These are system definition files for the Zebu parser compiler. Zebu is a Lex/Yacc-sorta thing for Common Lisp. Zebu can be found found at ftp://ftp.digitool.com/pub/MCL/contrib/zebu-3.5.5.tgz, among other places. Mark Kantrowitz's defsystem is now maintained by Marco Antoniotti and is part of CLOCC, the Common Lisp Open Code Collection (http://clocc.sourceforge.net/). I have written mk:defsystem system definition files, taking the original system files as a guideline. The package definition file zebu-package.lisp was rewritten (resulting in zebu-defsystem-package.lisp), since it depended on some symbols being present in the CL-USER package, amongst other things. The file zebu-compile-mg.lisp was added to compile the metagrammar (can't call zb:zebu-compile-file directly from the system files, since at read time the "zebu" package does not exist yet). The one thing I was too lazy to do is rewrite #p"test;exercise.lisp". This one still excepts some symbols in the CL-USER package that are not there anymore (the original zebu-package.lisp imported them, and every other file expects them to be within the ZEBU package anyway). Please report any install problems with mk:defsystem to me. Note that I am not the original author, so I am unlikely to be able to help you with hairy bugs in zebu itself. Oh, yes, how to use it: - Prepare everything: (require :zebu-compiler) (zb:zebu-compile-file "my-grammar-file.zb") (zb:zebu-load-file "my-grammar-file") (setf zb:*current-grammar* (zb:find-grammar "my-grammar")) - Ok now, parse away: (zb:file-parser "some-file") (zb:read-parser "2*(3+4)=++foo:") Notes: - Regrettably, Mr. Laubsch seems to be off the 'net at the moment. I tried to contact him and got no reply; other people on comp.lang.lisp reported similarly. I did not want to package a "new" version of Zebu without his okay, especially since none of the core functionality is changed and I did some package setup differently than him. Hence, the distribution of a "diff" package to be installed over the original sources. - Here is a list of files that can be removed if you only ever want to use mk:defsystem: COMPILE-Zebu.lisp Compile.lisp INSTALL.* ; except \1.mk-defsystem, obviously :-) machine Makefile shar-zebu Tar-zebu win* ; Yay! ZEBU-init.lisp zebu-package.lisp ; replaced by zebu-defsystem-package.lisp ZEBU-sys.lisp ; the .system files were modelled after this one Have fun, Rudi Schlatte