Chapter 2.16 --- Extra Credit

Foreign Libraries in Lisp

"I was indeed a total stranger in an utterly strange and confusing land... but I do not think, in retrospect, that I would have made my condition worse had I simply blurted out my predicament. I would not have been believed."

Like many other languages these days, Lisp allows you to call foreign code libraries, compiled or otherwise, as if they were native code. Lisp was one of the first languages to include this feature, and the term "Foreign Function Interface" was introduced specifically for this functionality in Common Lisp.

We have already seen some foreign libraries in action---such as lispbuilder-sdl in Chapter 2.12, and a few database libraries in Chapter 2.4. In this chapter we will be exploring a variety of foreign function interface libraries available in Quicklisp, so that you can get a feel for working with Lisp in a diverse ecosystem of code from many different sources---even Python libraries!

Exercise 2.16.1

CL-COLLIDER: an interface to SuperCollider

Exercise 2.16.2

CL-COLLIDER: Live-Hacking Audio

Exercise 2.16.3

CL-COLLIDER: Audio-Generating Macros

Exercise 2.16.4

CL+SSL: an interface to OpenSSL

Exercise 2.16.5

GSLL: an interface to the GNU Scientific Library

Exercise 2.16.6

Burgled-Batteries: a Python--Lisp Bridge

Exercise 2.16.7

Burgled-Batteries and SciPy

Exercise 2.16.8

Burgled-Batteries and Python GUI Libraries

Exercise 2.16.9

Burgled-Batteries: Python In Lisp