Fizz Buzz in Lisp

Welcome to the Fizz Buzz in Lisp page! Here, you'll find the source code for this program as well as a description of how the program works.

Current Solution

(defun divides-by (num divisor)
    (= (mod num divisor) 0))

(dotimes (num 100)
    (write-line
      (cond
        ((and (divides-by (+ num 1) 3) (divides-by (+ num 1) 5)) "FizzBuzz")
        ((divides-by (+ num 1) 3) "Fizz")
        ((divides-by (+ num 1) 5) "Buzz")
        (t (write-to-string (+ num 1))))))

Fizz Buzz in Lisp was written by:

• Parker Johansen

This article was written by:

• Jeremy Grifski
• rzuckerm
• shubhragupta-code
• Stuart Irwin

If you see anything you'd like to change or update, please consider contributing.

How to Implement the Solution

Lisp has many flavors and variations, so we will be using Clisp, the most common and general form. The code follows a pre-fix format, where a function or operator is followed by its arguments, even in the case of + or =. Every set of parenthesis is its own function.

As a quick note, here are the rules to the problem:

If a number is divisible by 3, print the word 'Fizz' instead of the number.
If the number is divisible by 5, print the word 'Buzz' instead of the number.
Finally, if the number is divisible by both 3 and 5, print 'FizzBuzz' instead
of the number. Otherwise, just print the number.

The Loop

The first line of code sets up the loop, running the functions inside 100 times, with an index variable named run.

(dotimes (run 100) ...)

The dots show where more lines of code will be placed, such as setq which creates a new integer variable.

(dotimes (run 100) (setq num (+ run 1)) ...)

The new variable is named num, and set to the current run value + 1.

The output

The next lines are used to print out the actual ouput, but only one of those is a print statement. write-line will take a string input and print it out as a line to console. Inside it is cond, which creates essentially a list of if-else statements, expecting pairs of boolean + executable.

(write-line (cond
	...
))

Each following line is one possible output, starting with the "FizzBuzz" phrase.

((and (= (mod num 3) 0) (= (mod num 5) 0)) "FizzBuzz")

To restate this in a more traditional format,

if(num % 3 == 0 && num % 5 == 0) then "FizzBuzz"

The next two checks are simaler, just testing for each option.

((= (mod num 3) 0) "Fizz")
((= (mod num 5) 0) "Buzz")

Finally, the last line in the set has no if statement, and is the default alternative, just writing the num variable to a string.

(t (write-to-string num))

The code will run through each if statement until one of them is true, then use the connected string as an argument for write-line, printing it out to the console.

How to Run the Solution

There are many options for running the code, though make sure to be using a CLisp based tool.

To run on a local machine, we can download a copy of Steel Bank Common Lisp as well as a copy of the solution. Assuming SBCL is in the path, we can run a lisp file like a script as follows:

sbcl --script fizz-buzz.lsp

For an easy online interpreter, here are some options:

• CompileOnline CLISP
• Jdoodle CLISP