Tulisp

Tulisp is a Lisp interpreter that can be embedded into Rust programs. The syntax tries to closely match that of Emacs Lisp. It was primarily designed to be a configuration language, but it also works well as a general purpose embedded scripting language.

One of the many benefits of using the Emacs Lisp syntax is that we can reuse its documentation for the builtin functions and macros. And for people who are already familiar with Emacs Lisp, there's no need to learn an extra language.

Getting started

Tulisp requires rustc version 1.70 or higher.

It is very easy to get started. Here's an example:

use tulisp::{TulispContext, tulisp_fn, Error};

fn main() -> Result<(), Error> {
    // Create a new Tulisp execution context.
    let mut ctx = TulispContext::new();

    // Add a function called `add_nums` to `ctx`.
    #[tulisp_fn(add_func = "ctx")]
    fn add_nums(num1: i64, num2: i64) -> i64 {
        num1 + num2
    }

    // Write a lisp program that calls `add_nums`
    let program = "(add_nums 10 20)";

    // Evaluate the program, and save the result.
    let sum: i64 = ctx.eval_string(program)?.try_into()?;

    assert_eq!(sum, 30);
    Ok(())
}

Features

• defuns, defmacros and lambdas
• intern to find/create symbols dynamically
• Backquote/Unquote forms (for example `(answer . ,(+ 2 3)))
• Threading macros (thread-first and thread-last)
• Methods for reading from alists and plists
• Lexical scopes and lexical binding
• Tailcall Optimization
• Proc macros for exposing rust functions to tulisp
• Decl macros for creating lists and destructuring lists quickly.
• Easy to use interpreter and objects
• Backtraces for errors

Performance

Tulisp has a light-weight tree-walking interpreter with very low startup times and sufficient speed for many config/simulation needs.

Builtin functions

A list of currently available builtin functions can be found here.

Projects using Tulisp

• slippy - a configuration tool for the Sway window manager.
• microsim - a microgrid simulator.