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Embeddable Common Lisp

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Embeddable Common Lisp
ParadigmsMulti-paradigm: procedural, functional, object-oriented, meta, reflective, generic
FamilyLisp
Designed byGiuseppe Attardi
DeveloperGiuseppe Attardi
First appeared1 January 1995; 29 years ago (1995-01-01)
Stable release
16.1.3 / 19 December 2016; 8 years ago (2016-12-19)
Typing disciplineDynamic, strong
Implementation languageC, Common Lisp
PlatformARM, x86
OSUnix-like, Android, Windows
LicenseLGPL 2.1+
Websitecommon-lisp.net/project/ecl
Influenced by
Lisp, Common Lisp, C

Embeddable Common Lisp (ECL) is a small implementation of the ANSI Common Lisp programming language that can be used stand-alone or embedded in extant applications written in C. It creates OS-native executables and libraries (i.e. Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) files on unix) from Common Lisp code, and runs on most platforms that support a C compiler. The ECL runtime is a dynamically loadable library for use by applications. It is distributed as free and open-source software under a GNU Lesser Public License (LGPL) 2.1+.

It includes a runtime system, and two compilers, a bytecode interpreter allowing applications to be deployed where no C compiler is expected, and an intermediate language type, which compiles Common Lisp to C for a more efficient runtime. The latter also features a native foreign function interface (FFI), that supports inline C as part of Common Lisp. Inline C FFI combined with Common Lisp macros, custom Lisp setf expansions and compiler-macros, yield a compile-time preprocessor.