a few features are not implemented: loop-finish
and data-type specifiers. Naturally, the for
clauses that
iterate over keymaps, overlays, intervals, frames, windows, and
buffers are Emacs-specific extensions.
Next: Macro-Writing Macros, Previous: Loop Facility, Up: Control Structure [Contents][Index]
4.8 Multiple Values
Common Lisp functions can return zero or more results. Emacs Lisp
functions, by contrast, always return exactly one result. This
package makes no attempt to emulate Common Lisp multiple return
values; Emacs versions of Common Lisp functions that return more
than one value either return just the first value (as in
cl-compiler-macroexpand
) or return a list of values.
This package does define placeholders
for the Common Lisp functions that work with multiple values, but
in Emacs Lisp these functions simply operate on lists instead.
The cl-values
form, for example, is a synonym for list
in Emacs.
- Macro: cl-multiple-value-bind (var…) values-form forms… ¶
This form evaluates values-form, which must return a list of values. It then binds the vars to these respective values, as if by
let
, and then executes the body forms. If there are more vars than values, the extra vars are bound tonil
. If there are fewer vars than values, the excess values are ignored.
- Macro: cl-multiple-value-setq (var…) form ¶
This form evaluates form, which must return a list of values. It then sets the vars to these respective values, as if by
setq
. Extra vars or values are treated the same as incl-multiple-value-bind
.
Since a perfect emulation is not feasible in Emacs Lisp, this package opts to keep it as simple and predictable as possible.
Previous: Multiple Values, Up: Control Structure [Contents][Index]
4.9 Macro-Writing Macros
This package includes two classic Common Lisp macro-writing macros to help render complex macrology easier to read.
- Macro: cl-with-gensyms names… body ¶
This macro expands to code that executes body with each of the variables in names bound to a fresh uninterned symbol, or gensym, in Common Lisp parlance. For macros requiring more than one gensym, use of
cl-with-gensyms
shortens the code and renders one’s intentions clearer. Compare:(defmacro my-macro (foo) (let ((bar (gensym "bar")) (baz (gensym "baz")) (quux (gensym "quux"))) `(let ((,bar (+ …))) …))) (defmacro my-macro (foo) (cl-with-gensyms (bar baz quux) `(let ((,bar (+ …))) …)))
- Macro: cl-once-only ((variable form)…) body ¶
This macro is primarily to help the macro programmer ensure that forms supplied by the user of the macro are evaluated just once by its expansion even though the result of evaluating the form is to occur more than once. Less often, this macro is used to ensure that forms supplied by the macro programmer are evaluated just once.
Each variable may be used to refer to the result of evaluating form in body.
cl-once-only
binds each variable to a fresh uninterned symbol during the evaluation of body. Then,cl-once-only
wraps the final expansion in code to evaluate each form and bind the result to the corresponding uninterned symbol. Thus, when the macro writer substitutes the value for variable into the expansion they are effectively referring to the result of evaluating form, rather than form itself. Another way to put this is that each variable is bound to an expression for the (singular) result of evaluating form.The most common case is where variable is one of the arguments to the macro being written, so
(variable variable)
may be abbreviated to justvariable
.For example, consider this macro:
(defmacro my-list (x y &rest forms) (let ((x-result (gensym)) (y-result (gensym))) `(let ((,x-result ,x) (,y-result ,y)) (list ,x-result ,y-result ,x-result ,y-result (progn ,@forms))))
In a call like
(my-list (pop foo) …)
the intermediate binding tox-result
ensures that thepop
is not done twice. But as a result the code is rather complex: the reader must keep track of howx-result
really just means the first parameter of the call to the macro, and the required use of multiple gensyms to avoid variable capture by(progn ,@forms)
obscures things further.cl-once-only
takes care of these details:(defmacro my-list (x y &rest forms) (cl-once-only (x y) `(list ,x ,y ,x ,y (progn ,@forms))))
Next: Declarations, Previous: Control Structure, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
5 Macros
This package implements the various Common Lisp features of
defmacro
, such as destructuring, &environment
,
and &body
. Top-level &whole
is not implemented
for defmacro
due to technical difficulties.
See Argument Lists.
Destructuring is made available to the user by way of the following macro:
- Macro: cl-destructuring-bind arglist expr forms… ¶
This macro expands to code that executes forms, with the variables in arglist bound to the list of values returned by expr. The arglist can include all the features allowed for
cl-defmacro
argument lists, including destructuring. (The&environment
keyword is not allowed.) The macro expansion will signal an error if expr returns a list of the wrong number of arguments or with incorrect keyword arguments.
This package also includes the Common Lisp define-compiler-macro
facility, which allows you to define compile-time expansions and
optimizations for your functions.
- Macro: cl-define-compiler-macro name arglist forms… ¶
This form is similar to
defmacro
, except that it only expands calls to name at compile-time; calls processed by the Lisp interpreter are not expanded, nor are they expanded by themacroexpand
function.The argument list may begin with a
&whole
keyword and a variable. This variable is bound to the macro-call form itself, i.e., to a list of the form ‘(name args…)’. If the macro expander returns this form unchanged, then the compiler treats it as a normal function call. This allows compiler macros to work as optimizers for special cases of a function, leaving complicated cases alone.For example, here is a simplified version of a definition that appears as a standard part of this package:
(cl-define-compiler-macro cl-member (&whole form a list &rest keys) (if (and (null keys) (eq (car-safe a) 'quote) (not (floatp (cadr a)))) (list 'memq a list) form))
This definition causes
(cl-member a list)
to change to a call to the fastermemq
in the common case where a is a non-floating-point constant; if a is anything else, or if there are any keyword arguments in the call, then the originalcl-member
call is left intact. (The actual compiler macro forcl-member
optimizes a number of other cases, including common:test
predicates.)
- Function: cl-compiler-macroexpand form ¶
This function is analogous to
macroexpand
, except that it expands compiler macros rather than regular macros. It returns form unchanged if it is not a call to a function for which a compiler macro has been defined, or if that compiler macro decided to punt by returning its&whole
argument. Likemacroexpand
, it expands repeatedly until it reaches a form for which no further expansion is possible.
See Macro Bindings, for descriptions of the cl-macrolet
and cl-symbol-macrolet
forms for making “local” macro
definitions.
Next: Symbols, Previous: Macros, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
6 Declarations
Common Lisp includes a complex and powerful “declaration”
mechanism that allows you to give the compiler special hints
about the types of data that will be stored in particular variables,
and about the ways those variables and functions will be used. This
package defines versions of all the Common Lisp declaration forms:
declare
, locally
, proclaim
, declaim
,
and the
.
Most of the Common Lisp declarations are not currently useful in Emacs Lisp. For example, the byte-code system provides little opportunity to benefit from type information. A few declarations are meaningful when byte compiler optimizations are enabled, as they are by the default. Otherwise these declarations will effectively be ignored.
- Function: cl-proclaim decl-spec ¶
This function records a “global” declaration specified by decl-spec. Since
cl-proclaim
is a function, decl-spec is evaluated and thus should normally be quoted.
- Macro: cl-declaim decl-specs… ¶
This macro is like
cl-proclaim
, except that it takes any number of decl-spec arguments, and the arguments are unevaluated and unquoted. Thecl-declaim
macro also puts(cl-eval-when (compile load eval) …)
around the declarations so that they will be registered at compile-time as well as at run-time. (This is vital, since normally the declarations are meant to influence the way the compiler treats the rest of the file that contains thecl-declaim
form.)
- Macro: cl-declare decl-specs… ¶
This macro is used to make declarations within functions and other code. Common Lisp allows declarations in various locations, generally at the beginning of any of the many “implicit
progn
s” throughout Lisp syntax, such as function bodies,let
bodies, etc. Currently the only declaration understood bycl-declare
isspecial
.
- Macro: cl-locally declarations… forms… ¶
In this package,
cl-locally
is no different fromprogn
.
- Macro: cl-the type form ¶
cl-the
returns the value ofform
, first checking (if optimization settings permit) that it is of typetype
. Future byte-compiler optimizations may also make use of this information to improve runtime efficiency.For example,
mapcar
can map over both lists and arrays. It is hard for the compiler to expandmapcar
into an in-line loop unless it knows whether the sequence will be a list or an array ahead of time. With(mapcar 'car (cl-the vector foo))
, a future compiler would have enough information to expand the loop in-line. For now, Emacs Lisp will treat the above code as exactly equivalent to(mapcar 'car foo)
.
Each decl-spec in a cl-proclaim
, cl-declaim
, or
cl-declare
should be a list beginning with a symbol that says
what kind of declaration it is. This package currently understands
special
, inline
, notinline
, optimize
,
and warn
declarations. (The warn
declaration is an
extension of standard Common Lisp.) Other Common Lisp declarations,
such as type
and ftype
, are silently ignored.
special
Since all variables in Emacs Lisp are “special” (in the Common Lisp sense),
special
declarations are only advisory. They simply tell the byte compiler that the specified variables are intentionally being referred to without being bound in the body of the function. The compiler normally emits warnings for such references, since they could be typographical errors for references to local variables.The declaration
(cl-declare (special var1 var2))
is equivalent to(defvar var1) (defvar var2)
.In top-level contexts, it is generally better to write
(defvar var)
than(cl-declaim (special var))
, sincedefvar
makes your intentions clearer.inline
The
inline
decl-spec lists one or more functions whose bodies should be expanded “in-line” into calling functions whenever the compiler is able to arrange for it. For example, the functioncl-acons
is declaredinline
by this package so that the form(cl-acons key value alist)
will expand directly into(cons (cons key value) alist)
when it is called in user functions, so as to save function calls.The following declarations are all equivalent. Note that the
defsubst
form is a convenient way to define a function and declare it inline all at once.(cl-declaim (inline foo bar)) (cl-eval-when (compile load eval) (cl-proclaim '(inline foo bar))) (defsubst foo (…) …) ; instead of defun
Please note: this declaration remains in effect after the containing source file is done. It is correct to use it to request that a function you have defined should be inlined, but it is impolite to use it to request inlining of an external function.
In Common Lisp, it is possible to use
(declare (inline …))
before a particular call to a function to cause just that call to be inlined; the current byte compilers provide no way to implement this, so(cl-declare (inline …))
is currently ignored by this package.notinline
The
notinline
declaration lists functions which should not be inlined after all; it cancels a previousinline
declaration.optimize
This declaration controls how much optimization is performed by the compiler.
The word
optimize
is followed by any number of lists like(speed 3)
or(safety 2)
. Common Lisp defines several optimization “qualities”; this package ignores all butspeed
andsafety
. The value of a quality should be an integer from 0 to 3, with 0 meaning “unimportant” and 3 meaning “very important”. The default level for both qualities is 1.In this package, the
speed
quality is tied to thebyte-optimize
flag, which is set tonil
for(speed 0)
and tot
for higher settings; and thesafety
quality is tied to thebyte-compile-delete-errors
flag, which is set tonil
for(safety 3)
and tot
for all lower settings. (The latter flag controls whether the compiler is allowed to optimize out code whose only side-effect could be to signal an error, e.g., rewriting(progn foo bar)
tobar
when it is not known whetherfoo
will be bound at run-time.)Note that even compiling with
(safety 0)
, the Emacs byte-code system provides sufficient checking to prevent real harm from being done. For example, barring serious bugs in Emacs itself, Emacs will not crash with a segmentation fault just because of an error in a fully-optimized Lisp program.The
optimize
declaration is normally used in a top-levelcl-proclaim
orcl-declaim
in a file; Common Lisp allows it to be used withdeclare
to set the level of optimization locally for a given form, but this will not work correctly with the current byte-compiler. (Thecl-declare
will set the new optimization level, but that level will not automatically be unset after the enclosing form is done.)warn
This declaration controls what sorts of warnings are generated by the byte compiler. The word
warn
is followed by any number of “warning qualities”, similar in form to optimization qualities. The currently supported warning types areredefine
,callargs
,unresolved
, andfree-vars
; in the current system, a value of 0 will disable these warnings and any higher value will enable them. See the documentation of the variablebyte-compile-warnings
for more details.
Next: Numbers, Previous: Declarations, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
7 Symbols
This package defines several symbol-related features that were missing from Emacs Lisp.
Next: Creating Symbols, Up: Symbols [Contents][Index]
7.1 Property Lists
These functions augment the standard Emacs Lisp functions get
and put
for operating on properties attached to symbols.
There are also functions for working with property lists as
first-class data structures not attached to particular symbols.
- Function: cl-get symbol property &optional default ¶
This function is like
get
, except that if the property is not found, the default argument provides the return value. (The Emacs Lispget
function always usesnil
as the default; this package’scl-get
is equivalent to Common Lisp’sget
.)The
cl-get
function issetf
-able; when used in this fashion, the default argument is allowed but ignored.
- Function: cl-remprop symbol property ¶
This function removes the entry for property from the property list of symbol. It returns a true value if the property was indeed found and removed, or
nil
if there was no such property. (This function was probably omitted from Emacs originally because, sinceget
did not allow a default, it was very difficult to distinguish between a missing property and a property whose value wasnil
; thus, setting a property tonil
was close enough tocl-remprop
for most purposes.)
- Function: cl-getf place property &optional default ¶
This function scans the list place as if it were a property list, i.e., a list of alternating property names and values. If an even-numbered element of place is found which is
eq
to property, the following odd-numbered element is returned. Otherwise, default is returned (ornil
if no default is given).In particular,
(get sym prop) ≡ (cl-getf (symbol-plist sym) prop)
It is valid to use
cl-getf
as asetf
place, in which case its place argument must itself be a validsetf
place. The default argument, if any, is ignored in this context. The effect is to change (viasetcar
) the value cell in the list that corresponds to property, or to cons a new property-value pair onto the list if the property is not yet present.(put sym prop val) ≡ (setf (cl-getf (symbol-plist sym) prop) val)
The
get
andcl-get
functions are alsosetf
-able. The fact thatdefault
is ignored can sometimes be useful:(cl-incf (cl-get 'foo 'usage-count 0))
Here, symbol
foo
’susage-count
property is incremented if it exists, or set to 1 (an incremented 0) otherwise.When not used as a
setf
form,cl-getf
is just a regular function and its place argument can actually be any Lisp expression.
- Macro: cl-remf place property ¶
This macro removes the property-value pair for property from the property list stored at place, which is any
setf
-able place expression. It returns true if the property was found. Note that if property happens to be first on the list, this will effectively do a(setf place (cddr place))
, whereas if it occurs later, this simply usessetcdr
to splice out the property and value cells.
Previous: Property Lists, Up: Symbols [Contents][Index]
7.2 Creating Symbols
These functions create unique symbols, typically for use as temporary variables.
- Function: cl-gensym &optional x ¶
This function creates a new, uninterned symbol (using
make-symbol
) with a unique name. (The name of an uninterned symbol is relevant only if the symbol is printed.) By default, the name is generated from an increasing sequence of numbers, ‘G1000’, ‘G1001’, ‘G1002’, etc. If the optional argument x is a string, that string is used as a prefix instead of ‘G’. Uninterned symbols are used in macro expansions for temporary variables, to ensure that their names will not conflict with “real” variables in the user’s code.(Internally, the variable
cl--gensym-counter
holds the counter used to generate names. It is initialized with zero and incremented after each use.)
- Function: cl-gentemp &optional x ¶
This function is like
cl-gensym
, except that it produces a new interned symbol. If the symbol that is generated already exists, the function keeps incrementing the counter and trying again until a new symbol is generated.
This package automatically creates all keywords that are called for by
&key
argument specifiers, and discourages the use of keywords
as data unrelated to keyword arguments, so the related function
defkeyword
(to create self-quoting keyword symbols) is not
provided.
Next: Sequences, Previous: Symbols, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
8 Numbers
This section defines a few simple Common Lisp operations on numbers that were left out of Emacs Lisp.
Next: Numerical Functions, Up: Numbers [Contents][Index]
8.1 Predicates on Numbers
These functions return t
if the specified condition is
true of the numerical argument, or nil
otherwise.
- Function: cl-plusp number ¶
This predicate tests whether number is positive. It is an error if the argument is not a number.
- Function: cl-minusp number ¶
This predicate tests whether number is negative. It is an error if the argument is not a number.
- Function: cl-oddp integer ¶
This predicate tests whether integer is odd. It is an error if the argument is not an integer.
- Function: cl-evenp integer ¶
This predicate tests whether integer is even. It is an error if the argument is not an integer.
- Function: cl-digit-char-p char radix ¶
Test if char is a digit in the specified radix (default is 10). If it is, return the numerical value of digit char in radix.
Next: Random Numbers, Previous: Predicates on Numbers, Up: Numbers [Contents][Index]
8.2 Numerical Functions
These functions perform various arithmetic operations on numbers.
- Function: cl-gcd &rest integers ¶
This function returns the Greatest Common Divisor of the arguments. For one argument, it returns the absolute value of that argument. For zero arguments, it returns zero.
- Function: cl-lcm &rest integers ¶
This function returns the Least Common Multiple of the arguments. For one argument, it returns the absolute value of that argument. For zero arguments, it returns one.
- Function: cl-isqrt integer ¶
This function computes the “integer square root” of its integer argument, i.e., the greatest integer less than or equal to the true square root of the argument.
- Function: cl-floor number &optional divisor ¶
With one argument,
cl-floor
returns a list of two numbers: The argument rounded down (toward minus infinity) to an integer, and the “remainder” which would have to be added back to the first return value to yield the argument again. If the argument is an integer x, the result is always the list(x 0)
. If the argument is a floating-point number, the first result is a Lisp integer and the second is a Lisp float between 0 (inclusive) and 1 (exclusive).With two arguments,
cl-floor
divides number by divisor, and returns the floor of the quotient and the corresponding remainder as a list of two numbers. If(cl-floor x y)
returns(q r)
, thenq*y + r = x
, with r between 0 (inclusive) and r (exclusive). Also, note that(cl-floor x)
is exactly equivalent to(cl-floor x 1)
.This function is entirely compatible with Common Lisp’s
floor
function, except that it returns the two results in a list since Emacs Lisp does not support multiple-valued functions.
- Function: cl-ceiling number &optional divisor ¶
This function implements the Common Lisp
ceiling
function, which is analogous tofloor
except that it rounds the argument or quotient of the arguments up toward plus infinity. The remainder will be between 0 and minus r.
- Function: cl-truncate number &optional divisor ¶
This function implements the Common Lisp
truncate
function, which is analogous tofloor
except that it rounds the argument or quotient of the arguments toward zero. Thus it is equivalent tocl-floor
if the argument or quotient is positive, or tocl-ceiling
otherwise. The remainder has the same sign as number.
- Function: cl-round number &optional divisor ¶
This function implements the Common Lisp
round
function, which is analogous tofloor
except that it rounds the argument or quotient of the arguments to the nearest integer. In the case of a tie (the argument or quotient is exactly halfway between two integers), it rounds to the even integer.
- Function: cl-mod number divisor ¶
This function returns the same value as the second return value of
cl-floor
.
- Function: cl-rem number divisor ¶
This function returns the same value as the second return value of
cl-truncate
.
- Function: cl-parse-integer string &key start end radix junk-allowed ¶
This function implements the Common Lisp
parse-integer
function. It parses an integer in the specified radix from the substring of string between start and end. Any leading and trailing whitespace chars are ignored. The function signals an error if the substring between start and end cannot be parsed as an integer, unless junk-allowed is non-nil
.
Next: Implementation Parameters, Previous: Numerical Functions, Up: Numbers [Contents][Index]
8.3 Random Numbers
This package also provides an implementation of the Common Lisp random number generator. It uses its own additive-congruential algorithm, which is much more likely to give statistically clean random numbers than the simple generators supplied by many operating systems.
- Function: cl-random number &optional state ¶
This function returns a random nonnegative number less than number, and of the same type (either integer or floating-point). The state argument should be a
random-state
object that holds the state of the random number generator. The function modifies this state object as a side effect. If state is omitted, it defaults to the internal variablecl--random-state
, which contains a pre-initialized defaultrandom-state
object. (Since any number of programs in the Emacs process may be accessingcl--random-state
in interleaved fashion, the sequence generated from this will be irreproducible for all intents and purposes.)
- Function: cl-make-random-state &optional state ¶
This function creates or copies a
random-state
object. If state is omitted ornil
, it returns a new copy ofcl--random-state
. This is a copy in the sense that future sequences of calls to(cl-random n)
and(cl-random n s)
(where s is the new random-state object) will return identical sequences of random numbers.If state is a
random-state
object, this function returns a copy of that object. If state ist
, this function returns a newrandom-state
object seeded from the date and time. As an extension to Common Lisp, state may also be an integer in which case the new object is seeded from that integer; each different integer seed will result in a completely different sequence of random numbers.It is valid to print a
random-state
object to a buffer or file and later read it back withread
. If a program wishes to use a sequence of pseudo-random numbers which can be reproduced later for debugging, it can call(cl-make-random-state t)
to get a new sequence, then print this sequence to a file. When the program is later rerun, it can read the original run’s random-state from the file.
- Function: cl-random-state-p object ¶
This predicate returns
t
if object is arandom-state
object, ornil
otherwise.
Previous: Random Numbers, Up: Numbers [Contents][Index]
8.4 Implementation Parameters
This package defines several useful constants having to do with floating-point numbers.
It determines their values by exercising the computer’s floating-point arithmetic in various ways. Because this operation might be slow, the code for initializing them is kept in a separate function that must be called before the parameters can be used.
- Function: cl-float-limits ¶
This function makes sure that the Common Lisp floating-point parameters like
cl-most-positive-float
have been initialized. Until it is called, these parameters have unspecified values. If the parameters have already been initialized, the function returns immediately.
Since true Common Lisp supports up to four different kinds of floating-point
numbers, it has families of constants like
most-positive-single-float
, most-positive-double-float
,
most-positive-long-float
, and so on. This package uses just
one set of constants because Emacs has only one kind of
floating-point number, namely the IEEE binary64 floating-point format.
See Float Basics in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
- Variable: cl-most-positive-float ¶
This constant equals the largest finite value a Lisp float can hold. For IEEE binary64 format, this equals
(- (expt 2 1024) (expt 2 971))
, which equals1.7976931348623157e+308
.
- Variable: cl-most-negative-float ¶
This constant equals the most negative finite value a Lisp float can hold. For IEEE binary64 format, this equals
(- cl-most-positive-float)
.
- Variable: cl-least-positive-normalized-float ¶
This constant equals the smallest positive Lisp float that is normalized, i.e., that has full precision. For IEEE binary64 format, this equals
(expt 2 -1022)
, which equals2.2250738585072014e-308
.
- Variable: cl-least-positive-float ¶
This constant equals the smallest Lisp float value greater than zero. For IEEE binary64 format, this equals
5e-324
(which equals(expt 2 -1074)
) if subnormal numbers are supported, andcl-least-positive-normalized-float
otherwise.
- Variable: cl-least-negative-float ¶
This constant is the negative counterpart of
cl-least-positive-float
.
- Variable: cl-least-negative-normalized-float ¶
This constant is the negative counterpart of
cl-least-positive-normalized-float
.
- Variable: cl-float-epsilon ¶
This constant is the smallest positive Lisp float that can be added to 1.0 to produce a distinct value. Adding a smaller number to 1.0 will yield 1.0 again due to roundoff. For IEEE binary64 format, this equals
(expt 2 -52)
, which equals2.220446049250313e-16
.
- Variable: cl-float-negative-epsilon ¶
This is the smallest positive value that can be subtracted from 1.0 to produce a distinct value. For IEEE binary64 format, this equals
(expt 2 -53)
, which equals1.1102230246251565e-16
.
Next: Lists, Previous: Numbers, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
9 Sequences
Common Lisp defines a number of functions that operate on
sequences, which are either lists, strings, or vectors.
Emacs Lisp includes a few of these, notably elt
and
length
; this package defines most of the rest.
Next: Mapping over Sequences, Up: Sequences [Contents][Index]
9.1 Sequence Basics
Many of the sequence functions take keyword arguments; see Argument Lists. All keyword arguments are optional and, if specified, may appear in any order.
The :key
argument should be passed either nil
, or a
function of one argument. This key function is used as a filter
through which the elements of the sequence are seen; for example,
(cl-find x y :key 'car)
is similar to (cl-assoc x y)
.
It searches for an element of the list whose CAR equals
x
, rather than for an element which equals x
itself.
If :key
is omitted or nil
, the filter is effectively
the identity function.
The :test
and :test-not
arguments should be either
nil
, or functions of two arguments. The test function is
used to compare two sequence elements, or to compare a search value
with sequence elements. (The two values are passed to the test
function in the same order as the original sequence function
arguments from which they are derived, or, if they both come from
the same sequence, in the same order as they appear in that sequence.)
The :test
argument specifies a function which must return
true (non-nil
) to indicate a match; instead, you may use
:test-not
to give a function which returns false to
indicate a match. The default test function is eql
.
Many functions that take item and :test
or :test-not
arguments also come in -if
and -if-not
varieties,
where a predicate function is passed instead of item,
and sequence elements match if the predicate returns true on them
(or false in the case of -if-not
). For example:
(cl-remove 0 seq :test '=) ≡ (cl-remove-if 'zerop seq)
to remove all zeros from sequence seq
.
Some operations can work on a subsequence of the argument sequence;
these function take :start
and :end
arguments, which
default to zero and the length of the sequence, respectively.
Only elements between start (inclusive) and end
(exclusive) are affected by the operation. The end argument
may be passed nil
to signify the length of the sequence;
otherwise, both start and end must be integers, with
0 <= start <= end <= (length seq)
.
If the function takes two sequence arguments, the limits are
defined by keywords :start1
and :end1
for the first,
and :start2
and :end2
for the second.
A few functions accept a :from-end
argument, which, if
non-nil
, causes the operation to go from right-to-left
through the sequence instead of left-to-right, and a :count
argument, which specifies an integer maximum number of elements
to be removed or otherwise processed.
The sequence functions make no guarantees about the order in
which the :test
, :test-not
, and :key
functions
are called on various elements. Therefore, it is a bad idea to depend
on side effects of these functions. For example, :from-end
may cause the sequence to be scanned actually in reverse, or it may
be scanned forwards but computing a result “as if” it were scanned
backwards. (Some functions, like cl-mapcar
and cl-every
,
do specify exactly the order in which the function is called
so side effects are perfectly acceptable in those cases.)
Strings may contain “text properties” as well
as character data. Except as noted, it is undefined whether or
not text properties are preserved by sequence functions. For
example, (cl-remove ?A str)
may or may not preserve
the properties of the characters copied from str into the
result.
Next: Sequence Functions, Previous: Sequence Basics, Up: Sequences [Contents][Index]
9.2 Mapping over Sequences
These functions “map” the function you specify over the elements
of lists or arrays. They are all variations on the theme of the
built-in function mapcar
.
- Function: cl-mapcar function seq &rest more-seqs ¶
This function calls function on successive parallel sets of elements from its argument sequences. Given a single seq argument it is equivalent to
mapcar
; given n sequences, it calls the function with the first elements of each of the sequences as the n arguments to yield the first element of the result list, then with the second elements, and so on. The mapping stops as soon as the shortest sequence runs out. The argument sequences may be any mixture of lists, strings, and vectors; the return sequence is always a list.Common Lisp’s
mapcar
accepts multiple arguments but works only on lists; Emacs Lisp’smapcar
accepts a single sequence argument. This package’scl-mapcar
works as a compatible superset of both.
- Function: cl-map result-type function seq &rest more-seqs ¶
This function maps function over the argument sequences, just like
cl-mapcar
, but it returns a sequence of type result-type rather than a list. result-type must be one of the following symbols:vector
,string
,list
(in which case the effect is the same as forcl-mapcar
), ornil
(in which case the results are thrown away andcl-map
returnsnil
).
- Function: cl-maplist function list &rest more-lists ¶
This function calls function on each of its argument lists, then on the CDRs of those lists, and so on, until the shortest list runs out. The results are returned in the form of a list. Thus,
cl-maplist
is likecl-mapcar
except that it passes in the list pointers themselves rather than the CARs of the advancing pointers.
- Function: cl-mapc function seq &rest more-seqs ¶
This function is like
cl-mapcar
, except that the values returned by function are ignored and thrown away rather than being collected into a list. The return value ofcl-mapc
is seq, the first sequence. This function is more general than the Emacs primitivemapc
. (Note that this function is calledcl-mapc
even in cl.el, rather thanmapc*
as you might expect.)
- Function: cl-mapl function list &rest more-lists ¶
This function is like
cl-maplist
, except that it throws away the values returned by function.
- Function: cl-mapcan function seq &rest more-seqs ¶
This function is like
cl-mapcar
, except that it concatenates the return values (which must be lists) usingnconc
, rather than simply collecting them into a list.
- Function: cl-mapcon function list &rest more-lists ¶
This function is like
cl-maplist
, except that it concatenates the return values usingnconc
.
- Function: cl-some predicate seq &rest more-seqs ¶
This function calls predicate on each element of seq in turn; if predicate returns a non-
nil
value,cl-some
returns that value, otherwise it returnsnil
. Given several sequence arguments, it steps through the sequences in parallel until the shortest one runs out, just as incl-mapcar
. You can rely on the left-to-right order in which the elements are visited, and on the fact that mapping stops immediately as soon as predicate returns non-nil
.
- Function: cl-every predicate seq &rest more-seqs ¶
This function calls predicate on each element of the sequence(s) in turn; it returns
nil
as soon as predicate returnsnil
for any element, ort
if the predicate was true for all elements.
- Function: cl-notany predicate seq &rest more-seqs ¶
This function calls predicate on each element of the sequence(s) in turn; it returns
nil
as soon as predicate returns a non-nil
value for any element, ort
if the predicate wasnil
for all elements.
- Function: cl-notevery predicate seq &rest more-seqs ¶
This function calls predicate on each element of the sequence(s) in turn; it returns a non-
nil
value as soon as predicate returnsnil
for any element, ornil
if the predicate was true for all elements.
- Function: cl-reduce function seq &key :from-end :start :end :initial-value :key ¶
This function returns the result of calling function on the first and second elements of seq, then calling function with that result and the third element of seq, then with that result and the fourth element of seq, etc.
Here is an example. Suppose function is
*
and seq is the list(2 3 4 5)
. The first two elements of the list are combined with(* 2 3) = 6
; this is combined with the next element,(* 6 4) = 24
, and that is combined with the final element:(* 24 5) = 120
. Note that the*
function happens to be self-reducing, so that(* 2 3 4 5)
has the same effect as an explicit call tocl-reduce
.If
:from-end
is true, the reduction is right-associative instead of left-associative:(cl-reduce '- '(1 2 3 4)) ≡ (- (- (- 1 2) 3) 4) ⇒ -8 (cl-reduce '- '(1 2 3 4) :from-end t) ≡ (- 1 (- 2 (- 3 4))) ⇒ -2
If
:key
is specified, it is a function of one argument, which is called on each of the sequence elements in turn.If
:initial-value
is specified, it is effectively added to the front (or rear in the case of:from-end
) of the sequence. The:key
function is not applied to the initial value.If the sequence, including the initial value, has exactly one element then that element is returned without ever calling function. If the sequence is empty (and there is no initial value), then function is called with no arguments to obtain the return value.
All of these mapping operations can be expressed conveniently in
terms of the cl-loop
macro. In compiled code, cl-loop
will
be faster since it generates the loop as in-line code with no
function calls.
Next: Searching Sequences, Previous: Mapping over Sequences, Up: Sequences [Contents][Index]
9.3 Sequence Functions
This section describes a number of Common Lisp functions for operating on sequences.
- Function: cl-subseq sequence start &optional end ¶
This function returns a given subsequence of the argument sequence, which may be a list, string, or vector. The indices start and end must be in range, and start must be no greater than end. If end is omitted, it defaults to the length of the sequence. The return value is always a copy; it does not share structure with sequence.
As an extension to Common Lisp, start and/or end may be negative, in which case they represent a distance back from the end of the sequence. This is for compatibility with Emacs’s
substring
function. Note thatcl-subseq
is the only sequence function that allows negative start and end.You can use
setf
on acl-subseq
form to replace a specified range of elements with elements from another sequence. The replacement is done as if bycl-replace
, described below.
- Function: cl-concatenate result-type &rest seqs ¶
This function concatenates the argument sequences together to form a result sequence of type result-type, one of the symbols
vector
,string
, orlist
. The arguments are always copied, even in cases such as(cl-concatenate 'list '(1 2 3))
where the result is identical to an argument.
- Function: cl-fill seq item &key :start :end ¶
This function fills the elements of the sequence (or the specified part of the sequence) with the value item.
- Function: cl-replace seq1 seq2 &key :start1 :end1 :start2 :end2 ¶
This function copies part of seq2 into part of seq1. The sequence seq1 is not stretched or resized; the amount of data copied is simply the shorter of the source and destination (sub)sequences. The function returns seq1.
If seq1 and seq2 are
eq
, then the replacement will work correctly even if the regions indicated by the start and end arguments overlap. However, if seq1 and seq2 are lists that share storage but are noteq
, and the start and end arguments specify overlapping regions, the effect is undefined.
- Function: cl-remove item seq &key :test :test-not :key :count :start :end :from-end ¶
This returns a copy of seq with all elements matching item removed. The result may share storage with or be
eq
to seq in some circumstances, but the original seq will not be modified. The:test
,:test-not
, and:key
arguments define the matching test that is used; by default, elementseql
to item are removed. The:count
argument specifies the maximum number of matching elements that can be removed (only the leftmost count matches are removed). The:start
and:end
arguments specify a region in seq in which elements will be removed; elements outside that region are not matched or removed. The:from-end
argument, if true, says that elements should be deleted from the end of the sequence rather than the beginning (this matters only if count was also specified).
- Function: cl-delete item seq &key :test :test-not :key :count :start :end :from-end ¶
This deletes all elements of seq that match item. It is a destructive operation. Since Emacs Lisp does not support stretchable strings or vectors, this is the same as
cl-remove
for those sequence types. On lists,cl-remove
will copy the list if necessary to preserve the original list, whereascl-delete
will splice out parts of the argument list. Compareappend
andnconc
, which are analogous non-destructive and destructive list operations in Emacs Lisp.
The predicate-oriented functions cl-remove-if
, cl-remove-if-not
,
cl-delete-if
, and cl-delete-if-not
are defined similarly.
- Function: cl-remove-duplicates seq &key :test :test-not :key :start :end :from-end ¶
This function returns a copy of seq with duplicate elements removed. Specifically, if two elements from the sequence match according to the
:test
,:test-not
, and:key
arguments, only the rightmost one is retained. If:from-end
is true, the leftmost one is retained instead. If:start
or:end
is specified, only elements within that subsequence are examined or removed.
- Function: cl-delete-duplicates seq &key :test :test-not :key :start :end :from-end ¶
This function deletes duplicate elements from seq. It is a destructive version of
cl-remove-duplicates
.
- Function: cl-substitute new old seq &key :test :test-not :key :count :start :end :from-end ¶
This function returns a copy of seq, with all elements matching old replaced with new. The
:count
,:start
,:end
, and:from-end
arguments may be used to limit the number of substitutions made.
- Function: cl-nsubstitute new old seq &key :test :test-not :key :count :start :end :from-end ¶
This is a destructive version of
cl-substitute
; it performs the substitution usingsetcar
oraset
rather than by returning a changed copy of the sequence.
The functions cl-substitute-if
, cl-substitute-if-not
,
cl-nsubstitute-if
, and cl-nsubstitute-if-not
are defined
similarly. For these, a predicate is given in place of the
old argument.
Next: Sorting Sequences, Previous: Sequence Functions, Up: Sequences [Contents][Index]
9.4 Searching Sequences
These functions search for elements or subsequences in a sequence.
(See also cl-member
and cl-assoc
; see Lists.)
- Function: cl-find item seq &key :test :test-not :key :start :end :from-end ¶
This function searches seq for an element matching item. If it finds a match, it returns the matching element. Otherwise, it returns
nil
. It returns the leftmost match, unless:from-end
is true, in which case it returns the rightmost match. The:start
and:end
arguments may be used to limit the range of elements that are searched.
- Function: cl-position item seq &key :test :test-not :key :start :end :from-end ¶
This function is like
cl-find
, except that it returns the integer position in the sequence of the matching item rather than the item itself. The position is relative to the start of the sequence as a whole, even if:start
is non-zero. The function returnsnil
if no matching element was found.
- Function: cl-count item seq &key :test :test-not :key :start :end ¶
This function returns the number of elements of seq which match item. The result is always a nonnegative integer.
The cl-find-if
, cl-find-if-not
, cl-position-if
,
cl-position-if-not
, cl-count-if
, and cl-count-if-not
functions are defined similarly.
- Function: cl-mismatch seq1 seq2 &key :test :test-not :key :start1 :end1 :start2 :end2 :from-end ¶
This function compares the specified parts of seq1 and seq2. If they are the same length and the corresponding elements match (according to
:test
,:test-not
, and:key
), the function returnsnil
. If there is a mismatch, the function returns the index (relative to seq1) of the first mismatching element. This will be the leftmost pair of elements that do not match, or the position at which the shorter of the two otherwise-matching sequences runs out.If
:from-end
is true, then the elements are compared from right to left starting at(1- end1)
and(1- end2)
. If the sequences differ, then one plus the index of the rightmost difference (relative to seq1) is returned.An interesting example is
(cl-mismatch str1 str2 :key 'upcase)
, which compares two strings case-insensitively.
- Function: cl-search seq1 seq2 &key :test :test-not :key :from-end :start1 :end1 :start2 :end2 ¶
This function searches seq2 for a subsequence that matches seq1 (or part of it specified by
:start1
and:end1
). Only matches that fall entirely within the region defined by:start2
and:end2
will be considered. The return value is the index of the leftmost element of the leftmost match, relative to the start of seq2, ornil
if no matches were found. If:from-end
is true, the function finds the rightmost matching subsequence.
Previous: Searching Sequences, Up: Sequences [Contents][Index]
9.5 Sorting Sequences
- Function: cl-sort seq predicate &key :key ¶
This function sorts seq into increasing order as determined by using predicate to compare pairs of elements. predicate should return true (non-
nil
) if and only if its first argument is less than (not equal to) its second argument. For example,<
andstring-lessp
are suitable predicate functions for sorting numbers and strings, respectively;>
would sort numbers into decreasing rather than increasing order.This function differs from Emacs’s built-in
sort
in that it can operate on any type of sequence, not just lists. Also, it accepts a:key
argument, which is used to preprocess data fed to the predicate function. For example,(setq data (cl-sort data 'string-lessp :key 'downcase))
sorts data, a sequence of strings, into increasing alphabetical order without regard to case. A
:key
function ofcar
would be useful for sorting association lists. It should only be a simple accessor though, since it’s used heavily in the current implementation.The
cl-sort
function is destructive; it sorts lists by actually rearranging the CDR pointers in suitable fashion.
- Function: cl-stable-sort seq predicate &key :key ¶
This function sorts seq stably, meaning two elements which are equal in terms of predicate are guaranteed not to be rearranged out of their original order by the sort.
In practice,
cl-sort
andcl-stable-sort
are equivalent in Emacs Lisp because the underlyingsort
function is stable by default. However, this package reserves the right to use non-stable methods forcl-sort
in the future.
- Function: cl-merge type seq1 seq2 predicate &key :key ¶
This function merges two sequences seq1 and seq2 by interleaving their elements. The result sequence, of type type (in the sense of
cl-concatenate
), has length equal to the sum of the lengths of the two input sequences. The sequences may be modified destructively. Order of elements within seq1 and seq2 is preserved in the interleaving; elements of the two sequences are compared by predicate (in the sense ofsort
) and the lesser element goes first in the result. When elements are equal, those from seq1 precede those from seq2 in the result. Thus, if seq1 and seq2 are both sorted according to predicate, then the result will be a merged sequence which is (stably) sorted according to predicate.
Next: Structures, Previous: Sequences, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
10 Lists
The functions described here operate on lists.
Next: Substitution of Expressions, Up: Lists [Contents][Index]
10.1 List Functions
This section describes a number of simple operations on lists, i.e., chains of cons cells.
- Function: cl-first x ¶
This function is a synonym for
(car x)
. Likewise, the functionscl-second
,cl-third
, …, throughcl-tenth
return the given element of the list x.
- Function: cl-rest x ¶
This function is a synonym for
(cdr x)
.
- Function: cl-endp x ¶
This function acts like
null
, but signals an error ifx
is neither anil
nor a cons cell.
- Function: cl-list-length x ¶
This function returns the length of list x, exactly like
(length x)
, except that if x is a circular list (where the CDR-chain forms a loop rather than terminating withnil
), this function returnsnil
. (The regularlength
function would get stuck if given a circular list. See also thesafe-length
function.)
- Function: cl-list* arg &rest others ¶
This function constructs a list of its arguments. The final argument becomes the CDR of the last cell constructed. Thus,
(cl-list* a b c)
is equivalent to(cons a (cons b c))
, and(cl-list* a b nil)
is equivalent to(list a b)
.
- Function: cl-ldiff list sublist ¶
If sublist is a sublist of list, i.e., is
eq
to one of the cons cells of list, then this function returns a copy of the part of list up to but not including sublist. For example,(cl-ldiff x (cddr x))
returns the first two elements of the listx
. The result is a copy; the original list is not modified. If sublist is not a sublist of list, a copy of the entire list is returned.
- Function: cl-copy-list list ¶
This function returns a copy of the list list. It copies dotted lists like
(1 2 . 3)
correctly.
- Function: cl-tree-equal x y &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function compares two trees of cons cells. If x and y are both cons cells, their CARs and CDRs are compared recursively. If neither x nor y is a cons cell, they are compared by
eql
, or according to the specified test. The:key
function, if specified, is applied to the elements of both trees. See Sequences.
Next: Lists as Sets, Previous: List Functions, Up: Lists [Contents][Index]
10.2 Substitution of Expressions
These functions substitute elements throughout a tree of cons
cells. (See Sequence Functions, for the cl-substitute
function, which works on just the top-level elements of a list.)
- Function: cl-subst new old tree &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function substitutes occurrences of old with new in tree, a tree of cons cells. It returns a substituted tree, which will be a copy except that it may share storage with the argument tree in parts where no substitutions occurred. The original tree is not modified. This function recurses on, and compares against old, both CARs and CDRs of the component cons cells. If old is itself a cons cell, then matching cells in the tree are substituted as usual without recursively substituting in that cell. Comparisons with old are done according to the specified test (
eql
by default). The:key
function is applied to the elements of the tree but not to old.
- Function: cl-nsubst new old tree &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function is like
cl-subst
, except that it works by destructive modification (bysetcar
orsetcdr
) rather than copying.
The cl-subst-if
, cl-subst-if-not
, cl-nsubst-if
, and
cl-nsubst-if-not
functions are defined similarly.
- Function: cl-sublis alist tree &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function is like
cl-subst
, except that it takes an association list alist of old-new pairs. Each element of the tree (after applying the:key
function, if any), is compared with the CARs of alist; if it matches, it is replaced by the corresponding CDR.
- Function: cl-nsublis alist tree &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This is a destructive version of
cl-sublis
.
Next: Association Lists, Previous: Substitution of Expressions, Up: Lists [Contents][Index]
10.3 Lists as Sets
These functions perform operations on lists that represent sets of
elements. All these functions (unless otherwise specified) default to
using eql
as the test function, but that can be modified by the
:test
parameter.
- Function: cl-member item list &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function searches list for an element matching item. If a match is found, it returns the cons cell whose CAR was the matching element. Otherwise, it returns
nil
. Elements are compared byeql
by default; you can use the:test
,:test-not
, and:key
arguments to modify this behavior. See Sequences.The standard Emacs lisp function
member
usesequal
for comparisons; it is equivalent to(cl-member item list :test 'equal)
.
The cl-member-if
and cl-member-if-not
functions
analogously search for elements that satisfy a given predicate.
- Function: cl-tailp sublist list ¶
This function returns
t
if sublist is a sublist of list, i.e., if sublist iseql
to list or to any of its CDRs.
- Function: cl-adjoin item list &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function conses item onto the front of list, like
(cons item list)
, but only if item is not already present on the list (as determined bycl-member
). If a:key
argument is specified, it is applied to item as well as to the elements of list during the search, on the reasoning that item is “about” to become part of the list.
- Function: cl-union list1 list2 &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function combines two lists that represent sets of items, returning a list that represents the union of those two sets. The resulting list contains all items that appear in list1 or list2, and no others. If an item appears in both list1 and list2 it is copied only once. If an item is duplicated in list1 or list2, it is undefined whether or not that duplication will survive in the result list. The order of elements in the result list is also undefined.
- Function: cl-nunion list1 list2 &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This is a destructive version of
cl-union
; rather than copying, it tries to reuse the storage of the argument lists if possible.
- Function: cl-intersection list1 list2 &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function computes the intersection of the sets represented by list1 and list2. It returns the list of items that appear in both list1 and list2.
- Function: cl-nintersection list1 list2 &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This is a destructive version of
cl-intersection
. It tries to reuse storage of list1 rather than copying. It does not reuse the storage of list2.
- Function: cl-set-difference list1 list2 &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function computes the “set difference” of list1 and list2, i.e., the set of elements that appear in list1 but not in list2.
- Function: cl-nset-difference list1 list2 &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This is a destructive
cl-set-difference
, which will try to reuse list1 if possible.
- Function: cl-set-exclusive-or list1 list2 &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function computes the “set exclusive or” of list1 and list2, i.e., the set of elements that appear in exactly one of list1 and list2.
- Function: cl-nset-exclusive-or list1 list2 &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This is a destructive
cl-set-exclusive-or
, which will try to reuse list1 and list2 if possible.
- Function: cl-subsetp list1 list2 &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function checks whether list1 represents a subset of list2, i.e., whether every element of list1 also appears in list2.
Previous: Lists as Sets, Up: Lists [Contents][Index]
10.4 Association Lists
An association list is a list representing a mapping from one set of values to another; any list whose elements are cons cells is an association list.
- Function: cl-assoc item a-list &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function searches the association list a-list for an element whose CAR matches (in the sense of
:test
,:test-not
, and:key
, or by comparison witheql
) a given item. It returns the matching element, if any, otherwisenil
. It ignores elements of a-list that are not cons cells. (This corresponds to the behavior ofassq
andassoc
in Emacs Lisp; Common Lisp’sassoc
ignoresnil
s but considers any other non-cons elements of a-list to be an error.)
- Function: cl-rassoc item a-list &key :test :test-not :key ¶
This function searches for an element whose CDR matches item. If a-list represents a mapping, this applies the inverse of the mapping to item.
The cl-assoc-if
, cl-assoc-if-not
, cl-rassoc-if
,
and cl-rassoc-if-not
functions are defined similarly.
Two simple functions for constructing association lists are:
- Function: cl-acons key value alist ¶
This is equivalent to
(cons (cons key value) alist)
.
- Function: cl-pairlis keys values &optional alist ¶
This is equivalent to
(nconc (cl-mapcar 'cons keys values) alist)
.
Next: Assertions and Errors, Previous: Lists, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
11 Structures
The Common Lisp structure mechanism provides a general way
to define data types similar to C’s struct
types. A
structure is a Lisp object containing some number of slots,
each of which can hold any Lisp data object. Functions are
provided for accessing and setting the slots, creating or copying
structure objects, and recognizing objects of a particular structure
type.
In true Common Lisp, each structure type is a new type distinct from all existing Lisp types. Since the underlying Emacs Lisp system provides no way to create new distinct types, this package implements structures as vectors (or lists upon request) with a special “tag” symbol to identify them.
- Macro: cl-defstruct name slots… ¶
The
cl-defstruct
form defines a new structure type called name, with the specified slots. (The slots may begin with a string which documents the structure type.) In the simplest case, name and each of the slots are symbols. For example,(cl-defstruct person first-name age sex)
defines a struct type called
person
that contains three slots. Given aperson
object p, you can access those slots by calling(person-first-name p)
,(person-age p)
, and(person-sex p)
. You can also change these slots by usingsetf
on any of these place forms, for example:(cl-incf (person-age birthday-boy))
You can create a new
person
by callingmake-person
, which takes keyword arguments:first-name
,:age
, and:sex
to specify the initial values of these slots in the new object. (Omitting any of these arguments leaves the corresponding slot “undefined”, according to the Common Lisp standard; in Emacs Lisp, such uninitialized slots are filled withnil
.)Given a
person
,(copy-person p)
makes a new object of the same type whose slots areeq
to those of p.Given any Lisp object x,
(person-p x)
returns true if x is aperson
, and false otherwise.Accessors like
person-first-name
normally check their arguments (effectively usingperson-p
) and signal an error if the argument is the wrong type. This check is affected by(optimize (safety …))
declarations. Safety level 1, the default, uses a somewhat optimized check that will detect all incorrect arguments, but may use an uninformative error message (e.g., “expected a vector” instead of “expected aperson
”). Safety level 0 omits all checks except as provided by the underlyingaref
call; safety levels 2 and 3 do rigorous checking that will always print a descriptive error message for incorrect inputs. See Declarations.(setq dave (make-person :first-name "Dave" :sex 'male)) ⇒ [cl-struct-person "Dave" nil male] (setq other (copy-person dave)) ⇒ [cl-struct-person "Dave" nil male] (eq dave other) ⇒ nil (eq (person-first-name dave) (person-first-name other)) ⇒ t (person-p dave) ⇒ t (person-p [1 2 3 4]) ⇒ nil (person-p "Bogus") ⇒ nil (person-p '[cl-struct-person counterfeit person object]) ⇒ t
In general, name is either a name symbol or a list of a name symbol followed by any number of structure options; each slot is either a slot symbol or a list of the form ‘(slot-name default-value slot-options…)’. The default-value is a Lisp form that is evaluated any time an instance of the structure type is created without specifying that slot’s value.
(cl-defstruct person (first-name nil :read-only t) age (sex 'unknown))
slot-options is a list of keyword-value pairs, where the following keywords can be used:
:read-only
A non-
nil
value means the slot should not besetf
-able; the slot’s value is determined when the object is created and does not change afterward.:type
The expected type of the values held in this slot.
:documentation
A documentation string describing the slot.
Other slot options are currently ignored.
For obscure historical reasons, structure options take a different form than slot options. A structure option is either a keyword symbol, or a list beginning with a keyword symbol possibly followed by arguments. (By contrast, slot options are key-value pairs not enclosed in lists.)
(cl-defstruct (person (:constructor create-person) (:type list) :named) first-name age sex)
The following structure options are recognized.
:conc-name
The argument is a symbol whose print name is used as the prefix for the names of slot accessor functions. The default is the name of the struct type followed by a hyphen. The option
(:conc-name p-)
would change this prefix top-
. Specifyingnil
as an argument means no prefix, so that the slot names themselves are used to name the accessor functions.:constructor
In the simple case, this option takes one argument which is an alternate name to use for the constructor function. The default is
make-name
, e.g.,make-person
. The above example changes this tocreate-person
. Specifyingnil
as an argument means that no standard constructor should be generated at all.In the full form of this option, the constructor name is followed by an arbitrary argument list. See Program Structure, for a description of the format of Common Lisp argument lists. All options, such as
&rest
and&key
, are supported. The argument names should match the slot names; each slot is initialized from the corresponding argument. Slots whose names do not appear in the argument list are initialized based on the default-value in their slot descriptor. Also,&optional
and&key
arguments that don’t specify defaults take their defaults from the slot descriptor. It is valid to include arguments that don’t correspond to slot names; these are useful if they are referred to in the defaults for optional, keyword, or&aux
arguments that do correspond to slots.You can specify any number of full-format
:constructor
options on a structure. The default constructor is still generated as well unless you disable it with a simple-format:constructor
option.(cl-defstruct (person (:constructor nil) ; no default constructor (:constructor new-person (first-name sex &optional (age 0))) (:constructor new-hound (&key (first-name "Rover") (dog-years 0) &aux (age (* 7 dog-years)) (sex 'canine)))) first-name age sex)
The first constructor here takes its arguments positionally rather than by keyword. (In official Common Lisp terminology, constructors that work By Order of Arguments instead of by keyword are called “BOA constructors”. No, I’m not making this up.) For example,
(new-person "Jane" 'female)
generates a person whose slots are"Jane"
, 0, andfemale
, respectively.The second constructor takes two keyword arguments,
:name
, which initializes thename
slot and defaults to"Rover"
, and:dog-years
, which does not itself correspond to a slot but which is used to initialize theage
slot. Thesex
slot is forced to the symbolcanine
with no syntax for overriding it.:copier
The argument is an alternate name for the copier function for this type. The default is
copy-name
.nil
means not to generate a copier function. (In this implementation, all copier functions are simply synonyms forcopy-sequence
.):predicate
The argument is an alternate name for the predicate that recognizes objects of this type. The default is
name-p
.nil
means not to generate a predicate function. (If the:type
option is used without the:named
option, no predicate is ever generated.)In true Common Lisp,
typep
is always able to recognize a structure object even if:predicate
was used. In this package,cl-typep
simply looks for a function calledtypename-p
, so it will work for structure types only if they used the default predicate name.:include
This option implements a very limited form of C++-style inheritance. The argument is the name of another structure type previously created with
cl-defstruct
. The effect is to cause the new structure type to inherit all of the included structure’s slots (plus, of course, any new slots described by this struct’s slot descriptors). The new structure is considered a “specialization” of the included one. In fact, the predicate and slot accessors for the included type will also accept objects of the new type.If there are extra arguments to the
:include
option after the included-structure name, these options are treated as replacement slot descriptors for slots in the included structure, possibly with modified default values. Borrowing an example from Steele:(cl-defstruct person first-name (age 0) sex) ⇒ person (cl-defstruct (astronaut (:include person (age 45))) helmet-size (favorite-beverage 'tang)) ⇒ astronaut (setq joe (make-person :first-name "Joe")) ⇒ [cl-struct-person "Joe" 0 nil] (setq buzz (make-astronaut :first-name "Buzz")) ⇒ [cl-struct-astronaut "Buzz" 45 nil nil tang] (list (person-p joe) (person-p buzz)) ⇒ (t t) (list (astronaut-p joe) (astronaut-p buzz)) ⇒ (nil t) (person-first-name buzz) ⇒ "Buzz" (astronaut-first-name joe) ⇒ error: "astronaut-first-name accessing a non-astronaut"
Thus, if
astronaut
is a specialization ofperson
, then everyastronaut
is also aperson
(but not the other way around). Everyastronaut
includes all the slots of aperson
, plus extra slots that are specific to astronauts. Operations that work on people (likeperson-first-name
) work on astronauts just like other people.:noinline
If this option is present, this structure’s functions will not be inlined, even functions that normally would.
:print-function
In full Common Lisp, this option allows you to specify a function that is called to print an instance of the structure type. The Emacs Lisp system offers no hooks into the Lisp printer which would allow for such a feature, so this package simply ignores
:print-function
.:type
The argument should be one of the symbols
vector
orlist
. This tells which underlying Lisp data type should be used to implement the new structure type. Records are used by default, but(:type vector)
will cause structure objects to be stored as vectors and(:type list)
lists instead.The record and vector representations for structure objects have the advantage that all structure slots can be accessed quickly, although creating them are a bit slower in Emacs Lisp. Lists are easier to create, but take a relatively long time accessing the later slots.
:named
This option, which takes no arguments, causes a characteristic “tag” symbol to be stored at the front of the structure object. Using
:type
without also using:named
will result in a structure type stored as plain vectors or lists with no identifying features.The default, if you don’t specify
:type
explicitly, is to use records, which are always tagged. Therefore,:named
is only useful in conjunction with:type
.(cl-defstruct (person1) first-name age sex) (cl-defstruct (person2 (:type list) :named) first-name age sex) (cl-defstruct (person3 (:type list)) first-name age sex) (cl-defstruct (person4 (:type vector)) first-name age sex) (setq p1 (make-person1)) ⇒ #s(person1 nil nil nil) (setq p2 (make-person2)) ⇒ (person2 nil nil nil) (setq p3 (make-person3)) ⇒ (nil nil nil) (setq p4 (make-person4)) ⇒ [nil nil nil] (person1-p p1) ⇒ t (person2-p p2) ⇒ t (person3-p p3) ⇒ error: function person3-p undefined
Since unnamed structures don’t have tags,
cl-defstruct
is not able to make a useful predicate for recognizing them. Also, accessors likeperson3-first-name
will be generated but they will not be able to do any type checking. Theperson3-first-name
function, for example, will simply be a synonym forcar
in this case. By contrast,person2-first-name
is able to verify that its argument is indeed aperson2
object before proceeding.:initial-offset
The argument must be a nonnegative integer. It specifies a number of slots to be left “empty” at the front of the structure. If the structure is named, the tag appears at the specified position in the list or vector; otherwise, the first slot appears at that position. Earlier positions are filled with
nil
by the constructors and ignored otherwise. If the type:include
s another type, then:initial-offset
specifies a number of slots to be skipped between the last slot of the included type and the first new slot.
Except as noted, the cl-defstruct
facility of this package is
entirely compatible with that of Common Lisp.
The cl-defstruct
package also provides a few structure
introspection functions.
- Function: cl-struct-sequence-type struct-type ¶
This function returns the underlying data structure for
struct-type
, which is a symbol. It returnsrecord
,vector
orlist
, ornil
ifstruct-type
is not actually a structure.
- Function: cl-struct-slot-info struct-type ¶
This function returns a list of slot descriptors for structure
struct-type
. Each entry in the list is(name . opts)
, wherename
is the name of the slot andopts
is the list of slot options given todefstruct
. Dummy entries represent the slots used for the struct name and that are skipped to implement:initial-offset
.
- Function: cl-struct-slot-offset struct-type slot-name ¶
Return the offset of slot
slot-name
instruct-type
. The returned zero-based slot index is relative to the start of the structure data type and is adjusted for any structure name and :initial-offset slots. Signal error if structstruct-type
does not containslot-name
.
- Function: cl-struct-slot-value struct-type slot-name inst ¶
Return the value of slot
slot-name
ininst
ofstruct-type
.struct
andslot-name
are symbols.inst
is a structure instance. This routine is also asetf
place. Can signal the same errors ascl-struct-slot-offset
.
Next: Efficiency Concerns, Previous: Structures, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
12 Assertions and Errors
This section describes two macros that test assertions, i.e., conditions which must be true if the program is operating correctly. Assertions never add to the behavior of a Lisp program; they simply make “sanity checks” to make sure everything is as it should be.
If the optimization property speed
has been set to 3, and
safety
is less than 3, then the byte-compiler will optimize
away the following assertions. Because assertions might be optimized
away, it is a bad idea for them to include side-effects.
- Macro: cl-assert test-form [show-args string args…] ¶
This form verifies that test-form is true (i.e., evaluates to a non-
nil
value). If so, it returnsnil
. If the test is not satisfied,cl-assert
signals an error.A default error message will be supplied which includes test-form. You can specify a different error message by including a string argument plus optional extra arguments. Those arguments are simply passed to
error
to signal the error.If the optional second argument show-args is
t
instead ofnil
, then the error message (with or without string) will also include all non-constant arguments of the top-level form. For example:(cl-assert (> x 10) t "x is too small: %d")
This usage of show-args is an extension to Common Lisp. In true Common Lisp, the second argument gives a list of places which can be
setf
’d by the user before continuing from the error. Since Emacs Lisp does not support continuable errors, it makes no sense to specify places.
- Macro: cl-check-type form type [string] ¶
This form verifies that form evaluates to a value of type type. If so, it returns
nil
. If not,cl-check-type
signals awrong-type-argument
error. The default error message lists the erroneous value along with type and form themselves. If string is specified, it is included in the error message in place of type. For example:(cl-check-type x (integer 1 *) "a positive integer")
See Type Predicates, for a description of the type specifiers that may be used for type.
Note that in Common Lisp, the first argument to
check-type
must be a place suitable for use bysetf
, becausecheck-type
signals a continuable error that allows the user to modify place.
Next: Common Lisp Compatibility, Previous: Assertions and Errors, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
Appendix A Efficiency Concerns
A.1 Macros
Many of the advanced features of this package, such as cl-defun
,
cl-loop
, etc., are implemented as Lisp macros. In
byte-compiled code, these complex notations will be expanded into
equivalent Lisp code which is simple and efficient. For example,
the form
(cl-incf i n)
is expanded at compile-time to the Lisp form
(setq i (+ i n))
which is the most efficient way of doing this operation
in Lisp. Thus, there is no performance penalty for using the more
readable cl-incf
form in your compiled code.
Interpreted code, on the other hand, must expand these macros
every time they are executed. For this reason it is strongly
recommended that code making heavy use of macros be compiled.
A loop using cl-incf
a hundred times will execute considerably
faster if compiled, and will also garbage-collect less because the
macro expansion will not have to be generated, used, and thrown away a
hundred times.
You can find out how a macro expands by using the
cl-prettyexpand
function.
- Function: cl-prettyexpand form &optional full ¶
This function takes a single Lisp form as an argument and inserts a nicely formatted copy of it in the current buffer (which must be in Lisp mode so that indentation works properly). It also expands all Lisp macros that appear in the form. The easiest way to use this function is to go to the *scratch* buffer and type, say,
(cl-prettyexpand '(cl-loop for x below 10 collect x))
and type C-x C-e immediately after the closing parenthesis; an expansion similar to:
(cl-block nil (let* ((x 0) (G1004 nil)) (while (< x 10) (setq G1004 (cons x G1004)) (setq x (+ x 1))) (nreverse G1004)))
will be inserted into the buffer. (The
cl-block
macro is expanded differently in the interpreter and compiler, socl-prettyexpand
just leaves it alone. The temporary variableG1004
was created bycl-gensym
.)If the optional argument full is true, then all macros are expanded, including
cl-block
,cl-eval-when
, and compiler macros. Expansion is done as if form were a top-level form in a file being compiled.Note that
cl-adjoin
andcl-member
have built-in compiler macros to optimize them in common cases.
A.2 Error Checking
Common Lisp compliance has in general not been sacrificed for the sake of efficiency. A few exceptions have been made for cases where substantial gains were possible at the expense of marginal incompatibility.
The Common Lisp standard (as embodied in Steele’s book) uses the
phrase “it is an error if” to indicate a situation that is not
supposed to arise in complying programs; implementations are strongly
encouraged but not required to signal an error in these situations.
This package sometimes omits such error checking in the interest of
compactness and efficiency. For example, cl-do
variable
specifiers are supposed to be lists of one, two, or three forms; extra
forms are ignored by this package rather than signaling a syntax
error. Functions taking keyword arguments will accept an odd number
of arguments, treating the trailing keyword as if it were followed by
the value nil
.
Argument lists (as processed by cl-defun
and friends)
are checked rigorously except for the minor point just
mentioned; in particular, keyword arguments are checked for
validity, and &allow-other-keys
and :allow-other-keys
are fully implemented. Keyword validity checking is slightly
time consuming (though not too bad in byte-compiled code);
you can use &allow-other-keys
to omit this check. Functions
defined in this package such as cl-find
and cl-member
do check their keyword arguments for validity.
A.3 Compiler Optimizations
Changing the value of byte-optimize
from the default t
is highly discouraged; many of the Common
Lisp macros emit
code that can be improved by optimization. In particular,
cl-block
s (whether explicit or implicit in constructs like
cl-defun
and cl-loop
) carry a fair run-time penalty; the
byte-compiler removes cl-block
s that are not actually
referenced by cl-return
or cl-return-from
inside the block.
Next: Porting Common Lisp, Previous: Efficiency Concerns, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
Appendix B Common Lisp Compatibility
The following is a list of some of the most important incompatibilities between this package and Common Lisp as documented in Steele (2nd edition).
The word cl-defun
is required instead of defun
in order
to use extended Common Lisp argument lists in a function. Likewise,
cl-defmacro
and cl-function
are versions of those forms
which understand full-featured argument lists. The &whole
keyword does not work in cl-defmacro
argument lists (except
inside recursive argument lists).
The equal
predicate does not distinguish
between IEEE floating-point plus and minus zero. The cl-equalp
predicate has several differences with Common Lisp; see Predicates.
The cl-do-all-symbols
form is the same as cl-do-symbols
with no obarray argument. In Common Lisp, this form would
iterate over all symbols in all packages. Since Emacs obarrays
are not a first-class package mechanism, there is no way for
cl-do-all-symbols
to locate any but the default obarray.
The cl-loop
macro is complete except that loop-finish
and type specifiers are unimplemented.
The multiple-value return facility treats lists as multiple
values, since Emacs Lisp cannot support multiple return values
directly. The macros will be compatible with Common Lisp if
cl-values
or cl-values-list
is always used to return to
a cl-multiple-value-bind
or other multiple-value receiver;
if cl-values
is used without cl-multiple-value-…
or vice-versa the effect will be different from Common Lisp.
Many Common Lisp declarations are ignored, and others match
the Common Lisp standard in concept but not in detail. For
example, local special
declarations, which are purely
advisory in Emacs Lisp, do not rigorously obey the scoping rules
set down in Steele’s book.
The variable cl--gensym-counter
starts out with zero.
The cl-defstruct
facility is compatible, except that the
:type
slot option is ignored.
The second argument of cl-check-type
is treated differently.
Next: Obsolete Features, Previous: Common Lisp Compatibility, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
Appendix C Porting Common Lisp
This package is meant to be used as an extension to Emacs Lisp, not as an Emacs implementation of true Common Lisp. Some of the remaining differences between Emacs Lisp and Common Lisp make it difficult to port large Common Lisp applications to Emacs. For one, some of the features in this package are not fully compliant with ANSI or Steele; see Common Lisp Compatibility. But there are also quite a few features that this package does not provide at all. Here are some major omissions that you will want to watch out for when bringing Common Lisp code into Emacs.
- Case-insensitivity. Symbols in Common Lisp are case-insensitive
by default. Some programs refer to a function or variable as
foo
in one place andFoo
orFOO
in another. Emacs Lisp will treat these as three distinct symbols.Some Common Lisp code is written entirely in upper case. While Emacs is happy to let the program’s own functions and variables use this convention, calls to Lisp builtins like
if
anddefun
will have to be changed to lower case. - Lexical scoping. In Common Lisp, function arguments and
let
bindings apply only to references physically within their bodies (or within macro expansions in their bodies). Traditionally, Emacs Lisp uses dynamic scoping wherein a binding to a variable is visible even inside functions called from the body. See Dynamic Binding in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual. Lexical binding is available since Emacs 24.1, so be sure to setlexical-binding
tot
if you need to emulate this aspect of Common Lisp. See Lexical Binding in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.Here is an example of a Common Lisp code fragment that would fail in Emacs Lisp if
lexical-binding
were set tonil
:(defun map-odd-elements (func list) (loop for x in list for flag = t then (not flag) collect (if flag x (funcall func x)))) (defun add-odd-elements (list x) (map-odd-elements (lambda (a) (+ a x)) list))
With lexical binding, the two functions’ usages of
x
are completely independent. With dynamic binding, the binding tox
made byadd-odd-elements
will have been hidden by the binding inmap-odd-elements
by the time the(+ a x)
function is called.Internally, this package uses lexical binding so that such problems do not occur. See Obsolete Lexical Binding, for a description of the obsolete
lexical-let
form that emulates a Common Lisp-style lexical binding when dynamic binding is in use. - Reader macros. Common Lisp includes a second type of macro that
works at the level of individual characters. For example, Common
Lisp implements the quote notation by a reader macro called
'
, whereas Emacs Lisp’s parser just treats quote as a special case. Some Lisp packages use reader macros to create special syntaxes for themselves, which the Emacs parser is incapable of reading. - Other syntactic features. Common Lisp provides a number of
notations beginning with
#
that the Emacs Lisp parser won’t understand. For example, ‘#| … |#’ is an alternate comment notation, and ‘#+lucid (foo)’ tells the parser to ignore the(foo)
except in Lucid Common Lisp. - Packages. In Common Lisp, symbols are divided into packages.
Symbols that are Lisp built-ins are typically stored in one package;
symbols that are vendor extensions are put in another, and each
application program would have a package for its own symbols.
Certain symbols are “exported” by a package and others are
internal; certain packages “use” or import the exported symbols
of other packages. To access symbols that would not normally be
visible due to this importing and exporting, Common Lisp provides
a syntax like
package:symbol
orpackage::symbol
.Emacs Lisp has a single namespace for all interned symbols, and then uses a naming convention of putting a prefix like
cl-
in front of the name. Some Emacs packages adopt the Common Lisp-like convention of usingcl:
orcl::
as the prefix. However, the Emacs parser does not understand colons and just treats them as part of the symbol name. Thus, whilemapcar
andlisp:mapcar
may refer to the same symbol in Common Lisp, they are totally distinct in Emacs Lisp. Common Lisp programs that refer to a symbol by the full name sometimes and the short name other times will not port cleanly to Emacs.Emacs Lisp does have a concept of “obarrays”, which are package-like collections of symbols, but this feature is not strong enough to be used as a true package mechanism.
- The
format
function is quite different between Common Lisp and Emacs Lisp. It takes an additional “destination” argument before the format string. A destination ofnil
means to format to a string as in Emacs Lisp; a destination oft
means to write to the terminal (similar tomessage
in Emacs). Also, format control strings are utterly different;~
is used instead of%
to introduce format codes, and the set of available codes is much richer. There are no notations like\n
for string literals; instead,format
is used with the “newline” format code,~%
. More advanced formatting codes provide such features as paragraph filling, case conversion, and even loops and conditionals.While it would have been possible to implement most of Common Lisp
format
in this package (under the namecl-format
, of course), it was not deemed worthwhile. It would have required a huge amount of code to implement even a decent subset offormat
, yet the functionality it would provide over Emacs Lisp’sformat
would rarely be useful. - Vector constants use square brackets in Emacs Lisp, but
#(a b c)
notation in Common Lisp. To further complicate matters, Emacs has its own#(
notation for something entirely different—strings with properties. - Characters are distinct from integers in Common Lisp. The notation
for character constants is also different:
#\A
in Common Lisp where Emacs Lisp uses?A
. Also,string=
andstring-equal
are synonyms in Emacs Lisp, whereas the latter is case-insensitive in Common Lisp. - Data types. Some Common Lisp data types do not exist in Emacs Lisp. Rational numbers and complex numbers are not present, nor are large integers (all integers are “fixnums”). All arrays are one-dimensional. There are no readtables or pathnames; streams are a set of existing data types rather than a new data type of their own. Hash tables, random-states, and packages (obarrays) are built from Lisp vectors or lists rather than being distinct types.
- The Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) is not implemented, nor is the Common Lisp Condition System. However, the EIEIO package (see Introduction in EIEIO) does implement some CLOS functionality.
- Common Lisp features that are completely redundant with Emacs
Lisp features of a different name generally have not been
implemented. For example, Common Lisp writes
defconstant
where Emacs Lisp usesdefconst
. Similarly,make-list
takes its arguments in different ways in the two Lisps but does exactly the same thing, so this package has not bothered to implement a Common Lisp-stylemake-list
. - A few more notable Common Lisp features not included in this package:
compiler-let
,prog
,ldb/dpb
,cerror
. - Recursion. While recursion works in Emacs Lisp just like it
does in Common Lisp, various details of the Emacs Lisp system
and compiler make recursion much less efficient than it is in
most Lisps. Some schools of thought prefer to use recursion
in Lisp over other techniques; they would sum a list of
numbers using something like
(defun sum-list (list) (if list (+ (car list) (sum-list (cdr list))) 0))
where a more iteratively-minded programmer might write one of these forms:
(let ((total 0)) (dolist (x my-list) (incf total x)) total) (loop for x in my-list sum x)
While this would be mainly a stylistic choice in most Common Lisps, in Emacs Lisp you should be aware that the iterative forms are much faster than recursion. Also, Lisp programmers will want to note that the current Emacs Lisp compiler does not optimize tail recursion.
Next: GNU Free Documentation License, Previous: Porting Common Lisp, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
Appendix D Obsolete Features
This section describes some features of the package that are obsolete and should not be used in new code. They are either only provided by the old cl.el entry point, not by the newer cl-lib.el; or where versions with a ‘cl-’ prefix do exist they do not behave in exactly the same way.
Next: Obsolete Macros, Up: Obsolete Features [Contents][Index]
D.1 Obsolete Lexical Binding
The following macros are extensions to Common Lisp, where all bindings are lexical unless declared otherwise. These features are likewise obsolete since the introduction of true lexical binding in Emacs 24.1.
- Macro: lexical-let (bindings…) forms… ¶
This form is exactly like
let
except that the bindings it establishes are purely lexical.
Lexical bindings are similar to local variables in a language like C:
Only the code physically within the body of the lexical-let
(after macro expansion) may refer to the bound variables.
(setq a 5) (defun foo (b) (+ a b)) (let ((a 2)) (foo a)) ⇒ 4 (lexical-let ((a 2)) (foo a)) ⇒ 7
In this example, a regular let
binding of a
actually
makes a temporary change to the global variable a
, so foo
is able to see the binding of a
to 2. But lexical-let
actually creates a distinct local variable a
for use within its
body, without any effect on the global variable of the same name.
The most important use of lexical bindings is to create closures. A closure is a function object that refers to an outside lexical variable (see Closures in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual). For example:
(defun make-adder (n) (lexical-let ((n n)) (lambda (m) (+ n m)))) (setq add17 (make-adder 17)) (funcall add17 4) ⇒ 21
The call (make-adder 17)
returns a function object which adds
17 to its argument. If let
had been used instead of
lexical-let
, the function object would have referred to the
global n
, which would have been bound to 17 only during the
call to make-adder
itself.
(defun make-counter () (lexical-let ((n 0)) (cl-function (lambda (&optional (m 1)) (cl-incf n m))))) (setq count-1 (make-counter)) (funcall count-1 3) ⇒ 3 (funcall count-1 14) ⇒ 17 (setq count-2 (make-counter)) (funcall count-2 5) ⇒ 5 (funcall count-1 2) ⇒ 19 (funcall count-2) ⇒ 6
Here we see that each call to make-counter
creates a distinct
local variable n
, which serves as a private counter for the
function object that is returned.
Closed-over lexical variables persist until the last reference to
them goes away, just like all other Lisp objects. For example,
count-2
refers to a function object which refers to an
instance of the variable n
; this is the only reference
to that variable, so after (setq count-2 nil)
the garbage
collector would be able to delete this instance of n
.
Of course, if a lexical-let
does not actually create any
closures, then the lexical variables are free as soon as the
lexical-let
returns.
Many closures are used only during the extent of the bindings they
refer to; these are known as “downward funargs” in Lisp parlance.
When a closure is used in this way, regular Emacs Lisp dynamic
bindings suffice and will be more efficient than lexical-let
closures:
(defun add-to-list (x list) (mapcar (lambda (y) (+ x y))) list) (add-to-list 7 '(1 2 5)) ⇒ (8 9 12)
Since this lambda is only used while x
is still bound,
it is not necessary to make a true closure out of it.
You can use defun
or flet
inside a lexical-let
to create a named closure. If several closures are created in the
body of a single lexical-let
, they all close over the same
instance of the lexical variable.
- Macro: lexical-let* (bindings…) forms… ¶
This form is just like
lexical-let
, except that the bindings are made sequentially in the manner oflet*
.
Next: Obsolete Ways to Customize Setf, Previous: Obsolete Lexical Binding, Up: Obsolete Features [Contents][Index]
D.2 Obsolete Macros
The following macros are obsolete, and are replaced by versions with a ‘cl-’ prefix that do not behave in exactly the same way. Consequently, the cl.el versions are not simply aliases to the cl-lib.el versions.
- Macro: flet (bindings…) forms… ¶
This macro is replaced by
cl-flet
(see Function Bindings), which behaves the same way as Common Lisp’sflet
. Thisflet
takes the same arguments ascl-flet
, but does not behave in precisely the same way.While
flet
in Common Lisp establishes a lexical function binding, thisflet
makes a dynamic binding (it dates from a time before Emacs had lexical binding). The result is thatflet
affects indirect calls to a function as well as calls directly inside theflet
form itself.This will even work on Emacs primitives, although note that some calls to primitive functions internal to Emacs are made without going through the symbol’s function cell, and so will not be affected by
flet
. For example,(flet ((message (&rest args) (push args saved-msgs))) (do-something))
This code attempts to replace the built-in function
message
with a function that simply saves the messages in a list rather than displaying them. The original definition ofmessage
will be restored afterdo-something
exits. This code will work fine on messages generated by other Lisp code, but messages generated directly inside Emacs will not be caught since they make direct C-language calls to the message routines rather than going through the Lispmessage
function.For those cases where the dynamic scoping of
flet
is desired,cl-flet
is clearly not a substitute. The most direct replacement would be instead to usecl-letf
to temporarily rebind(symbol-function 'fun)
. But in most cases, a better substitute is to use advice, such as:(defvar my-fun-advice-enable nil) (add-advice 'fun :around (lambda (orig &rest args) (if my-fun-advice-enable (do-something) (apply orig args))))
so that you can then replace the
flet
with a simple dynamically scoped binding ofmy-fun-advice-enable
.Note that many primitives (e.g.,
+
) have special byte-compile handling. Attempts to redefine such functions usingflet
,cl-letf
, or advice will fail when byte-compiled.
- Macro: labels (bindings…) forms… ¶
This macro is replaced by
cl-labels
(see Function Bindings), which behaves the same way as Common Lisp’slabels
. Thislabels
takes the same arguments ascl-labels
, but does not behave in precisely the same way.This version of
labels
uses the obsoletelexical-let
form (see Obsolete Lexical Binding), rather than the true lexical binding thatcl-labels
uses.
Previous: Obsolete Macros, Up: Obsolete Features [Contents][Index]
D.3 Obsolete Ways to Customize Setf
Common Lisp defines three macros, define-modify-macro
,
defsetf
, and define-setf-method
, that allow the
user to extend generalized variables in various ways.
In Emacs, these are obsolete, replaced by various features of
gv.el in Emacs 24.3.
See Adding Generalized Variables in GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual.
- Macro: define-modify-macro name arglist function [doc-string] ¶
This macro defines a “read-modify-write” macro similar to
cl-incf
andcl-decf
. You can replace this macro withgv-letplace
.The macro name is defined to take a place argument followed by additional arguments described by arglist. The call
(name place args…)
will be expanded to
(cl-callf func place args…)
which in turn is roughly equivalent to
(setf place (func place args…))
For example:
(define-modify-macro incf (&optional (n 1)) +) (define-modify-macro concatf (&rest args) concat)
Note that
&key
is not allowed in arglist, but&rest
is sufficient to pass keywords on to the function.Most of the modify macros defined by Common Lisp do not exactly follow the pattern of
define-modify-macro
. For example,push
takes its arguments in the wrong order, andpop
is completely irregular.The above
incf
example could be written usinggv-letplace
as:(defmacro incf (place &optional n) (gv-letplace (getter setter) place (cl-once-only ((v (or n 1))) (funcall setter `(+ ,v ,getter)))))
- Macro: defsetf access-fn update-fn ¶
This is the simpler of two
defsetf
forms, and is replaced bygv-define-simple-setter
.With access-fn the name of a function that accesses a place, this declares update-fn to be the corresponding store function. From now on,
(setf (access-fn arg1 arg2 arg3) value)
will be expanded to
(update-fn arg1 arg2 arg3 value)
The update-fn is required to be either a true function, or a macro that evaluates its arguments in a function-like way. Also, the update-fn is expected to return value as its result. Otherwise, the above expansion would not obey the rules for the way
setf
is supposed to behave.As a special (non-Common-Lisp) extension, a third argument of
t
todefsetf
says that the return value ofupdate-fn
is not suitable, so that the abovesetf
should be expanded to something more like(let ((temp value)) (update-fn arg1 arg2 arg3 temp) temp)
Some examples are:
(defsetf car setcar) (defsetf buffer-name rename-buffer t)
These translate directly to
gv-define-simple-setter
:(gv-define-simple-setter car setcar) (gv-define-simple-setter buffer-name rename-buffer t)
- Macro: defsetf access-fn arglist (store-var) forms… ¶
This is the second, more complex, form of
defsetf
. It can be replaced bygv-define-setter
.This form of
defsetf
is rather likedefmacro
except for the additional store-var argument. The forms should return a Lisp form that stores the value of store-var into the generalized variable formed by a call to access-fn with arguments described by arglist. The forms may begin with a string which documents thesetf
method (analogous to the doc string that appears at the front of a function).For example, the simple form of
defsetf
is shorthand for(defsetf access-fn (&rest args) (store) (append '(update-fn) args (list store)))
The Lisp form that is returned can access the arguments from arglist and store-var in an unrestricted fashion; macros like
cl-incf
that invoke this setf-method will insert temporary variables as needed to make sure the apparent order of evaluation is preserved.Another standard example:
(defsetf nth (n x) (store) `(setcar (nthcdr ,n ,x) ,store))
You could write this using
gv-define-setter
as:(gv-define-setter nth (store n x) `(setcar (nthcdr ,n ,x) ,store))
- Macro: define-setf-method access-fn arglist forms… ¶
This is the most general way to create new place forms. You can replace this by
gv-define-setter
orgv-define-expander
.When a
setf
to access-fn with arguments described by arglist is expanded, the forms are evaluated and must return a list of five items:- A list of temporary variables.
- A list of value forms corresponding to the temporary variables above. The temporary variables will be bound to these value forms as the first step of any operation on the generalized variable.
- A list of exactly one store variable (generally obtained
from a call to
gensym
). - A Lisp form that stores the contents of the store variable into the generalized variable, assuming the temporaries have been bound as described above.
- A Lisp form that accesses the contents of the generalized variable, assuming the temporaries have been bound.
This is exactly like the Common Lisp macro of the same name, except that the method returns a list of five values rather than the five values themselves, since Emacs Lisp does not support Common Lisp’s notion of multiple return values. (Note that the
setf
implementation provided by gv.el does not use this five item format. Its use here is only for backwards compatibility.)Once again, the forms may begin with a documentation string.
A setf-method should be maximally conservative with regard to temporary variables. In the setf-methods generated by
defsetf
, the second return value is simply the list of arguments in the place form, and the first return value is a list of a corresponding number of temporary variables generated bycl-gensym
. Macros likecl-incf
that use this setf-method will optimize away most temporaries that turn out to be unnecessary, so there is little reason for the setf-method itself to optimize.
Next: Function Index, Previous: Obsolete Features, Up: GNU Emacs Common Lisp Emulation [Contents][Index]
Appendix E GNU Free Documentation License
Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc. https://fsf.org/ Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
- PREAMBLE
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.
This License is a kind of “copyleft”, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.
We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.
- APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS
This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The “Document”, below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as “you”. You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright law.
A “Modified Version” of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.
A “Secondary Section” is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document’s overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.
The “Invariant Sections” are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero Invariant Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none.
The “Cover Texts” are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. A Front-Cover Text may be at most 5 words, and a Back-Cover Text may be at most 25 words.
A “Transparent” copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, that is suitable for revising the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. An image format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text. A copy that is not “Transparent” is called “Opaque”.
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML, PostScript or PDF designed for human modification. Examples of transparent image formats include PNG, XCF and JPG. Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML, PostScript or PDF produced by some word processors for output purposes only.
The “Title Page” means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, “Title Page” means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work’s title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.
The “publisher” means any person or entity that distributes copies of the Document to the public.
A section “Entitled XYZ” means a named subunit of the Document whose title either is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in another language. (Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below, such as “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, “Endorsements”, or “History”.) To “Preserve the Title” of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a section “Entitled XYZ” according to this definition.
The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that this License applies to the Document. These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to be included by reference in this License, but only as regards disclaiming warranties: any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no effect on the meaning of this License.
- VERBATIM COPYING
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.
You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies.
- COPYING IN QUANTITY
If you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed covers) of the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Document’s license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. If you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.
It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.
- MODIFICATIONS
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
- Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
- List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this requirement.
- State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the publisher.
- Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
- Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices.
- Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.
- Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document’s license notice.
- Include an unaltered copy of this License.
- Preserve the section Entitled “History”, Preserve its Title, and add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If there is no section Entitled “History” in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence.
- Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the “History” section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.
- For any section Entitled “Acknowledgements” or “Dedications”, Preserve the Title of the section, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.
- Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles.
- Delete any section Entitled “Endorsements”. Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version.
- Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled “Endorsements” or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section.
- Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers.
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version’s license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.
You may add a section Entitled “Endorsements”, provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties—for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.
- COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled “History” in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled “History”; likewise combine any sections Entitled “Acknowledgements”, and any sections Entitled “Dedications”. You must delete all sections Entitled “Endorsements.”
- COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.
- AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation’s users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Document’s Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.
- TRANSLATION
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will prevail.
If a section in the Document is Entitled “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, or “History”, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require changing the actual title.
- TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.
However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.
Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.
Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have been terminated and not permanently reinstated, receipt of a copy of some or all of the same material does not give you any rights to use it.
- FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License “or any later version” applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of this License can be used, that proxy’s public statement of acceptance of a version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document.
- RELICENSING
“Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site” (or “MMC Site”) means any World Wide Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides prominent facilities for anybody to edit those works. A public wiki that anybody can edit is an example of such a server. A “Massive Multiauthor Collaboration” (or “MMC”) contained in the site means any set of copyrightable works thus published on the MMC site.
“CC-BY-SA” means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license published by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation with a principal place of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft versions of that license published by that same organization.
“Incorporate” means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as part of another Document.
An MMC is “eligible for relicensing” if it is licensed under this License, and if all works that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC, and subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had no cover texts or invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.
The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is eligible for relicensing.
ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents
To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:
Copyright (C) year your name. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.
If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the “with…Texts.” line with this:
with the Invariant Sections being list their titles, with the Front-Cover Texts being list, and with the Back-Cover Texts being list.
If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.
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