Understanding Lisp Semantics

Lisp’s semantics revolve around the evaluation of S-expressions. Every expression in Lisp is either an atom or a list. Atoms (like numbers or symbols) evaluate to themselves or their bound values. Lists generally represent function applications, where the first element is interpreted as the function and the remaining elements as its arguments. The language embraces the idea that code and data share the same form—lists—enabling powerful metaprogramming through constructs like macros. Additionally, Lisp supports first-class functions and dynamic or lexical scoping rules that determine how variables are bound to values during evaluation.