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Kyoto Common Lisp

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ4042392
Source-derived summary

Kyoto Common Lisp (KCL) is an implementation of Common Lisp by Taichi Yuasa and Masami Hagiya, written in C to run under Unix-like operating systems. KCL is compiled to ANSI C. It conforms to Common Lisp as described in the 1984 first edition of Guy Steele's book Common Lisp the Language and is available under a licence agreement.

KCL was implemented from scratch, outside of the standard committee, solely on the basis of the specification. It was one of the first Common Lisp implementations ever, and exposed a number of holes and mistakes in the specification that had gone unnoticed.

Derived software

Austin Kyoto Common Lisp (AKCL) is a collection of ports, bug fixes, and performance improvements to KCL made by William Schelter. AKCL has been ported to a range of Unix workstations.

GNU Common Lisp (GCL) was derived from AKCL.

Embeddable Common-Lisp (ECL) was derived from KCL.

ManKai Common Lisp (MKCL) was derived from ECL.

Commercial versions of Kyoto Common Lisp were Ibuki Common Lisp and Delphi Common Lisp.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kyoto Common Lisp” as open-knowledge reference entry. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1984—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Kyoto, Common and Lisp can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as open-knowledge reference entry. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4042392. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1984.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Kyoto Common Lisp”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Kyoto Common Lisp primary sources, Kyoto Common Lisp archive and Kyoto research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Kyoto Common Lisp”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Kyoto Common Lisp” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.