Awesome LISP Family

A list of lisp-flavored programming languages implemented on top of existing programming languages.

Classification

• Type-A: Simple syntax mapping
  These languages usually just provide s-expressions (parentheses) syntax and are translated to the target language without extra features/semantics. Also sometimes being called transpilers.

• Type-B: Syntax and additional semantics
  In addition to translating the syntax some additional features/semantics that are not present in the target language are added. Usually if a language does not fit in other category, it can be considered being a Type-B.

• Type-C: Clojure-like
  Distintive syntax that besides parentheses also uses brackets and curly braces. Distinctive features are persistent data structures, namespaces and vars, protocols.

• Type-L: Common Lisp
  Implementing ANSI Common Lisp standard or being inspired by it.

• Type-S: Scheme
  Implementing some of RxRS standards or being inspired by Scheme.

Languages

Listed primarily by the language which can be used for interoperability / FFI.

Language section does not necessarily mean the language of the implementation. For example Ferret compiles into C++ but the compiler is written in Clojure. Or Carp interops with C but it is mostly written in Haskell. In case of SBCL it contains only small amounts of C, but it is implemented almost entirely in Common Lisp.

• Multi Lang
• Cobol
• Common Lisp
• Scheme
• C/C++
• C#
• Elm
• Erlang
• Fortran
• Go
• Haskell
• Java
• JavaScript
• Julia
• Lua
• Objective-C
• OCaml
• PHP
• Perl
• Python
• R
• Rust
• Shell
• VHDL
• WASM

Multi Lang

Name	Active	Type	Target
Lux		B
Mal		*1
STELLA		?
Wax		*
Shen		B
Zick Standard Lisp		?

Cobol

Name	Active	Type	Target
Cisp		L

Common Lisp

Name	Active	Type	Target
SBCL		L
Clasp		L
ECL		L
CLISP		L
Clozure CL		L
Coalton		L

See list of additional implementations.

Scheme

Name	Active	Type	Target
Racket		S
STklos		S
Bigloo		S	native
Gerbil		S
Gauche		S
Chibi-Scheme		S
Gambit		S
Guile		S
Loko Scheme		S
Cisco Chez		S
Racket Chez		S
Rabbit		S
CHICKEN Scheme		S
Cyclone		S
Microscheme		S
Vicare		S
Ikarus		S

See list of additional implementations and benchmarks.

The Development of Chez Scheme

C/C++

Name	Active	Type	Target
Janet		B
Cakelisp		A
Dale		B
Owl Lisp		S
jo_clojure		C
Extempore		S
Maru		B
Liz		A
Toccata		C
Lcc		A
PicoLisp		B
Ferret		C
C-Mera		A
FemtoLisp		S

C#

Name	Active	Type	Target
Clojure-CLR		C
IronScheme		S
Arcadia		C

Elm

Name	Active	Type	Target
Enclojure		C

Erlang

Name	Active	Type	Target
Lisp Flavored Erlang		A2
Joxa		A1
Clojerl		C
Kapok		C
scm		S

Fortran

Name	Active	Type	Target
fscheme		S
Schemetran		A

Go

Name	Active	Type	Target
Joker		C
Slick		L
Zygo		B
ZYLISP		A

Haskell

Name	Active	Type	Target
Carp		B

Java

Name	Active	Type	Target
ABCL		L
Clojure		C
Kawa		S
Armed Bear Clojure		C+L
PicoLisp		B

JavaScript

Name	Active	Type	Target
BiwaScheme		S
ClojureScript		C
JACL		L
LIPS		S
RacketScript		S
Valtan		L
Lumen		A
JSLisp		L
eslisp		A
Parenscript		L
Wisp		C
Whalesong		S

Julia

Name	Active	Type	Target
LispSyntax.jl		A

Lua

Name	Active	Type	Target
Fennel		A
Lumen		A
Urn		?

Objective-C

Name	Active	Type	Target
nu		?
DreamLisp		B

OCaml

Name	Active	Type	Target
Reason-Lisp		A

Perl

Name	Active	Type	Target
Bel		?

PHP

Name	Active	Type	Target
Phel		C

Python

Name	Active	Type	Target
Hy		A1+C*
Hissp		A
Pixie		B

R

Name	Active	Type	Target
llr		C

Rust

Name	Active	Type	Target
GameLisp		B
ClojureRS		C
BLisp		B
Ketos		B
Rustly		C

Shell

Name	Active	Type	Target
Fleck		A
Gherkin		B

VHDL

Name	Active	Type	Target
VhdlLisp		?

WASM

Name	Active	Type	Target
Liz		A
Schism		S
WASM Scheme		S
clj-wasm		A
Arboreta WASM		?

Misc

• Bel - self-hosted lisp dialect, see also markdown formatted mirror
  • Bel Clojure - implementation in Clojure, includes continuations, Java numbers and strings, read blog post
  • Language::Bel - implementation of Bel in Perl 5, includes extensive test suite
  • Chime - implementation of Bel written in Haskell
  • Babybel - Ruby implementation of Bel
  • Bel-sml - implementation written in Standard ML
• uLisp - Lisp for microcontrollers, fits into 2 Kbytes of RAM
• CLJSL - subset of Clojure compiled to GLSL for GPU programming
• A list of more Clojure-like languages.
• Additional "write C in Lisp" projects (most of them not ready for a prime time).
• Build your own lisp - a book describing building a Lisp dialect
• See also list of languages implemented in Lisp.
• Map of Common Lisp implementations
• Benchmarks of Scheme implementations
• awesome-lisp-languages
• awesome-lisp-companies
• awesome-clojure

Contribute

Anything incorrect? Is there an interested project that is missing? Open an issue or PR to request adding a project to the list.