Welcome to Virtual Allegro CL

Here's your chance to try out the power of Lisp without downloading or installing any software!

Our new Allegro CL Lisp Prompt allows you to experience Allegro CL via the Web. Simply click on one of the two links at the bottom of this page to get connected. Once the Lisp Prompt (CL-USER(1):) appears, you can begin coding.

Getting Started

Lisp is great for calculations and analyses of text. Give these simple applications a try:

Example 1:

(+ 1 2) -> 3
(* 17 (/ 4.0 2)) -> 34.0

Example 2:

(setq mystring "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog")
(count #\e mystring) -> 4
(count #\o mystring) -> 5
(count-if 'alphanumericp mystring) -> 36
(length mystring) -> 44

The Dynamic Learning Center and the Franz Examples Section contain a variety of Lisp programming exercises and examples that can be experimented with as well.

Lisp Resources

The PDF file Basic Lisp Techniques (which is part of the Allegro CL 7.0 documentation) provides an introduction to the Common Lisp language.

A list of other books, Lisp-oriented web sites and tutorials can be found here

Experience the True Power of Lisp

To properly test out the power and potential of Allegro CL, please download the Free Express Edition, available on Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, and MacOSX. Click here for your copy. You can also contact sales@franz.com for an Evaluation Version if you wish to evaluate Allegro CL for commercial purposes.

Allegro CL Portal Prompts

Personal Telnet Client: click here or connect to prompt.franz.com on port 23.

Java Telnet Applet: click here.

Please note that the Allegro CL prompt is subject to the following restrictions:

Memory use is limited to 18MB
No subprocesses may be spawned
No external network connections can be made
Disk space is limited to 300KB. Any files you write will be deleted when the Lisp session ends.
Maximum cumulative CPU time per connection is 10 seconds. When the 10 second limit is reached, Lisp exits immediately without warning*

* Most of the operations that you might want to try will complete in milliseconds. Time that the program spends waiting for input is not counted. When your cumulative CPU time exceeds 10 seconds, your connection will be terminated.