NAME

       fennel - a lisp programming language that runs on Lua

SYNOPSIS

       fennel [--repl] | [--compile filename] | [--eval source] | [filename] [args ...]

DESCRIPTION

       This manual page documents briefly the fennel command.

       fennel is the main entry point for Fennel, a lisp programming language that runs on Lua runtimes. With no
       options or arguments, it runs an interactive Read-Eval-Print loop (REPL).

       Given  a filename as its first argument, it runs that file and passes it the subsequent arguments. Ahead-
       of-time compilation can be invoked with the --compile flag, while short snippets can  be  evaluated  with
       the --eval argument.

OPTIONS

       A summary of options is included below.

       --repl Start an interactive repl session. This is the default when given no arguments.

       --compile filename
              Perform ahead-of-time compilation on the provided file and write the Lua output to standard out.

       --eval source
              Evaluate a given piece of source code and print the result.

       --no-searcher
              When  running  a  repl  or  a  file,  fennel.searcher  is installed by default so that the require
              function can load Fennel files in addition to Lua files. This flag disables that behavior. Has  no
              effect for ahead-of-time compilation.

       --add-package-path path
              Add  the  given  path  to  package.path  so that the require function will know to look there when
              searching for Lua modules.

       --add-fennel-path path
              Same as above, but for Fennel's path used when searching for Fennel modules.

       --globals VAR1[,VAR2...]
              Allow VAR1, VAR2, etc as globals in addition to the standard set of globals. This  enables  strict
              global checking even in ahead-of-time compilation where it otherwise would be disabled. Use "*" to
              disable globals checking.

       --globals-only VAR1[,VAR2...]
              Same as above, but without the inclusion of the standard set of globals.

       --require-as-include
              Instead  of  loading  required  modules  at  runtime, compile them inline into the main file being
              compiled. Only useful during ahead-of-time compilation.

       --assert-as-repl
              Calls to the built-in function assert from Fennel will be replaced with calls  to  assert-repl  so
              that when the assertion fails, a REPL will be started in which you can interactively debug.

       --use-bit-lib
              Compile bitwise operations to use LuaJIT's bitop library instead of Lua 5.3+ bitwise operators.

       --load FILE
              Load the specified file before any command is run.

       --compile-binary FILE OUT LUA_LIB LUA_DIR
              Compile  FILE  to  a  standalone binary OUT using LUA_LIB and the Lua header files in LUA_DIR. See
              --compile-binary --help for details.

       --no-compiler-sandbox
              Do not limit compiler environment (used in macros) to minimal sandbox.

       --keywords KEYWORD1[,KEYWORD2...]
              Treat these symbols as reserved Lua keywords.

       -h, --help
              Print a help message and exit

       -v, --version
              Print the version number and exit

       Use the NO_COLOR environment variable to disable escape codes in error messages.

SEE ALSO

       fennel-api(3), fennel-reference(5), fennel-tutorial(7)

       The semantics are very close to Lua, so Lua's reference manual is also helpful.

COMMUNITY

       The  mailing  list  is  at  https://lists.sr.ht/~technomancy/fennel  while  the  issue  tracker   is   at
       https://todo.sr.ht/~technomancy/fennel. Most discussion happens on the #fennel channel of Libera chat.

AUTHORS

       Calvin Rose and Phil Hagelberg and contributors: https://github.com/bakpakin/Fennel/graphs/contributors

LICENSE

       Copyright © 2016-2024, Released under the MIT/X11 license

                                                                                                       FENNEL(1)