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SketchyLISP
Reference
  Copyright (C) 2006
Nils M Holm

1 Summary

SketchyLISP is an interpreter for a purely applicative dialect of Scheme. It may be considered an implementation of pure LISP plus global definitions, first-class continuations and input/output functions.

Like its first volume, this part focuses on the functional aspects of the Scheme language. While the first volume provides a step-by-step introduction to Scheme in general, this part describes the SketchyLISP subset as a formal system for re-writing terms. It introduces semi-formal definitions for Scheme data, programs, a small set of primitive functions, and a set of rules for reducing purely applicative expressions to normal forms.

This volume also contains the complete Scheme source code for about 90 R5RS-compliant library functions. Every part of the language that is used to form these functions is either explained in the section on primitives and reduction rules or contained in the collection of library functions itself. Therefore this part is completely self-contained.

SketchyLISP is an extended subset of full R5RS Scheme, so most SketchyLISP programs work in Scheme without modification. There are only a few SketchyLISP primitives which have no counterparts in Scheme. These primitives are marked as specific to SketchyLISP in this book.