LispWorks is a commercial implementation and IDE

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

 for the Common Lisp

Common Lisp

Common Lisp, commonly abbreviated CL, is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ANSI INCITS 226-1994 , . From the ANSI Common Lisp standard the Common Lisp HyperSpec has been derived for use with web browsers...

 programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

. The software runs on Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

 (PowerPC, Intel), Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, FreeBSD

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

, Solaris (x86/x64, SPARC) and HP UX.

LispWorks was developed by the UK software company Harlequin Ltd., and first published in 1989. Harlequin ultimately spun off its Lisp arm as Xanalys

Xanalys

Xanalys Limited is an independent software company founded in January 2009 when the Analytics and Investigative Management division of Tiburon Inc. was acquired by a group of former Xanalys management and engineering staff based in the UK. Various intellectual property and contracts relating to...

, which took over management and rights to LispWorks. In January 2005, the Xanalys Lisp team formed LispWorks Ltd. to market, develop, and support the LispWorks software.

Some of LispWorks's features are

• an implementation of the Common Lisp Object System with support for the Metaobject
  Metaobject
  In computer science, a metaobject or meta-object is any entity that manipulates, creates, describes, or implements other objects. The object that the metaobject is about is called the base object...
  
   protocol
• native threads
• Unicode
  Unicode
  Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
  
   support: it can read and write Unicode files and supports strings encoded in UCS-2
• Foreign Language Interface (FFI) for interfacing with routines written in C
• the Common Application Programmer's Interface (CAPI) GUI toolkit, which provides native look-and-feel on Windows, Cocoa
  Cocoa (API)
  Cocoa is Apple's native object-oriented application programming interface for the Mac OS X operating system and—along with the Cocoa Touch extension for gesture recognition and animation—for applications for the iOS operating system, used on Apple devices such as the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and...
  
  , and Motif
  Motif (widget toolkit)
  In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and other POSIX-compliant systems. It emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a...
  
  
• an Emacs
  Emacs
  Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
  
  -like editor (source code is included in the Professional edition)
• a graphical debugger
  Debugger
  A debugger or debugging tool is a computer program that is used to test and debug other programs . The code to be examined might alternatively be running on an instruction set simulator , a technique that allows great power in its ability to halt when specific conditions are encountered but which...
  
  , inspector
  Inspector window
  An inspector window is a type of computing window that shows current parameters of a selected object and allows these parameters to be changed on-the-fly...
  
  , stepper, profiler, class browser
  Class browser
  A class browser is a feature of an integrated development environment that allows the programmer to browse, navigate, or visualize the structure of object-oriented programming code.- History :...
  
  , etc.
• a native-code compiler for an extended ANSI Common Lisp
• a facility to generate standalone executables
• on Mac OS X
  Mac OS X
  Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
  
   it provides a bridge to Objective-C
  Objective-C
  Objective-C is a reflective, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language.Today, it is used primarily on Apple's Mac OS X and iOS: two environments derived from the OpenStep standard, though not compliant with it...
  
   for using Apple's Cocoa
  Cocoa (API)
  Cocoa is Apple's native object-oriented application programming interface for the Mac OS X operating system and—along with the Cocoa Touch extension for gesture recognition and animation—for applications for the iOS operating system, used on Apple devices such as the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and...
  
   libraries
• many of the libraries are written using the Common Lisp Object System and can be extended by the user (by writing subclasses and new methods)

The Enterprise edition also includes KnowledgeWorks, which adds Prolog features to Lisp; the CommonSQL database interface; and a CORBA

Çorba

Chorba , ciorbă , shurpa , shorpo , or sorpa is one of various kinds of soup or stew found in national cuisines across Middle East...

 binding. The Enterprise edition is also available as a 64bit implementation.

In September 2009, it had been announced that LispWorks 6 would support concurrent threads and the CAPI graphics toolkit has been extended to support GTK+

GTK+

GTK+ is a cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU LGPL, allowing both free and proprietary software to use it. It is one of the most popular toolkits for the X Window System, along with Qt.The name GTK+ originates from GTK;...

. LispWorks 6 was released January 2010.

LispWorks ran on the spacecraft

Spacecraft

A spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....

 Deep Space 1

Deep Space 1

Deep Space 1 is a spacecraft of the NASA New Millennium Program dedicated to testing a payload of advanced, high risk technologies....

. The application called RAX won the NASA Software of the Year award in 1999.