Wiki: Lisp

General

• () is a shorter way of writing nil.
• To concatenate two strings, (format()"~a~a"a b) is shorter than (concatenate'string a b).
• for can be replaced with as, saving a byte.
• Large numbers can be compacted by writing them in base 36 with the prefix #36r.
• Tips for golfing in Lisp
• The Common Lisp Hyper-Spec has a useful alphabetical list of functions.
• The Implementation Notes for GNU CLISP have information specific to the version of Lisp used on code.golf.

Using quote as a variable

Sometimes, it is helpful to use quote as a variable, since 'foo is short for (quote foo). To use quote in an expression, use dotted pair notation.

; Example:
(dotimes(i 10)(format t"~d ~a~%"i"potato")) ; this
(dotimes'10(format t"~d ~a~%".'"potato"))   ; is equivalent to this