:santagrin: This book was suggested by : pr_tiglao

Book excerpts:

While this book is clearly written, it is not an introduction to programming in Lisp -- Common Lisp: The Language only offers the language specification.

Common Lisp has proved to be a useful and stable platform for rapid prototyping and systems delivery in artificial intelligence and other areas. With experience gained in using Common Lisp for so many applications, implementors found no shortage of opportunities for innovation. One of the important characteristics of Lisp is its good support for experimental extension of the language; while Common Lisp has been stable, it has not stagnated.

The purpose of this second edition is to bridge the gap between the first edition and the forthcoming ANSI standard for Common Lisp. Because of the requirement for formal public review, it will be some time yet before the ANSI standard is final. This book in no way resembles the forthcoming standard.

Incorporated into this second edition is a great deal of material based on the votes of X3J13 (the ANSI committee responsible for the standardization of Common Lisp), in order to give the reader a picture of where the language is heading. The purpose here is not simply to quote the X3J13 documents verbatim but to paraphrase them and relate them to the structure of the first edition. A single vote by X3J13 may be discussed in many parts of this book, and a single passage of this book may be affected by many of the votes.

At the end of the book is an index of the X3J13 votes, ordered by the committee's internal code names (included to ease cross-reference to the X3J13 documents, which may be useful during the public review periods).

Reviews:

Amazon.com

:) Common Lisp is an enormous language, with over 800 built-in functions, many of which have complicated semantics and dozens of keywords that alter those semantics. Considering the daunting task of documenting this language, Steele deserves a medal. (In fact, the book has received various awards.)