The eclector system provides a portable implementation of a reader following the Common Lisp specification.

eclector is under active development. Its ASDF system structure, package structure, exported symbols and protocols may change at any time but are becoming less and less likely to do so in incompatible ways.

This document only gives a very brief overview and highlights some features. Proper documentation can be found in the documentation directory.

In the simplest case, the eclector reader can be used like any Common Lisp reader:

(with-input-from-string (stream "(1 2 3)")
  (eclector.reader:read stream))

Using features provided in the eclector.parse-result package, the reader can produce parse results controlled by the client, optionally including source tracking and representation of skipped input (due to e.g. comments and reader conditionals):

(defclass my-client (eclector.parse-result:parse-result-client)
  ())

(defmethod eclector.parse-result:make-expression-result
    ((client my-client) (result t) (children t) (source t))
  (list :result result :source source :children children))

(defmethod eclector.parse-result:make-skipped-input-result
    ((client my-client) (stream t) (reason t) (source t))
  (list :reason reason :source source))

(with-input-from-string (stream "(1 #|comment|# \"string\")")
  (eclector.parse-result:read (make-instance 'my-client) stream))

The eclector.concrete-syntax-tree system provides a variant of the eclector reader that produces instances of the concrete syntax tree classes provided by the concrete syntax tree library:

(with-input-from-string (stream "(1 2 3)")
  (eclector.concrete-syntax-tree:cst-read stream))