interpreted language. Ignore them.)
SBCL aims for but has not yet reached compliance with the ANSI
-standard for Common Lisp. More information on this is available in the
-BUGS section below.
+standard for Common Lisp. More information about this is available in
+the BUGS section below.
SBCL also includes various non-ANSI extensions.
(Why doesn't SBCL support more extensions? Why drop all those nice
extensions from CMU CL when the code already exists? This is a
-frequently asked question on the mailing list. In other cases, it's a
+frequently asked question on the mailing list. In some cases, it's a
design philosophy issue: arguably SBCL has done its job by supplying a
stable FFI, and the right design decision is to move functionality
derived from that, like socket support, into separate libraries,
.TP 3
.B --noinform
Suppress the printing of any banner or other informational message at
-startup. (This makes it easier to write Lisp programs which work in
-Unix pipelines. See also the "--noprogrammer" and "--noprint" options.)
+startup. (This makes it easier to write Lisp programs which work
+cleanly in Unix pipelines. See also the "--noprint" and
+"--disable-debugger" options.)
.PP
In the future, runtime options may be added to control behavior such
When ordinarily the toplevel "read-eval-print loop" would be executed,
execute a "read-eval loop" instead, i.e. don't print a prompt and
don't echo results. Combined with the --noinform runtime option, this
-makes it easier to write Lisp "scripts" which work in Unix pipelines.
+makes it easier to write Lisp "scripts" which work cleanly in Unix
+pipelines.
.TP 3
-.B --noprogrammer
+.B --disable-debugger
+This is equivalent to --eval '(sb-ext:disable-debugger)'.
By default, a Common Lisp system tries to ask the programmer for help
when it gets in trouble (by printing a debug prompt on *DEBUG-IO*).
However, this is not useful behavior for a system running with no
programmer available, and this option tries to set up more appropriate
-behavior for that situation. Thus we set *DEBUG-IO* to send its
-output to *ERROR-OUTPUT*, and to raise an error if any input is
-requested from it; and we set *DEBUGGER-HOOK* to output a backtrace,
-then exit the process with a failure code.
+behavior for that situation. This is implemented by modifying special
+variables: we set *DEBUG-IO* to send its output to *ERROR-OUTPUT*, and
+to raise an error if any input is requested from it, and we set
+*DEBUGGER-HOOK* to output a backtrace, then exit the process with a
+failure code. Because it is implemented by modifying special variables,
+its effects persist in .core files created by SB-EXT:SAVE-LISP-AND-DIE.
+(If you want to undo its effects, see the SB-EXT:ENABLE-DEBUGGER
+command.)
.PP
Regardless of the order in which --sysinit, --userinit, and --eval
.SH SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
-Unlike its distinguished ancestor CMU CL, SBCL currently runs only on X86
-(Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD) and Alpha (Linux). For information on
-other ongoing ports, see the sbcl-devel mailing list, and/or the
-web site.
+SBCL currently runs on
+X86 (Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD), Alpha (Linux, Tru64), PPC
+(Linux) and SPARC (Linux and Solaris 2.x).
+For information on other ongoing and possible ports, see the
+sbcl-devel mailing list, and/or the web site.
-SBCL requires on the order of 16Mb RAM to run on X86 systems.
+SBCL requires on the order of 16Mb RAM to run on X86 systems,
+though for all but the smallest programs would be happier with 32Mb
+or more.
.SH ENVIRONMENT
For more detailed and current information on bugs, see the BUGS file
in the distribution.
-It is possible to get in deep trouble by exhausting
+It is possible to get in deep trouble by exhausting
memory. To plagiarize a sadly apt description of a language not
renowned for the production of bulletproof software, "[The current
SBCL implementation of] Common Lisp makes it harder for you to shoot
yourself in the foot, but when you do, the entire universe explodes."
.TP 3
\--
-The system doesn't deal well with stack overflow. (It tends to cause
-a segmentation fault instead of being caught cleanly.)
-.TP 3
-\--
Like CMU CL, the SBCL system overcommits memory at startup. On typical
Unix-alikes like Linux and FreeBSD, this means that if the SBCL system
turns out to use more virtual memory than the system has available for
.TP 3
\--
Multidimensional arrays are inefficient, especially
-multidimensional arrays of floating point numbers
+multidimensional arrays of floating point numbers.
.TP 3
\--
The DYNAMIC-EXTENT declaration isn't implemented at all, not even
optimizations.)
.TP 3
\--
-SBCL, like most implementations of Common Lisp, has trouble
-passing floating point numbers around efficiently, because
-they're larger than a machine word. (Thus, they get "boxed" in
+SBCL, like most (maybe all?) implementations of Common Lisp on
+stock hardware, has trouble
+passing floating point numbers around efficiently, because a floating
+point number, plus a few extra bits to identify its type,
+is larger than a machine word. (Thus, they get "boxed" in
heap-allocated storage, causing GC overhead.) Within
a single compilation unit,
or when doing built-in operations like SQRT and AREF,
or some special operations like structure slot accesses,
this is avoidable: see the user manual for some
efficiency hints. But for general function calls across
-the boundaries of compilation units, passing a floating point
-number as a function argument (or returning a floating point
-number as a function value) is a fundamentally slow operation.
+the boundaries of compilation units, passing the result of
+a floating point calculation
+as a function argument (or returning a floating point
+result as a function value) is a fundamentally slow operation.
.PP
There are still some nagging pre-ANSIisms, notably
.SH REPORTING BUGS
-To report a bug, please send mail to sbcl-help@lists.sourceforge.net
-or sbcl-devel@lists.sourceforge.net.
+To report a bug, please send mail to the mailing lists sbcl-help or
+sbcl-devel. You can find the complete mailing list addresses on the
+web pages, <http://sbcl.sourceforge.net/>. (You may also find fancy
+SourceForge bug-tracking machinery there, but don't be fooled. As of
+2002-07-25 anyway, we don't actively monitor that machinery, and it
+exists only because we haven't been able to figure out how to turn
+it off.)
As with any software bug report, it's most helpful if you can provide
enough information to reproduce the symptoms reliably, and if you say
clearly what the symptoms are. E.g. "There seems to be something wrong
with TAN of very small negative arguments. When I execute
-(TAN LEAST-NEGATIVE-SINGLE-FLOAT) interactively on sbcl-1.2.3 on my Linux
-4.5 X86 box, I get an UNBOUND-VARIABLE error."
+(TAN LEAST-NEGATIVE-SINGLE-FLOAT) interactively on sbcl-1.2.3 on my
+Linux 4.5 X86 box, I get an UNBOUND-VARIABLE error."
.SH SUPPORT
<http://sbcl.sourceforge.net/>. The mailing lists there are the
recommended place to look for support.
+.SH FILES
+
+.TP
+.I sbcl
+executable program containing some low-level runtime support and
+a loader, used to read sbcl.core
+.TP
+.I sbcl.core
+dumped memory image containing most of SBCL, to be loaded by the
+'sbcl' executable
+.TP
+.I sbclrc
+optional system-wide startup script (in an etc-ish system
+configuration file directory)
+.TP
+.I .sbclrc
+optional per-user customizable startup script (in user's home directory)
+
.SH AUTHORS
Dozens of people have made substantial contributions to SBCL and its
projects / sbcl.git / blobdiff