About this manual

The LispWorks Reference Manual is organized by package. Each chapter contains detailed reference material for all the exported symbols in a given package. Within any chapter, the symbols are organized alphabetically (ignoring non-alphanumeric characters that are common in Lisp symbols, such as *). The chapters themselves are organized alphabetically, as follows:

• The CLOS Package, describes Xanalys's extensions to CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System.
• The COMM Package, describes the functions providing the TCP/IP interface.
• The COMMON-LISP Package, describes Xanalys's extensions to symbols in the COMMON-LISP package. You should refer to the Common Lisp Hyperspec, supplied in HTML format with LispWorks, for full documentation about standard Common Lisp symbols.
• The COMPILER Package, describes symbols available in the COMPILER package.
• The DBG Package, describes symbols available in the DBG package, used to configure the debugging information produced by LispWorks.
• The DSPEC Package, describes the symbols available in the DSPEC package, which are used for naming and locating definitions.
• The EXTERNAL-FORMAT Package, describes symbols available in the EXTERNAL-FORMAT package.
• The HCL Package, describes symbols available in the HCL package.
• The LINK-LOAD Package, describes symbols available in the LINK-LOAD package. It applies only to UNIX LispWorks, not LispWorks for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.
• The LISPWORKS Package, describes symbols available in the LISPWORKS package.
• The MP Package, describes symbols available in the MP package, giving you access to the multi-processing capabilities of LispWorks.
• The PARSERGEN Package, describes symbols available in the PARSERGEN package, the LispWorks parser generator.
• The SERIAL-PORT Package documents the Serial Port API. This is implemented only in LispWorks for Windows.
• The SQL Package documents symbols used in accessing LispWorks ODBC and SQL functionality.
• The STREAM Package documents the symbols available in the STREAM package that provide users with the functionality to define their own streams for use by the standard I/O functions.
• The SYSTEM Package, describes symbols available in the SYSTEM package.
• The WIN32 Package (including DDE), describes symbols available in the WIN32 package. It applies only to LispWorks for Windows.

Many chapters in the LispWorks Reference Manual should be used in conjunction with relevant chapters in the LispWorks User Guide that describe use of the module pertaining to the package.

Reference material for some aspects of LispWorks can be found in places other than this manual.

• As mentioned above, refer to the Common Lisp Hyperspec for documentation about Common Lisp itself.
• Refer to the CAPI Reference Manual for details about symbols in the CAPI package, and related packages GP and COLOR .
• Refer to the LispWorks Foreign Language Interface User Guide and Reference Manual for details on integrating C and Common Lisp source code.
• Refer to the LispWorks Editor User Guide for documentation on the LispWorks Editor.