Lisp/Scheme interpreter without Emacs?

Question

I've been wanting to teach myself Lisp for a while. However, all the interpreters of which I've heard involve some flavor of emacs. Are there any command line interpreters, such that I could type this into the command line:

lispinterpret sourcefile.lisp

just like I can run perl or python.

While I'd also like to become more familiar with Emacs (if only not to be frustrated when I work with somebody who uses Emacs), I'd rather decouple learning Emacs from learning Lisp.

Edit: I actually want to follow SICP which uses Scheme, so an answer about Scheme would be more useful. I'm just not that familiar with the differences.

Answer 1

Another good dialect of lisp is cmucl. They used to love to brag about being the "fastest" lisp.

Answer 2

It seems like scheme shell is suitable for your purpose. Take a look at http://www.scsh.net/index.html

Answer 3

I often write lisp shell scripts which start with this line:

#!/usr/bin/clisp

Then you don't even need to type "lispinterpret" on the command-line. Just mark the script executable and run it directly.

Answer 4

The most widely used IDE for Common Lisp, particularly in the free software subset of the community, is in fact SLIME, which runs on Emacs. You can use whatever CL compiler you prefer and invoke Lisp source files the way you describe, but if you do that, you won't be taking advantage of many of Lisps dynamic features that are so incredibly useful while developing your application.

I suggest you take a look at this SLIME demonstration video to see what I mean, even though it might be a bit outdated at this point.

If the problem is that you (think you) don't like Emacs, I seriously suggest you try to learn it. Seriously. No, really, I mean that. However, there are alternatives, such as the IDEs provided by commercial Lisp implementations such as Allegro and Lispworks (free trials available), or an Eclipse plug-in called Cusp.

Answer 5

Most scheme interpreters that I am familiar with can be run from the command line. (Much of the list below is extracted from the comparative table at Alexey Radul's Scheme Implementation Choices page. There is a more extensive list at schemewiki but that page does not immediately provide command-line invocation syntax.)

Here's how you run a number of implementations at the command line:

• Chez Scheme: scheme, petite

• MIT Scheme: mit-scheme

• Scheme 48: scheme48

• RScheme: rs

• Racket: racket (But I recommend trying the DrRacket IDE, especially for beginners.)

• Guile: guile

• Bigloo: bigloo

• Chicken: csi

• Gambit: gsi

• Gauche: gosh

• IronScheme: IronScheme.Console

• Kawa: kawa, java kawa.repl

• Larceny: larceny

• SCM: scm

Answer 6

Did you try Allegro CL from http://www.franz.com/?