Summary

  • Lisp, one of the oldest programming languages still in use, has spawned a tiny interpreter, TinyLisp, comprising only 99 lines of C code.
  • Running on a Z80-based Sharp pocket computer with 2.3kB of RAM, it supports double-precision floating point and 21 Lisp primitives, plus a garbage collector.
  • It can be found on GitHub along with a more advanced implementation comprising 1,000 lines of C, which offers a more advanced garbage collector and several more Lisp primitives, but is still far from full-featured.
  • The article detailing TinyLisp is part of the GitHub project.
  • More full-featured Lisp implementations are also widely available.

By Maya Posch

Original Article