ref: 310ccf23d770b7f9e7589c3ef2611c1565009a7e
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# femtolisp A compact interpreter for a minimal lisp/scheme dialect. This is a reanimation of https://github.com/lambdaconservatory/femtolisp with bigger plans. Supported OS: [9front](http://9front.org), OpenBSD, Linux. Supported CPUs: any decent 32-bit or 64-bit CPU, either LE or BE. Tested on: 9front-latest/arm64, OpenBSD-current/amd64, Debian/ppc, Alpine/amd64, Android-termux/arm64, Debian/sparc64. Some of the changes from the original include: * aggressive clean up and removal (like Windows and Mac OS X support) * `[` and `]` are synonyms to `(` and `)` * some of the previously available (but not merged) patches from the community and [Julia](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia) are applied * "boot" image is built into the executable * vm opcode definitions and tables are generated from a single file * fixed bootstrap (makes it work properly when opcodes change) * bigints ## Characteristics * lexical scope, lisp-1 * unrestricted macros * case-sensitive * simple compacting copying garbage collector * Scheme-style varargs (dotted formal argument lists) * "human-readable" bytecode with self-hosted compiler * circular structure can be printed and read * `#.` read macro for eval-when-read and readably printing builtins * read macros for backquote * symbol character-escaping printer * exceptions * gensyms (can be usefully read back in, too) * `#| multiline comments |#`, `#;(block comment...`, lots of other lexical syntax * generic compare function, cyclic equal * cvalues system providing C data types and a C FFI * constructor notation for nicely printing arbitrary values