CMU Artificial Intelligence Repository

Common Lisp the Language, 2nd Edition

Common Lisp the Language, 2nd Edition

This document contains the complete text of the book

   Common Lisp the Language, 2nd edition
   by Guy L. Steele, Thinking Machines, Inc.
   Digital Press
   1990 paperbound
   1029 pages
   ISBN 1-55558-041-6  $39.95

in html format. To use it, start with the Title Page or Table of Contents. A searchable index interface to the book is under construction. This is a mirror of the original. Several other mirrors are available. Please use the mirror that is closest to you. A guide on how to update this book to be accurate for ANSI Common Lisp can be found here

Digital Press

We are very grateful to Butterworth-Heinemann, owners of Digital Press, for allowing us to make the full text of this important reference work widely available in electronic format. The paperbound version is of course readily available at fine bookstores, or contact them directly:

   Digital Press
   225 Wildwood St.
   Woburn, MA 01801
   Tel: 800-366-2665 (USA) or 617-928-2527
   Fax: 800-446-6520 (USA) or 617-933-6333

For other fine books from Digital Press, please see the Digital Press 1994 Catalog.

Book Description

In this greatly expanded edition of the defacto standard, you’ll learn about the nearly 200 changes already made since original publication - and find out about gray areas likely to be revised later. Written by the Vice-Chairman of X3J13 (the ANSI committee responsible for the standardization of Common Lisp) and co-developer of the language itself, the new edition contains the entire text of the first edition plus six completely new chapters. They cover:

CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System, with new features to support function overloading and object-oriented programming, plus complete technical specifications
Loops, a powerful control structure for multiple variables
Conditions, a generalization of the error signaling mechanism
Series and generators
Plus other subjects not part of the ANSI standards but of interest to professional programmers.

Throughout, you’ll find fresh examples, additional clarifications, warnings, and tips - all presented with the author’s customary vigor and wit.

LaTeX, DVI, and PS versions

The sources for the book and catalog are available in gzipped tar files:

The original versions of these files can be obtained by anonymous ftp from

   README file
and the
Digital Press catalog
with any distributed electronic copies of Common Lisp the Language.

Known Bugs

The LaTeX sources were converted to html using the latex2html
program. We fixed many of the glitches by hand, but may have missed some.
When in doubt, check your copy of the original paperbound version.

Because latex2html replaces mathematical formulas, tables,
figures, and non-ascii characters with embedded GIFs, you may find
that some characters drop out when cutting and pasting the text. Where
possible, we've attempted to replace these GIFs with ascii
equivalents.

The current index is inferior to the one available in the paperbound
version and will eventually be replaced with a form-based GLIMPSE index. 

Please report errors in the html version to ai+cltl2@cs.cmu.edu.

Acknowledgments

The following people were instrumental in the preparation of the html
version of the book:

 Mark Kantrowitz
 Nikos Drakos
 Robert Doorenbos
 Marius Minea
 Alison Cawsey
 Steve Strassmann
 Tom Bylander




Inquiries, comments, and corrections are welcome. Please direct them to
AI.Repository@cs.cmu.edu



Digital Press is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation, used
under license to Butterworth-Heinemann.