LISP print function docstring

Question

I am simply trying to print a LISP function's documentation string. The LISP documentation is fairly ambiguous with regard to doctypes, so I am unsure as to how to do this. This is what I have so far:

(defun pr(x) "This is a docstring!" (+ x 1))
(documentation #'pr t)

I haven't found any concise answers on how to do this. Where is this wrong?

Svante · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-30 01:38:58Z

5

It's right. You could also explicitly say (documentation #'pr 'function).

However, as the Spec also notes:

An implementation is permitted to discard documentation strings at any time for implementation-defined reasons.

So if you do not get the docstring, you may have to take a look at the documentation of the implementation you are using, the optimization settings, whether you are running interpreted or compiled etc.

answered Mar 30, 2019 at 1:38

Svante

51.8k11 gold badges84 silver badges127 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

4 Comments

Ryan Cocuzzo Over a year ago

How would I print just the function's name?

Svante Over a year ago

You can try the third value of (function-lambda-expression some-fun), but the above caveats apply as well.

Ryan Cocuzzo Over a year ago

(print (function-lambda-expression 'something)) yields (LAMBDA (X) "hiii" (DECLARE (SYSTEM::IN-DEFUN SOMETHING)) (BLOCK SOMETHING (+ X 1))) , but I would just like to print something. How would I do that?

Svante Over a year ago

It's the third value. (nth-value 2 (function-lambda-expression #'something)).

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

LISP print function docstring

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

4 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related