1.2 Command Line Options

The command line syntax and environment is described in the lisp(1) man page in the man/man1 directory of the distribution. See also cmucl(1). Currently CMUCL accepts the following switches:

--help

Same as -help.

-help

Print out the command line options and exit.

-batch

specifies batch mode, where all input is directed from standard-input. An error code of 0 is returned upon encountering an EOF and 1 otherwise.

-quiet

enters quiet mode. This implies setting the variables *load-verbose*, *compile-verbose*, *compile-print*, *compile-progress*, *require-verbose* and *gc-verbose* to NIL, and disables the printing of the startup banner.

-core

requires an argument that should be the name of a core file. Rather than using the default core file, which is searched in a number of places, according to the initial value of the library: search-list, the specified core file is loaded. This switch overrides the value of the CMUCLCORE environment variable, if present.

-lib

requires an argument that should be the path to the CMUCL library directory, which is going to be used to initialize the library: search-list, among other things. This switch overrides the value of the CMUCLLIB environment variable, if present.

-dynamic-space-size

requires an argument that should be the number of megabytes (1048576 bytes) that should be allocated to the heap. If not specified, a platform-specific default is used. The actual maximum allowed heap size is platform-specific.

Currently, this option is only available for the x86 and sparc platforms.

-edit

specifies to enter Hemlock. A file to edit may be specified by placing the name of the file between the program name (usually lisp and the first switch.

-eval

accepts one argument which should be a Lisp form to evaluate during the start up sequence. The value of the form will not be printed unless it is wrapped in a form that does output.

-hinit

accepts an argument that should be the name of the hemlock init file to load the first time the function ed is invoked. The default is to load hemlock-init.object-type, or if that does not exist, hemlock-init.lisp from the user’s home directory. If the file is not in the user’s home directory, the full path must be specified.

-init

accepts an argument that should be the name of an init file to load during the normal start up sequence. The default is to load init.object-type or, if that does not exist, init.lisp from the user’s home directory. If neither exists, CMUCL tries .cmucl-init.object-type and then .cmucl-init.lisp. If the file is not in the user’s home directory, the full path must be specified. If the file does not exist, CMUCL silently ignores it.

-noinit

accepts no arguments and specifies that an init file should not be loaded during the normal start up sequence. Also, this switch suppresses the loading of a hemlock init file when Hemlock is started up with the -edit switch.

-nositeinit

accepts no arguments and specifies that the site init file should not be loaded during the normal start up sequence.

-load

accepts an argument which should be the name of a file to load into Lisp before entering Lisp’s read-eval-print loop.

-slave

specifies that Lisp should start up as a slave Lisp and try to connect to an editor Lisp. The name of the editor to connect to must be specified—to find the editor’s name, use the Hemlock “Accept Slave Connections” command. The name for the editor Lisp is of the form:

    machine-name:socket
  

where machine-name is the internet host name for the machine and socket is the decimal number of the socket to connect to.

-fpu

specifies what fpu should be used for x87 machines. The possible values are “x87”, “sse2”, or “auto”, which is the default. By default, CMUCL will detect if the chip supports the SSE2 instruction set or not. If so or if -fpu sse2 is specified, the SSE2 core will be loaded that uses SSE2 for floating-point arithmetic. If SSE2 is not available or if -fpu x87 is given, the legacy x87 core is loaded.

--

indicates that everything after “--” is not subject to CMUCL’s command line parsing. Everything after “--” is placed in the variable ext:*command-line-application-arguments*.

For more details on the use of the -edit and -slave switches, see the Hemlock User’s Manual.

Arguments to the above switches can be specified in one of two ways: switch=value or switch<space>value. For example, to start up the saved core file mylisp.core use either of the following two commands:

   lisp -core=mylisp.core
   lisp -core mylisp.core