2 Customizing the Lisp Environment

2.2 The default startup function

The default startup function parses command-line arguments in the order they appear on the command line. It recognizes and executes the following options:

• [-load | -l] file

These arguments indicate that the startup function should load the specified file by using the functionload; the file argument is passed to load as a string.

The following example demonstrates how to load the file"~/.lisp" instead of the regular initialization file:

% lisp -load ~/.lisp -n

• [-no-init-file | -n]

These arguments inhibit the loading of the initialization file. If you do not specify one of these arguments, the initialization file is loaded after all of the other command-line arguments have been processed. The following example uses the abbreviated version of these arguments:

% lisp -n

• [-eval | -e] form

These arguments pass the specified form to Lisp for evaluation. Any return value is lost; thus, the form argument can only produce side effects. The following example uses one of these arguments to make Lisp print in hexadecimal; the double quotation marks prevent interpretation of the form by the operating system shell.

% lisp -eval "(setq *print-base* 16)"

• [-quit | -q]

These arguments call the functionquit, which terminates the Lisp environment. In the example, the file"demo" is loaded, the function demo is called, but Lisp quits before it enters top level.

% lisp -load "demo" -eval "(demo)" -quit

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