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NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2026 19:06:18 +0000
From: steve g <Sgonedes1977@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: REPL, streams, SBCL
References: <87wlrmeha9.fsf@gmail.com> <11ajq5a$2i7p$1@dont-email.me>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:06:01 -0400
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Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

> On Mon, 12 Oct 2026 17:32:46 -0400, steve g wrote:
>
>> I was interested in changing the REPL for SBCL.
>
> Probably easier to run it in an environment like Jupyter. Even without
> a custom SBCL kernel, just the regular “%%script magic” already lets
> you do some useful things.
>
> ←
>     %%script sbcl
>     (+ 2 2)
> →
>     This is SBCL 2.6.4.debian, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
>     More information about SBCL is available at <http://www.sbcl.org/>.
>
>     SBCL is free software, provided as is, with absolutely no warranty.
>     It is mostly in the public domain; some portions are provided under
>     BSD-style licenses.  See the CREDITS and COPYING files in the
>     distribution for more information.
>     * 4
>     *



> You probably want to turn off the startup banner message, and the “*”
> characters from the default prompting for input by the REPL. The
> `--script` option does this, but it also turns off automatic output of
> expression values:

Yes. again, this has changed my thinking; --script, like duh! You know
they say the best way to check your documant is by getting someone else
to read it; thank you for this.


> ←
>     %%script sbcl --script
>     (+ 2 2) ; produces no output
>     (princ (+ 2 2)) ; need to do explicit output
> →
>     4

This is very helpful. I did not even think about this.


> This may be OK for running functional scripts, but it is not so
> convenient for simple experimentation.
>
> Alternatively, the `--noinform` option turns off the startup banner.
> You can then change the prompt to the empty string by setting the
> SBCL-specific `sb-aclrepl:*prompt*` variable. To access this, you need
> to `require` the `sb-aclrepl` package. To avoid spurious output, this
> can all be done with `--eval` options on the command line:
>
> ←
>     %%script sbcl --noinform --eval "(require 'sb-aclrepl)"  --eval "(setq sb-aclrepl:*prompt* \"\")"
>     (+ 2 2)
> →
>     4
>
> Gets a bit complicated, but at least it’s not always necessary ...

agreed.


thank you for your spare eyes and your time.