Golid

Program in Go with Lisp syntax

This is an experimental project where I'm making a basic Lisp that "compiles" to valid Go source code, enabling use of Lisp syntactic macros with minimally-changed Go code. It currently supports some very basic Go programs.

Wishlist

• Stable, complete, accurate support for all the Go features it uses
• Translation of Golid into itself
• Lisp macros (with quasi-quoting)
• More useful GoString() with line numbers of errors
• Prettier output formatting
• Comment preservation
• An Emacs mode file for Golid
• Automatic conversion of an entire source tree's Golid files in one fell swoop
• Automatic conversion of Go into Golid syntax.

Installation

• Install and configure Go
• Run go get github.com/refola/golid/cmd/golid
• Run go install github.com/refola/golid/cmd/golid or, from the repository root, run ./install.sh
• Run golid file.gol to convert file.gol into gol_file.go

More info

• Wiki
• Credits
• Motivation/history

Lisp-iness disclaimer

I am most definitely not a Lisp wizard. I'm just a programmer who like's Go's general simplicity and Lisp's macros. If you are a Lisp wizard, then I would appreciate your advice for how to implement things more easily or more cleanly. However, please keep in mind that this is not a "make Lisp like Go" project. This is a "steal Lisp magic and give it to Go" project. As such, as much as possible will come from Go instead of Lisp. For example, this project uses Go's = and := for setting variables; there is no let or setf. If you want a proper Lisp to use with Go, then go here.

License

This is licensed as GPLv3 because that's the most restrictive license GitHub offers by default. I know that this is an inappropriate license for something resembling a programming language. If for some reason you want to use experimental learning code for your GPLv3-incompatible project, then please make a bug report describing your project and why you want to use piklisp.go for it in a GPLv3-incompatible way. I'll gladly change the license in exchange for having a public record of someone wanting to use my project. Depending on demand, I'm potentially willing to go as far as public domain or the "Unlicense". But I need a good reason to relicense.