[rol]

In regards to Common Lisp, depending on which implementation you use you may get some sort of type checking at compile time.

For example, if you save the following code[1] into a file and try to load it into SBCL, it will give a compile time error:

    (ql:quickload 'defstar)
    
    (use-package 'defstar)
    
    (declaim (optimize (debug 3) (speed 0) (safety 3)))
    
    (defun* factorial ((x (integer 0 *))) ;; x is an integer from 0 up to +inf
      (if (zerop x)
          1
        (* x (factorial (1- x)))))
    
    (defun main ()
      (factorial "foo")  ;; Compile time error: "foo" conflicts with its assert type UNSIGNED-BTYE
      (factorial -1)     ;; Compile time error: -1 conflicts with its assert type UNSIGNED-BTYE
      (factorial 1.0)    ;; Compile time error: 1.0 conflicts with its assert type UNSIGNED-BTYE
      (factorial 0))     ;; Works

And when you load the file into SBCL you get the following error message (assuming you have Quicklisp installed):

    $ sbcl --load compile-time-safety.lisp 
    This is SBCL 1.2.7, an implementation of ANSI Common Lisp.
    More information about SBCL is available at <http://www.sbcl.org/>.
    
    SBCL is free software, provided as is, with absolutely no warranty.
    It is mostly in the public domain; some portions are provided under
    BSD-style licenses.  See the CREDITS and COPYING files in the
    distribution for more information.
    To load "defstar":
      Load 1 ASDF system:
        defstar
    ; Loading "defstar"
    
    
    ; file: /home/rol/src/lisp/compile-time-safety.lisp
    ; in: DEFUN MAIN
    ;     (FACTORIAL "foo")
    ; 
    ; caught WARNING:
    ;   Constant "foo" conflicts with its asserted type UNSIGNED-BYTE.
    ;   See also:
    ;     The SBCL Manual, Node "Handling of Types"
    ; 
    ; compilation unit finished
    ;   caught 1 WARNING condition

It's not as nice as Haskell's type system, but it's something :)

The main problem with this sort of compile-time checking is that it's implementation dependent, so some Common Lisp implementation may not provide it. You can configure the defstar library that I used on this code so that it automatically adds calls to "(check-type ...)". But then you are back at doing run-time checking of types.

--

[1] - The defstar library can be found on Quicklisp or here: https://bitbucket.org/eeeickythump/defstar/

It's pretty much just a nicer way to write all of the "(declaim ...)" and "(declare ...)" needed to provide the most information to the Common Lisp type system.