Must Know Libs

So after you search through the Hyperspec for a function you just know has to be in there somewhere, what libraries to you look at next?

I know ALEXANDRIA and CL-UTILITIES have a lot of useful functions not in the standard, but I'm also thinking of things like CL-PPCRE which provide some basic tools from other languages.

Yes it's a pretty generic question, but if you were to set up a new person with Common Lisp which packages would you recommend for their tool-belt?

It depends on your intent, or on the goal of a project..

As the language is Lisp, I'd suggest closer-mop, contextl, metabang-bind, iterate, cl-def, computed-class, cl-perec...
By the way, due to cffi and uffi, it's relatively cheap to create bindings to c libraries (e.g. GTK+, etc.).

BRs,
Grault

I would say, there is a chance sooner or later you will need:
http://www.cliki.net/CXML
on CXML page are also other very useful libraries for handling xml validation and xpath library.

Also, everything from Edi Weitz is worth recommending: http://weitz.de/

For DB stuff, you may appreciate http://common-lisp.net/project/postmodern/
or http://clsql.b9.com/ but Postmodern looks nicer and simpler.

How about clim, hunchentoot and cl-ncurses. That way one can create gui's for the desktop, web and cli.

http://www.cliki.net/CLIM

http://common-lisp.net/project/cl-ncurses/

http://weitz.de/hunchentoot/

Here are a few approaches to answering your question.

- Find a cool lisp app and learn what it uses.

- Learn the packages in a bundle such as LibCL or one of the other links on that page.

- Search for interesting packages on sites like
http://common-lisp.net
http://cliki.net
http://cl-user.net

For an easy, portable GUI, I recommend checking out http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/

grault wrote:... I'd suggest metabang-bind ....

Use http://github.com/ks/X.LET-STAR instead of bind, it's user extensible and nicer

Karol