On: Common Lisp as a Scripting Language, 2015 Edition

[mark_l_watson]

I used Common Lisp from the mid 1980s until about 5 years ago when my customers wanted Clojure, if they wanted Lisp development done. I have never seriously used CL as a scripting language but for a while I was using Gambit-C Scheme for small compiled apps and command line tools. Gambit-C is very good for this purpose.

BTW, Clojure is "out" for command line tools because of the JVM startup time but I have thought about Clojurescript + node.

[sputnikus → mark_l_watson]

Pixie[1] is also worth a look. It's Clojure-like scripting language written in RPython.

[1] https://github.com/pixie-lang/pixie

[dorfsmay → sputnikus]

Indeed pretty cool, clojure implemented in rpython!

[rakoo → dorfsmay]

For even more fun, checkout hy (https://github.com/hylang/hy). It's completely compatible with standard python both ways (ie you can import python from hy and import hy from python), so you can import python-sh and do awesome stuff like:

  (import [sh [cat grep wc]])
  (->
   (cat "/usr/share/dict/words")
   (grep "-E" "^hy")
   (wc "-l"))

[andrewchambers → dorfsmay]

It isn't clojure compatible, it is like clojure.

[whateveracct → mark_l_watson]

Nitpick, but Clojure's startup time isn't JVM startup time it's clojure.core startup time

[e12e → whateveracct]

This appears to be true, eg:

  cat <<eof > Hello.java
  public class Hello {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
      System.out.println("Hello, world!"); }}
  eof

  javac Hello.java
  echo "Main-Class: Hello" > manifest.mf
  jar cvfm hello.jar manifest.mf Hello.class
  time java -jar hello.jar 
  Hello, world!

  real    0m0.153s
  user    0m0.132s
  sys     0m0.020s

vs:

  lein new hello
  cd hello
  # Pesty s-expressions, so hard to work with... ;-)
  cat <<eof|patch -p0
  --- project.clj 2015-04-16 04:13:09.734160136 +0200
  +++ project.clj.patch   2015-04-16 04:09:33.809504079 +0200
  @@ -3,4 +3,5 @@
     :url "http://example.com/FIXME"
     :license {:name "Eclipse Public License"
               :url "http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html"}
  +  :main hello.core
     :dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.6.0"]])
  eof

  cat<<eof > src/hello/core.clj
  (ns hello.core
    (:gen-class))
  (defn -main 
    "I don't do a whole lot."
    []
    (println "Hello, World!"))
  eof

  lein uberjar
  
  time java -jar target/hello-0.1.0-SNAPSHOT-standalone.jar 

Hello, World!

  real    0m1.060s
  user    0m1.400s
  sys     0m0.040s

(Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2520M CPU @ 2.50GHz, SSD drive)

[e12e → e12e]

Kawa:

  wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/kawa/kawa-2.0.jar
  wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/kawa/kawa-2.0.jar.sig
  gpg --recv-key D269E756
  gpg --verify kawa-2.0.jar.sig

  echo '(format #t "Hello, world!\n")' > hello.scm
  # Not sure how to bundle up a scheme script with kawa
  # to a stand-alone jar...
  java -jar kawa-2.0.jar --main -C hello.scm 
  time java -cp kawa-2.0.jar:. hello
  Hello, world!

  real    0m0.284s
  user    0m0.296s
  sys     0m0.020s

[_19qg → e12e]

Lisp on my Raspberry Pi is faster:

    pi@raspberrypi ~/lisp/ccl $ time ./armcl -n -Q -e '(progn (princ "hello") (quit))'
    hello

    real	0m0.112s
    user	0m0.020s
    sys	        0m0.080s

And the expression is first compiled to native code...

[e12e → _19qg]

How does guile 2.0 do on that hardware?

[_19qg → e12e]

Don't know. I don't use it.

[e12e → e12e]

And, for the record, with the same hello.scm, and guile (2.0.5 as found in Debian stable):

  # First run:
  time guile hello.scm 
  ;;; note: auto-compilation is enabled, set GUILE_AUTO_COMPILE=0
  (...)
  Hello, world!

  real    0m0.066s
  user    0m0.044s
  sys     0m0.020s

  #Ed: with precompiled code under $HOME/.cache/guile (?)
  time guile hello.scm 
  Hello, world!

  real    0m0.040s
  user    0m0.036s
  sys     0m0.004s

[i_am_so_tired → whateveracct]

Ah, that is why Kawa Scheme starts up faster then.

[father_of_two → mark_l_watson]

There is also scsh (scheme shell - http://scsh.net/) although not being maintained anymore.

[kd0amg → father_of_two]

There's a plan to do some work on it (including trying to port it to 64 bit) this summer.

[rml → kd0amg]

An updated version by Roderic Morris can be installed as a library atop the latest version of Scheme 48. It's on github: https://github.com/scheme/scsh

I think it's 64-bit (?). Most of the time it hasn't mattered for me, at least when writing scripts.

You can also just build the "old" version (0.6.7) with the `-m32` GCC flag, and it works fine on 64-bit Linux and OS X. It's very stable in my experience, and works fine.

[wglb → mark_l_watson]

And there is http://scsh.net/

[i_am_so_tired → mark_l_watson]

I use Kawa Scheme on the JVM for scripting on Windows. Powershell is forbidden where I work. For some reason, it seems to start up faster than Clojure.

[jonnybgood → mark_l_watson]

Considered Racket?

[enupten → mark_l_watson]

Is clojure any "better" in real-world use ?