What are the generic functions defined by the standard?

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In Common Lisp there are a few generic functions defined by the standard, for instance functions to manipulate sequences.

However looking at Graham's book ANSI Common Lisp and Steele's book Common Lisp – The language at the relevant chapters, I could not find any list of the generic functions defined in the standard.

What are the generic functions defined by the standard?

clos common-lisp
2 Answers

The question you asked

Functions that manipulate sequences are not generic-functions. They are listed in the section 17.3 The Sequences Dictionary.

All symbols specified by the standard are listed in the section 1.9 Symbols in the COMMON-LISP Package.

A partial list of standardized generic functions can be found in section 7.7 The Objects Dictionary (e.g., print-object is listed in section 22.4 The Printer Dictionary).

The question you might have meant to ask

Finding existing Lisp functionality should not be hard using apropos. Once you see a plausibly looking symbol, use describe to find out what it actually does.

Remember that most implementations offer more that the standard specifies. You can do something like this:

(dolist (pack (package-use-list "COMMON-LISP-USER"))
  (format t "~S~%" pack)
  (do-external-symbols (s pack)
    (when (and (fboundp s)
               (typep (fdefinition s) 'generic-function))
      (format t "  ~S~%" s))))
user_8507810

I currently see no better way than to go through the pages of the CLHS Master Index and grep for "Generic Function".

Applying this suggestion a local copy of the HyperSpec using the script

% sed -n -e '
/Standard Generic Function/{
 s/.*Standard Generic Function *//
 s|</A>||
 p
}' X_Mast_*.htm | sort -u

yielded the following list

(SETF CLASS-NAME)
ADD-METHOD
ALLOCATE-INSTANCE
CHANGE-CLASS
CLASS-NAME
COMPUTE-APPLICABLE-METHODS
DESCRIBE-OBJECT
DOCUMENTATION, (SETF DOCUMENTATION)
FIND-METHOD
FUNCTION-KEYWORDS
INITIALIZE-INSTANCE
MAKE-INSTANCE
MAKE-INSTANCES-OBSOLETE
MAKE-LOAD-FORM
METHOD-QUALIFIERS
NO-APPLICABLE-METHOD
NO-NEXT-METHOD
PRINT-OBJECT
REINITIALIZE-INSTANCE
REMOVE-METHOD
SHARED-INITIALIZE
SLOT-MISSING
SLOT-UNBOUND
UPDATE-INSTANCE-FOR-DIFFERENT-CLASS
UPDATE-INSTANCE-FOR-REDEFINED-CLASS
Harleqin_316150
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