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A naive LISP interpreted by a tower of interpreters, compiled to C

lolita is a zero-dependency (using only the 'base' package) implementation of a LISP with full support of macros that compiles to C. Of interest is the way macros are achieved - lazily building an infinite tower of interpreters.

A Tower of Interpreters

Consider the unless macro

(begin
  (defmacro (unless cond body)
    `(if ,cond 'passthrough ,body))

  (unless #t (+ 2 2)))

defmacro is a special keyword that defines new keywords. In this case, the keyword unless is defined. Once a new keyword is defined, each occurrence is "expanded" by evaluating the body of the macro in a new meta-level interpreter.

If the body of the macro itself contains macro definitions and invocations, those macros are in turn expanded, thus, a new meta-meta-level interpreter is created. The process is repeated as many times as necessary.

Tower of interpreters

Compilation to C

Code is compiled to C and executed via the scheme.h runtime. The output C code is expressed in C macros defined in scheme.h for simplicity and readability. The strategy adopted preserves the flavour of an expression-centered language like LISP as much as possible.

How to compile?

To compile, for example, factorial.scm run:

cabal run lolita -- factorial.scm

This will output a out.c file which can then be compiled and ran:

cc out.c && ./a.out

Source files

  • src/
    • Main.hs - the command line interface
    • MonadT.hs - simple monad transformers library ala mtl
    • Parse.hs - LISP reader implemented with combinators
    • Objectify.hs - AST builder and macro expansion
    • Walk.hs - various code walkers for processing the AST
    • Codegen.hs - performs the final step of converting the processed AST to C code
  • scheme.h - the C runtime required to execute the output C code

Leftovers and limitations (things I meant to do, but didn't end up doing)

It should be relatively straightforward to implement mutation in the language via set!. An appropriate API should be added to scheme.h and a code walker to label mutable variables.

Currently, there is no garbage collector whatsoever; however, a Boehm style garbage collector should be relatively straightforward to adopt.

Credits

Various sources have been referenced throughout the codebase; however, one source has been paramount in the development of lolita: Lisp in Small Pieces by Christian Queinnec.