robpike/lisp
Toy Lisp 1.5 interpreter observed · 2026-10-21
Health v2 · maintenance only
77/100
- Activity 99
- Release rhythm 35
- Longevity 100
Flags: no_releases
How is this computed?
round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-10-21. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.
- gap_med: n/a
- age_days: 2317
- days_rel: n/a
- days_push: 9
- n_releases_24m: 0
Adoption not part of the score
1003 stars · 52 forks observed · 2026-10-21
What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-09-07, confidence 0.95
A toy interpreter for Lisp 1.5, the language defined in the 1962 MIT LISP 1.5 Programmer's Manual, written in clean Go code. It is a pedagogical experiment implementing the EVALQUOTE/APPLY interpreter from page 13 of the book, deliberately not a modern or practical Lisp.
Use cases
- learn how the original Lisp 1.5 interpreter works
- study the EVALQUOTE/APPLY evaluator from the LISP 1.5 manual
- teach a course on Lisp history and interpreter design
- experiment with a minimal Lisp REPL
- explore lexical scoping in a classic Lisp dialect
- play with arbitrary-precision integer arithmetic in Lisp
When to choose
- you want to understand or teach how early Lisp interpreters worked
- you want a small, readable Go codebase showing a minimal Lisp evaluator
- you want a fun historical REPL with big-integer arithmetic and Unicode identifiers
When to avoid
- you need a practical Lisp for real programs (no SETQ, PROG, I/O, or character handling)
- you need Common Lisp, Scheme, or floating-point numbers
- you need performance - the interpreter is intentionally slow
Facets
cli-tool · maturity stable
interpreter programming-language programming-languages education windows cli go lisp lisp-1.5 pedagogical toy-language historical-recreation big-integer-arithmetic lexical-scoping interpreter algorithms linux macos
1 source
- readme: https://github.com/robpike/lisp · fetched 2026-10-21 · cf9a8ca49ee0
Member repositories
| Repository | Role | Health v2 |
|---|---|---|
| robpike/lisp | main | 77 |
For agents
Data as of 2026-10-19T08:05:51.212177+00:00 · Report a problem