Stupid reader tricks

Here are some stupid reader tricks for Lisp. I've tested them on SBCL, and they are of questionable portability and utility.

Run Shell Commands from the Lisp Prompt

(set-macro-character #\! 
    (lambda (stream char)
      (declare (ignore stream char))
      (uiop:run-program (read-line stream) :output *standard-output*))
    t)

> !ls -als
total 4068
   4 drwxr-x--- 21 jrm  jrm     4096 Apr 18 06:42 .
   4 drwxr-xr-x  4 root root    4096 Mar 22 17:27 ..
1900 -rwx--x--x  1 jrm  jrm  1940604 Apr 17 19:10 .bash_history
   4 -rw-r--r--  1 jrm  jrm      220 Mar 19 12:16 .bash_logout
   8 -rw-r--r--  1 jrm  jrm     4961 Apr  1 11:13 .bashrc
   4 drwx------  6 jrm  jrm     4096 Mar 21 07:52 .cache
   0 lrwxrwxrwx  1 jrm  jrm       51 Mar 24 05:20 .config -> /mnt/c/Users/JosephMarshall/AppData/Roaming/.config
   0 lrwxrwxrwx  1 jrm  jrm       50 Mar 26 03:12 .emacs -> /mnt/c/Users/JosephMarshall/AppData/Roaming/.emacs
   4 drwx------  6 jrm  jrm     4096 Apr 17 12:13 .emacs.d
      ... etc ...

>

Make λ an alias for lambda

(set-macro-character #\λ (lambda (stream char) (declare (ignore stream char)) 'cl:lambda) t)

> ((λ (x) (+ x 4)) 3)
7

If you do this you might want to add a print function for the lambda symbol:

(defmethod print-object ((obj (eql 'cl:lambda)) stream) ;; doubt this is portable
  (format stream "λ"))

> '(λ (x) (+ x 4))
(λ (x) (+ x 4))

> (symbol-name (car *))
"LAMBDA"