Is there a reason why the pid of the inferior lisp should be asked from the lisp itself? Isn't (process-id (inferior-lisp-proc)) good enough? (Are multiple lisps in the same slime instance or a remotely running lisp the problem?) I'm asking this both out of curiosity and because Java (and hence abcl) doesn't have a clue about its pid(s), at least AFAIK. Andras