Robert-van-Engelen/tinylisp resource

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

1594 stars · 99 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

A tiny Lisp interpreter written in 99 lines of C, accompanied by an article explaining how to build it yourself. It includes 21 Lisp primitives, garbage collection, a REPL, and tail-call optimized variants, and even runs on a vintage Sharp PC-G850 pocket computer.

Use cases

• learn how to write a Lisp interpreter in C
• study a minimal Lisp implementation with garbage collection
• understand NaN boxing value representation
• run a tiny Lisp on embedded or vintage hardware
• extend a small interpreter with new Lisp features
• teach programming language implementation concepts

When to choose

• you want a compact, readable codebase for learning interpreter internals
• you need a minimal Lisp that runs on constrained or retro hardware
• you want a tutorial-style project with an accompanying article

When to avoid

• you need a production-grade Lisp or Scheme with full standard library
• you require high performance or a mature ecosystem
• you want batteries-included tooling like package management or debugging

Facets

learning-resource · maturity stable

interpreter programming-language parser programming-languages education tutorials c cross-platform cli lisp interpreter nan-boxing garbage-collection repl tail-call-optimization minimalist retro-computing

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="Robert-van-Engelen/tinylisp")