GNU Common Lisp

Table of Contents

• Introduction to GCL
• Downloading GCL

Introduction to GCL

GNU Common Lisp (GCL, formerly known as Austin Kyoto Common Lisp) is a compiler and interpreter for Common Lisp. GCL is very portable and extremely efficient on a wide class of applications, and compares favorably in performance with commercial Lisps on several large theorem--prover and symbolic algebra systems. GCL supports the CLtL1 specification.

Some advantages

• GCL compiles to C and then uses the native optimizing C compiler (e.g., GCC), giving great portability.
• Highly efficient. A function call is basically the same speed as a C function call, in fact identical to a C function call via a pointer.
• It has a source level Lisp debugger (dbl) for interpreted code, letting you step a line at a time, while displaying the your position in an Emacs window. This is invaluable when trying to understand large systems.
• Has pioneered conservative Garbage Collection schemes.
• Also has a garbage collection scheme, for only recent allocations, based on native page fault handling. This is the stratified garbage collection (SGC).
• Very reliable. People have huge chip verification suites which run for extended periods. I have had computations which ran for weeks. There are no leaks.
• Very fast. I have numerous users who claim their code runs two times under GCL, than in competitive lisps.
• New features such as fast regexp matching (using my new algorithm).
• Socket code is being added.
• A new Windows 95 port is in progress.
• Can be used in commercial applications, since covered by the Gnu library license, which permits you to distribute a system including GCL, as long as you distribute your binary .o files as well.
• built in interface to Tk widget system. Allows a mixture of tcl and common lisp to be used in a user interface--your choice which you use.
• Special permission can be given for other commercial applications.
• Support available from the developer.

Downloading GCL

GCL can also be downloaded from http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/pub/gcl/.
The source is now under cvs and you can download various versions, including any changes.

William F. Schelter

Return to GNU's home page.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: 3 Dec 2000 tower