Emacs Lisp

Table of Contents

• Lisp
• Namespace and Security
• The Language
• Fundamental Data Types
• Fundamental Data Structures
• Variables
• Common Functions
• Control Flow
• Special Forms
• Functions
• Emacs Byte-code
• The Emacs Interpreter
• Customizing Key Binds
• Elisp within Emacs
• Exercises
• Customizing Emacs
• Example Customization
• ASIDE: Concept of Pure Functions

Lisp

• LISP: LISt processor because the source code is comprised of lists.
• Lisp is the first functional language.
  • ELisp (Emacs Lisp) is a variant of Lisp used to write and extend the Emacs application.
  • Elisp is a language embedded as a part of larger applications (extension language)

An example of app-specific language (ASL). To some extent, it's an example of the little language philosophy. The creators of Emacs took an existing language and mutated it to suit their particular problem.

Namespace and Security

• Emacs is very traditional - a flat, top-level namespace that can be prone to clashing
• You have a lot of liberty in making problematic changes. This is allowed for example:

emacs-version
; "28.2"
(setq emacs-version "100.0")
; "100.0"
(setq emacs-version "100.0")

; You can also mess around safely with scoped variables:
(let ((emacs-version "19.2"))
  (message "A %s" emacs-version)
  )
; "A 19.2"

• Trying to evaluate a variable that's never been assigned, you get a runtime error, very reliably
• There is well-defined behavior, as opposed to undefined behavior like in C/C++, the former which is obviously safer
• The Emacs debugger also provides a traceback, but it reads bottom to top
  • To exit from the debugger, enter C-]

Scripting languages thus tend to be used for exploratory programs, student codes, one-off programs, etc.

(message "You can %s like printf!" "interpolate")
; "You can interpolate like printf!"

The Language

Fundamental Data Types

• 34 integers
• 34.4 floats
• 'eggert symbol has a name, in this case eggert and has no other properties
  • a symbol can only has one name, which guarantees uniqueness via the symbol table
• "eggert" strings - do not care about line boundaries
  • strings with equal content are not unique

Fundamental Data Structures

Emacs uses the same notation for programs and data. In other words, we use data notation to write our programs. The fundamental data structure in Lisp is the list, which is built from cons, which is just a pair of values. A list is singly-linked list of cons.

• (cons a b) builds a pair and gives you the result (allocates storage on the heap)
  • [A|B] is what it looks like (implementation)

Lists

• (A B C D E) five-item list, which are built out of pairs
  • [A| ]->[B| ]->[C| ]->[D| ]->[E|/] how the list implementation looks like
• (A . B) is a list without the nill character at the end of it, (does not chain)
• (A B C . D) = [A| ]->[B| ]->[C|D]
• () list of no elements (empty list)
• nil also the empty list
• ("A ()") list of 1 element: the string "A"
• (A ()) list of 2 elements: A and empty list
• ((A B C)) list of 1 element: a list with three elements

Specifying Data Types

• We use an apostrophe to treat something as data '(f e g) tells lisp to treat that as a list
• (f e g) would be a function call
• this is useful because lists can reprogram themselves

(let ((a '(f e g)) # let a be list(feg)
     (b 29))       # let b be 29
(cons a b))        # execute function const on a and b

• (A (B C) D) = [A | ]->[[B | ]->[C |\]| ]->[D|\] (nested list)
• (let ((foo (cons 29 '(37 -6))))) = [29 | ]->[37 | ]->[6| ]
  • (cons (cdr foo)(car foo)) = [[37 | -> [-6 | ]] | 29]

Cons Nested List Example

(cons Hello (Brave New) World)

Variables

• (defvar x 5) (defvar y 5) define and set a variable

• (setq x 5) (setq y 5) Set the value of an existing variable

(let ((a 1) (b 2)) ; local binding within the body
    (+ a b)
)

Common Functions

• quote returns object, without evaluating it

  (quote (+ 2 2))
  '(+ 2 2)
  

• car returns the first element in a list

  (car '(rose violet daisy buttercup))
  ; rose
  

• cdr returns the rest of the list

  (cdr '(rose violet daisy buttercup))
  ; (violet daisy buttercup)
  

• cons constructs lists

  (cons 'I '(like lisp))
  ; (I like lisp)
  (cons (car '(rose violet daisy buttercup)) (cdr '(rose violet daisy buttercup)))
  ; (rose violet daisy buttercup)
  

• append attaches one list to another

  (append '(1 2 3 4) '(5 6 7 8))
  ; (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8)
  (cons '(1 2 3 4) '(5 6 7 8))
  ; ((1 2 3 4) 5 6 7 8)
  

• (forward-char x) moves x characters forward at cursor position

• (other-buffer)

• (current-buffer)

• (point-min) function with 0 arguments

• (point-max)

• (count-lines beginning end)

Control Flow

• (= 1 2) comparison operator (bool return)
• (> 2 2) comparison operator (bool return)
• (if (= 1 2)) "Yes" runs if true, "No" runs if false

Special Forms

• (if 0 (cons 3 5)(cons 4 7)) if 0 is nill evaluate (cons 3 5) else evaluate(cons 4 7)
  • useful as it is cheaper than a function call
• (let((arg1 arg2) (arg3 arg4)) command) goes through each pair until non-nil, and returns the corresponding item to the command
• (and arg1 arg2) evaluates from left to right, if one of the values evaluates to nil, it will return nil. Otherwise returns last item
• (or arg1 arg2) finds the first non-nil argument and returns that value

Functions

(defun function-name (arguments...)
    "optional-documetation..."
    (interactive argument-passing-info) ; optional
    ; body
)

Example:

(defun multiply-by-thirty-five (number)
    "Multiply NUMBER by Thirty Five."
    (* 35 number)
)

; calling the function
(multiply-by-thirty-five 2) ; 70

• ; you can define a function to be interactive
• ; such functions can be called via M-x
• (defun add (x y) (interactive) (+ x y))

Emacs Byte-code

• You can load external source code into the current namespace with:
  • M-x load-file RET filename RET
• As a solution to slow interpreting speed (due to the extensive use of pointers and dereferencing), ELisp uses byte-codes to compile data structures to create compact representations of a program.
• Byte-code differs from machine code:
  • PRO: byte-code is portable and works on any architecture as it is designed for some abstract machine that the Emacs application knows about.
  • CON: Not as performant as machine code.

Emacs Lisp has a compiler that translates functions written in Lisp into a special representation called byte-code that can be executed more efficiently. The compiler replaces Lisp function definitions with byte-code. When a byte-code function is called, its definition is evaluated by the byte-code interpreter.

• The numbers are analogous to opcodes in true machine code
  • Each number represents a certain elementary operation, like pushing data onto stack memory, adding two values, etc

For example, abstractly, this may be the compiled byte-code for some function:

  1 push a (arg #1)
 10 dup
 27 *
  2 push b (arg #2)
 10 dup
 27 *
 26 +
105 sqrt

• Strung together they are functionally equivalent to the original Emacs function from which it was compiled, but now it can be compactly represented with a byte stream 1 10 27 2 10 27 26 105.
• This in turn is more performant than uncompiled Emacs code because it can be run directly by a byte-code interpreter, in contrast to high-level language that needs to be parsed (tokenized and semantically analyzed) before executing - going off of some scattered knowledge here, anyone feel free to correct me.
• The byte-code files end with the .elc extension. You can compile a .el source file with:

M-x byte-compile-file RET filename.elc RET

.elc files can be loaded in the same way as .el files with load-file.

Generally, you'd want to keep both the .el (so you can make future changes) and the .elc (so you get a performance gain) files on hand. But we're also talking about scripting in this class, and with the sizes of our scripts, this compiled/uncompiled speed difference is not noticeable (so bothering to make a .elc file in the first place is.. questionable. But it's good to know its purpose and that it's how Lisp works under the hood). - Nik Brandt (Piazza)

The Emacs Interpreter

• Is a single-threaded interpreter
• There is only one instruction pointer (e.g. %rip on x86-64) at all times
• There's also a byte-code interpreter, which has some byte-code instruction pointer
• Emacs is itself a C program, so under the hood it's something like:

// points to current instruction in byte-code sequence
unsigned char *bcip;

Customizing Key Binds

(global-set-key "@" "abcxyz")
; Now typing "@" is automatically replaced with "abcxyz"

; This is like setting keyboad macros:
(global-set-key "@", 'what-cursor-position)
; Now typing "@" automatically shows cursor position in minibuffer

• This could be a security hazard, because you can also include control characters. Emacs does provide an easy way to write control characters as strings:

"\C-k" ; C-j
"^K"

• Emacs however checks if you attempt to recurse like:

(global-set-key "!" "!")
; After 0 kbd macro iterations: Lisp nesting exceeds ‘max-lisp\
; -eval-depth’

Elisp within Emacs

• You can use M-: RET to enter an Eval minibuffer.
• You can also eval a line in a main buffer by moving the cursor to the end of the Lisp list and then entering C-x C-e..
• You can directly enter an initial buffer without a file called the *scratch* buffer. You do this by pressing q right after starting up Emacs.

Lisp interaction mode:

• Move cursor to end of Lisp expression line.
• C-j to evaluate this line.
• Output will be shown and written to the buffer.
• Use instead of C-x C-e if you want the history to be saved in the buffer itself.

Exercises

quote (1 2 3))                      ; (1 2 3)
'(1 2 3)                            ; (1 2 3)
(list (+ 1 2) '(+ 1 2))             ; (3 (+ 1 2))
(cons (+ 1 2) '(3 4))               ; (3 3 4)
(+ 10 (car '(1 2 3)))               ; 11
(append '(1 2) '(3 4))              ; (1 2 3 4)
(reverse (append '(1 2) '(3 4)))    ; (4 3 2 1)
(cdddar (1 2 3 4 5 6 7))            ; ERROR (unless cdddar defined)

Customizing Emacs

Some Emacs jargon:

The function point returns the current position of the cursor as a number.

save-excursion is often used to keep point in the location expected by the user:

(save-excursion
    (actions-that-modify-point))

TIP: You can use (global-set-key KEY COMMAND) to define a custom key bind.

Example Customization

Explain how to arrange for Emacs to treat C-t as a command that causes Emacs to issue a message like this in the echo area:

1. Define a function.

2. Use current-time-string to get current time, and use concat to concetatne time with other text

3. Make the function interactive

4. Use message for output in the echo area

   (defun print-time ()
       (interactive)
       (message (concat "It is now" (current-time-string) ".")))
   

5. Create the C-t key binding:

   M-x global-set-key C-t print-time RET
   

ASIDE: Concept of Pure Functions

Also known as deterministic, functions that have two properties:

1. Given a specific input x, the function always returns the same output y.
2. It doesn't modify any data beyond initializing local variables required to compute its output.

// Pure
int f(int p) {
    int q = 5 * p * p;
    return q;
}

// Impure
int z;
int f(int p) {
    return p * z++;
}

Notice that as long as you're using or modifying a global mutable variable, your function risks not being a pure function.

Functional languages...

• Are only composed of functions
• Can't change variable state (no p = p + 1).
• No loops, only recursion (because the counter i changes its state).
• Order of execution is not important because all functions are pure, so they won't have any side effects by definition.