Lisp: S-expressions & Primitive Functions

Functional Programming Language.

Everything in "s-expressions" -- symbolic expressions

All uppercase letters

S-Expressions

Atoms

Integer or symbolic identifier

e.g. 42 XYZ T NIL

T -- true

NIL -- false

Non-atomic

i.e. Binary trees

• Children can be atom or non-atom
• Left-half: car
• Right-half: cdr

e.g. (42.NIL) (NIL.42) (42.(NIL.42)) ((NIL.42).42)

How are s-expressions stored and used?

• Atoms: one word of memory storing the int value or name of the atom; accessed by a pointer to that memory loaction
• Non-atoms: one block of two words of memory storing the car & cdr of the non-atom. Accessed by a pointer to the block of two words.
  • car: content of the address register -- the left child
  • cdr: content of the displacement register -- the right child

Primary Functions

• CAR -- return car of a non-atom, error if param is an atom
• CDR -- return cdr of a non-atom, error if param is an atom
• CONS -- combine two atom/non-atom into one non-atom, e.g. CONS[se1, se2] = (se1 . se2)

1. Grab a two-word block of memory from the heap

2. Copy se1 into the first word

3. Copy se2 into the second word

4. Return a pointer to the two-word block of memory

• EQ -- compare two atoms, return T if the same, NIL otherwise

  1. EQ [ ae1, ae2 ] -- ae1, ae2 must both be atomic, otherwise error

  2. Compare pointers but not values

• ATOM [se] -- T if se is atomic, NIL otherwise

• NULL [se] -- T if se is NIL, NIL otherwise.

Customized Functions

•  cadaar[se] = car[cdr[car[car[se]]]] -- [se] is the param decl instead of an actual variable
  

** Note, everything in lisp should be s-expressions, but the above is not written in that format. Therefore, the above is actually a pseudo code, and it has to be converted into formal lisp.