LFE, Lisp Flavoured Erlang, is a lisp syntax front-end to the Erlang compiler. Code produced with it is compatible with "normal" Erlang code. An LFE evaluator and shell is also included.
To compile LFE, simple clone it and compile:
$ git clone https://github.com/lfe/lfe.git
$ cd lfe
$ make compile
LFE requires Erlang be installed on the system and that the erl
binary is
in $PATH
.
To run the full suite of tests for LFE, simply use the following:
make tests
Should you wish to have LFE available system-wide, you can run
the following make
target:
$ make install
By default this will create the programs lfe
, lfec
, lfedoc
and
lfescript
in /usr/local/bin
. This can be changed by defining the
make
variable PREFIX
to point to the desired parent directory.
Note that the install
target will also install the LFE man pages in the
appropriate $(PREFIX)/share/man/man*
directories. This can be changed by
defining the make
variable MANINSTDIR
to point to the desired top
man
directory.
So:
$ make install PREFIX=/Users/rv/ MANINSTDIR=/Users/rv/man
will put the programs in /Users/rv/bin
and the man pages in the
/Users/rv/man/man*
directories.
If you're running LFE from a git clone working dir, you can start the REPL like so after compiling:
$ ./bin/lfe
Erlang/OTP 26 [erts-14.0.2] [source] [64-bit] [smp:10:10] [ds:10:10:10] [async-threads:1] [jit] [dtrace]
..-~.~_~---..
( \\ ) | A Lisp-2+ on the Erlang VM
|`-.._/_\\_.-': | Type (help) for usage info.
| g |_ \ |
| n | | | Docs: https://docs.lfe.io/
| a / / | Source: https://github.com/lfe/lfe
\ l |_/ |
\ r / | LFE v2.1.2 (abort with ^G)
`-E___.-'
lfe>
If you have installed LFE, then you may start the REPL from any location:
$ lfe
Likewise, you may run an LFE shell script in the same style as shell scripts with:
$ ./bin/lfe script-name script-arg-1 ...
or
$ lfe script-name script-arg-1 ...
The docs site has several places to explore that will show you how to start using LFE. However, here's a quick taste:
- start up an LFE REPL as demonstrated above
- then, do something like this:
lfe> (* 2 (+ 1 2 3 4 5 6))
42
lfe> (* 2 (lists:foldl #'+/2 0 (lists:seq 1 6)))
42
LFE now supports Docker. To get started, simply do the following, once you have Docker set up on your machine:
$ docker pull lfex/lfe
Alternatively, you could build the image yourself:
$ cd lfe
$ docker build .
To bring up the LFE REPL:
$ docker run -it lfex/lfe
Files with more technical details:
- lfe.txt
- lfescript.txt
- lfe_bits.txt
- lfe_clj.txt
- lfe_comp.txt
- lfe_docs.txt
- lfe_gen.txt
- lfe_io.txt
- lfe_lib.txt
- lfe_macro.txt
If you would like to make changes to the LFE documentation and then regenerate the docs, you'll want to read the instructions here:
LFE on Slack, join by requesting an invite here