Re: Using lisp code in emacs inside a C program

[William Gardella]

Rivka Miller <rivkaumiller@gmail.com> writes:
> \begin{quotation}
> ECL (ECL for short) uses standard C calling conventions for Lisp
> compiled functions, which allows C programs to easily call Lisp
> functions and vice versa. No foreign function interface is required:
> data can be exchanged between C and Lisp with no need for conversion.
> \end{quotation}
>
> How did ECL achieve this?
>
> R

Not to oversimplify too much, but a compiled ECL function *is* a C
function.  The Debian description of the package lists among its
features:

> ECL stands for Embeddable Common-Lisp. The ECL project is an effort to
> modernize Giuseppe Attardi's ECL environment to produce an implementation of
> the Common-Lisp language which complies to the ANSI X3J13 definition of the
> language. 

> The current ECL implementation features: 
> * A bytecodes compiler and interpreter. 
> * A translator to C. 
> ...

So it's like similar initiatives for Pascal, FORTRAN, etc.--the end
result is a C program that you can poke at with tools designed to work
with C (binutils, gdb, etc.) and which can communicate natively with C
functions.  I've not used it and have heard mixed reviews (mostly on
#emacs) about its performance relative to other compiled CL
implementations.  But if what you need is Lisp inside C, it seems this
is your bet--it can even be used to make C shared libraries, it looks
like.

Chicken, being an R5RS-to-C compiler, has similar aspirations for the
world of Scheme.

Best,
WGG

-- 
I use grml (http://grml.org/)