PICOLISP(1)							   User Commands						       PICOLISP(1)

NAME

       pil, picolisp - a fast, lightweight Lisp interpreter

SYNOPSIS

       pil [arguments ...] [-] [arguments ...] [+]
       picolisp [arguments ...] [-] [arguments ...] [+]

DESCRIPTION

       PicoLisp is a Lisp interpreter with a small memory footprint, yet relatively high execution speed. It combines an elegant and powerful lan-
       guage with built-in database functionality.

       pil is the startup front-end for the interpreter. It takes care of starting the binary base system and loading a  useful  runtime  environ-
       ment.

       picolisp  is  just the bare interpreter binary. It is usually called in stand-alone scripts, using the she-bang notation in the first line,
       passing the minimal environment in lib.l and loading additional files as needed:

	      #!/usr/bin/picolisp /usr/lib/picolisp/lib.l
	      (load "@ext.l" "myfiles/lib.l" "myfiles/foo.l")
	      (do ... something ...)
	      (bye)

INVOCATION

       PicoLisp has no pre-defined command line flags; applications are free to define their own. Any built-in or user-level Lisp function can	be
       invoked	from the command line by prefixing it with a hyphen. Examples for built-in functions useful in this context are version (print the
       version number) or bye (exit the interpreter). Therefore, a minimal call to print the version number and then immediately exit  the  inter-
       preter would be:

	      $ pil -version -bye

       Any other argument (not starting with a hyphen) should be the name of a file to be loaded. If the first character of a path or file name is
       an at-mark, it will be substituted with the path to the installation directory.

       All arguments are evaluated from left to right, then an interactive read-eval-print loop is entered (with a colon as prompt).

       A single hyphen stops the evaluation of the rest of the command line, so that the remaining arguments may be processed under  program  con-
       trol.

       If  the very last command line argument is a single plus character, debugging mode is switched on at interpreter startup, before evaluating
       any of the command line arguments. A minimal interactive session is started with:

	      $ pil +

       Here you can access the reference manual

	      : (doc)

       and the online documentation for most functions,

	      : (doc 'vi)

       or directly inspect their sources:

	      : (vi 'doc)

       The interpreter can be terminated with

	      : (bye)

       or by typing Ctrl-D.

FILES

       Runtime files are maintained in the ~/.pil directory:

       ~/.pil/tmp/<pid>/
	      Process-local temporary directories

       ~/.pil/history
	      The line editor's history file

BUGS

       PicoLisp doesn't try to protect you from every possible programming error ("You asked for it, you got it").

AUTHOR

       Alexander Burger <abu@software-lab.de>

RESOURCES

       Home page: http://home.picolisp.com
       Download: http://www.software-lab.de/down.html

																       PICOLISP(1)