1 Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes. -*- text -*-
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
7 Changes since the stable branch:
9 * Changes to the standalone interpreter
11 ** New command line option `--no-debug'.
13 Specifying `--no-debug' on the command line will keep the debugging
14 evaluator turned off, even for interactive sessions.
16 ** User-init file ~/.guile is now loaded with the debugging evaluator.
18 Previously, the normal evaluator would have been used. Using the
19 debugging evaluator gives better error messages.
21 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
23 ** We now have uninterned symbols.
25 The new function 'make-symbol' will return a uninterned symbol. This
26 is a symbol that is unique and is guaranteed to remain unique.
27 However, uninterned symbols can not yet be read back in.
29 Use the new function 'symbol-interned?' to check whether a symbol is
32 ** pretty-print has more options.
34 The function pretty-print from the (ice-9 pretty-print) module can now
35 also be invoked with keyword arguments that control things like
36 maximum output width. See its online documentation.
38 ** Variables have no longer a special behavior for `equal?'.
40 Previously, comparing two variables with `equal?' would recursivly
41 compare their values. This is no longer done. Variables are now only
42 `equal?' if they are `eq?'.
44 ** `(begin)' is now valid.
46 You can now use an empty `begin' form. It will yield #<unspecified>
47 when evaluated and simply be ignored in a definition context.
49 ** Removed: substring-move-left!, substring-move-right!
51 Use `substring-move!' instead.
53 * Changes to the C interface
55 ** New functions for memory management
57 A new set of functions for memory management has been added since the
58 old way (scm_must_malloc, scm_must_free, etc) was error prone and
59 indeed, Guile itself contained some long standing bugs that could
60 cause aborts in long running programs.
62 The new functions are more symmetrical and do not need cooperation
63 from smob free routines, among other improvements.
65 The new functions are scm_malloc, scm_realloc, scm_strdup,
66 scm_strndup, scm_gc_malloc, scm_gc_realloc, scm_gc_free,
67 scm_gc_register_collectable_memory, and
68 scm_gc_unregister_collectable_memory. Refer to the manual for more
69 details and for upgrading instructions.
71 The old functions for memory management have been deprecated. They
72 are: scm_must_malloc, scm_must_realloc, scm_must_free,
73 scm_must_strdup, scm_must_strndup, scm_done_malloc, scm_done_free.
75 ** New function: scm_str2string
77 This function creates a scheme string from a 0-terminated C string. The input
80 ** Declarations of exported features are marked with SCM_API.
82 Every declaration of a feature that belongs to the exported Guile API
83 has been marked by adding the macro "SCM_API" to the start of the
84 declaration. This macro can expand into different things, the most
85 common of which is just "extern" for Unix platforms. On Win32, it can
86 be used to control which symbols are exported from a DLL.
88 If you `#define SCM_IMPORT' before including <libguile.h>, SCM_API
89 will expand into "__declspec (dllimport) extern", which is needed for
90 linking to the Guile DLL in Windows.
92 There are also SCM_RL_IMPORT, QT_IMPORT, SCM_SRFI1314_IMPORT, and
93 SCM_SRFI4_IMPORT, for the corresponding libraries.
95 ** SCM_NEWCELL and SCM_NEWCELL2 have been deprecated.
97 Use the new functions scm_alloc_cell and scm_alloc_double_cell
98 instead. The old macros had problems because with them allocation and
99 initialization was separated and the GC could sometimes observe half
100 initialized cells. Only careful coding by the user of SCM_NEWCELL and
101 SCM_NEWCELL2 could make this safe and efficient.
103 Changes since Guile 1.4:
105 * Changes to the distribution
107 ** A top-level TODO file is included.
109 ** Guile now uses a versioning scheme similar to that of the Linux kernel.
111 Guile now always uses three numbers to represent the version,
112 i.e. "1.6.5". The first number, 1, is the major version number, the
113 second number, 6, is the minor version number, and the third number,
114 5, is the micro version number. Changes in major version number
115 indicate major changes in Guile.
117 Minor version numbers that are even denote stable releases, and odd
118 minor version numbers denote development versions (which may be
119 unstable). The micro version number indicates a minor sub-revision of
120 a given MAJOR.MINOR release.
122 In keeping with the new scheme, (minor-version) and scm_minor_version
123 no longer return everything but the major version number. They now
124 just return the minor version number. Two new functions
125 (micro-version) and scm_micro_version have been added to report the
126 micro version number.
128 In addition, ./GUILE-VERSION now defines GUILE_MICRO_VERSION.
130 ** New preprocessor definitions are available for checking versions.
132 version.h now #defines SCM_MAJOR_VERSION, SCM_MINOR_VERSION, and
133 SCM_MICRO_VERSION to the appropriate integer values.
135 ** Guile now actively warns about deprecated features.
137 The new configure option `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' and the
138 environment variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED control this mechanism.
139 See INSTALL and README for more information.
141 ** Guile is much more likely to work on 64-bit architectures.
143 Guile now compiles and passes "make check" with only two UNRESOLVED GC
144 cases on Alpha and ia64 based machines now. Thanks to John Goerzen
145 for the use of a test machine, and thanks to Stefan Jahn for ia64
148 ** New functions: setitimer and getitimer.
150 These implement a fairly direct interface to the libc functions of the
153 ** The #. reader extension is now disabled by default.
155 For safety reasons, #. evaluation is disabled by default. To
156 re-enable it, set the fluid read-eval? to #t. For example:
158 (fluid-set! read-eval? #t)
160 but make sure you realize the potential security risks involved. With
161 read-eval? enabled, reading a data file from an untrusted source can
164 ** New SRFI modules have been added:
166 SRFI-0 `cond-expand' is now supported in Guile, without requiring
169 (srfi srfi-1) is a library containing many useful pair- and list-processing
172 (srfi srfi-2) exports and-let*.
174 (srfi srfi-4) implements homogeneous numeric vector datatypes.
176 (srfi srfi-6) is a dummy module for now, since guile already provides
177 all of the srfi-6 procedures by default: open-input-string,
178 open-output-string, get-output-string.
180 (srfi srfi-8) exports receive.
182 (srfi srfi-9) exports define-record-type.
184 (srfi srfi-10) exports define-reader-ctor and implements the reader
187 (srfi srfi-11) exports let-values and let*-values.
189 (srfi srfi-13) implements the SRFI String Library.
191 (srfi srfi-14) implements the SRFI Character-Set Library.
193 (srfi srfi-17) implements setter and getter-with-setter and redefines
194 some accessor procedures as procedures with getters. (such as car,
195 cdr, vector-ref etc.)
197 (srfi srfi-19) implements the SRFI Time/Date Library.
199 ** New scripts / "executable modules"
201 Subdirectory "scripts" contains Scheme modules that are packaged to
202 also be executable as scripts. At this time, these scripts are available:
211 See README there for more info.
213 These scripts can be invoked from the shell with the new program
214 "guile-tools", which keeps track of installation directory for you.
217 $ guile-tools display-commentary srfi/*.scm
219 guile-tools is copied to the standard $bindir on "make install".
221 ** New module (ice-9 stack-catch):
223 stack-catch is like catch, but saves the current state of the stack in
224 the fluid the-last-stack. This fluid can be useful when using the
225 debugger and when re-throwing an error.
227 ** The module (ice-9 and-let*) has been renamed to (ice-9 and-let-star)
229 This has been done to prevent problems on lesser operating systems
230 that can't tolerate `*'s in file names. The exported macro continues
231 to be named `and-let*', of course.
233 On systems that support it, there is also a compatibility module named
234 (ice-9 and-let*). It will go away in the next release.
236 ** New modules (oop goops) etc.:
241 (oop goops active-slot)
242 (oop goops composite-slot)
244 The Guile Object Oriented Programming System (GOOPS) has been
245 integrated into Guile. For further information, consult the GOOPS
246 manual and tutorial in the `doc' directory.
248 ** New module (ice-9 rdelim).
250 This exports the following procedures which were previously defined
251 in the default environment:
253 read-line read-line! read-delimited read-delimited! %read-delimited!
254 %read-line write-line
256 For backwards compatibility the definitions are still imported into the
257 default environment in this version of Guile. However you should add:
259 (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim))
261 to any program which uses the definitions, since this may change in
264 Alternatively, if guile-scsh is installed, the (scsh rdelim) module
265 can be used for similar functionality.
267 ** New module (ice-9 rw)
269 This is a subset of the (scsh rw) module from guile-scsh. Currently
270 it defines two procedures:
272 *** New function: read-string!/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
274 Read characters from a port or file descriptor into a string STR.
275 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
276 fport. This procedure is scsh-compatible and can efficiently read
279 *** New function: write-string/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
281 Write characters from a string STR to a port or file descriptor.
282 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
283 fport. This procedure is mostly compatible and can efficiently
286 ** New module (ice-9 match)
288 This module includes Andrew K. Wright's pattern matcher. See
289 ice-9/match.scm for brief description or
291 http://www.star-lab.com/wright/code.html
293 for complete documentation.
295 ** New module (ice-9 buffered-input)
297 This module provides procedures to construct an input port from an
298 underlying source of input that reads and returns its input in chunks.
299 The underlying input source is a Scheme procedure, specified by the
300 caller, which the port invokes whenever it needs more input.
302 This is useful when building an input port whose back end is Readline
303 or a UI element such as the GtkEntry widget.
307 The reference and tutorial documentation that was previously
308 distributed separately, as `guile-doc', is now included in the core
309 Guile distribution. The documentation consists of the following
312 - The Guile Tutorial (guile-tut.texi) contains a tutorial introduction
315 - The Guile Reference Manual (guile.texi) contains (or is intended to
316 contain) reference documentation on all aspects of Guile.
318 - The GOOPS Manual (goops.texi) contains both tutorial-style and
319 reference documentation for using GOOPS, Guile's Object Oriented
322 - The Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
325 See the README file in the `doc' directory for more details.
327 ** There are a couple of examples in the examples/ directory now.
329 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
331 ** New command line option `--use-srfi'
333 Using this option, SRFI modules can be loaded on startup and be
334 available right from the beginning. This makes programming portable
335 Scheme programs easier.
337 The option `--use-srfi' expects a comma-separated list of numbers,
338 each representing a SRFI number to be loaded into the interpreter
339 before starting evaluating a script file or the REPL. Additionally,
340 the feature identifier for the loaded SRFIs is recognized by
341 `cond-expand' when using this option.
344 $ guile --use-srfi=8,13
345 guile> (receive (x z) (values 1 2) (+ 1 2))
347 guile> (string-pad "bla" 20)
350 ** Guile now always starts up in the `(guile-user)' module.
352 Previously, scripts executed via the `-s' option would run in the
353 `(guile)' module and the repl would run in the `(guile-user)' module.
354 Now every user action takes place in the `(guile-user)' module by
357 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
359 ** Character classifiers work for non-ASCII characters.
361 The predicates `char-alphabetic?', `char-numeric?',
362 `char-whitespace?', `char-lower?', `char-upper?' and `char-is-both?'
363 no longer check whether their arguments are ASCII characters.
364 Previously, a character would only be considered alphabetic when it
365 was also ASCII, for example.
367 ** Previously deprecated Scheme functions have been removed:
369 tag - no replacement.
370 fseek - replaced by seek.
371 list* - replaced by cons*.
373 ** It's now possible to create modules with controlled environments
377 (use-modules (ice-9 safe))
378 (define m (make-safe-module))
379 ;;; m will now be a module containing only a safe subset of R5RS
380 (eval '(+ 1 2) m) --> 3
381 (eval 'load m) --> ERROR: Unbound variable: load
383 ** Evaluation of "()", the empty list, is now an error.
385 Previously, the expression "()" evaluated to the empty list. This has
386 been changed to signal a "missing expression" error. The correct way
387 to write the empty list as a literal constant is to use quote: "'()".
389 ** New concept of `Guile Extensions'.
391 A Guile Extension is just a ordinary shared library that can be linked
392 at run-time. We found it advantageous to give this simple concept a
393 dedicated name to distinguish the issues related to shared libraries
394 from the issues related to the module system.
396 *** New function: load-extension
398 Executing (load-extension lib init) is mostly equivalent to
400 (dynamic-call init (dynamic-link lib))
402 except when scm_register_extension has been called previously.
403 Whenever appropriate, you should use `load-extension' instead of
404 dynamic-link and dynamic-call.
406 *** New C function: scm_c_register_extension
408 This function registers a initialization function for use by
409 `load-extension'. Use it when you don't want specific extensions to
410 be loaded as shared libraries (for example on platforms that don't
411 support dynamic linking).
413 ** Auto-loading of compiled-code modules is deprecated.
415 Guile used to be able to automatically find and link a shared
416 library to satisfy requests for a module. For example, the module
417 `(foo bar)' could be implemented by placing a shared library named
418 "foo/libbar.so" (or with a different extension) in a directory on the
421 This has been found to be too tricky, and is no longer supported. The
422 shared libraries are now called "extensions". You should now write a
423 small Scheme file that calls `load-extension' to load the shared
424 library and initialize it explicitely.
426 The shared libraries themselves should be installed in the usual
427 places for shared libraries, with names like "libguile-foo-bar".
429 For example, place this into a file "foo/bar.scm"
431 (define-module (foo bar))
433 (load-extension "libguile-foo-bar" "foobar_init")
435 ** Backward incompatible change: eval EXP ENVIRONMENT-SPECIFIER
437 `eval' is now R5RS, that is it takes two arguments.
438 The second argument is an environment specifier, i.e. either
440 (scheme-report-environment 5)
442 (interaction-environment)
448 ** The module system has been made more disciplined.
450 The function `eval' will save and restore the current module around
451 the evaluation of the specified expression. While this expression is
452 evaluated, `(current-module)' will now return the right module, which
453 is the module specified as the second argument to `eval'.
455 A consequence of this change is that `eval' is not particularly
456 useful when you want allow the evaluated code to change what module is
457 designated as the current module and have this change persist from one
458 call to `eval' to the next. The read-eval-print-loop is an example
459 where `eval' is now inadequate. To compensate, there is a new
460 function `primitive-eval' that does not take a module specifier and
461 that does not save/restore the current module. You should use this
462 function together with `set-current-module', `current-module', etc
463 when you want to have more control over the state that is carried from
464 one eval to the next.
466 Additionally, it has been made sure that forms that are evaluated at
467 the top level are always evaluated with respect to the current module.
468 Previously, subforms of top-level forms such as `begin', `case',
469 etc. did not respect changes to the current module although these
470 subforms are at the top-level as well.
472 To prevent strange behavior, the forms `define-module',
473 `use-modules', `use-syntax', and `export' have been restricted to only
474 work on the top level. The forms `define-public' and
475 `defmacro-public' only export the new binding on the top level. They
476 behave just like `define' and `defmacro', respectively, when they are
477 used in a lexical environment.
479 Also, `export' will no longer silently re-export bindings imported
480 from a used module. It will emit a `deprecation' warning and will
481 cease to perform any re-export in the next version. If you actually
482 want to re-export bindings, use the new `re-export' in place of
483 `export'. The new `re-export' will not make copies of variables when
484 rexporting them, as `export' did wrongly.
486 ** Module system now allows selection and renaming of imported bindings
488 Previously, when using `use-modules' or the `#:use-module' clause in
489 the `define-module' form, all the bindings (association of symbols to
490 values) for imported modules were added to the "current module" on an
491 as-is basis. This has been changed to allow finer control through two
492 new facilities: selection and renaming.
494 You can now select which of the imported module's bindings are to be
495 visible in the current module by using the `:select' clause. This
496 clause also can be used to rename individual bindings. For example:
498 ;; import all bindings no questions asked
499 (use-modules (ice-9 common-list))
501 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them;
502 ;; the current module sees: every some zonk-y zonk-n
503 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
506 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))))
508 You can also programmatically rename all selected bindings using the
509 `:renamer' clause, which specifies a proc that takes a symbol and
510 returns another symbol. Because it is common practice to use a prefix,
511 we now provide the convenience procedure `symbol-prefix-proc'. For
514 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
515 ;; and all four w/ prefix "CL:";
516 ;; the current module sees: CL:every CL:some CL:zonk-y CL:zonk-n
517 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
520 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
521 :renamer (symbol-prefix-proc 'CL:)))
523 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
524 ;; and all four by upcasing.
525 ;; the current module sees: EVERY SOME ZONK-Y ZONK-N
526 (define (upcase-symbol sym)
527 (string->symbol (string-upcase (symbol->string sym))))
529 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
532 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
533 :renamer upcase-symbol))
535 Note that programmatic renaming is done *after* individual renaming.
536 Also, the above examples show `use-modules', but the same facilities are
537 available for the `#:use-module' clause of `define-module'.
539 See manual for more info.
541 ** The semantics of guardians have changed.
543 The changes are for the most part compatible. An important criterion
544 was to keep the typical usage of guardians as simple as before, but to
545 make the semantics safer and (as a result) more useful.
547 *** All objects returned from guardians are now properly alive.
549 It is now guaranteed that any object referenced by an object returned
550 from a guardian is alive. It's now impossible for a guardian to
551 return a "contained" object before its "containing" object.
553 One incompatible (but probably not very important) change resulting
554 from this is that it is no longer possible to guard objects that
555 indirectly reference themselves (i.e. are parts of cycles). If you do
556 so accidentally, you'll get a warning.
558 *** There are now two types of guardians: greedy and sharing.
560 If you call (make-guardian #t) or just (make-guardian), you'll get a
561 greedy guardian, and for (make-guardian #f) a sharing guardian.
563 Greedy guardians are the default because they are more "defensive".
564 You can only greedily guard an object once. If you guard an object
565 more than once, once in a greedy guardian and the rest of times in
566 sharing guardians, then it is guaranteed that the object won't be
567 returned from sharing guardians as long as it is greedily guarded
570 Guardians returned by calls to `make-guardian' can now take one more
571 optional parameter, which says whether to throw an error in case an
572 attempt is made to greedily guard an object that is already greedily
573 guarded. The default is true, i.e. throw an error. If the parameter
574 is false, the guardian invocation returns #t if guarding was
575 successful and #f if it wasn't.
577 Also, since greedy guarding is, in effect, a side-effecting operation
578 on objects, a new function is introduced: `destroy-guardian!'.
579 Invoking this function on a guardian renders it unoperative and, if
580 the guardian is greedy, clears the "greedily guarded" property of the
581 objects that were guarded by it, thus undoing the side effect.
583 Note that all this hair is hardly very important, since guardian
584 objects are usually permanent.
586 ** Continuations created by call-with-current-continuation now accept
587 any number of arguments, as required by R5RS.
589 ** New function `issue-deprecation-warning'
591 This function is used to display the deprecation messages that are
592 controlled by GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION as explained in the README.
595 (issue-deprecation-warning "`id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.")
599 ;; `id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.
604 ** New syntax `begin-deprecated'
606 When deprecated features are included (as determined by the configure
607 option --enable-deprecated), `begin-deprecated' is identical to
608 `begin'. When deprecated features are excluded, it always evaluates
609 to `#f', ignoring the body forms.
611 ** New function `make-object-property'
613 This function returns a new `procedure with setter' P that can be used
614 to attach a property to objects. When calling P as
618 where `obj' is any kind of object, it attaches `val' to `obj' in such
619 a way that it can be retrieved by calling P as
623 This function will replace procedure properties, symbol properties and
624 source properties eventually.
626 ** Module (ice-9 optargs) now uses keywords instead of `#&'.
628 Instead of #&optional, #&key, etc you should now use #:optional,
629 #:key, etc. Since #:optional is a keyword, you can write it as just
630 :optional when (read-set! keywords 'prefix) is active.
632 The old reader syntax `#&' is still supported, but deprecated. It
633 will be removed in the next release.
635 ** New define-module option: pure
637 Tells the module system not to include any bindings from the root
642 (define-module (totally-empty-module)
645 ** New define-module option: export NAME1 ...
647 Export names NAME1 ...
649 This option is required if you want to be able to export bindings from
650 a module which doesn't import one of `define-public' or `export'.
656 :use-module (ice-9 r5rs)
659 ;;; Note that we're pure R5RS below this point!
664 ** New function: object->string OBJ
666 Return a Scheme string obtained by printing a given object.
668 ** New function: port? X
670 Returns a boolean indicating whether X is a port. Equivalent to
671 `(or (input-port? X) (output-port? X))'.
673 ** New function: file-port?
675 Determines whether a given object is a port that is related to a file.
677 ** New function: port-for-each proc
679 Apply PROC to each port in the Guile port table in turn. The return
680 value is unspecified. More specifically, PROC is applied exactly once
681 to every port that exists in the system at the time PORT-FOR-EACH is
682 invoked. Changes to the port table while PORT-FOR-EACH is running
683 have no effect as far as PORT-FOR-EACH is concerned.
685 ** New function: dup2 oldfd newfd
687 A simple wrapper for the `dup2' system call. Copies the file
688 descriptor OLDFD to descriptor number NEWFD, replacing the
689 previous meaning of NEWFD. Both OLDFD and NEWFD must be integers.
690 Unlike for dup->fdes or primitive-move->fdes, no attempt is made
691 to move away ports which are using NEWFD. The return value is
694 ** New function: close-fdes fd
696 A simple wrapper for the `close' system call. Close file
697 descriptor FD, which must be an integer. Unlike close (*note
698 close: Ports and File Descriptors.), the file descriptor will be
699 closed even if a port is using it. The return value is
702 ** New function: crypt password salt
704 Encrypts `password' using the standard unix password encryption
707 ** New function: chroot path
709 Change the root directory of the running process to `path'.
711 ** New functions: getlogin, cuserid
713 Return the login name or the user name of the current effective user
716 ** New functions: getpriority which who, setpriority which who prio
718 Get or set the priority of the running process.
720 ** New function: getpass prompt
722 Read a password from the terminal, first displaying `prompt' and
725 ** New function: flock file operation
727 Set/remove an advisory shared or exclusive lock on `file'.
729 ** New functions: sethostname name, gethostname
731 Set or get the hostname of the machine the current process is running
734 ** New function: mkstemp! tmpl
736 mkstemp creates a new unique file in the file system and returns a
737 new buffered port open for reading and writing to the file. TMPL
738 is a string specifying where the file should be created: it must
739 end with `XXXXXX' and will be changed in place to return the name
740 of the temporary file.
742 ** New function: open-input-string string
744 Return an input string port which delivers the characters from
745 `string'. This procedure, together with `open-output-string' and
746 `get-output-string' implements SRFI-6.
748 ** New function: open-output-string
750 Return an output string port which collects all data written to it.
751 The data can then be retrieved by `get-output-string'.
753 ** New function: get-output-string
755 Return the contents of an output string port.
757 ** New function: identity
761 ** socket, connect, accept etc., now have support for IPv6. IPv6 addresses
762 are represented in Scheme as integers with normal host byte ordering.
764 ** New function: inet-pton family address
766 Convert a printable string network address into an integer. Note that
767 unlike the C version of this function, the result is an integer with
768 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
771 (inet-pton AF_INET "127.0.0.1") => 2130706433
772 (inet-pton AF_INET6 "::1") => 1
774 ** New function: inet-ntop family address
776 Convert an integer network address into a printable string. Note that
777 unlike the C version of this function, the input is an integer with
778 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
781 (inet-ntop AF_INET 2130706433) => "127.0.0.1"
782 (inet-ntop AF_INET6 (- (expt 2 128) 1)) =>
783 ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
787 Use `identity' instead.
793 ** Deprecated: return-it
797 ** Deprecated: string-character-length
799 Use `string-length' instead.
803 Use `logior' instead.
805 ** Deprecated: close-all-ports-except.
807 This was intended for closing ports in a child process after a fork,
808 but it has the undesirable side effect of flushing buffers.
809 port-for-each is more flexible.
811 ** The (ice-9 popen) module now attempts to set up file descriptors in
812 the child process from the current Scheme ports, instead of using the
813 current values of file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 in the parent process.
815 ** Removed function: builtin-weak-bindings
817 There is no such concept as a weak binding any more.
819 ** Removed constants: bignum-radix, scm-line-incrementors
821 ** define-method: New syntax mandatory.
823 The new method syntax is now mandatory:
825 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ...) BODY ...)
826 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ... . REST-ARG) BODY ...)
828 ARG-SPEC ::= ARG-NAME | (ARG-NAME TYPE)
829 REST-ARG ::= ARG-NAME
831 If you have old code using the old syntax, import
832 (oop goops old-define-method) before (oop goops) as in:
834 (use-modules (oop goops old-define-method) (oop goops))
836 ** Deprecated function: builtin-variable
837 Removed function: builtin-bindings
839 There is no longer a distinction between builtin or other variables.
840 Use module system operations for all variables.
842 ** Lazy-catch handlers are no longer allowed to return.
844 That is, a call to `throw', `error', etc is now guaranteed to not
847 ** Bugfixes for (ice-9 getopt-long)
849 This module is now tested using test-suite/tests/getopt-long.test.
850 The following bugs have been fixed:
852 *** Parsing for options that are specified to have `optional' args now checks
853 if the next element is an option instead of unconditionally taking it as the
856 *** An error is now thrown for `--opt=val' when the option description
857 does not specify `(value #t)' or `(value optional)'. This condition used to
858 be accepted w/o error, contrary to the documentation.
860 *** The error message for unrecognized options is now more informative.
861 It used to be "not a record", an artifact of the implementation.
863 *** The error message for `--opt' terminating the arg list (no value), when
864 `(value #t)' is specified, is now more informative. It used to be "not enough
867 *** "Clumped" single-char args now preserve trailing string, use it as arg.
868 The expansion used to be like so:
870 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "--xyz")
872 Note that the "5d" is dropped. Now it is like so:
874 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "5d" "--xyz")
876 This enables single-char options to have adjoining arguments as long as their
877 constituent characters are not potential single-char options.
879 ** (ice-9 session) procedure `arity' now works with (ice-9 optargs) `lambda*'
881 The `lambda*' and derivative forms in (ice-9 optargs) now set a procedure
882 property `arglist', which can be retrieved by `arity'. The result is that
883 `arity' can give more detailed information than before:
887 guile> (use-modules (ice-9 optargs))
888 guile> (define* (foo #:optional a b c) a)
890 0 or more arguments in `lambda*:G0'.
895 3 optional arguments: `a', `b' and `c'.
896 guile> (define* (bar a b #:key c d #:allow-other-keys) a)
898 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 2 keyword arguments: `c'
899 and `d', other keywords allowed.
900 guile> (define* (baz a b #:optional c #:rest r) a)
902 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 1 optional argument: `c',
905 * Changes to the C interface
907 ** Types have been renamed from scm_*_t to scm_t_*.
909 This has been done for POSIX sake. It reserves identifiers ending
910 with "_t". What a concept.
912 The old names are still available with status `deprecated'.
914 ** scm_t_bits (former scm_bits_t) is now a unsigned type.
916 ** Deprecated features have been removed.
920 SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP SCM_ICHRP, SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR
921 SCM_SETJMPBUF SCM_NSTRINGP SCM_NRWSTRINGP SCM_NVECTORP SCM_DOUBLE_CELLP
923 *** C Functions removed
925 scm_sysmissing scm_tag scm_tc16_flo scm_tc_flo
926 scm_fseek - replaced by scm_seek.
927 gc-thunk - replaced by after-gc-hook.
928 gh_int2scmb - replaced by gh_bool2scm.
929 scm_tc_dblr - replaced by scm_tc16_real.
930 scm_tc_dblc - replaced by scm_tc16_complex.
931 scm_list_star - replaced by scm_cons_star.
933 ** Deprecated: scm_makfromstr
935 Use scm_mem2string instead.
937 ** Deprecated: scm_make_shared_substring
939 Explicit shared substrings will disappear from Guile.
941 Instead, "normal" strings will be implemented using sharing
942 internally, combined with a copy-on-write strategy.
944 ** Deprecated: scm_read_only_string_p
946 The concept of read-only strings will disappear in next release of
949 ** Deprecated: scm_sloppy_memq, scm_sloppy_memv, scm_sloppy_member
951 Instead, use scm_c_memq or scm_memq, scm_memv, scm_member.
953 ** New functions: scm_call_0, scm_call_1, scm_call_2, scm_call_3
955 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments.
959 scm_call_1 (proc, arg1);
961 ** New functions: scm_apply_0, scm_apply_1, scm_apply_2, scm_apply_3
963 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments and a list
968 scm_apply_1 (proc, arg1, args);
970 ** New functions: scm_list_1, scm_list_2, scm_list_3, scm_list_4, scm_list_5
972 Create a list of the given number of elements.
974 ** Renamed function: scm_listify has been replaced by scm_list_n.
976 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_LIST0, SCM_LIST1, SCM_LIST2, SCM_LIST3, SCM_LIST4,
977 SCM_LIST5, SCM_LIST6, SCM_LIST7, SCM_LIST8, SCM_LIST9.
979 Use functions scm_list_N instead.
981 ** New function: scm_c_read (SCM port, void *buffer, scm_sizet size)
983 Used by an application to read arbitrary number of bytes from a port.
984 Same semantics as libc read, except that scm_c_read only returns less
985 than SIZE bytes if at end-of-file.
987 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
989 ** New function: scm_c_write (SCM port, const void *ptr, scm_sizet size)
991 Used by an application to write arbitrary number of bytes to an SCM
992 port. Similar semantics as libc write. However, unlike libc
993 write, scm_c_write writes the requested number of bytes and has no
996 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
998 ** New function: scm_init_guile ()
1000 In contrast to scm_boot_guile, scm_init_guile will return normally
1001 after initializing Guile. It is not available on all systems, tho.
1003 ** New functions: scm_str2symbol, scm_mem2symbol
1005 The function scm_str2symbol takes a const char* pointing to a zero-terminated
1006 field of characters and creates a scheme symbol object from that C string.
1007 The function scm_mem2symbol takes a const char* and a number of characters and
1008 creates a symbol from the characters in that memory area.
1010 ** New functions: scm_primitive_make_property
1011 scm_primitive_property_ref
1012 scm_primitive_property_set_x
1013 scm_primitive_property_del_x
1015 These functions implement a new way to deal with object properties.
1016 See libguile/properties.c for their documentation.
1018 ** New function: scm_done_free (long size)
1020 This function is the inverse of scm_done_malloc. Use it to report the
1021 amount of smob memory you free. The previous method, which involved
1022 calling scm_done_malloc with negative argument, was somewhat
1023 unintuitive (and is still available, of course).
1025 ** New function: scm_c_memq (SCM obj, SCM list)
1027 This function provides a fast C level alternative for scm_memq for the case
1028 that the list parameter is known to be a proper list. The function is a
1029 replacement for scm_sloppy_memq, but is stricter in its requirements on its
1030 list input parameter, since for anything else but a proper list the function's
1031 behaviour is undefined - it may even crash or loop endlessly. Further, for
1032 the case that the object is not found in the list, scm_c_memq returns #f which
1033 is similar to scm_memq, but different from scm_sloppy_memq's behaviour.
1035 ** New functions: scm_remember_upto_here_1, scm_remember_upto_here_2,
1036 scm_remember_upto_here
1038 These functions replace the function scm_remember.
1040 ** Deprecated function: scm_remember
1042 Use one of the new functions scm_remember_upto_here_1,
1043 scm_remember_upto_here_2 or scm_remember_upto_here instead.
1045 ** New function: scm_allocate_string
1047 This function replaces the function scm_makstr.
1049 ** Deprecated function: scm_makstr
1051 Use the new function scm_allocate_string instead.
1053 ** New global variable scm_gc_running_p introduced.
1055 Use this variable to find out if garbage collection is being executed. Up to
1056 now applications have used scm_gc_heap_lock to test if garbage collection was
1057 running, which also works because of the fact that up to know only the garbage
1058 collector has set this variable. But, this is an implementation detail that
1059 may change. Further, scm_gc_heap_lock is not set throughout gc, thus the use
1060 of this variable is (and has been) not fully safe anyway.
1062 ** New macros: SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH
1064 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
1066 ** New macros: SCM_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_CCLO_LENGTH, SCM_STACK_LENGTH,
1067 SCM_STRING_LENGTH, SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
1068 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH.
1070 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH.
1072 ** New macros: SCM_SET_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH,
1073 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
1074 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH
1076 Use these instead of SCM_SETLENGTH
1078 ** New macros: SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_CCLO_BASE,
1079 SCM_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_COMPLEX_MEM,
1082 Use these instead of SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS, SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS or
1085 ** New macros: SCM_SET_BIGNUM_BASE, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS,
1086 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE,
1089 Use these instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
1091 ** New macro: SCM_BITVECTOR_P
1093 ** New macro: SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X
1095 Use instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
1097 ** New macros: SCM_DIR_OPEN_P, SCM_DIR_FLAG_OPEN
1099 For directory objects, use these instead of SCM_OPDIRP and SCM_OPN.
1101 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_OUTOFRANGE, SCM_NALLOC, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL,
1102 SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL,
1103 SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD,
1104 SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS, SCM_SYMBOL_SLOTS, SCM_SLOTS, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
1105 SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_FREEP, SCM_NFREEP, SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS,
1106 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY,
1107 SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_HUGE_LENGTH,
1108 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
1109 SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_RWSTRINGP, SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, SCM_ROCHARS,
1110 SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_GC8MARKP,
1111 SCM_SETGC8MARK, SCM_CLRGC8MARK, SCM_GCTYP16, SCM_GCCDR, SCM_SUBR_DOC,
1112 SCM_OPDIRP, SCM_VALIDATE_OPDIR, SCM_WTA, RETURN_SCM_WTA, SCM_CONST_LONG,
1113 SCM_WNA, SCM_FUNC_NAME, SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_COPY,
1114 SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_DEF_COPY, SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP, SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP,
1115 SCM_SETAND_CDR, SCM_SETOR_CDR, SCM_SETAND_CAR, SCM_SETOR_CAR
1117 Use SCM_ASSERT_RANGE or SCM_VALIDATE_XXX_RANGE instead of SCM_OUTOFRANGE.
1118 Use scm_memory_error instead of SCM_NALLOC.
1119 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP.
1120 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR.
1121 Use SCM_FREE_CELL_P instead of SCM_FREEP/SCM_NFREEP
1122 Use a type specific accessor macro instead of SCM_CHARS/SCM_UCHARS.
1123 Use a type specific accessor instead of SCM(_|_RO|_HUGE_)LENGTH.
1124 Use SCM_VALIDATE_(SYMBOL|STRING) instead of SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING.
1125 Use SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
1126 Use SCM_STRINGP or SCM_SYMBOLP instead of SCM_ROSTRINGP.
1127 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_RWSTRINGP.
1128 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING.
1129 Use SCM_STRING_CHARS instead of SCM_ROCHARS.
1130 Use SCM_STRING_UCHARS instead of SCM_ROUCHARS.
1131 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETLENGTH.
1132 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
1133 Use a type specific length macro instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
1134 Use SCM_GCMARKP instead of SCM_GC8MARKP.
1135 Use SCM_SETGCMARK instead of SCM_SETGC8MARK.
1136 Use SCM_CLRGCMARK instead of SCM_CLRGC8MARK.
1137 Use SCM_TYP16 instead of SCM_GCTYP16.
1138 Use SCM_CDR instead of SCM_GCCDR.
1139 Use SCM_DIR_OPEN_P instead of SCM_OPDIRP.
1140 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of SCM_WTA.
1141 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of RETURN_SCM_WTA.
1142 Use SCM_VCELL_INIT instead of SCM_CONST_LONG.
1143 Use SCM_WRONG_NUM_ARGS instead of SCM_WNA.
1144 Use SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP.
1145 Use !SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP.
1147 ** Removed function: scm_struct_init
1149 ** Removed variable: scm_symhash_dim
1151 ** Renamed function: scm_make_cont has been replaced by
1152 scm_make_continuation, which has a different interface.
1154 ** Deprecated function: scm_call_catching_errors
1156 Use scm_catch or scm_lazy_catch from throw.[ch] instead.
1158 ** Deprecated function: scm_strhash
1160 Use scm_string_hash instead.
1162 ** Deprecated function: scm_vector_set_length_x
1164 Instead, create a fresh vector of the desired size and copy the contents.
1166 ** scm_gensym has changed prototype
1168 scm_gensym now only takes one argument.
1170 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc7_ssymbol, scm_tc7_msymbol, scm_tcs_symbols,
1173 There is now only a single symbol type scm_tc7_symbol.
1174 The tag scm_tc7_lvector was not used anyway.
1176 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe, scm_set_smob_mfpe.
1178 Use scm_make_smob_type and scm_set_smob_XXX instead.
1180 ** New function scm_set_smob_apply.
1182 This can be used to set an apply function to a smob type.
1184 ** Deprecated function: scm_strprint_obj
1186 Use scm_object_to_string instead.
1188 ** Deprecated function: scm_wta
1190 Use scm_wrong_type_arg, or another appropriate error signalling function
1193 ** Explicit support for obarrays has been deprecated.
1195 Use `scm_str2symbol' and the generic hashtable functions instead.
1197 ** The concept of `vcells' has been deprecated.
1199 The data type `variable' is now used exclusively. `Vcells' have been
1200 a low-level concept so you are likely not affected by this change.
1202 *** Deprecated functions: scm_sym2vcell, scm_sysintern,
1203 scm_sysintern0, scm_symbol_value0, scm_intern, scm_intern0.
1205 Use scm_c_define or scm_c_lookup instead, as appropriate.
1207 *** New functions: scm_c_module_lookup, scm_c_lookup,
1208 scm_c_module_define, scm_c_define, scm_module_lookup, scm_lookup,
1209 scm_module_define, scm_define.
1211 These functions work with variables instead of with vcells.
1213 ** New functions for creating and defining `subr's and `gsubr's.
1215 The new functions more clearly distinguish between creating a subr (or
1216 gsubr) object and adding it to the current module.
1218 These new functions are available: scm_c_make_subr, scm_c_define_subr,
1219 scm_c_make_subr_with_generic, scm_c_define_subr_with_generic,
1220 scm_c_make_gsubr, scm_c_define_gsubr, scm_c_make_gsubr_with_generic,
1221 scm_c_define_gsubr_with_generic.
1223 ** Deprecated functions: scm_make_subr, scm_make_subr_opt,
1224 scm_make_subr_with_generic, scm_make_gsubr,
1225 scm_make_gsubr_with_generic.
1227 Use the new ones from above instead.
1229 ** C interface to the module system has changed.
1231 While we suggest that you avoid as many explicit module system
1232 operations from C as possible for the time being, the C interface has
1233 been made more similar to the high-level Scheme module system.
1235 *** New functions: scm_c_define_module, scm_c_use_module,
1236 scm_c_export, scm_c_resolve_module.
1238 They mostly work like their Scheme namesakes. scm_c_define_module
1239 takes a function that is called a context where the new module is
1242 *** Deprecated functions: scm_the_root_module, scm_make_module,
1243 scm_ensure_user_module, scm_load_scheme_module.
1245 Use the new functions instead.
1247 ** Renamed function: scm_internal_with_fluids becomes
1250 scm_internal_with_fluids is available as a deprecated function.
1252 ** New function: scm_c_with_fluid.
1254 Just like scm_c_with_fluids, but takes one fluid and one value instead
1257 ** Deprecated typedefs: long_long, ulong_long.
1259 They are of questionable utility and they pollute the global
1262 ** Deprecated typedef: scm_sizet
1264 It is of questionable utility now that Guile requires ANSI C, and is
1267 ** Deprecated typedefs: scm_port_rw_active, scm_port,
1268 scm_ptob_descriptor, scm_debug_info, scm_debug_frame, scm_fport,
1269 scm_option, scm_rstate, scm_rng, scm_array, scm_array_dim.
1271 Made more compliant with the naming policy by adding a _t at the end.
1273 ** Deprecated functions: scm_mkbig, scm_big2num, scm_adjbig,
1274 scm_normbig, scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl
1276 With the exception of the mysterious scm_2ulong2big, they are still
1277 available under new names (scm_i_mkbig etc). These functions are not
1278 intended to be used in user code. You should avoid dealing with
1279 bignums directly, and should deal with numbers in general (which can
1282 ** Change in behavior: scm_num2long, scm_num2ulong
1284 The scm_num2[u]long functions don't any longer accept an inexact
1285 argument. This change in behavior is motivated by concordance with
1286 R5RS: It is more common that a primitive doesn't want to accept an
1287 inexact for an exact.
1289 ** New functions: scm_short2num, scm_ushort2num, scm_int2num,
1290 scm_uint2num, scm_size2num, scm_ptrdiff2num, scm_num2short,
1291 scm_num2ushort, scm_num2int, scm_num2uint, scm_num2ptrdiff,
1294 These are conversion functions between the various ANSI C integral
1295 types and Scheme numbers. NOTE: The scm_num2xxx functions don't
1296 accept an inexact argument.
1298 ** New functions: scm_float2num, scm_double2num,
1299 scm_num2float, scm_num2double.
1301 These are conversion functions between the two ANSI C float types and
1304 ** New number validation macros:
1305 SCM_NUM2{SIZE,PTRDIFF,SHORT,USHORT,INT,UINT}[_DEF]
1309 ** New functions: scm_gc_protect_object, scm_gc_unprotect_object
1311 These are just nicer-named old scm_protect_object and
1312 scm_unprotect_object.
1314 ** Deprecated functions: scm_protect_object, scm_unprotect_object
1316 ** New functions: scm_gc_[un]register_root, scm_gc_[un]register_roots
1318 These functions can be used to register pointers to locations that
1321 ** Deprecated function: scm_create_hook.
1323 Its sins are: misleading name, non-modularity and lack of general
1327 Changes since Guile 1.3.4:
1329 * Changes to the distribution
1331 ** Trees from nightly snapshots and CVS now require you to run autogen.sh.
1333 We've changed the way we handle generated files in the Guile source
1334 repository. As a result, the procedure for building trees obtained
1335 from the nightly FTP snapshots or via CVS has changed:
1336 - You must have appropriate versions of autoconf, automake, and
1337 libtool installed on your system. See README for info on how to
1338 obtain these programs.
1339 - Before configuring the tree, you must first run the script
1340 `autogen.sh' at the top of the source tree.
1342 The Guile repository used to contain not only source files, written by
1343 humans, but also some generated files, like configure scripts and
1344 Makefile.in files. Even though the contents of these files could be
1345 derived mechanically from other files present, we thought it would
1346 make the tree easier to build if we checked them into CVS.
1348 However, this approach means that minor differences between
1349 developer's installed tools and habits affected the whole team.
1350 So we have removed the generated files from the repository, and
1351 added the autogen.sh script, which will reconstruct them
1355 ** configure now has experimental options to remove support for certain
1358 --disable-arrays omit array and uniform array support
1359 --disable-posix omit posix interfaces
1360 --disable-networking omit networking interfaces
1361 --disable-regex omit regular expression interfaces
1363 These are likely to become separate modules some day.
1365 ** New configure option --enable-debug-freelist
1367 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
1368 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
1370 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
1371 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
1373 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
1374 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
1376 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
1377 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can
1378 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
1379 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
1381 ** New configure option --enable-debug-malloc
1383 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
1387 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
1388 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
1390 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
1392 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
1393 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
1395 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
1396 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
1397 number of objects of that kind.
1399 ** All includes are now referenced relative to the root directory
1401 Since some users have had problems with mixups between Guile and
1402 system headers, we have decided to always refer to Guile headers via
1403 their parent directories. This essentially creates a "private name
1404 space" for Guile headers. This means that the compiler only is given
1405 -I options for the root build and root source directory.
1407 ** Header files kw.h and genio.h have been removed.
1409 ** The module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) has been removed.
1411 ** New module (ice-9 documentation)
1413 Implements the interface to documentation strings associated with
1416 ** New module (ice-9 time)
1418 Provides a macro `time', which displays execution time of a given form.
1420 ** New module (ice-9 history)
1422 Loading this module enables value history in the repl.
1424 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
1426 ** New command line option --debug
1428 Start Guile with debugging evaluator and backtraces enabled.
1430 This is useful when debugging your .guile init file or scripts.
1432 ** New help facility
1434 Usage: (help NAME) gives documentation about objects named NAME (a symbol)
1435 (help REGEXP) ditto for objects with names matching REGEXP (a string)
1436 (help 'NAME) gives documentation for NAME, even if it is not an object
1437 (help ,EXPR) gives documentation for object returned by EXPR
1438 (help (my module)) gives module commentary for `(my module)'
1439 (help) gives this text
1441 `help' searches among bindings exported from loaded modules, while
1442 `apropos' searches among bindings visible from the "current" module.
1444 Examples: (help help)
1446 (help "output-string")
1448 ** `help' and `apropos' now prints full module names
1450 ** Dynamic linking now uses libltdl from the libtool package.
1452 The old system dependent code for doing dynamic linking has been
1453 replaced with calls to the libltdl functions which do all the hairy
1456 The major improvement is that you can now directly pass libtool
1457 library names like "libfoo.la" to `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-link'
1458 will be able to do the best shared library job you can get, via
1461 The way dynamic libraries are found has changed and is not really
1462 portable across platforms, probably. It is therefore recommended to
1463 use absolute filenames when possible.
1465 If you pass a filename without an extension to `dynamic-link', it will
1466 try a few appropriate ones. Thus, the most platform ignorant way is
1467 to specify a name like "libfoo", without any directories and
1470 ** Guile COOP threads are now compatible with LinuxThreads
1472 Previously, COOP threading wasn't possible in applications linked with
1473 Linux POSIX threads due to their use of the stack pointer to find the
1474 thread context. This has now been fixed with a workaround which uses
1475 the pthreads to allocate the stack.
1477 ** New primitives: `pkgdata-dir', `site-dir', `library-dir'
1479 ** Positions of erring expression in scripts
1481 With version 1.3.4, the location of the erring expression in Guile
1482 scipts is no longer automatically reported. (This should have been
1483 documented before the 1.3.4 release.)
1485 You can get this information by enabling recording of positions of
1486 source expressions and running the debugging evaluator. Put this at
1487 the top of your script (or in your "site" file):
1489 (read-enable 'positions)
1490 (debug-enable 'debug)
1492 ** Backtraces in scripts
1494 It is now possible to get backtraces in scripts.
1498 (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
1500 at the top of the script.
1502 (The first options enables the debugging evaluator.
1503 The second enables backtraces.)
1505 ** Part of module system symbol lookup now implemented in C
1507 The eval closure of most modules is now implemented in C. Since this
1508 was one of the bottlenecks for loading speed, Guile now loads code
1509 substantially faster than before.
1511 ** Attempting to get the value of an unbound variable now produces
1512 an exception with a key of 'unbound-variable instead of 'misc-error.
1514 ** The initial default output port is now unbuffered if it's using a
1515 tty device. Previously in this situation it was line-buffered.
1517 ** New hook: after-gc-hook
1519 after-gc-hook takes over the role of gc-thunk. This hook is run at
1520 the first SCM_TICK after a GC. (Thus, the code is run at the same
1521 point during evaluation as signal handlers.)
1523 Note that this hook should be used only for diagnostic and debugging
1524 purposes. It is not certain that it will continue to be well-defined
1525 when this hook is run in the future.
1527 C programmers: Note the new C level hooks scm_before_gc_c_hook,
1528 scm_before_sweep_c_hook, scm_after_gc_c_hook.
1530 ** Improvements to garbage collector
1532 Guile 1.4 has a new policy for triggering heap allocation and
1533 determining the sizes of heap segments. It fixes a number of problems
1536 1. The new policy can handle two separate pools of cells
1537 (2-word/4-word) better. (The old policy would run wild, allocating
1538 more and more memory for certain programs.)
1540 2. The old code would sometimes allocate far too much heap so that the
1541 Guile process became gigantic. The new code avoids this.
1543 3. The old code would sometimes allocate too little so that few cells
1544 were freed at GC so that, in turn, too much time was spent in GC.
1546 4. The old code would often trigger heap allocation several times in a
1547 row. (The new scheme predicts how large the segments needs to be
1548 in order not to need further allocation.)
1550 All in all, the new GC policy will make larger applications more
1553 The new GC scheme also is prepared for POSIX threading. Threads can
1554 allocate private pools of cells ("clusters") with just a single
1555 function call. Allocation of single cells from such a cluster can
1556 then proceed without any need of inter-thread synchronization.
1558 ** New environment variables controlling GC parameters
1560 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE Maximal segment size
1563 Allocation of 2-word cell heaps:
1565 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1 Size of initial heap segment in bytes
1568 GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1 Minimum number of freed cells at each
1569 GC in percent of total heap size
1572 Allocation of 4-word cell heaps
1573 (used for real numbers and misc other objects):
1575 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2
1577 (See entry "Way for application to customize GC parameters" under
1578 section "Changes to the scm_ interface" below.)
1580 ** Guile now implements reals using 4-word cells
1582 This speeds up computation with reals. (They were earlier allocated
1583 with `malloc'.) There is still some room for optimizations, however.
1585 ** Some further steps toward POSIX thread support have been taken
1587 *** Guile's critical sections (SCM_DEFER/ALLOW_INTS)
1588 don't have much effect any longer, and many of them will be removed in
1592 are only handled at the top of the evaluator loop, immediately after
1593 I/O, and in scm_equalp.
1595 *** The GC can allocate thread private pools of pairs.
1597 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
1599 ** close-input-port and close-output-port are now R5RS
1601 These procedures have been turned into primitives and have R5RS behaviour.
1603 ** New procedure: simple-format PORT MESSAGE ARG1 ...
1605 (ice-9 boot) makes `format' an alias for `simple-format' until possibly
1606 extended by the more sophisticated version in (ice-9 format)
1608 (simple-format port message . args)
1609 Write MESSAGE to DESTINATION, defaulting to `current-output-port'.
1610 MESSAGE can contain ~A (was %s) and ~S (was %S) escapes. When printed,
1611 the escapes are replaced with corresponding members of ARGS:
1612 ~A formats using `display' and ~S formats using `write'.
1613 If DESTINATION is #t, then use the `current-output-port',
1614 if DESTINATION is #f, then return a string containing the formatted text.
1615 Does not add a trailing newline."
1617 ** string-ref: the second argument is no longer optional.
1619 ** string, list->string: no longer accept strings in their arguments,
1620 only characters, for compatibility with R5RS.
1622 ** New procedure: port-closed? PORT
1623 Returns #t if PORT is closed or #f if it is open.
1625 ** Deprecated: list*
1627 The list* functionality is now provided by cons* (SRFI-1 compliant)
1629 ** New procedure: cons* ARG1 ARG2 ... ARGn
1631 Like `list', but the last arg provides the tail of the constructed list,
1632 returning (cons ARG1 (cons ARG2 (cons ... ARGn))).
1634 Requires at least one argument. If given one argument, that argument
1635 is returned as result.
1637 This function is called `list*' in some other Schemes and in Common LISP.
1639 ** Removed deprecated: serial-map, serial-array-copy!, serial-array-map!
1641 ** New procedure: object-documentation OBJECT
1643 Returns the documentation string associated with OBJECT. The
1644 procedure uses a caching mechanism so that subsequent lookups are
1647 Exported by (ice-9 documentation).
1649 ** module-name now returns full names of modules
1651 Previously, only the last part of the name was returned (`session' for
1652 `(ice-9 session)'). Ex: `(ice-9 session)'.
1654 * Changes to the gh_ interface
1656 ** Deprecated: gh_int2scmb
1658 Use gh_bool2scm instead.
1660 * Changes to the scm_ interface
1662 ** Guile primitives now carry docstrings!
1664 Thanks to Greg Badros!
1666 ** Guile primitives are defined in a new way: SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
1668 Now Guile primitives are defined using the SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
1669 macros and must contain a docstring that is extracted into foo.doc using a new
1670 guile-doc-snarf script (that uses guile-doc-snarf.awk).
1672 However, a major overhaul of these macros is scheduled for the next release of
1675 ** Guile primitives use a new technique for validation of arguments
1677 SCM_VALIDATE_* macros are defined to ease the redundancy and improve
1678 the readability of argument checking.
1680 ** All (nearly?) K&R prototypes for functions replaced with ANSI C equivalents.
1682 ** New macros: SCM_PACK, SCM_UNPACK
1684 Compose/decompose an SCM value.
1686 The SCM type is now treated as an abstract data type and may be defined as a
1687 long, a void* or as a struct, depending on the architecture and compile time
1688 options. This makes it easier to find several types of bugs, for example when
1689 SCM values are treated as integers without conversion. Values of the SCM type
1690 should be treated as "atomic" values. These macros are used when
1691 composing/decomposing an SCM value, either because you want to access
1692 individual bits, or because you want to treat it as an integer value.
1694 E.g., in order to set bit 7 in an SCM value x, use the expression
1696 SCM_PACK (SCM_UNPACK (x) | 0x80)
1698 ** The name property of hooks is deprecated.
1699 Thus, the use of SCM_HOOK_NAME and scm_make_hook_with_name is deprecated.
1701 You can emulate this feature by using object properties.
1703 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP, SCM_CRDY, SCM_ICHRP,
1704 SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR, SCM_SETJMPBUF, SCM_NSTRINGP, SCM_NRWSTRINGP,
1707 These macros will be removed in a future release of Guile.
1709 ** The following types, functions and macros from numbers.h are deprecated:
1710 scm_dblproc, SCM_UNEGFIXABLE, SCM_FLOBUFLEN, SCM_INEXP, SCM_CPLXP, SCM_REAL,
1711 SCM_IMAG, SCM_REALPART, scm_makdbl, SCM_SINGP, SCM_NUM2DBL, SCM_NO_BIGDIG
1713 Further, it is recommended not to rely on implementation details for guile's
1714 current implementation of bignums. It is planned to replace this
1715 implementation with gmp in the future.
1717 ** Port internals: the rw_random variable in the scm_port structure
1718 must be set to non-zero in any random access port. In recent Guile
1719 releases it was only set for bidirectional random-access ports.
1721 ** Port internals: the seek ptob procedure is now responsible for
1722 resetting the buffers if required. The change was made so that in the
1723 special case of reading the current position (i.e., seek p 0 SEEK_CUR)
1724 the fport and strport ptobs can avoid resetting the buffers,
1725 in particular to avoid discarding unread chars. An existing port
1726 type can be fixed by adding something like the following to the
1727 beginning of the ptob seek procedure:
1729 if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_READ)
1730 scm_end_input (object);
1731 else if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_WRITE)
1732 ptob->flush (object);
1734 although to actually avoid resetting the buffers and discard unread
1735 chars requires further hacking that depends on the characteristics
1738 ** Deprecated functions: scm_fseek, scm_tag
1740 These functions are no longer used and will be removed in a future version.
1742 ** The scm_sysmissing procedure is no longer used in libguile.
1743 Unless it turns out to be unexpectedly useful to somebody, it will be
1744 removed in a future version.
1746 ** The format of error message strings has changed
1748 The two C procedures: scm_display_error and scm_error, as well as the
1749 primitive `scm-error', now use scm_simple_format to do their work.
1750 This means that the message strings of all code must be updated to use
1751 ~A where %s was used before, and ~S where %S was used before.
1753 During the period when there still are a lot of old Guiles out there,
1754 you might want to support both old and new versions of Guile.
1756 There are basically two methods to achieve this. Both methods use
1759 AC_CHECK_FUNCS(scm_simple_format)
1761 in your configure.in.
1763 Method 1: Use the string concatenation features of ANSI C's
1768 #ifdef HAVE_SCM_SIMPLE_FORMAT
1774 Then represent each of your error messages using a preprocessor macro:
1776 #define E_SPIDER_ERROR "There's a spider in your " ## FMT_S ## "!!!"
1780 (define fmt-s (if (defined? 'simple-format) "~S" "%S"))
1781 (define make-message string-append)
1783 (define e-spider-error (make-message "There's a spider in your " fmt-s "!!!"))
1785 Method 2: Use the oldfmt function found in doc/oldfmt.c.
1789 scm_misc_error ("picnic", scm_c_oldfmt0 ("There's a spider in your ~S!!!"),
1794 (scm-error 'misc-error "picnic" (oldfmt "There's a spider in your ~S!!!")
1798 ** Deprecated: coop_mutex_init, coop_condition_variable_init
1800 Don't use the functions coop_mutex_init and
1801 coop_condition_variable_init. They will change.
1803 Use scm_mutex_init and scm_cond_init instead.
1805 ** New function: int scm_cond_timedwait (scm_cond_t *COND, scm_mutex_t *MUTEX, const struct timespec *ABSTIME)
1806 `scm_cond_timedwait' atomically unlocks MUTEX and waits on
1807 COND, as `scm_cond_wait' does, but it also bounds the duration
1808 of the wait. If COND has not been signaled before time ABSTIME,
1809 the mutex MUTEX is re-acquired and `scm_cond_timedwait'
1810 returns the error code `ETIMEDOUT'.
1812 The ABSTIME parameter specifies an absolute time, with the same
1813 origin as `time' and `gettimeofday': an ABSTIME of 0 corresponds
1814 to 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970.
1816 ** New function: scm_cond_broadcast (scm_cond_t *COND)
1817 `scm_cond_broadcast' restarts all the threads that are waiting
1818 on the condition variable COND. Nothing happens if no threads are
1821 ** New function: scm_key_create (scm_key_t *KEY, void (*destr_function) (void *))
1822 `scm_key_create' allocates a new TSD key. The key is stored in
1823 the location pointed to by KEY. There is no limit on the number
1824 of keys allocated at a given time. The value initially associated
1825 with the returned key is `NULL' in all currently executing threads.
1827 The DESTR_FUNCTION argument, if not `NULL', specifies a destructor
1828 function associated with the key. When a thread terminates,
1829 DESTR_FUNCTION is called on the value associated with the key in
1830 that thread. The DESTR_FUNCTION is not called if a key is deleted
1831 with `scm_key_delete' or a value is changed with
1832 `scm_setspecific'. The order in which destructor functions are
1833 called at thread termination time is unspecified.
1835 Destructors are not yet implemented.
1837 ** New function: scm_setspecific (scm_key_t KEY, const void *POINTER)
1838 `scm_setspecific' changes the value associated with KEY in the
1839 calling thread, storing the given POINTER instead.
1841 ** New function: scm_getspecific (scm_key_t KEY)
1842 `scm_getspecific' returns the value currently associated with
1843 KEY in the calling thread.
1845 ** New function: scm_key_delete (scm_key_t KEY)
1846 `scm_key_delete' deallocates a TSD key. It does not check
1847 whether non-`NULL' values are associated with that key in the
1848 currently executing threads, nor call the destructor function
1849 associated with the key.
1851 ** New function: scm_c_hook_init (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *HOOK_DATA, scm_c_hook_type_t TYPE)
1853 Initialize a C level hook HOOK with associated HOOK_DATA and type
1854 TYPE. (See scm_c_hook_run ().)
1856 ** New function: scm_c_hook_add (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA, int APPENDP)
1858 Add hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA to HOOK. If APPENDP
1859 is true, add it last, otherwise first. The same FUNC can be added
1860 multiple times if FUNC_DATA differ and vice versa.
1862 ** New function: scm_c_hook_remove (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA)
1864 Remove hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA from HOOK. A
1865 function is only removed if both FUNC and FUNC_DATA matches.
1867 ** New function: void *scm_c_hook_run (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *DATA)
1869 Run hook HOOK passing DATA to the hook functions.
1871 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_NORMAL, all hook functions are run. The value
1872 returned is undefined.
1874 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_OR, hook functions are run until a function
1875 returns a non-NULL value. This value is returned as the result of
1876 scm_c_hook_run. If all functions return NULL, NULL is returned.
1878 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_AND, hook functions are run until a function
1879 returns a NULL value, and NULL is returned. If all functions returns
1880 a non-NULL value, the last value is returned.
1882 ** New C level GC hooks
1884 Five new C level hooks has been added to the garbage collector.
1886 scm_before_gc_c_hook
1889 are run before locking and after unlocking the heap. The system is
1890 thus in a mode where evaluation can take place. (Except that
1891 scm_before_gc_c_hook must not allocate new cells.)
1893 scm_before_mark_c_hook
1894 scm_before_sweep_c_hook
1895 scm_after_sweep_c_hook
1897 are run when the heap is locked. These are intended for extension of
1898 the GC in a modular fashion. Examples are the weaks and guardians
1901 ** Way for application to customize GC parameters
1903 The application can set up other default values for the GC heap
1904 allocation parameters
1906 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_1, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1,
1907 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2,
1908 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE,
1912 scm_default_init_heap_size_1, scm_default_min_yield_1,
1913 scm_default_init_heap_size_2, scm_default_min_yield_2,
1914 scm_default_max_segment_size
1916 respectively before callong scm_boot_guile.
1918 (See entry "New environment variables ..." in section
1919 "Changes to the stand-alone interpreter" above.)
1921 ** scm_protect_object/scm_unprotect_object now nest
1923 This means that you can call scm_protect_object multiple times on an
1924 object and count on the object being protected until
1925 scm_unprotect_object has been call the same number of times.
1927 The functions also have better time complexity.
1929 Still, it is usually possible to structure the application in a way
1930 that you don't need to use these functions. For example, if you use a
1931 protected standard Guile list to keep track of live objects rather
1932 than some custom data type, objects will die a natural death when they
1933 are no longer needed.
1935 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc16_flo, scm_tc_flo, scm_tc_dblr, scm_tc_dblc
1937 Guile does not provide the float representation for inexact real numbers any
1938 more. Now, only doubles are used to represent inexact real numbers. Further,
1939 the tag names scm_tc_dblr and scm_tc_dblc have been changed to scm_tc16_real
1940 and scm_tc16_complex, respectively.
1942 ** Removed deprecated type scm_smobfuns
1944 ** Removed deprecated function scm_newsmob
1946 ** Warning: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe might become deprecated in a future release
1948 There is an ongoing discussion among the developers whether to
1949 deprecate `scm_make_smob_type_mfpe' or not. Please use the current
1950 standard interface (scm_make_smob_type, scm_set_smob_XXX) in new code
1951 until this issue has been settled.
1953 ** Removed deprecated type tag scm_tc16_kw
1955 ** Added type tag scm_tc16_keyword
1957 (This was introduced already in release 1.3.4 but was not documented
1960 ** gdb_print now prints "*** Guile not initialized ***" until Guile initialized
1962 * Changes to system call interfaces:
1964 ** The "select" procedure now tests port buffers for the ability to
1965 provide input or accept output. Previously only the underlying file
1966 descriptors were checked.
1968 ** New variable PIPE_BUF: the maximum number of bytes that can be
1969 atomically written to a pipe.
1971 ** If a facility is not available on the system when Guile is
1972 compiled, the corresponding primitive procedure will not be defined.
1973 Previously it would have been defined but would throw a system-error
1974 exception if called. Exception handlers which catch this case may
1975 need minor modification: an error will be thrown with key
1976 'unbound-variable instead of 'system-error. Alternatively it's
1977 now possible to use `defined?' to check whether the facility is
1980 ** Procedures which depend on the timezone should now give the correct
1981 result on systems which cache the TZ environment variable, even if TZ
1982 is changed without calling tzset.
1984 * Changes to the networking interfaces:
1986 ** New functions: htons, ntohs, htonl, ntohl: for converting short and
1987 long integers between network and host format. For now, it's not
1988 particularly convenient to do this kind of thing, but consider:
1990 (define write-network-long
1991 (lambda (value port)
1992 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
1993 (uniform-vector-set! v 0 (htonl value))
1994 (uniform-vector-write v port))))
1996 (define read-network-long
1998 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
1999 (uniform-vector-read! v port)
2000 (ntohl (uniform-vector-ref v 0)))))
2002 ** If inet-aton fails, it now throws an error with key 'misc-error
2003 instead of 'system-error, since errno is not relevant.
2005 ** Certain gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr failures now throw errors with
2006 specific keys instead of 'system-error. The latter is inappropriate
2007 since errno will not have been set. The keys are:
2008 'host-not-found, 'try-again, 'no-recovery and 'no-data.
2010 ** sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent: now take an
2011 optional argument STAYOPEN, which specifies whether the database
2012 remains open after a database entry is accessed randomly (e.g., using
2013 gethostbyname for the hosts database.) The default is #f. Previously
2017 Changes since Guile 1.3.2:
2019 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2023 An initial version of the Guile debugger written by Chris Hanson has
2024 been added. The debugger is still under development but is included
2025 in the distribution anyway since it is already quite useful.
2031 after an error to enter the debugger. Type `help' inside the debugger
2032 for a description of available commands.
2034 If you prefer to have stack frames numbered and printed in
2035 anti-chronological order and prefer up in the stack to be down on the
2036 screen as is the case in gdb, you can put
2038 (debug-enable 'backwards)
2040 in your .guile startup file. (However, this means that Guile can't
2041 use indentation to indicate stack level.)
2043 The debugger is autoloaded into Guile at the first use.
2045 ** Further enhancements to backtraces
2047 There is a new debug option `width' which controls the maximum width
2048 on the screen of printed stack frames. Fancy printing parameters
2049 ("level" and "length" as in Common LISP) are adaptively adjusted for
2050 each stack frame to give maximum information while still fitting
2051 within the bounds. If the stack frame can't be made to fit by
2052 adjusting parameters, it is simply cut off at the end. This is marked
2055 ** Some modules are now only loaded when the repl is started
2057 The modules (ice-9 debug), (ice-9 session), (ice-9 threads) and (ice-9
2058 regex) are now loaded into (guile-user) only if the repl has been
2059 started. The effect is that the startup time for scripts has been
2060 reduced to 30% of what it was previously.
2062 Correctly written scripts load the modules they require at the top of
2063 the file and should not be affected by this change.
2065 ** Hooks are now represented as smobs
2067 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2069 ** Readline support has changed again.
2071 The old (readline-activator) module is gone. Use (ice-9 readline)
2072 instead, which now contains all readline functionality. So the code
2073 to activate readline is now
2075 (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
2078 This should work at any time, including from the guile prompt.
2080 To avoid confusion about the terms of Guile's license, please only
2081 enable readline for your personal use; please don't make it the
2082 default for others. Here is why we make this rather odd-sounding
2085 Guile is normally licensed under a weakened form of the GNU General
2086 Public License, which allows you to link code with Guile without
2087 placing that code under the GPL. This exception is important to some
2090 However, since readline is distributed under the GNU General Public
2091 License, when you link Guile with readline, either statically or
2092 dynamically, you effectively change Guile's license to the strict GPL.
2093 Whenever you link any strictly GPL'd code into Guile, uses of Guile
2094 which are normally permitted become forbidden. This is a rather
2095 non-obvious consequence of the licensing terms.
2097 So, to make sure things remain clear, please let people choose for
2098 themselves whether to link GPL'd libraries like readline with Guile.
2100 ** regexp-substitute/global has changed slightly, but incompatibly.
2102 If you include a function in the item list, the string of the match
2103 object it receives is the same string passed to
2104 regexp-substitute/global, not some suffix of that string.
2105 Correspondingly, the match's positions are relative to the entire
2106 string, not the suffix.
2108 If the regexp can match the empty string, the way matches are chosen
2109 from the string has changed. regexp-substitute/global recognizes the
2110 same set of matches that list-matches does; see below.
2112 ** New function: list-matches REGEXP STRING [FLAGS]
2114 Return a list of match objects, one for every non-overlapping, maximal
2115 match of REGEXP in STRING. The matches appear in left-to-right order.
2116 list-matches only reports matches of the empty string if there are no
2117 other matches which begin on, end at, or include the empty match's
2120 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
2122 ** New function: fold-matches REGEXP STRING INIT PROC [FLAGS]
2124 For each match of REGEXP in STRING, apply PROC to the match object,
2125 and the last value PROC returned, or INIT for the first call. Return
2126 the last value returned by PROC. We apply PROC to the matches as they
2127 appear from left to right.
2129 This function recognizes matches according to the same criteria as
2132 Thus, you could define list-matches like this:
2134 (define (list-matches regexp string . flags)
2135 (reverse! (apply fold-matches regexp string '() cons flags)))
2137 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
2141 *** New function: hook? OBJ
2143 Return #t if OBJ is a hook, otherwise #f.
2145 *** New function: make-hook-with-name NAME [ARITY]
2147 Return a hook with name NAME and arity ARITY. The default value for
2148 ARITY is 0. The only effect of NAME is that it will appear when the
2149 hook object is printed to ease debugging.
2151 *** New function: hook-empty? HOOK
2153 Return #t if HOOK doesn't contain any procedures, otherwise #f.
2155 *** New function: hook->list HOOK
2157 Return a list of the procedures that are called when run-hook is
2160 ** `map' signals an error if its argument lists are not all the same length.
2162 This is the behavior required by R5RS, so this change is really a bug
2163 fix. But it seems to affect a lot of people's code, so we're
2164 mentioning it here anyway.
2166 ** Print-state handling has been made more transparent
2168 Under certain circumstances, ports are represented as a port with an
2169 associated print state. Earlier, this pair was represented as a pair
2170 (see "Some magic has been added to the printer" below). It is now
2171 indistinguishable (almost; see `get-print-state') from a port on the
2174 *** New function: port-with-print-state OUTPUT-PORT PRINT-STATE
2176 Return a new port with the associated print state PRINT-STATE.
2178 *** New function: get-print-state OUTPUT-PORT
2180 Return the print state associated with this port if it exists,
2181 otherwise return #f.
2183 *** New function: directory-stream? OBJECT
2185 Returns true iff OBJECT is a directory stream --- the sort of object
2186 returned by `opendir'.
2188 ** New function: using-readline?
2190 Return #t if readline is in use in the current repl.
2192 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
2194 Structs will be replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into Guile
2195 and use GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
2197 * Changes to the scm_ interface
2199 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
2201 The entire current struct interface (struct.c, struct.h) will be
2202 replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into libguile and use
2203 GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
2205 ** The internal representation of subr's has changed
2207 Instead of giving a hint to the subr name, the CAR field of the subr
2208 now contains an index to a subr entry in scm_subr_table.
2210 *** New variable: scm_subr_table
2212 An array of subr entries. A subr entry contains the name, properties
2213 and documentation associated with the subr. The properties and
2214 documentation slots are not yet used.
2216 ** A new scheme for "forwarding" calls to a builtin to a generic function
2218 It is now possible to extend the functionality of some Guile
2219 primitives by letting them defer a call to a GOOPS generic function on
2220 argument mismatch. This means that there is no loss of efficiency in
2225 (use-modules (oop goops)) ; Must be GOOPS version 0.2.
2226 (define-method + ((x <string>) (y <string>))
2227 (string-append x y))
2229 + will still be as efficient as usual in numerical calculations, but
2230 can also be used for concatenating strings.
2232 Who will be the first one to extend Guile's numerical tower to
2233 rationals? :) [OK, there a few other things to fix before this can
2234 be made in a clean way.]
2236 *** New snarf macros for defining primitives: SCM_GPROC, SCM_GPROC1
2238 New macro: SCM_GPROC (CNAME, SNAME, REQ, OPT, VAR, CFUNC, GENERIC)
2240 New macro: SCM_GPROC1 (CNAME, SNAME, TYPE, CFUNC, GENERIC)
2242 These do the same job as SCM_PROC and SCM_PROC1, but they also define
2243 a variable GENERIC which can be used by the dispatch macros below.
2245 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
2247 *** New macros for forwarding control to a generic on arg type error
2249 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_1 (GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
2251 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
2253 These correspond to the scm_wta function call, and have the same
2254 behaviour until the user has called the GOOPS primitive
2255 `enable-primitive-generic!'. After that, these macros will apply the
2256 generic function GENERIC to the argument(s) instead of calling
2259 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
2261 *** New macros for argument testing with generic dispatch
2263 New macro: SCM_GASSERT1 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
2265 New macro: SCM_GASSERT2 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
2267 These correspond to the SCM_ASSERT macro, but will defer control to
2268 GENERIC on error after `enable-primitive-generic!' has been called.
2270 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
2272 ** New function: SCM scm_eval_body (SCM body, SCM env)
2274 Evaluates the body of a special form.
2276 ** The internal representation of struct's has changed
2278 Previously, four slots were allocated for the procedure(s) of entities
2279 and operators. The motivation for this representation had to do with
2280 the structure of the evaluator, the wish to support tail-recursive
2281 generic functions, and efficiency. Since the generic function
2282 dispatch mechanism has changed, there is no longer a need for such an
2283 expensive representation, and the representation has been simplified.
2285 This should not make any difference for most users.
2287 ** GOOPS support has been cleaned up.
2289 Some code has been moved from eval.c to objects.c and code in both of
2290 these compilation units has been cleaned up and better structured.
2292 *** New functions for applying generic functions
2294 New function: SCM scm_apply_generic (GENERIC, ARGS)
2295 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_0 (GENERIC)
2296 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_1 (GENERIC, ARG1)
2297 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2)
2298 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_3 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, ARG3)
2300 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_named_hook
2302 It is now replaced by:
2304 ** New function: SCM scm_create_hook (const char *name, int arity)
2306 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
2307 binds a variable named NAME to it.
2309 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
2311 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module.
2312 This might change when we get the new module system.
2314 [The behaviour is identical to scm_make_named_hook.]
2318 Changes since Guile 1.3:
2320 * Changes to mailing lists
2322 ** Some of the Guile mailing lists have moved to sourceware.cygnus.com.
2324 See the README file to find current addresses for all the Guile
2327 * Changes to the distribution
2329 ** Readline support is no longer included with Guile by default.
2331 Based on the different license terms of Guile and Readline, we
2332 concluded that Guile should not *by default* cause the linking of
2333 Readline into an application program. Readline support is now offered
2334 as a separate module, which is linked into an application only when
2335 you explicitly specify it.
2337 Although Guile is GNU software, its distribution terms add a special
2338 exception to the usual GNU General Public License (GPL). Guile's
2339 license includes a clause that allows you to link Guile with non-free
2340 programs. We add this exception so as not to put Guile at a
2341 disadvantage vis-a-vis other extensibility packages that support other
2344 In contrast, the GNU Readline library is distributed under the GNU
2345 General Public License pure and simple. This means that you may not
2346 link Readline, even dynamically, into an application unless it is
2347 distributed under a free software license that is compatible the GPL.
2349 Because of this difference in distribution terms, an application that
2350 can use Guile may not be able to use Readline. Now users will be
2351 explicitly offered two independent decisions about the use of these
2354 You can activate the readline support by issuing
2356 (use-modules (readline-activator))
2359 from your ".guile" file, for example.
2361 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2363 ** All builtins now print as primitives.
2364 Previously builtin procedures not belonging to the fundamental subr
2365 types printed as #<compiled closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>.
2366 Now, they print as #<primitive-procedure NAME>.
2368 ** Backtraces slightly more intelligible.
2369 gsubr-apply and macro transformer application frames no longer appear
2372 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2374 ** Guile now correctly handles internal defines by rewriting them into
2375 their equivalent letrec. Previously, internal defines would
2376 incrementally add to the innermost environment, without checking
2377 whether the restrictions specified in RnRS were met. This lead to the
2378 correct behaviour when these restriction actually were met, but didn't
2379 catch all illegal uses. Such an illegal use could lead to crashes of
2380 the Guile interpreter or or other unwanted results. An example of
2381 incorrect internal defines that made Guile behave erratically:
2393 The problem with this example is that the definition of `c' uses the
2394 value of `b' directly. This confuses the meoization machine of Guile
2395 so that the second call of `b' (this time in a larger environment that
2396 also contains bindings for `c' and `d') refers to the binding of `c'
2397 instead of `a'. You could also make Guile crash with a variation on
2402 (define (b flag) (if flag a 1))
2403 (define c (1+ (b flag)))
2411 From now on, Guile will issue an `Unbound variable: b' error message
2416 A hook contains a list of functions which should be called on
2417 particular occasions in an existing program. Hooks are used for
2420 A window manager might have a hook before-window-map-hook. The window
2421 manager uses the function run-hooks to call all functions stored in
2422 before-window-map-hook each time a window is mapped. The user can
2423 store functions in the hook using add-hook!.
2425 In Guile, hooks are first class objects.
2427 *** New function: make-hook [N_ARGS]
2429 Return a hook for hook functions which can take N_ARGS arguments.
2430 The default value for N_ARGS is 0.
2432 (See also scm_make_named_hook below.)
2434 *** New function: add-hook! HOOK PROC [APPEND_P]
2436 Put PROC at the beginning of the list of functions stored in HOOK.
2437 If APPEND_P is supplied, and non-false, put PROC at the end instead.
2439 PROC must be able to take the number of arguments specified when the
2442 If PROC already exists in HOOK, then remove it first.
2444 *** New function: remove-hook! HOOK PROC
2446 Remove PROC from the list of functions in HOOK.
2448 *** New function: reset-hook! HOOK
2450 Clear the list of hook functions stored in HOOK.
2452 *** New function: run-hook HOOK ARG1 ...
2454 Run all hook functions stored in HOOK with arguments ARG1 ... .
2455 The number of arguments supplied must correspond to the number given
2456 when the hook was created.
2458 ** The function `dynamic-link' now takes optional keyword arguments.
2459 The only keyword argument that is currently defined is `:global
2460 BOOL'. With it, you can control whether the shared library will be
2461 linked in global mode or not. In global mode, the symbols from the
2462 linked library can be used to resolve references from other
2463 dynamically linked libraries. In non-global mode, the linked
2464 library is essentially invisible and can only be accessed via
2465 `dynamic-func', etc. The default is now to link in global mode.
2466 Previously, the default has been non-global mode.
2468 The `#:global' keyword is only effective on platforms that support
2469 the dlopen family of functions.
2471 ** New function `provided?'
2473 - Function: provided? FEATURE
2474 Return true iff FEATURE is supported by this installation of
2475 Guile. FEATURE must be a symbol naming a feature; the global
2476 variable `*features*' is a list of available features.
2478 ** Changes to the module (ice-9 expect):
2480 *** The expect-strings macro now matches `$' in a regular expression
2481 only at a line-break or end-of-file by default. Previously it would
2482 match the end of the string accumulated so far. The old behaviour
2483 can be obtained by setting the variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
2486 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
2487 for the regexp-exec flags. If `regexp/noteol' is included, then `$'
2488 in a regular expression will still match before a line-break or
2489 end-of-file. The default is `regexp/noteol'.
2491 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable
2492 `expect-strings-compile-flags' for the flags to be supplied to
2493 `make-regexp'. The default is `regexp/newline', which was previously
2496 *** The expect macro now supplies two arguments to a match procedure:
2497 the current accumulated string and a flag to indicate whether
2498 end-of-file has been reached. Previously only the string was supplied.
2499 If end-of-file is reached, the match procedure will be called an
2500 additional time with the same accumulated string as the previous call
2501 but with the flag set.
2503 ** New module (ice-9 format), implementing the Common Lisp `format' function.
2505 This code, and the documentation for it that appears here, was
2506 borrowed from SLIB, with minor adaptations for Guile.
2508 - Function: format DESTINATION FORMAT-STRING . ARGUMENTS
2509 An almost complete implementation of Common LISP format description
2510 according to the CL reference book `Common LISP' from Guy L.
2511 Steele, Digital Press. Backward compatible to most of the
2512 available Scheme format implementations.
2514 Returns `#t', `#f' or a string; has side effect of printing
2515 according to FORMAT-STRING. If DESTINATION is `#t', the output is
2516 to the current output port and `#t' is returned. If DESTINATION
2517 is `#f', a formatted string is returned as the result of the call.
2518 NEW: If DESTINATION is a string, DESTINATION is regarded as the
2519 format string; FORMAT-STRING is then the first argument and the
2520 output is returned as a string. If DESTINATION is a number, the
2521 output is to the current error port if available by the
2522 implementation. Otherwise DESTINATION must be an output port and
2525 FORMAT-STRING must be a string. In case of a formatting error
2526 format returns `#f' and prints a message on the current output or
2527 error port. Characters are output as if the string were output by
2528 the `display' function with the exception of those prefixed by a
2529 tilde (~). For a detailed description of the FORMAT-STRING syntax
2530 please consult a Common LISP format reference manual. For a test
2531 suite to verify this format implementation load `formatst.scm'.
2532 Please send bug reports to `lutzeb@cs.tu-berlin.de'.
2534 Note: `format' is not reentrant, i.e. only one `format'-call may
2535 be executed at a time.
2538 *** Format Specification (Format version 3.0)
2540 Please consult a Common LISP format reference manual for a detailed
2541 description of the format string syntax. For a demonstration of the
2542 implemented directives see `formatst.scm'.
2544 This implementation supports directive parameters and modifiers (`:'
2545 and `@' characters). Multiple parameters must be separated by a comma
2546 (`,'). Parameters can be numerical parameters (positive or negative),
2547 character parameters (prefixed by a quote character (`''), variable
2548 parameters (`v'), number of rest arguments parameter (`#'), empty and
2549 default parameters. Directive characters are case independent. The
2550 general form of a directive is:
2552 DIRECTIVE ::= ~{DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER,}[:][@]DIRECTIVE-CHARACTER
2554 DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER ::= [ [-|+]{0-9}+ | 'CHARACTER | v | # ]
2556 *** Implemented CL Format Control Directives
2558 Documentation syntax: Uppercase characters represent the
2559 corresponding control directive characters. Lowercase characters
2560 represent control directive parameter descriptions.
2563 Any (print as `display' does).
2567 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARA'
2571 S-expression (print as `write' does).
2575 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARS'
2581 print number sign always.
2584 print comma separated.
2586 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARD'
2592 print number sign always.
2595 print comma separated.
2597 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARX'
2603 print number sign always.
2606 print comma separated.
2608 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARO'
2614 print number sign always.
2617 print comma separated.
2619 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARB'
2624 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARR'
2628 print a number as a Roman numeral.
2631 print a number as an "old fashioned" Roman numeral.
2634 print a number as an ordinal English number.
2637 print a number as a cardinal English number.
2642 prints `y' and `ies'.
2645 as `~P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
2648 as `~@P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
2653 prints a character as the reader can understand it (i.e. `#\'
2657 prints a character as emacs does (eg. `^C' for ASCII 03).
2660 Fixed-format floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN).
2661 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHARF'
2663 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
2666 Exponential floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN`E'EE).
2667 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARE'
2669 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
2672 General floating-point (prints a flonum either fixed or
2674 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARG'
2676 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
2679 Dollars floating-point (prints a flonum in fixed with signs
2681 `~DIGITS,SCALE,WIDTH,PADCHAR$'
2683 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
2686 A sign is always printed and appears before the padding.
2689 The sign appears before the padding.
2697 print newline if not at the beginning of the output line.
2699 prints `~&' and then N-1 newlines.
2704 print N page separators.
2714 newline is ignored, white space left.
2717 newline is left, white space ignored.
2722 relative tabulation.
2728 Indirection (expects indirect arguments as a list).
2730 extracts indirect arguments from format arguments.
2733 Case conversion (converts by `string-downcase').
2735 converts by `string-capitalize'.
2738 converts by `string-capitalize-first'.
2741 converts by `string-upcase'.
2744 Argument Jumping (jumps 1 argument forward).
2746 jumps N arguments forward.
2749 jumps 1 argument backward.
2752 jumps N arguments backward.
2755 jumps to the 0th argument.
2758 jumps to the Nth argument (beginning from 0)
2760 `~[STR0~;STR1~;...~;STRN~]'
2761 Conditional Expression (numerical clause conditional).
2763 take argument from N.
2766 true test conditional.
2769 if-else-then conditional.
2775 default clause follows.
2778 Iteration (args come from the next argument (a list)).
2780 at most N iterations.
2783 args from next arg (a list of lists).
2786 args from the rest of arguments.
2789 args from the rest args (lists).
2800 aborts if N <= M <= K
2802 *** Not Implemented CL Format Control Directives
2805 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
2808 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
2814 (sorry I don't understand its semantics completely)
2816 *** Extended, Replaced and Additional Control Directives
2818 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHD'
2819 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHX'
2820 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHO'
2821 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHB'
2822 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHR'
2823 COMMAWIDTH is the number of characters between two comma
2827 print a R4RS complex number as `~F~@Fi' with passed parameters for
2831 Pretty print formatting of an argument for scheme code lists.
2837 Flushes the output if format DESTINATION is a port.
2840 Print a `#\space' character
2842 print N `#\space' characters.
2845 Print a `#\tab' character
2847 print N `#\tab' characters.
2850 Takes N as an integer representation for a character. No arguments
2851 are consumed. N is converted to a character by `integer->char'. N
2852 must be a positive decimal number.
2855 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
2856 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
2857 be processed by `read'.
2860 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
2861 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
2862 be processed by `read'.
2865 Prints information and a copyright notice on the format
2868 prints format version.
2871 may also print number strings, i.e. passing a number as a string
2872 and format it accordingly.
2874 *** Configuration Variables
2876 The format module exports some configuration variables to suit the
2877 systems and users needs. There should be no modification necessary for
2878 the configuration that comes with Guile. Format detects automatically
2879 if the running scheme system implements floating point numbers and
2882 format:symbol-case-conv
2883 Symbols are converted by `symbol->string' so the case type of the
2884 printed symbols is implementation dependent.
2885 `format:symbol-case-conv' is a one arg closure which is either
2886 `#f' (no conversion), `string-upcase', `string-downcase' or
2887 `string-capitalize'. (default `#f')
2889 format:iobj-case-conv
2890 As FORMAT:SYMBOL-CASE-CONV but applies for the representation of
2891 implementation internal objects. (default `#f')
2894 The character prefixing the exponent value in `~E' printing.
2897 *** Compatibility With Other Format Implementations
2903 Downward compatible except for padding support and `~A', `~S',
2904 `~P', `~X' uppercase printing. SLIB format 1.4 uses C-style
2905 `printf' padding support which is completely replaced by the CL
2906 `format' padding style.
2909 Downward compatible except for `~', which is not documented
2910 (ignores all characters inside the format string up to a newline
2911 character). (7.1 implements `~a', `~s', ~NEWLINE, `~~', `~%',
2912 numerical and variable parameters and `:/@' modifiers in the CL
2916 Downward compatible except for `~A' and `~S' which print in
2917 uppercase. (Elk implements `~a', `~s', `~~', and `~%' (no
2918 directive parameters or modifiers)).
2921 Downward compatible except for an optional destination parameter:
2922 S2C accepts a format call without a destination which returns a
2923 formatted string. This is equivalent to a #f destination in S2C.
2924 (S2C implements `~a', `~s', `~c', `~%', and `~~' (no directive
2925 parameters or modifiers)).
2928 ** Changes to string-handling functions.
2930 These functions were added to support the (ice-9 format) module, above.
2932 *** New function: string-upcase STRING
2933 *** New function: string-downcase STRING
2935 These are non-destructive versions of the existing string-upcase! and
2936 string-downcase! functions.
2938 *** New function: string-capitalize! STRING
2939 *** New function: string-capitalize STRING
2941 These functions convert the first letter of each word in the string to
2944 (string-capitalize "howdy there")
2947 As with the other functions, string-capitalize! modifies the string in
2948 place, while string-capitalize returns a modified copy of its argument.
2950 *** New function: string-ci->symbol STRING
2952 Return a symbol whose name is STRING, but having the same case as if
2953 the symbol had be read by `read'.
2955 Guile can be configured to be sensitive or insensitive to case
2956 differences in Scheme identifiers. If Guile is case-insensitive, all
2957 symbols are converted to lower case on input. The `string-ci->symbol'
2958 function returns a symbol whose name in STRING, transformed as Guile
2959 would if STRING were input.
2961 *** New function: substring-move! STRING1 START END STRING2 START
2963 Copy the substring of STRING1 from START (inclusive) to END
2964 (exclusive) to STRING2 at START. STRING1 and STRING2 may be the same
2965 string, and the source and destination areas may overlap; in all
2966 cases, the function behaves as if all the characters were copied
2969 *** Extended functions: substring-move-left! substring-move-right!
2971 These functions now correctly copy arbitrarily overlapping substrings;
2972 they are both synonyms for substring-move!.
2975 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-long), with the function `getopt-long'.
2977 getopt-long is a function for parsing command-line arguments in a
2978 manner consistent with other GNU programs.
2980 (getopt-long ARGS GRAMMAR)
2981 Parse the arguments ARGS according to the argument list grammar GRAMMAR.
2983 ARGS should be a list of strings. Its first element should be the
2984 name of the program; subsequent elements should be the arguments
2985 that were passed to the program on the command line. The
2986 `program-arguments' procedure returns a list of this form.
2988 GRAMMAR is a list of the form:
2989 ((OPTION (PROPERTY VALUE) ...) ...)
2991 Each OPTION should be a symbol. `getopt-long' will accept a
2992 command-line option named `--OPTION'.
2993 Each option can have the following (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs:
2995 (single-char CHAR) --- Accept `-CHAR' as a single-character
2996 equivalent to `--OPTION'. This is how to specify traditional
2998 (required? BOOL) --- If BOOL is true, the option is required.
2999 getopt-long will raise an error if it is not found in ARGS.
3000 (value BOOL) --- If BOOL is #t, the option accepts a value; if
3001 it is #f, it does not; and if it is the symbol
3002 `optional', the option may appear in ARGS with or
3004 (predicate FUNC) --- If the option accepts a value (i.e. you
3005 specified `(value #t)' for this option), then getopt
3006 will apply FUNC to the value, and throw an exception
3007 if it returns #f. FUNC should be a procedure which
3008 accepts a string and returns a boolean value; you may
3009 need to use quasiquotes to get it into GRAMMAR.
3011 The (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs may occur in any order, but each
3012 property may occur only once. By default, options do not have
3013 single-character equivalents, are not required, and do not take
3016 In ARGS, single-character options may be combined, in the usual
3017 Unix fashion: ("-x" "-y") is equivalent to ("-xy"). If an option
3018 accepts values, then it must be the last option in the
3019 combination; the value is the next argument. So, for example, using
3020 the following grammar:
3021 ((apples (single-char #\a))
3022 (blimps (single-char #\b) (value #t))
3023 (catalexis (single-char #\c) (value #t)))
3024 the following argument lists would be acceptable:
3025 ("-a" "-b" "bang" "-c" "couth") ("bang" and "couth" are the values
3026 for "blimps" and "catalexis")
3027 ("-ab" "bang" "-c" "couth") (same)
3028 ("-ac" "couth" "-b" "bang") (same)
3029 ("-abc" "couth" "bang") (an error, since `-b' is not the
3030 last option in its combination)
3032 If an option's value is optional, then `getopt-long' decides
3033 whether it has a value by looking at what follows it in ARGS. If
3034 the next element is a string, and it does not appear to be an
3035 option itself, then that string is the option's value.
3037 The value of a long option can appear as the next element in ARGS,
3038 or it can follow the option name, separated by an `=' character.
3039 Thus, using the same grammar as above, the following argument lists
3041 ("--apples" "Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
3042 ("--apples=Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
3043 ("--blimps" "Goodyear" "--apples=Braeburn")
3045 If the option "--" appears in ARGS, argument parsing stops there;
3046 subsequent arguments are returned as ordinary arguments, even if
3047 they resemble options. So, in the argument list:
3048 ("--apples" "Granny Smith" "--" "--blimp" "Goodyear")
3049 `getopt-long' will recognize the `apples' option as having the
3050 value "Granny Smith", but it will not recognize the `blimp'
3051 option; it will return the strings "--blimp" and "Goodyear" as
3052 ordinary argument strings.
3054 The `getopt-long' function returns the parsed argument list as an
3055 assocation list, mapping option names --- the symbols from GRAMMAR
3056 --- onto their values, or #t if the option does not accept a value.
3057 Unused options do not appear in the alist.
3059 All arguments that are not the value of any option are returned
3060 as a list, associated with the empty list.
3062 `getopt-long' throws an exception if:
3063 - it finds an unrecognized option in ARGS
3064 - a required option is omitted
3065 - an option that requires an argument doesn't get one
3066 - an option that doesn't accept an argument does get one (this can
3067 only happen using the long option `--opt=value' syntax)
3068 - an option predicate fails
3073 `((lockfile-dir (required? #t)
3076 (predicate ,file-is-directory?))
3077 (verbose (required? #f)
3080 (x-includes (single-char #\x))
3081 (rnet-server (single-char #\y)
3082 (predicate ,string?))))
3084 (getopt-long '("my-prog" "-vk" "/tmp" "foo1" "--x-includes=/usr/include"
3085 "--rnet-server=lamprod" "--" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
3087 => ((() "foo1" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
3088 (rnet-server . "lamprod")
3089 (x-includes . "/usr/include")
3090 (lockfile-dir . "/tmp")
3093 ** The (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) module is obsolete; use (ice-9 getopt-long).
3095 It will be removed in a few releases.
3097 ** New syntax: lambda*
3098 ** New syntax: define*
3099 ** New syntax: define*-public
3100 ** New syntax: defmacro*
3101 ** New syntax: defmacro*-public
3102 Guile now supports optional arguments.
3104 `lambda*', `define*', `define*-public', `defmacro*' and
3105 `defmacro*-public' are identical to the non-* versions except that
3106 they use an extended type of parameter list that has the following BNF
3107 syntax (parentheses are literal, square brackets indicate grouping,
3108 and `*', `+' and `?' have the usual meaning):
3110 ext-param-list ::= ( [identifier]* [#&optional [ext-var-decl]+]?
3111 [#&key [ext-var-decl]+ [#&allow-other-keys]?]?
3112 [[#&rest identifier]|[. identifier]]? ) | [identifier]
3114 ext-var-decl ::= identifier | ( identifier expression )
3116 The semantics are best illustrated with the following documentation
3117 and examples for `lambda*':
3120 lambda extended for optional and keyword arguments
3122 lambda* creates a procedure that takes optional arguments. These
3123 are specified by putting them inside brackets at the end of the
3124 paramater list, but before any dotted rest argument. For example,
3125 (lambda* (a b #&optional c d . e) '())
3126 creates a procedure with fixed arguments a and b, optional arguments c
3127 and d, and rest argument e. If the optional arguments are omitted
3128 in a call, the variables for them are unbound in the procedure. This
3129 can be checked with the bound? macro.
3131 lambda* can also take keyword arguments. For example, a procedure
3133 (lambda* (#&key xyzzy larch) '())
3134 can be called with any of the argument lists (#:xyzzy 11)
3135 (#:larch 13) (#:larch 42 #:xyzzy 19) (). Whichever arguments
3136 are given as keywords are bound to values.
3138 Optional and keyword arguments can also be given default values
3139 which they take on when they are not present in a call, by giving a
3140 two-item list in place of an optional argument, for example in:
3141 (lambda* (foo #&optional (bar 42) #&key (baz 73)) (list foo bar baz))
3142 foo is a fixed argument, bar is an optional argument with default
3143 value 42, and baz is a keyword argument with default value 73.
3144 Default value expressions are not evaluated unless they are needed
3145 and until the procedure is called.
3147 lambda* now supports two more special parameter list keywords.
3149 lambda*-defined procedures now throw an error by default if a
3150 keyword other than one of those specified is found in the actual
3151 passed arguments. However, specifying #&allow-other-keys
3152 immediately after the kyword argument declarations restores the
3153 previous behavior of ignoring unknown keywords. lambda* also now
3154 guarantees that if the same keyword is passed more than once, the
3155 last one passed is the one that takes effect. For example,
3156 ((lambda* (#&key (heads 0) (tails 0)) (display (list heads tails)))
3157 #:heads 37 #:tails 42 #:heads 99)
3158 would result in (99 47) being displayed.
3160 #&rest is also now provided as a synonym for the dotted syntax rest
3161 argument. The argument lists (a . b) and (a #&rest b) are equivalent in
3162 all respects to lambda*. This is provided for more similarity to DSSSL,
3163 MIT-Scheme and Kawa among others, as well as for refugees from other
3166 Further documentation may be found in the optargs.scm file itself.
3168 The optional argument module also exports the macros `let-optional',
3169 `let-optional*', `let-keywords', `let-keywords*' and `bound?'. These
3170 are not documented here because they may be removed in the future, but
3171 full documentation is still available in optargs.scm.
3173 ** New syntax: and-let*
3174 Guile now supports the `and-let*' form, described in the draft SRFI-2.
3176 Syntax: (land* (<clause> ...) <body> ...)
3177 Each <clause> should have one of the following forms:
3178 (<variable> <expression>)
3181 Each <variable> or <bound-variable> should be an identifier. Each
3182 <expression> should be a valid expression. The <body> should be a
3183 possibly empty sequence of expressions, like the <body> of a
3186 Semantics: A LAND* expression is evaluated by evaluating the
3187 <expression> or <bound-variable> of each of the <clause>s from
3188 left to right. The value of the first <expression> or
3189 <bound-variable> that evaluates to a false value is returned; the
3190 remaining <expression>s and <bound-variable>s are not evaluated.
3191 The <body> forms are evaluated iff all the <expression>s and
3192 <bound-variable>s evaluate to true values.
3194 The <expression>s and the <body> are evaluated in an environment
3195 binding each <variable> of the preceding (<variable> <expression>)
3196 clauses to the value of the <expression>. Later bindings
3197 shadow earlier bindings.
3199 Guile's and-let* macro was contributed by Michael Livshin.
3201 ** New sorting functions
3203 *** New function: sorted? SEQUENCE LESS?
3204 Returns `#t' when the sequence argument is in non-decreasing order
3205 according to LESS? (that is, there is no adjacent pair `... x y
3206 ...' for which `(less? y x)').
3208 Returns `#f' when the sequence contains at least one out-of-order
3209 pair. It is an error if the sequence is neither a list nor a
3212 *** New function: merge LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
3213 LIST1 and LIST2 are sorted lists.
3214 Returns the sorted list of all elements in LIST1 and LIST2.
3216 Assume that the elements a and b1 in LIST1 and b2 in LIST2 are "equal"
3217 in the sense that (LESS? x y) --> #f for x, y in {a, b1, b2},
3218 and that a < b1 in LIST1. Then a < b1 < b2 in the result.
3219 (Here "<" should read "comes before".)
3221 *** New procedure: merge! LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
3222 Merges two lists, re-using the pairs of LIST1 and LIST2 to build
3223 the result. If the code is compiled, and LESS? constructs no new
3224 pairs, no pairs at all will be allocated. The first pair of the
3225 result will be either the first pair of LIST1 or the first pair of
3228 *** New function: sort SEQUENCE LESS?
3229 Accepts either a list or a vector, and returns a new sequence
3230 which is sorted. The new sequence is the same type as the input.
3231 Always `(sorted? (sort sequence less?) less?)'. The original
3232 sequence is not altered in any way. The new sequence shares its
3233 elements with the old one; no elements are copied.
3235 *** New procedure: sort! SEQUENCE LESS
3236 Returns its sorted result in the original boxes. No new storage is
3237 allocated at all. Proper usage: (set! slist (sort! slist <))
3239 *** New function: stable-sort SEQUENCE LESS?
3240 Similar to `sort' but stable. That is, if "equal" elements are
3241 ordered a < b in the original sequence, they will have the same order
3244 *** New function: stable-sort! SEQUENCE LESS?
3245 Similar to `sort!' but stable.
3246 Uses temporary storage when sorting vectors.
3248 *** New functions: sort-list, sort-list!
3249 Added for compatibility with scsh.
3251 ** New built-in random number support
3253 *** New function: random N [STATE]
3254 Accepts a positive integer or real N and returns a number of the
3255 same type between zero (inclusive) and N (exclusive). The values
3256 returned have a uniform distribution.
3258 The optional argument STATE must be of the type produced by
3259 `copy-random-state' or `seed->random-state'. It defaults to the value
3260 of the variable `*random-state*'. This object is used to maintain the
3261 state of the pseudo-random-number generator and is altered as a side
3262 effect of the `random' operation.
3264 *** New variable: *random-state*
3265 Holds a data structure that encodes the internal state of the
3266 random-number generator that `random' uses by default. The nature
3267 of this data structure is implementation-dependent. It may be
3268 printed out and successfully read back in, but may or may not
3269 function correctly as a random-number state object in another
3272 *** New function: copy-random-state [STATE]
3273 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
3274 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
3275 If argument STATE is given, a copy of it is returned. Otherwise a
3276 copy of `*random-state*' is returned.
3278 *** New function: seed->random-state SEED
3279 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
3280 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
3281 SEED is a string or a number. A new state is generated and
3282 initialized using SEED.
3284 *** New function: random:uniform [STATE]
3285 Returns an uniformly distributed inexact real random number in the
3286 range between 0 and 1.
3288 *** New procedure: random:solid-sphere! VECT [STATE]
3289 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose
3290 squares is less than 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in
3291 space of dimension N = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are
3292 uniformly distributed within the unit N-shere. The sum of the
3293 squares of the numbers is returned. VECT can be either a vector
3294 or a uniform vector of doubles.
3296 *** New procedure: random:hollow-sphere! VECT [STATE]
3297 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose squares
3298 is equal to 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in space of
3299 dimension n = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are uniformly
3300 distributed over the surface of the unit n-shere. VECT can be either
3301 a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
3303 *** New function: random:normal [STATE]
3304 Returns an inexact real in a normal distribution with mean 0 and
3305 standard deviation 1. For a normal distribution with mean M and
3306 standard deviation D use `(+ M (* D (random:normal)))'.
3308 *** New procedure: random:normal-vector! VECT [STATE]
3309 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers which are independent and
3310 standard normally distributed (i.e., with mean 0 and variance 1).
3311 VECT can be either a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
3313 *** New function: random:exp STATE
3314 Returns an inexact real in an exponential distribution with mean 1.
3315 For an exponential distribution with mean U use (* U (random:exp)).
3317 ** The range of logand, logior, logxor, logtest, and logbit? have changed.
3319 These functions now operate on numbers in the range of a C unsigned
3322 These functions used to operate on numbers in the range of a C signed
3323 long; however, this seems inappropriate, because Guile integers don't
3326 ** New function: make-guardian
3327 This is an implementation of guardians as described in
3328 R. Kent Dybvig, Carl Bruggeman, and David Eby (1993) "Guardians in a
3329 Generation-Based Garbage Collector" ACM SIGPLAN Conference on
3330 Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1993
3331 ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/guardians.ps.gz
3333 ** New functions: delq1!, delv1!, delete1!
3334 These procedures behave similar to delq! and friends but delete only
3335 one object if at all.
3337 ** New function: unread-string STRING PORT
3338 Unread STRING to PORT, that is, push it back onto the port so that
3339 next read operation will work on the pushed back characters.
3341 ** unread-char can now be called multiple times
3342 If unread-char is called multiple times, the unread characters will be
3343 read again in last-in first-out order.
3345 ** the procedures uniform-array-read! and uniform-array-write! now
3346 work on any kind of port, not just ports which are open on a file.
3348 ** Now 'l' in a port mode requests line buffering.
3350 ** The procedure truncate-file now works on string ports as well
3351 as file ports. If the size argument is omitted, the current
3352 file position is used.
3354 ** new procedure: seek PORT/FDES OFFSET WHENCE
3355 The arguments are the same as for the old fseek procedure, but it
3356 works on string ports as well as random-access file ports.
3358 ** the fseek procedure now works on string ports, since it has been
3359 redefined using seek.
3361 ** the setvbuf procedure now uses a default size if mode is _IOFBF and
3362 size is not supplied.
3364 ** the newline procedure no longer flushes the port if it's not
3365 line-buffered: previously it did if it was the current output port.
3367 ** open-pipe and close-pipe are no longer primitive procedures, but
3368 an emulation can be obtained using `(use-modules (ice-9 popen))'.
3370 ** the freopen procedure has been removed.
3372 ** new procedure: drain-input PORT
3373 Drains PORT's read buffers (including any pushed-back characters)
3374 and returns the contents as a single string.
3376 ** New function: map-in-order PROC LIST1 LIST2 ...
3377 Version of `map' which guarantees that the procedure is applied to the
3378 lists in serial order.
3380 ** Renamed `serial-array-copy!' and `serial-array-map!' to
3381 `array-copy-in-order!' and `array-map-in-order!'. The old names are
3382 now obsolete and will go away in release 1.5.
3384 ** New syntax: collect BODY1 ...
3385 Version of `begin' which returns a list of the results of the body
3386 forms instead of the result of the last body form. In contrast to
3387 `begin', `collect' allows an empty body.
3389 ** New functions: read-history FILENAME, write-history FILENAME
3390 Read/write command line history from/to file. Returns #t on success
3391 and #f if an error occured.
3393 ** `ls' and `lls' in module (ice-9 ls) now handle no arguments.
3395 These procedures return a list of definitions available in the specified
3396 argument, a relative module reference. In the case of no argument,
3397 `(current-module)' is now consulted for definitions to return, instead
3398 of simply returning #f, the former behavior.
3400 ** The #/ syntax for lists is no longer supported.
3402 Earlier versions of Scheme accepted this syntax, but printed a
3405 ** Guile no longer consults the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable.
3407 Instead, you should set GUILE_LOAD_PATH to tell Guile where to find
3410 * Changes to the gh_ interface
3414 Now takes a second argument which is the result array. If this
3415 pointer is NULL, a new array is malloced (the old behaviour).
3417 ** gh_chars2byvect, gh_shorts2svect, gh_floats2fvect, gh_scm2chars,
3418 gh_scm2shorts, gh_scm2longs, gh_scm2floats
3422 * Changes to the scm_ interface
3424 ** Function: scm_make_named_hook (char* name, int n_args)
3426 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
3427 binds a variable named NAME to it.
3429 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
3431 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module. This
3432 might change when we get the new module system.
3434 ** The smob interface
3436 The interface for creating smobs has changed. For documentation, see
3437 data-rep.info (made from guile-core/doc/data-rep.texi).
3439 *** Deprecated function: SCM scm_newsmob (scm_smobfuns *)
3441 >>> This function will be removed in 1.3.4. <<<
3445 *** Function: SCM scm_make_smob_type (const char *name, scm_sizet size)
3446 This function adds a new smob type, named NAME, with instance size
3447 SIZE to the system. The return value is a tag that is used in
3448 creating instances of the type. If SIZE is 0, then no memory will
3449 be allocated when instances of the smob are created, and nothing
3450 will be freed by the default free function.
3452 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_mark (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
3453 This function sets the smob marking procedure for the smob type
3454 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
3455 `scm_make_smob_type'.
3457 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_free (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
3458 This function sets the smob freeing procedure for the smob type
3459 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
3460 `scm_make_smob_type'.
3462 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_print (tc, print)
3464 - Function: void scm_set_smob_print (long tc,
3465 scm_sizet (*print) (SCM,
3469 This function sets the smob printing procedure for the smob type
3470 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
3471 `scm_make_smob_type'.
3473 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_equalp (long tc, SCM (*equalp) (SCM, SCM))
3474 This function sets the smob equality-testing predicate for the
3475 smob type specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
3476 `scm_make_smob_type'.
3478 *** Macro: void SCM_NEWSMOB (SCM var, long tc, void *data)
3479 Make VALUE contain a smob instance of the type with type code TC and
3480 smob data DATA. VALUE must be previously declared as C type `SCM'.
3482 *** Macro: fn_returns SCM_RETURN_NEWSMOB (long tc, void *data)
3483 This macro expands to a block of code that creates a smob instance
3484 of the type with type code TC and smob data DATA, and returns that
3485 `SCM' value. It should be the last piece of code in a block.
3487 ** The interfaces for using I/O ports and implementing port types
3488 (ptobs) have changed significantly. The new interface is based on
3489 shared access to buffers and a new set of ptob procedures.
3491 *** scm_newptob has been removed
3495 *** Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (type_name, fill_buffer, write_flush)
3497 - Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (char *type_name,
3498 int (*fill_buffer) (SCM port),
3499 void (*write_flush) (SCM port));
3501 Similarly to the new smob interface, there is a set of function
3502 setters by which the user can customize the behaviour of his port
3503 type. See ports.h (scm_set_port_XXX).
3505 ** scm_strport_to_string: New function: creates a new string from
3506 a string port's buffer.
3508 ** Plug in interface for random number generators
3509 The variable `scm_the_rng' in random.c contains a value and three
3510 function pointers which together define the current random number
3511 generator being used by the Scheme level interface and the random
3512 number library functions.
3514 The user is free to replace the default generator with the generator
3517 *** Variable: size_t scm_the_rng.rstate_size
3518 The size of the random state type used by the current RNG
3521 *** Function: unsigned long scm_the_rng.random_bits (scm_rstate *STATE)
3522 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
3524 *** Function: void scm_the_rng.init_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE, chars *S, int N)
3525 Seed random state STATE using string S of length N.
3527 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_the_rng.copy_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE)
3528 Given random state STATE, return a malloced copy.
3531 The default RNG is the MWC (Multiply With Carry) random number
3532 generator described by George Marsaglia at the Department of
3533 Statistics and Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The
3534 Florida State University (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo).
3536 It uses 64 bits, has a period of 4578426017172946943 (4.6e18), and
3537 passes all tests in the DIEHARD test suite
3538 (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo/diehard.html). The generation of 32 bits
3539 costs one multiply and one add on platforms which either supports long
3540 longs (gcc does this on most systems) or have 64 bit longs. The cost
3541 is four multiply on other systems but this can be optimized by writing
3542 scm_i_uniform32 in assembler.
3544 These functions are provided through the scm_the_rng interface for use
3545 by libguile and the application.
3547 *** Function: unsigned long scm_i_uniform32 (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
3548 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
3549 Don't use this function directly. Instead go through the plugin
3550 interface (see "Plug in interface" above).
3552 *** Function: void scm_i_init_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE, char *SEED, int N)
3553 Initialize STATE using SEED of length N.
3555 *** Function: scm_i_rstate *scm_i_copy_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
3556 Return a malloc:ed copy of STATE. This function can easily be re-used
3557 in the interfaces to other RNGs.
3559 ** Random number library functions
3560 These functions use the current RNG through the scm_the_rng interface.
3561 It might be a good idea to use these functions from your C code so
3562 that only one random generator is used by all code in your program.
3564 The default random state is stored in:
3566 *** Variable: SCM scm_var_random_state
3567 Contains the vcell of the Scheme variable "*random-state*" which is
3568 used as default state by all random number functions in the Scheme
3573 double x = scm_c_uniform01 (SCM_RSTATE (SCM_CDR (scm_var_random_state)));
3575 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_default_rstate (void)
3576 This is a convenience function which returns the value of
3577 scm_var_random_state. An error message is generated if this value
3578 isn't a random state.
3580 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_make_rstate (char *SEED, int LENGTH)
3581 Make a new random state from the string SEED of length LENGTH.
3583 It is generally not a good idea to use multiple random states in a
3584 program. While subsequent random numbers generated from one random
3585 state are guaranteed to be reasonably independent, there is no such
3586 guarantee for numbers generated from different random states.
3588 *** Macro: unsigned long scm_c_uniform32 (scm_rstate *STATE)
3589 Return 32 random bits.
3591 *** Function: double scm_c_uniform01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
3592 Return a sample from the uniform(0,1) distribution.
3594 *** Function: double scm_c_normal01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
3595 Return a sample from the normal(0,1) distribution.
3597 *** Function: double scm_c_exp1 (scm_rstate *STATE)
3598 Return a sample from the exp(1) distribution.
3600 *** Function: unsigned long scm_c_random (scm_rstate *STATE, unsigned long M)
3601 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
3603 *** Function: SCM scm_c_random_bignum (scm_rstate *STATE, SCM M)
3604 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
3605 M must be a bignum object. The returned value may be an INUM.
3609 Changes in Guile 1.3 (released Monday, October 19, 1998):
3611 * Changes to the distribution
3613 ** We renamed the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable to GUILE_LOAD_PATH.
3614 To avoid conflicts, programs should name environment variables after
3615 themselves, except when there's a common practice establishing some
3618 For now, Guile supports both GUILE_LOAD_PATH and SCHEME_LOAD_PATH,
3619 giving the former precedence, and printing a warning message if the
3620 latter is set. Guile 1.4 will not recognize SCHEME_LOAD_PATH at all.
3622 ** The header files related to multi-byte characters have been removed.
3623 They were: libguile/extchrs.h and libguile/mbstrings.h. Any C code
3624 which referred to these explicitly will probably need to be rewritten,
3625 since the support for the variant string types has been removed; see
3628 ** The header files append.h and sequences.h have been removed. These
3629 files implemented non-R4RS operations which would encourage
3630 non-portable programming style and less easy-to-read code.
3632 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3634 ** New procedures have been added to implement a "batch mode":
3636 *** Function: batch-mode?
3638 Returns a boolean indicating whether the interpreter is in batch
3641 *** Function: set-batch-mode?! ARG
3643 If ARG is true, switches the interpreter to batch mode. The `#f'
3644 case has not been implemented.
3646 ** Guile now provides full command-line editing, when run interactively.
3647 To use this feature, you must have the readline library installed.
3648 The Guile build process will notice it, and automatically include
3651 The readline library is available via anonymous FTP from any GNU
3652 mirror site; the canonical location is "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
3654 ** the-last-stack is now a fluid.
3656 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
3658 ** You can now use the `guile-config' utility to build programs that use Guile.
3660 Guile now includes a command-line utility called `guile-config', which
3661 can provide information about how to compile and link programs that
3664 *** `guile-config compile' prints any C compiler flags needed to use Guile.
3665 You should include this command's output on the command line you use
3666 to compile C or C++ code that #includes the Guile header files. It's
3667 usually just a `-I' flag to help the compiler find the Guile headers.
3670 *** `guile-config link' prints any linker flags necessary to link with Guile.
3672 This command writes to its standard output a list of flags which you
3673 must pass to the linker to link your code against the Guile library.
3674 The flags include '-lguile' itself, any other libraries the Guile
3675 library depends upon, and any `-L' flags needed to help the linker
3676 find those libraries.
3678 For example, here is a Makefile rule that builds a program named 'foo'
3679 from the object files ${FOO_OBJECTS}, and links them against Guile:
3682 ${CC} ${CFLAGS} ${FOO_OBJECTS} `guile-config link` -o foo
3684 Previous Guile releases recommended that you use autoconf to detect
3685 which of a predefined set of libraries were present on your system.
3686 It is more robust to use `guile-config', since it records exactly which
3687 libraries the installed Guile library requires.
3689 This was originally called `build-guile', but was renamed to
3690 `guile-config' before Guile 1.3 was released, to be consistent with
3691 the analogous script for the GTK+ GUI toolkit, which is called
3695 ** Use the GUILE_FLAGS macro in your configure.in file to find Guile.
3697 If you are using the GNU autoconf package to configure your program,
3698 you can use the GUILE_FLAGS autoconf macro to call `guile-config'
3699 (described above) and gather the necessary values for use in your
3702 The GUILE_FLAGS macro expands to configure script code which runs the
3703 `guile-config' script, to find out where Guile's header files and
3704 libraries are installed. It sets two variables, marked for
3705 substitution, as by AC_SUBST.
3707 GUILE_CFLAGS --- flags to pass to a C or C++ compiler to build
3708 code that uses Guile header files. This is almost always just a
3711 GUILE_LDFLAGS --- flags to pass to the linker to link a
3712 program against Guile. This includes `-lguile' for the Guile
3713 library itself, any libraries that Guile itself requires (like
3714 -lqthreads), and so on. It may also include a -L flag to tell the
3715 compiler where to find the libraries.
3717 GUILE_FLAGS is defined in the file guile.m4, in the top-level
3718 directory of the Guile distribution. You can copy it into your
3719 package's aclocal.m4 file, and then use it in your configure.in file.
3721 If you are using the `aclocal' program, distributed with GNU automake,
3722 to maintain your aclocal.m4 file, the Guile installation process
3723 installs guile.m4 where aclocal will find it. All you need to do is
3724 use GUILE_FLAGS in your configure.in file, and then run `aclocal';
3725 this will copy the definition of GUILE_FLAGS into your aclocal.m4
3729 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3731 ** Multi-byte strings have been removed, as have multi-byte and wide
3732 ports. We felt that these were the wrong approach to
3733 internationalization support.
3735 ** New function: readline [PROMPT]
3736 Read a line from the terminal, and allow the user to edit it,
3737 prompting with PROMPT. READLINE provides a large set of Emacs-like
3738 editing commands, lets the user recall previously typed lines, and
3739 works on almost every kind of terminal, including dumb terminals.
3741 READLINE assumes that the cursor is at the beginning of the line when
3742 it is invoked. Thus, you can't print a prompt yourself, and then call
3743 READLINE; you need to package up your prompt as a string, pass it to
3744 the function, and let READLINE print the prompt itself. This is
3745 because READLINE needs to know the prompt's screen width.
3747 For Guile to provide this function, you must have the readline
3748 library, version 2.1 or later, installed on your system. Readline is
3749 available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in pub/gnu, or from
3750 any GNU mirror site.
3752 See also ADD-HISTORY function.
3754 ** New function: add-history STRING
3755 Add STRING as the most recent line in the history used by the READLINE
3756 command. READLINE does not add lines to the history itself; you must
3757 call ADD-HISTORY to make previous input available to the user.
3759 ** The behavior of the read-line function has changed.
3761 This function now uses standard C library functions to read the line,
3762 for speed. This means that it doesn not respect the value of
3763 scm-line-incrementors; it assumes that lines are delimited with
3766 (Note that this is read-line, the function that reads a line of text
3767 from a port, not readline, the function that reads a line from a
3768 terminal, providing full editing capabilities.)
3770 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style): Parse command-line arguments.
3772 This module provides some simple argument parsing. It exports one
3775 Function: getopt-gnu-style ARG-LS
3776 Parse a list of program arguments into an alist of option
3779 Each item in the list of program arguments is examined to see if
3780 it meets the syntax of a GNU long-named option. An argument like
3781 `--MUMBLE' produces an element of the form (MUMBLE . #t) in the
3782 returned alist, where MUMBLE is a keyword object with the same
3783 name as the argument. An argument like `--MUMBLE=FROB' produces
3784 an element of the form (MUMBLE . FROB), where FROB is a string.
3786 As a special case, the returned alist also contains a pair whose
3787 car is the symbol `rest'. The cdr of this pair is a list
3788 containing all the items in the argument list that are not options
3789 of the form mentioned above.
3791 The argument `--' is treated specially: all items in the argument
3792 list appearing after such an argument are not examined, and are
3793 returned in the special `rest' list.
3795 This function does not parse normal single-character switches.
3796 You will need to parse them out of the `rest' list yourself.
3798 ** The read syntax for byte vectors and short vectors has changed.
3800 Instead of #bytes(...), write #y(...).
3802 Instead of #short(...), write #h(...).
3804 This may seem nutty, but, like the other uniform vectors, byte vectors
3805 and short vectors want to have the same print and read syntax (and,
3806 more basic, want to have read syntax!). Changing the read syntax to
3807 use multiple characters after the hash sign breaks with the
3808 conventions used in R5RS and the conventions used for the other
3809 uniform vectors. It also introduces complexity in the current reader,
3810 both on the C and Scheme levels. (The Right solution is probably to
3811 change the syntax and prototypes for uniform vectors entirely.)
3814 ** The new module (ice-9 session) provides useful interactive functions.
3816 *** New procedure: (apropos REGEXP OPTION ...)
3818 Display a list of top-level variables whose names match REGEXP, and
3819 the modules they are imported from. Each OPTION should be one of the
3822 value --- Show the value of each matching variable.
3823 shadow --- Show bindings shadowed by subsequently imported modules.
3824 full --- Same as both `shadow' and `value'.
3828 guile> (apropos "trace" 'full)
3829 debug: trace #<procedure trace args>
3830 debug: untrace #<procedure untrace args>
3831 the-scm-module: display-backtrace #<compiled-closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>
3832 the-scm-module: before-backtrace-hook ()
3833 the-scm-module: backtrace #<primitive-procedure backtrace>
3834 the-scm-module: after-backtrace-hook ()
3835 the-scm-module: has-shown-backtrace-hint? #f
3838 ** There are new functions and syntax for working with macros.
3840 Guile implements macros as a special object type. Any variable whose
3841 top-level binding is a macro object acts as a macro. The macro object
3842 specifies how the expression should be transformed before evaluation.
3844 *** Macro objects now print in a reasonable way, resembling procedures.
3846 *** New function: (macro? OBJ)
3847 True iff OBJ is a macro object.
3849 *** New function: (primitive-macro? OBJ)
3850 Like (macro? OBJ), but true only if OBJ is one of the Guile primitive
3851 macro transformers, implemented in eval.c rather than Scheme code.
3853 Why do we have this function?
3854 - For symmetry with procedure? and primitive-procedure?,
3855 - to allow custom print procedures to tell whether a macro is
3856 primitive, and display it differently, and
3857 - to allow compilers and user-written evaluators to distinguish
3858 builtin special forms from user-defined ones, which could be
3861 *** New function: (macro-type OBJ)
3862 Return a value indicating what kind of macro OBJ is. Possible return
3865 The symbol `syntax' --- a macro created by procedure->syntax.
3866 The symbol `macro' --- a macro created by procedure->macro.
3867 The symbol `macro!' --- a macro created by procedure->memoizing-macro.
3868 The boolean #f --- if OBJ is not a macro object.
3870 *** New function: (macro-name MACRO)
3871 Return the name of the macro object MACRO's procedure, as returned by
3874 *** New function: (macro-transformer MACRO)
3875 Return the transformer procedure for MACRO.
3877 *** New syntax: (use-syntax MODULE ... TRANSFORMER)
3879 Specify a new macro expander to use in the current module. Each
3880 MODULE is a module name, with the same meaning as in the `use-modules'
3881 form; each named module's exported bindings are added to the current
3882 top-level environment. TRANSFORMER is an expression evaluated in the
3883 resulting environment which must yield a procedure to use as the
3884 module's eval transformer: every expression evaluated in this module
3885 is passed to this function, and the result passed to the Guile
3888 *** macro-eval! is removed. Use local-eval instead.
3890 ** Some magic has been added to the printer to better handle user
3891 written printing routines (like record printers, closure printers).
3893 The problem is that these user written routines must have access to
3894 the current `print-state' to be able to handle fancy things like
3895 detection of circular references. These print-states have to be
3896 passed to the builtin printing routines (display, write, etc) to
3897 properly continue the print chain.
3899 We didn't want to change all existing print code so that it
3900 explicitly passes thru a print state in addition to a port. Instead,
3901 we extented the possible values that the builtin printing routines
3902 accept as a `port'. In addition to a normal port, they now also take
3903 a pair of a normal port and a print-state. Printing will go to the
3904 port and the print-state will be used to control the detection of
3905 circular references, etc. If the builtin function does not care for a
3906 print-state, it is simply ignored.
3908 User written callbacks are now called with such a pair as their
3909 `port', but because every function now accepts this pair as a PORT
3910 argument, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, it is probably
3911 safest to not check for these pairs.
3913 However, it is sometimes necessary to continue a print chain on a
3914 different port, for example to get a intermediate string
3915 representation of the printed value, mangle that string somehow, and
3916 then to finally print the mangled string. Use the new function
3918 inherit-print-state OLD-PORT NEW-PORT
3920 for this. It constructs a new `port' that prints to NEW-PORT but
3921 inherits the print-state of OLD-PORT.
3923 ** struct-vtable-offset renamed to vtable-offset-user
3925 ** New constants: vtable-index-layout, vtable-index-vtable, vtable-index-printer
3927 ** There is now a third optional argument to make-vtable-vtable
3928 (and fourth to make-struct) when constructing new types (vtables).
3929 This argument initializes field vtable-index-printer of the vtable.
3931 ** The detection of circular references has been extended to structs.
3932 That is, a structure that -- in the process of being printed -- prints
3933 itself does not lead to infinite recursion.
3935 ** There is now some basic support for fluids. Please read
3936 "libguile/fluid.h" to find out more. It is accessible from Scheme with
3937 the following functions and macros:
3939 Function: make-fluid
3941 Create a new fluid object. Fluids are not special variables or
3942 some other extension to the semantics of Scheme, but rather
3943 ordinary Scheme objects. You can store them into variables (that
3944 are still lexically scoped, of course) or into any other place you
3945 like. Every fluid has a initial value of `#f'.
3947 Function: fluid? OBJ
3949 Test whether OBJ is a fluid.
3951 Function: fluid-ref FLUID
3952 Function: fluid-set! FLUID VAL
3954 Access/modify the fluid FLUID. Modifications are only visible
3955 within the current dynamic root (that includes threads).
3957 Function: with-fluids* FLUIDS VALUES THUNK
3959 FLUIDS is a list of fluids and VALUES a corresponding list of
3960 values for these fluids. Before THUNK gets called the values are
3961 installed in the fluids and the old values of the fluids are
3962 saved in the VALUES list. When the flow of control leaves THUNK
3963 or reenters it, the values get swapped again. You might think of
3964 this as a `safe-fluid-excursion'. Note that the VALUES list is
3965 modified by `with-fluids*'.
3967 Macro: with-fluids ((FLUID VALUE) ...) FORM ...
3969 The same as `with-fluids*' but with a different syntax. It looks
3970 just like `let', but both FLUID and VALUE are evaluated. Remember,
3971 fluids are not special variables but ordinary objects. FLUID
3972 should evaluate to a fluid.
3974 ** Changes to system call interfaces:
3976 *** close-port, close-input-port and close-output-port now return a
3977 boolean instead of an `unspecified' object. #t means that the port
3978 was successfully closed, while #f means it was already closed. It is
3979 also now possible for these procedures to raise an exception if an
3980 error occurs (some errors from write can be delayed until close.)
3982 *** the first argument to chmod, fcntl, ftell and fseek can now be a
3985 *** the third argument to fcntl is now optional.
3987 *** the first argument to chown can now be a file descriptor or a port.
3989 *** the argument to stat can now be a port.
3991 *** The following new procedures have been added (most use scsh
3994 *** procedure: close PORT/FD
3995 Similar to close-port (*note close-port: Closing Ports.), but also
3996 works on file descriptors. A side effect of closing a file
3997 descriptor is that any ports using that file descriptor are moved
3998 to a different file descriptor and have their revealed counts set
4001 *** procedure: port->fdes PORT
4002 Returns the integer file descriptor underlying PORT. As a side
4003 effect the revealed count of PORT is incremented.
4005 *** procedure: fdes->ports FDES
4006 Returns a list of existing ports which have FDES as an underlying
4007 file descriptor, without changing their revealed counts.
4009 *** procedure: fdes->inport FDES
4010 Returns an existing input port which has FDES as its underlying
4011 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
4012 Otherwise, returns a new input port with a revealed count of 1.
4014 *** procedure: fdes->outport FDES
4015 Returns an existing output port which has FDES as its underlying
4016 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
4017 Otherwise, returns a new output port with a revealed count of 1.
4019 The next group of procedures perform a `dup2' system call, if NEWFD
4020 (an integer) is supplied, otherwise a `dup'. The file descriptor to be
4021 duplicated can be supplied as an integer or contained in a port. The
4022 type of value returned varies depending on which procedure is used.
4024 All procedures also have the side effect when performing `dup2' that
4025 any ports using NEWFD are moved to a different file descriptor and have
4026 their revealed counts set to zero.
4028 *** procedure: dup->fdes PORT/FD [NEWFD]
4029 Returns an integer file descriptor.
4031 *** procedure: dup->inport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
4032 Returns a new input port using the new file descriptor.
4034 *** procedure: dup->outport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
4035 Returns a new output port using the new file descriptor.
4037 *** procedure: dup PORT/FD [NEWFD]
4038 Returns a new port if PORT/FD is a port, with the same mode as the
4039 supplied port, otherwise returns an integer file descriptor.
4041 *** procedure: dup->port PORT/FD MODE [NEWFD]
4042 Returns a new port using the new file descriptor. MODE supplies a
4043 mode string for the port (*note open-file: File Ports.).
4045 *** procedure: setenv NAME VALUE
4046 Modifies the environment of the current process, which is also the
4047 default environment inherited by child processes.
4049 If VALUE is `#f', then NAME is removed from the environment.
4050 Otherwise, the string NAME=VALUE is added to the environment,
4051 replacing any existing string with name matching NAME.
4053 The return value is unspecified.
4055 *** procedure: truncate-file OBJ SIZE
4056 Truncates the file referred to by OBJ to at most SIZE bytes. OBJ
4057 can be a string containing a file name or an integer file
4058 descriptor or port open for output on the file. The underlying
4059 system calls are `truncate' and `ftruncate'.
4061 The return value is unspecified.
4063 *** procedure: setvbuf PORT MODE [SIZE]
4064 Set the buffering mode for PORT. MODE can be:
4072 block buffered, using a newly allocated buffer of SIZE bytes.
4073 However if SIZE is zero or unspecified, the port will be made
4076 This procedure should not be used after I/O has been performed with
4079 Ports are usually block buffered by default, with a default buffer
4080 size. Procedures e.g., *Note open-file: File Ports, which accept a
4081 mode string allow `0' to be added to request an unbuffered port.
4083 *** procedure: fsync PORT/FD
4084 Copies any unwritten data for the specified output file descriptor
4085 to disk. If PORT/FD is a port, its buffer is flushed before the
4086 underlying file descriptor is fsync'd. The return value is
4089 *** procedure: open-fdes PATH FLAGS [MODES]
4090 Similar to `open' but returns a file descriptor instead of a port.
4092 *** procedure: execle PATH ENV [ARG] ...
4093 Similar to `execl', but the environment of the new process is
4094 specified by ENV, which must be a list of strings as returned by
4095 the `environ' procedure.
4097 This procedure is currently implemented using the `execve' system
4098 call, but we call it `execle' because of its Scheme calling
4101 *** procedure: strerror ERRNO
4102 Returns the Unix error message corresponding to ERRNO, an integer.
4104 *** procedure: primitive-exit [STATUS]
4105 Terminate the current process without unwinding the Scheme stack.
4106 This is would typically be useful after a fork. The exit status
4107 is STATUS if supplied, otherwise zero.
4109 *** procedure: times
4110 Returns an object with information about real and processor time.
4111 The following procedures accept such an object as an argument and
4112 return a selected component:
4115 The current real time, expressed as time units relative to an
4119 The CPU time units used by the calling process.
4122 The CPU time units used by the system on behalf of the
4126 The CPU time units used by terminated child processes of the
4127 calling process, whose status has been collected (e.g., using
4131 Similarly, the CPU times units used by the system on behalf of
4132 terminated child processes.
4134 ** Removed: list-length
4135 ** Removed: list-append, list-append!
4136 ** Removed: list-reverse, list-reverse!
4138 ** array-map renamed to array-map!
4140 ** serial-array-map renamed to serial-array-map!
4142 ** catch doesn't take #f as first argument any longer
4144 Previously, it was possible to pass #f instead of a key to `catch'.
4145 That would cause `catch' to pass a jump buffer object to the procedure
4146 passed as second argument. The procedure could then use this jump
4147 buffer objekt as an argument to throw.
4149 This mechanism has been removed since its utility doesn't motivate the
4150 extra complexity it introduces.
4152 ** The `#/' notation for lists now provokes a warning message from Guile.
4153 This syntax will be removed from Guile in the near future.
4155 To disable the warning message, set the GUILE_HUSH environment
4156 variable to any non-empty value.
4158 ** The newline character now prints as `#\newline', following the
4159 normal Scheme notation, not `#\nl'.
4161 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4163 ** The gh_enter function now takes care of loading the Guile startup files.
4164 gh_enter works by calling scm_boot_guile; see the remarks below.
4166 ** Function: void gh_write (SCM x)
4168 Write the printed representation of the scheme object x to the current
4169 output port. Corresponds to the scheme level `write'.
4171 ** gh_list_length renamed to gh_length.
4173 ** vector handling routines
4175 Several major changes. In particular, gh_vector() now resembles
4176 (vector ...) (with a caveat -- see manual), and gh_make_vector() now
4177 exists and behaves like (make-vector ...). gh_vset() and gh_vref()
4178 have been renamed gh_vector_set_x() and gh_vector_ref(). Some missing
4179 vector-related gh_ functions have been implemented.
4181 ** pair and list routines
4183 Implemented several of the R4RS pair and list functions that were
4186 ** gh_scm2doubles, gh_doubles2scm, gh_doubles2dvect
4188 New function. Converts double arrays back and forth between Scheme
4191 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4193 ** The function scm_boot_guile now takes care of loading the startup files.
4195 Guile's primary initialization function, scm_boot_guile, now takes
4196 care of loading `boot-9.scm', in the `ice-9' module, to initialize
4197 Guile, define the module system, and put together some standard
4198 bindings. It also loads `init.scm', which is intended to hold
4199 site-specific initialization code.
4201 Since Guile cannot operate properly until boot-9.scm is loaded, there
4202 is no reason to separate loading boot-9.scm from Guile's other
4203 initialization processes.
4205 This job used to be done by scm_compile_shell_switches, which didn't
4206 make much sense; in particular, it meant that people using Guile for
4207 non-shell-like applications had to jump through hoops to get Guile
4208 initialized properly.
4210 ** The function scm_compile_shell_switches no longer loads the startup files.
4211 Now, Guile always loads the startup files, whenever it is initialized;
4212 see the notes above for scm_boot_guile and scm_load_startup_files.
4214 ** Function: scm_load_startup_files
4215 This new function takes care of loading Guile's initialization file
4216 (`boot-9.scm'), and the site initialization file, `init.scm'. Since
4217 this is always called by the Guile initialization process, it's
4218 probably not too useful to call this yourself, but it's there anyway.
4220 ** The semantics of smob marking have changed slightly.
4222 The smob marking function (the `mark' member of the scm_smobfuns
4223 structure) is no longer responsible for setting the mark bit on the
4224 smob. The generic smob handling code in the garbage collector will
4225 set this bit. The mark function need only ensure that any other
4226 objects the smob refers to get marked.
4228 Note that this change means that the smob's GC8MARK bit is typically
4229 already set upon entry to the mark function. Thus, marking functions
4230 which look like this:
4233 if (SCM_GC8MARKP (ptr))
4235 SCM_SETGC8MARK (ptr);
4236 ... mark objects to which the smob refers ...
4239 are now incorrect, since they will return early, and fail to mark any
4240 other objects the smob refers to. Some code in the Guile library used
4243 ** The semantics of the I/O port functions in scm_ptobfuns have changed.
4245 If you have implemented your own I/O port type, by writing the
4246 functions required by the scm_ptobfuns and then calling scm_newptob,
4247 you will need to change your functions slightly.
4249 The functions in a scm_ptobfuns structure now expect the port itself
4250 as their argument; they used to expect the `stream' member of the
4251 port's scm_port_table structure. This allows functions in an
4252 scm_ptobfuns structure to easily access the port's cell (and any flags
4253 it its CAR), and the port's scm_port_table structure.
4255 Guile now passes the I/O port itself as the `port' argument in the
4256 following scm_ptobfuns functions:
4258 int (*free) (SCM port);
4259 int (*fputc) (int, SCM port);
4260 int (*fputs) (char *, SCM port);
4261 scm_sizet (*fwrite) SCM_P ((char *ptr,
4265 int (*fflush) (SCM port);
4266 int (*fgetc) (SCM port);
4267 int (*fclose) (SCM port);
4269 The interfaces to the `mark', `print', `equalp', and `fgets' methods
4272 If you have existing code which defines its own port types, it is easy
4273 to convert your code to the new interface; simply apply SCM_STREAM to
4274 the port argument to yield the value you code used to expect.
4276 Note that since both the port and the stream have the same type in the
4277 C code --- they are both SCM values --- the C compiler will not remind
4278 you if you forget to update your scm_ptobfuns functions.
4281 ** Function: int scm_internal_select (int fds,
4285 struct timeval *timeout);
4287 This is a replacement for the `select' function provided by the OS.
4288 It enables I/O blocking and sleeping to happen for one cooperative
4289 thread without blocking other threads. It also avoids busy-loops in
4290 these situations. It is intended that all I/O blocking and sleeping
4291 will finally go through this function. Currently, this function is
4292 only available on systems providing `gettimeofday' and `select'.
4294 ** Function: SCM scm_internal_stack_catch (SCM tag,
4295 scm_catch_body_t body,
4297 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
4300 A new sibling to the other two C level `catch' functions
4301 scm_internal_catch and scm_internal_lazy_catch. Use it if you want
4302 the stack to be saved automatically into the variable `the-last-stack'
4303 (scm_the_last_stack_var) on error. This is necessary if you want to
4304 use advanced error reporting, such as calling scm_display_error and
4305 scm_display_backtrace. (They both take a stack object as argument.)
4307 ** Function: SCM scm_spawn_thread (scm_catch_body_t body,
4309 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
4312 Spawns a new thread. It does a job similar to
4313 scm_call_with_new_thread but takes arguments more suitable when
4314 spawning threads from application C code.
4316 ** The hook scm_error_callback has been removed. It was originally
4317 intended as a way for the user to install his own error handler. But
4318 that method works badly since it intervenes between throw and catch,
4319 thereby changing the semantics of expressions like (catch #t ...).
4320 The correct way to do it is to use one of the C level catch functions
4321 in throw.c: scm_internal_catch/lazy_catch/stack_catch.
4323 ** Removed functions:
4325 scm_obj_length, scm_list_length, scm_list_append, scm_list_append_x,
4326 scm_list_reverse, scm_list_reverse_x
4328 ** New macros: SCM_LISTn where n is one of the integers 0-9.
4330 These can be used for pretty list creation from C. The idea is taken
4331 from Erick Gallesio's STk.
4333 ** scm_array_map renamed to scm_array_map_x
4335 ** mbstrings are now removed
4337 This means that the type codes scm_tc7_mb_string and
4338 scm_tc7_mb_substring has been removed.
4340 ** scm_gen_putc, scm_gen_puts, scm_gen_write, and scm_gen_getc have changed.
4342 Since we no longer support multi-byte strings, these I/O functions
4343 have been simplified, and renamed. Here are their old names, and
4344 their new names and arguments:
4346 scm_gen_putc -> void scm_putc (int c, SCM port);
4347 scm_gen_puts -> void scm_puts (char *s, SCM port);
4348 scm_gen_write -> void scm_lfwrite (char *ptr, scm_sizet size, SCM port);
4349 scm_gen_getc -> void scm_getc (SCM port);
4352 ** The macros SCM_TYP7D and SCM_TYP7SD has been removed.
4354 ** The macro SCM_TYP7S has taken the role of the old SCM_TYP7D
4356 SCM_TYP7S now masks away the bit which distinguishes substrings from
4359 ** scm_catch_body_t: Backward incompatible change!
4361 Body functions to scm_internal_catch and friends do not any longer
4362 take a second argument. This is because it is no longer possible to
4363 pass a #f arg to catch.
4365 ** Calls to scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect now nest properly.
4367 The function scm_protect_object protects its argument from being freed
4368 by the garbage collector. scm_unprotect_object removes that
4371 These functions now nest properly. That is, for every object O, there
4372 is a counter which scm_protect_object(O) increments and
4373 scm_unprotect_object(O) decrements, if the counter is greater than
4374 zero. Every object's counter is zero when it is first created. If an
4375 object's counter is greater than zero, the garbage collector will not
4376 reclaim its storage.
4378 This allows you to use scm_protect_object in your code without
4379 worrying that some other function you call will call
4380 scm_unprotect_object, and allow it to be freed. Assuming that the
4381 functions you call are well-behaved, and unprotect only those objects
4382 they protect, you can follow the same rule and have confidence that
4383 objects will be freed only at appropriate times.
4386 Changes in Guile 1.2 (released Tuesday, June 24 1997):
4388 * Changes to the distribution
4390 ** Nightly snapshots are now available from ftp.red-bean.com.
4391 The old server, ftp.cyclic.com, has been relinquished to its rightful
4394 Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are now available via
4395 anonymous FTP from ftp.red-bean.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.
4397 Via the web, that's: ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
4398 For getit, that's: ftp.red-bean.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
4400 ** To run Guile without installing it, the procedure has changed a bit.
4402 If you used a separate build directory to compile Guile, you'll need
4403 to include the build directory in SCHEME_LOAD_PATH, as well as the
4404 source directory. See the `INSTALL' file for examples.
4406 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
4408 ** The standard Guile load path for Scheme code now includes
4409 $(datadir)/guile (usually /usr/local/share/guile). This means that
4410 you can install your own Scheme files there, and Guile will find them.
4411 (Previous versions of Guile only checked a directory whose name
4412 contained the Guile version number, so you had to re-install or move
4413 your Scheme sources each time you installed a fresh version of Guile.)
4415 The load path also includes $(datadir)/guile/site; we recommend
4416 putting individual Scheme files there. If you want to install a
4417 package with multiple source files, create a directory for them under
4420 ** Guile 1.2 will now use the Rx regular expression library, if it is
4421 installed on your system. When you are linking libguile into your own
4422 programs, this means you will have to link against -lguile, -lqt (if
4423 you configured Guile with thread support), and -lrx.
4425 If you are using autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your
4426 application, the following lines should suffice to add the appropriate
4427 libraries to your link command:
4429 ### Find Rx, quickthreads and libguile.
4430 AC_CHECK_LIB(rx, main)
4431 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
4432 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
4434 The Guile 1.2 distribution does not contain sources for the Rx
4435 library, as Guile 1.0 did. If you want to use Rx, you'll need to
4436 retrieve it from a GNU FTP site and install it separately.
4438 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
4440 ** The dynamic linking features of Guile are now enabled by default.
4441 You can disable them by giving the `--disable-dynamic-linking' option
4444 (dynamic-link FILENAME)
4446 Find the object file denoted by FILENAME (a string) and link it
4447 into the running Guile application. When everything works out,
4448 return a Scheme object suitable for representing the linked object
4449 file. Otherwise an error is thrown. How object files are
4450 searched is system dependent.
4452 (dynamic-object? VAL)
4454 Determine whether VAL represents a dynamically linked object file.
4456 (dynamic-unlink DYNOBJ)
4458 Unlink the indicated object file from the application. DYNOBJ
4459 should be one of the values returned by `dynamic-link'.
4461 (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
4463 Search the C function indicated by FUNCTION (a string or symbol)
4464 in DYNOBJ and return some Scheme object that can later be used
4465 with `dynamic-call' to actually call this function. Right now,
4466 these Scheme objects are formed by casting the address of the
4467 function to `long' and converting this number to its Scheme
4470 (dynamic-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
4472 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ. The
4473 function is passed no arguments and its return value is ignored.
4474 When FUNCTION is something returned by `dynamic-func', call that
4475 function and ignore DYNOBJ. When FUNCTION is a string (or symbol,
4476 etc.), look it up in DYNOBJ; this is equivalent to
4478 (dynamic-call (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ) #f)
4480 Interrupts are deferred while the C function is executing (with
4481 SCM_DEFER_INTS/SCM_ALLOW_INTS).
4483 (dynamic-args-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ ARGS)
4485 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ, but pass it
4486 some arguments and return its return value. The C function is
4487 expected to take two arguments and return an `int', just like
4490 int c_func (int argc, char **argv);
4492 ARGS must be a list of strings and is converted into an array of
4493 `char *'. The array is passed in ARGV and its size in ARGC. The
4494 return value is converted to a Scheme number and returned from the
4495 call to `dynamic-args-call'.
4497 When dynamic linking is disabled or not supported on your system,
4498 the above functions throw errors, but they are still available.
4500 Here is a small example that works on GNU/Linux:
4502 (define libc-obj (dynamic-link "libc.so"))
4503 (dynamic-args-call 'rand libc-obj '())
4505 See the file `libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING' for additional comments.
4507 ** The #/ syntax for module names is depreciated, and will be removed
4508 in a future version of Guile. Instead of
4516 The latter syntax is more consistent with existing Lisp practice.
4518 ** Guile now does fancier printing of structures. Structures are the
4519 underlying implementation for records, which in turn are used to
4520 implement modules, so all of these object now print differently and in
4521 a more informative way.
4523 The Scheme printer will examine the builtin variable *struct-printer*
4524 whenever it needs to print a structure object. When this variable is
4525 not `#f' it is deemed to be a procedure and will be applied to the
4526 structure object and the output port. When *struct-printer* is `#f'
4527 or the procedure return `#f' the structure object will be printed in
4528 the boring #<struct 80458270> form.
4530 This hook is used by some routines in ice-9/boot-9.scm to implement
4531 type specific printing routines. Please read the comments there about
4534 One of the more specific uses of structs are records. The printing
4535 procedure that could be passed to MAKE-RECORD-TYPE is now actually
4536 called. It should behave like a *struct-printer* procedure (described
4539 ** Guile now supports a new R4RS-compliant syntax for keywords. A
4540 token of the form #:NAME, where NAME has the same syntax as a Scheme
4541 symbol, is the external representation of the keyword named NAME.
4542 Keyword objects print using this syntax as well, so values containing
4543 keyword objects can be read back into Guile. When used in an
4544 expression, keywords are self-quoting objects.
4546 Guile suports this read syntax, and uses this print syntax, regardless
4547 of the current setting of the `keyword' read option. The `keyword'
4548 read option only controls whether Guile recognizes the `:NAME' syntax,
4549 which is incompatible with R4RS. (R4RS says such token represent
4552 ** Guile has regular expression support again. Guile 1.0 included
4553 functions for matching regular expressions, based on the Rx library.
4554 In Guile 1.1, the Guile/Rx interface was removed to simplify the
4555 distribution, and thus Guile had no regular expression support. Guile
4556 1.2 again supports the most commonly used functions, and supports all
4557 of SCSH's regular expression functions.
4559 If your system does not include a POSIX regular expression library,
4560 and you have not linked Guile with a third-party regexp library such as
4561 Rx, these functions will not be available. You can tell whether your
4562 Guile installation includes regular expression support by checking
4563 whether the `*features*' list includes the `regex' symbol.
4565 *** regexp functions
4567 By default, Guile supports POSIX extended regular expressions. That
4568 means that the characters `(', `)', `+' and `?' are special, and must
4569 be escaped if you wish to match the literal characters.
4571 This regular expression interface was modeled after that implemented
4572 by SCSH, the Scheme Shell. It is intended to be upwardly compatible
4573 with SCSH regular expressions.
4575 **** Function: string-match PATTERN STR [START]
4576 Compile the string PATTERN into a regular expression and compare
4577 it with STR. The optional numeric argument START specifies the
4578 position of STR at which to begin matching.
4580 `string-match' returns a "match structure" which describes what,
4581 if anything, was matched by the regular expression. *Note Match
4582 Structures::. If STR does not match PATTERN at all,
4583 `string-match' returns `#f'.
4585 Each time `string-match' is called, it must compile its PATTERN
4586 argument into a regular expression structure. This operation is
4587 expensive, which makes `string-match' inefficient if the same regular
4588 expression is used several times (for example, in a loop). For better
4589 performance, you can compile a regular expression in advance and then
4590 match strings against the compiled regexp.
4592 **** Function: make-regexp STR [FLAGS]
4593 Compile the regular expression described by STR, and return the
4594 compiled regexp structure. If STR does not describe a legal
4595 regular expression, `make-regexp' throws a
4596 `regular-expression-syntax' error.
4598 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
4600 **** Constant: regexp/extended
4601 Use POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting
4602 STR. If not set, POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used.
4603 If the FLAGS argument is omitted, we assume regexp/extended.
4605 **** Constant: regexp/icase
4606 Do not differentiate case. Subsequent searches using the
4607 returned regular expression will be case insensitive.
4609 **** Constant: regexp/newline
4610 Match-any-character operators don't match a newline.
4612 A non-matching list ([^...]) not containing a newline matches a
4615 Match-beginning-of-line operator (^) matches the empty string
4616 immediately after a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
4617 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/notbol.
4619 Match-end-of-line operator ($) matches the empty string
4620 immediately before a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
4621 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/noteol.
4623 **** Function: regexp-exec REGEXP STR [START [FLAGS]]
4624 Match the compiled regular expression REGEXP against `str'. If
4625 the optional integer START argument is provided, begin matching
4626 from that position in the string. Return a match structure
4627 describing the results of the match, or `#f' if no match could be
4630 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
4632 **** Constant: regexp/notbol
4633 The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but
4634 see the compilation flag regexp/newline above) This flag may be
4635 used when different portions of a string are passed to
4636 regexp-exec and the beginning of the string should not be
4637 interpreted as the beginning of the line.
4639 **** Constant: regexp/noteol
4640 The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the
4641 compilation flag regexp/newline above)
4643 **** Function: regexp? OBJ
4644 Return `#t' if OBJ is a compiled regular expression, or `#f'
4647 Regular expressions are commonly used to find patterns in one string
4648 and replace them with the contents of another string.
4650 **** Function: regexp-substitute PORT MATCH [ITEM...]
4651 Write to the output port PORT selected contents of the match
4652 structure MATCH. Each ITEM specifies what should be written, and
4653 may be one of the following arguments:
4655 * A string. String arguments are written out verbatim.
4657 * An integer. The submatch with that number is written.
4659 * The symbol `pre'. The portion of the matched string preceding
4660 the regexp match is written.
4662 * The symbol `post'. The portion of the matched string
4663 following the regexp match is written.
4665 PORT may be `#f', in which case nothing is written; instead,
4666 `regexp-substitute' constructs a string from the specified ITEMs
4669 **** Function: regexp-substitute/global PORT REGEXP TARGET [ITEM...]
4670 Similar to `regexp-substitute', but can be used to perform global
4671 substitutions on STR. Instead of taking a match structure as an
4672 argument, `regexp-substitute/global' takes two string arguments: a
4673 REGEXP string describing a regular expression, and a TARGET string
4674 which should be matched against this regular expression.
4676 Each ITEM behaves as in REGEXP-SUBSTITUTE, with the following
4679 * A function may be supplied. When this function is called, it
4680 will be passed one argument: a match structure for a given
4681 regular expression match. It should return a string to be
4682 written out to PORT.
4684 * The `post' symbol causes `regexp-substitute/global' to recurse
4685 on the unmatched portion of STR. This *must* be supplied in
4686 order to perform global search-and-replace on STR; if it is
4687 not present among the ITEMs, then `regexp-substitute/global'
4688 will return after processing a single match.
4690 *** Match Structures
4692 A "match structure" is the object returned by `string-match' and
4693 `regexp-exec'. It describes which portion of a string, if any, matched
4694 the given regular expression. Match structures include: a reference to
4695 the string that was checked for matches; the starting and ending
4696 positions of the regexp match; and, if the regexp included any
4697 parenthesized subexpressions, the starting and ending positions of each
4700 In each of the regexp match functions described below, the `match'
4701 argument must be a match structure returned by a previous call to
4702 `string-match' or `regexp-exec'. Most of these functions return some
4703 information about the original target string that was matched against a
4704 regular expression; we will call that string TARGET for easy reference.
4706 **** Function: regexp-match? OBJ
4707 Return `#t' if OBJ is a match structure returned by a previous
4708 call to `regexp-exec', or `#f' otherwise.
4710 **** Function: match:substring MATCH [N]
4711 Return the portion of TARGET matched by subexpression number N.
4712 Submatch 0 (the default) represents the entire regexp match. If
4713 the regular expression as a whole matched, but the subexpression
4714 number N did not match, return `#f'.
4716 **** Function: match:start MATCH [N]
4717 Return the starting position of submatch number N.
4719 **** Function: match:end MATCH [N]
4720 Return the ending position of submatch number N.
4722 **** Function: match:prefix MATCH
4723 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET preceding the regexp match.
4725 **** Function: match:suffix MATCH
4726 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET following the regexp match.
4728 **** Function: match:count MATCH
4729 Return the number of parenthesized subexpressions from MATCH.
4730 Note that the entire regular expression match itself counts as a
4731 subexpression, and failed submatches are included in the count.
4733 **** Function: match:string MATCH
4734 Return the original TARGET string.
4736 *** Backslash Escapes
4738 Sometimes you will want a regexp to match characters like `*' or `$'
4739 exactly. For example, to check whether a particular string represents
4740 a menu entry from an Info node, it would be useful to match it against
4741 a regexp like `^* [^:]*::'. However, this won't work; because the
4742 asterisk is a metacharacter, it won't match the `*' at the beginning of
4743 the string. In this case, we want to make the first asterisk un-magic.
4745 You can do this by preceding the metacharacter with a backslash
4746 character `\'. (This is also called "quoting" the metacharacter, and
4747 is known as a "backslash escape".) When Guile sees a backslash in a
4748 regular expression, it considers the following glyph to be an ordinary
4749 character, no matter what special meaning it would ordinarily have.
4750 Therefore, we can make the above example work by changing the regexp to
4751 `^\* [^:]*::'. The `\*' sequence tells the regular expression engine
4752 to match only a single asterisk in the target string.
4754 Since the backslash is itself a metacharacter, you may force a
4755 regexp to match a backslash in the target string by preceding the
4756 backslash with itself. For example, to find variable references in a
4757 TeX program, you might want to find occurrences of the string `\let\'
4758 followed by any number of alphabetic characters. The regular expression
4759 `\\let\\[A-Za-z]*' would do this: the double backslashes in the regexp
4760 each match a single backslash in the target string.
4762 **** Function: regexp-quote STR
4763 Quote each special character found in STR with a backslash, and
4764 return the resulting string.
4766 *Very important:* Using backslash escapes in Guile source code (as
4767 in Emacs Lisp or C) can be tricky, because the backslash character has
4768 special meaning for the Guile reader. For example, if Guile encounters
4769 the character sequence `\n' in the middle of a string while processing
4770 Scheme code, it replaces those characters with a newline character.
4771 Similarly, the character sequence `\t' is replaced by a horizontal tab.
4772 Several of these "escape sequences" are processed by the Guile reader
4773 before your code is executed. Unrecognized escape sequences are
4774 ignored: if the characters `\*' appear in a string, they will be
4775 translated to the single character `*'.
4777 This translation is obviously undesirable for regular expressions,
4778 since we want to be able to include backslashes in a string in order to
4779 escape regexp metacharacters. Therefore, to make sure that a backslash
4780 is preserved in a string in your Guile program, you must use *two*
4781 consecutive backslashes:
4783 (define Info-menu-entry-pattern (make-regexp "^\\* [^:]*"))
4785 The string in this example is preprocessed by the Guile reader before
4786 any code is executed. The resulting argument to `make-regexp' is the
4787 string `^\* [^:]*', which is what we really want.
4789 This also means that in order to write a regular expression that
4790 matches a single backslash character, the regular expression string in
4791 the source code must include *four* backslashes. Each consecutive pair
4792 of backslashes gets translated by the Guile reader to a single
4793 backslash, and the resulting double-backslash is interpreted by the
4794 regexp engine as matching a single backslash character. Hence:
4796 (define tex-variable-pattern (make-regexp "\\\\let\\\\=[A-Za-z]*"))
4798 The reason for the unwieldiness of this syntax is historical. Both
4799 regular expression pattern matchers and Unix string processing systems
4800 have traditionally used backslashes with the special meanings described
4801 above. The POSIX regular expression specification and ANSI C standard
4802 both require these semantics. Attempting to abandon either convention
4803 would cause other kinds of compatibility problems, possibly more severe
4804 ones. Therefore, without extending the Scheme reader to support
4805 strings with different quoting conventions (an ungainly and confusing
4806 extension when implemented in other languages), we must adhere to this
4807 cumbersome escape syntax.
4809 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4811 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4813 * Changes to system call interfaces:
4815 ** The value returned by `raise' is now unspecified. It throws an exception
4818 *** A new procedure `sigaction' can be used to install signal handlers
4820 (sigaction signum [action] [flags])
4822 signum is the signal number, which can be specified using the value
4825 If action is omitted, sigaction returns a pair: the CAR is the current
4826 signal hander, which will be either an integer with the value SIG_DFL
4827 (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or the Scheme procedure which
4828 handles the signal, or #f if a non-Scheme procedure handles the
4829 signal. The CDR contains the current sigaction flags for the handler.
4831 If action is provided, it is installed as the new handler for signum.
4832 action can be a Scheme procedure taking one argument, or the value of
4833 SIG_DFL (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or #f to restore
4834 whatever signal handler was installed before sigaction was first used.
4835 Flags can optionally be specified for the new handler (SA_RESTART is
4836 always used if the system provides it, so need not be specified.) The
4837 return value is a pair with information about the old handler as
4840 This interface does not provide access to the "signal blocking"
4841 facility. Maybe this is not needed, since the thread support may
4842 provide solutions to the problem of consistent access to data
4845 *** A new procedure `flush-all-ports' is equivalent to running
4846 `force-output' on every port open for output.
4848 ** Guile now provides information on how it was built, via the new
4849 global variable, %guile-build-info. This variable records the values
4850 of the standard GNU makefile directory variables as an assocation
4851 list, mapping variable names (symbols) onto directory paths (strings).
4852 For example, to find out where the Guile link libraries were
4853 installed, you can say:
4855 guile -c "(display (assq-ref %guile-build-info 'libdir)) (newline)"
4858 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4860 ** The new function scm_handle_by_message_noexit is just like the
4861 existing scm_handle_by_message function, except that it doesn't call
4862 exit to terminate the process. Instead, it prints a message and just
4863 returns #f. This might be a more appropriate catch-all handler for
4864 new dynamic roots and threads.
4867 Changes in Guile 1.1 (released Friday, May 16 1997):
4869 * Changes to the distribution.
4871 The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
4873 guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
4874 guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
4875 Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
4876 is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
4877 guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
4878 expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
4879 programming language. These are packaged together because the
4880 Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
4882 This NEWS file describes the changes made to guile-core since the 1.0
4885 We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
4886 date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
4891 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
4893 ** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
4894 Shivers' Scheme Shell.
4896 In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
4897 exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
4898 stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
4899 the (command-line) function.
4900 -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
4901 -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
4902 -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
4904 The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
4905 -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
4906 -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
4907 command line arguments
4908 -ds do -s script at this point
4909 --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
4910 -h, --help display this help and exit
4911 -v, --version display version information and exit
4912 \ read arguments from following script lines
4914 So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
4915 which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
4917 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
4920 (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
4924 (main (command-line))
4926 Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
4928 ekko a speckled gecko
4930 Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
4931 token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
4932 following list of command-line arguments:
4934 ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
4936 Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
4937 the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
4938 with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
4939 defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
4940 remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
4942 In Unix, the first line of a script file must take the following form:
4944 #!INTERPRETER ARGUMENT
4946 where INTERPRETER is the absolute filename of the interpreter
4947 executable, and ARGUMENT is a single command-line argument to pass to
4950 You may only pass one argument to the interpreter, and its length is
4951 limited. These restrictions can be annoying to work around, so Guile
4952 provides a general mechanism (borrowed from, and compatible with,
4953 SCSH) for circumventing them.
4955 If the ARGUMENT in a Guile script is a single backslash character,
4956 `\', Guile will open the script file, parse arguments from its second
4957 and subsequent lines, and replace the `\' with them. So, for example,
4958 here is another implementation of the `ekko' script:
4960 #!/usr/local/bin/guile \
4964 (for-each (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
4968 If the user invokes this script as follows:
4970 ekko a speckled gecko
4972 Unix expands this into
4974 /usr/local/bin/guile \ ekko a speckled gecko
4976 When Guile sees the `\' argument, it replaces it with the arguments
4977 read from the second line of the script, producing:
4979 /usr/local/bin/guile -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
4981 This tells Guile to load the `ekko' script, and apply the function
4982 `main' to the argument list ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
4984 Here is how Guile parses the command-line arguments:
4985 - Each space character terminates an argument. This means that two
4986 spaces in a row introduce an empty-string argument.
4987 - The tab character is not permitted (unless you quote it with the
4988 backslash character, as described below), to avoid confusion.
4989 - The newline character terminates the sequence of arguments, and will
4990 also terminate a final non-empty argument. (However, a newline
4991 following a space will not introduce a final empty-string argument;
4992 it only terminates the argument list.)
4993 - The backslash character is the escape character. It escapes
4994 backslash, space, tab, and newline. The ANSI C escape sequences
4995 like \n and \t are also supported. These produce argument
4996 constituents; the two-character combination \n doesn't act like a
4997 terminating newline. The escape sequence \NNN for exactly three
4998 octal digits reads as the character whose ASCII code is NNN. As
4999 above, characters produced this way are argument constituents.
5000 Backslash followed by other characters is not allowed.
5002 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
5004 ** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
5005 system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
5006 all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
5007 supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
5008 libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
5010 Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
5011 it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
5012 independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
5014 ** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
5016 To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
5017 -lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
5018 autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
5019 following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
5022 ### Find quickthreads and libguile.
5023 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
5024 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
5026 * Changes to Scheme functions
5028 ** Guile Scheme's special syntax for keyword objects is now optional,
5029 and disabled by default.
5031 The syntax variation from R4RS made it difficult to port some
5032 interesting packages to Guile. The routines which accepted keyword
5033 arguments (mostly in the module system) have been modified to also
5034 accept symbols whose names begin with `:'.
5036 To change the keyword syntax, you must first import the (ice-9 debug)
5038 (use-modules (ice-9 debug))
5040 Then you can enable the keyword syntax as follows:
5041 (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
5043 To disable keyword syntax, do this:
5044 (read-set! keywords #f)
5046 ** Many more primitive functions accept shared substrings as
5047 arguments. In the past, these functions required normal, mutable
5048 strings as arguments, although they never made use of this
5051 ** The uniform array functions now operate on byte vectors. These
5052 functions are `array-fill!', `serial-array-copy!', `array-copy!',
5053 `serial-array-map', `array-map', `array-for-each', and
5056 ** The new functions `trace' and `untrace' implement simple debugging
5057 support for Scheme functions.
5059 The `trace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
5060 and tells the Guile interpreter to display each procedure's name and
5061 arguments each time the procedure is invoked. When invoked with no
5062 arguments, `trace' returns the list of procedures currently being
5065 The `untrace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
5066 and tells the Guile interpreter not to trace them any more. When
5067 invoked with no arguments, `untrace' untraces all curretly traced
5070 The tracing in Guile has an advantage over most other systems: we
5071 don't create new procedure objects, but mark the procedure objects
5072 themselves. This means that anonymous and internal procedures can be
5075 ** The function `assert-repl-prompt' has been renamed to
5076 `set-repl-prompt!'. It takes one argument, PROMPT.
5077 - If PROMPT is #f, the Guile read-eval-print loop will not prompt.
5078 - If PROMPT is a string, we use it as a prompt.
5079 - If PROMPT is a procedure accepting no arguments, we call it, and
5080 display the result as a prompt.
5081 - Otherwise, we display "> ".
5083 ** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
5084 string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
5085 in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
5088 ** The new function `thunk?' returns true iff its argument is a
5089 procedure of zero arguments.
5091 ** `defined?' is now a builtin function, instead of syntax. This
5092 means that its argument should be quoted. It returns #t iff its
5093 argument is bound in the current module.
5095 ** The new syntax `use-modules' allows you to add new modules to your
5096 environment without re-typing a complete `define-module' form. It
5097 accepts any number of module names as arguments, and imports their
5098 public bindings into the current module.
5100 ** The new function (module-defined? NAME MODULE) returns true iff
5101 NAME, a symbol, is defined in MODULE, a module object.
5103 ** The new function `builtin-bindings' creates and returns a hash
5104 table containing copies of all the root module's bindings.
5106 ** The new function `builtin-weak-bindings' does the same as
5107 `builtin-bindings', but creates a doubly-weak hash table.
5109 ** The `equal?' function now considers variable objects to be
5110 equivalent if they have the same name and the same value.
5112 ** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
5113 given to Guile, as a list of strings.
5115 When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
5116 script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
5117 `-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
5118 behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
5119 command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
5121 ** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
5122 in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
5123 mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
5124 but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
5126 ** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
5129 ** Changes to I/O functions
5131 *** The functions `read', `primitive-load', `read-and-eval!', and
5132 `primitive-load-path' no longer take optional arguments controlling
5133 case insensitivity and a `#' parser.
5135 Case sensitivity is now controlled by a read option called
5136 `case-insensitive'. The user can add new `#' syntaxes with the
5137 `read-hash-extend' function (see below).
5139 *** The new function `read-hash-extend' allows the user to change the
5140 syntax of Guile Scheme in a somewhat controlled way.
5142 (read-hash-extend CHAR PROC)
5143 When parsing S-expressions, if we read a `#' character followed by
5144 the character CHAR, use PROC to parse an object from the stream.
5145 If PROC is #f, remove any parsing procedure registered for CHAR.
5147 The reader applies PROC to two arguments: CHAR and an input port.
5149 *** The new functions read-delimited and read-delimited! provide a
5150 general mechanism for doing delimited input on streams.
5152 (read-delimited DELIMS [PORT HANDLE-DELIM])
5153 Read until we encounter one of the characters in DELIMS (a string),
5154 or end-of-file. PORT is the input port to read from; it defaults to
5155 the current input port. The HANDLE-DELIM parameter determines how
5156 the terminating character is handled; it should be one of the
5159 'trim omit delimiter from result
5160 'peek leave delimiter character in input stream
5161 'concat append delimiter character to returned value
5162 'split return a pair: (RESULT . TERMINATOR)
5164 HANDLE-DELIM defaults to 'peek.
5166 (read-delimited! DELIMS BUF [PORT HANDLE-DELIM START END])
5167 A side-effecting variant of `read-delimited'.
5169 The data is written into the string BUF at the indices in the
5170 half-open interval [START, END); the default interval is the whole
5171 string: START = 0 and END = (string-length BUF). The values of
5172 START and END must specify a well-defined interval in BUF, i.e.
5173 0 <= START <= END <= (string-length BUF).
5175 It returns NBYTES, the number of bytes read. If the buffer filled
5176 up without a delimiter character being found, it returns #f. If the
5177 port is at EOF when the read starts, it returns the EOF object.
5179 If an integer is returned (i.e., the read is successfully terminated
5180 by reading a delimiter character), then the HANDLE-DELIM parameter
5181 determines how to handle the terminating character. It is described
5182 above, and defaults to 'peek.
5184 (The descriptions of these functions were borrowed from the SCSH
5185 manual, by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
5187 *** The `%read-delimited!' function is the primitive used to implement
5188 `read-delimited' and `read-delimited!'.
5190 (%read-delimited! DELIMS BUF GOBBLE? [PORT START END])
5192 This returns a pair of values: (TERMINATOR . NUM-READ).
5193 - TERMINATOR describes why the read was terminated. If it is a
5194 character or the eof object, then that is the value that terminated
5195 the read. If it is #f, the function filled the buffer without finding
5196 a delimiting character.
5197 - NUM-READ is the number of characters read into BUF.
5199 If the read is successfully terminated by reading a delimiter
5200 character, then the gobble? parameter determines what to do with the
5201 terminating character. If true, the character is removed from the
5202 input stream; if false, the character is left in the input stream
5203 where a subsequent read operation will retrieve it. In either case,
5204 the character is also the first value returned by the procedure call.
5206 (The descriptions of this function was borrowed from the SCSH manual,
5207 by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
5209 *** The `read-line' and `read-line!' functions have changed; they now
5210 trim the terminator by default; previously they appended it to the
5211 returned string. For the old behavior, use (read-line PORT 'concat).
5213 *** The functions `uniform-array-read!' and `uniform-array-write!' now
5214 take new optional START and END arguments, specifying the region of
5215 the array to read and write.
5217 *** The `ungetc-char-ready?' function has been removed. We feel it's
5218 inappropriate for an interface to expose implementation details this
5221 ** Changes to the Unix library and system call interface
5223 *** The new fcntl function provides access to the Unix `fcntl' system
5226 (fcntl PORT COMMAND VALUE)
5227 Apply COMMAND to PORT's file descriptor, with VALUE as an argument.
5228 Values for COMMAND are:
5230 F_DUPFD duplicate a file descriptor
5231 F_GETFD read the descriptor's close-on-exec flag
5232 F_SETFD set the descriptor's close-on-exec flag to VALUE
5233 F_GETFL read the descriptor's flags, as set on open
5234 F_SETFL set the descriptor's flags, as set on open to VALUE
5235 F_GETOWN return the process ID of a socket's owner, for SIGIO
5236 F_SETOWN set the process that owns a socket to VALUE, for SIGIO
5237 FD_CLOEXEC not sure what this is
5239 For details, see the documentation for the fcntl system call.
5241 *** The arguments to `select' have changed, for compatibility with
5242 SCSH. The TIMEOUT parameter may now be non-integral, yielding the
5243 expected behavior. The MILLISECONDS parameter has been changed to
5244 MICROSECONDS, to more closely resemble the underlying system call.
5245 The RVEC, WVEC, and EVEC arguments can now be vectors; the type of the
5246 corresponding return set will be the same.
5248 *** The arguments to the `mknod' system call have changed. They are
5251 (mknod PATH TYPE PERMS DEV)
5252 Create a new file (`node') in the file system. PATH is the name of
5253 the file to create. TYPE is the kind of file to create; it should
5254 be 'fifo, 'block-special, or 'char-special. PERMS specifies the
5255 permission bits to give the newly created file. If TYPE is
5256 'block-special or 'char-special, DEV specifies which device the
5257 special file refers to; its interpretation depends on the kind of
5258 special file being created.
5260 *** The `fork' function has been renamed to `primitive-fork', to avoid
5261 clashing with various SCSH forks.
5263 *** The `recv' and `recvfrom' functions have been renamed to `recv!'
5264 and `recvfrom!'. They no longer accept a size for a second argument;
5265 you must pass a string to hold the received value. They no longer
5266 return the buffer. Instead, `recv' returns the length of the message
5267 received, and `recvfrom' returns a pair containing the packet's length
5268 and originating address.
5270 *** The file descriptor datatype has been removed, as have the
5271 `read-fd', `write-fd', `close', `lseek', and `dup' functions.
5272 We plan to replace these functions with a SCSH-compatible interface.
5274 *** The `create' function has been removed; it's just a special case
5277 *** There are new functions to break down process termination status
5278 values. In the descriptions below, STATUS is a value returned by
5281 (status:exit-val STATUS)
5282 If the child process exited normally, this function returns the exit
5283 code for the child process (i.e., the value passed to exit, or
5284 returned from main). If the child process did not exit normally,
5285 this function returns #f.
5287 (status:stop-sig STATUS)
5288 If the child process was suspended by a signal, this function
5289 returns the signal that suspended the child. Otherwise, it returns
5292 (status:term-sig STATUS)
5293 If the child process terminated abnormally, this function returns
5294 the signal that terminated the child. Otherwise, this function
5297 POSIX promises that exactly one of these functions will return true on
5298 a valid STATUS value.
5300 These functions are compatible with SCSH.
5302 *** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
5303 returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
5305 Component Accessor Setter
5306 ========================= ============ ============
5307 seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
5308 minutes tm:min set-tm:min
5309 hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
5310 day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
5311 month tm:mon set-tm:mon
5312 year tm:year set-tm:year
5313 day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
5314 day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
5315 daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
5316 GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
5317 name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
5319 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname',
5320 describing the host system:
5323 ============================================== ================
5324 name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
5325 network name of this machine utsname:nodename
5326 release level of the operating system utsname:release
5327 version level of the operating system utsname:version
5328 machine hardware platform utsname:machine
5330 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getpw',
5331 `getpwnam', `getpwuid', and `getpwent', describing entries from the
5332 system's user database:
5335 ====================== =================
5336 user name passwd:name
5337 user password passwd:passwd
5340 real name passwd:gecos
5341 home directory passwd:dir
5342 shell program passwd:shell
5344 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getgr',
5345 `getgrnam', `getgrgid', and `getgrent', describing entries from the
5346 system's group database:
5349 ======================= ============
5350 group name group:name
5351 group password group:passwd
5353 group members group:mem
5355 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `gethost',
5356 `gethostbyaddr', `gethostbyname', and `gethostent', describing
5360 ========================= ===============
5361 official name of host hostent:name
5362 alias list hostent:aliases
5363 host address type hostent:addrtype
5364 length of address hostent:length
5365 list of addresses hostent:addr-list
5367 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getnet',
5368 `getnetbyaddr', `getnetbyname', and `getnetent', describing internet
5372 ========================= ===============
5373 official name of net netent:name
5374 alias list netent:aliases
5375 net number type netent:addrtype
5376 net number netent:net
5378 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getproto',
5379 `getprotobyname', `getprotobynumber', and `getprotoent', describing
5383 ========================= ===============
5384 official protocol name protoent:name
5385 alias list protoent:aliases
5386 protocol number protoent:proto
5388 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getserv',
5389 `getservbyname', `getservbyport', and `getservent', describing
5393 ========================= ===============
5394 official service name servent:name
5395 alias list servent:aliases
5396 port number servent:port
5397 protocol to use servent:proto
5399 *** There are new accessors for the sockaddr structures returned by
5400 `accept', `getsockname', `getpeername', `recvfrom!':
5403 ======================================== ===============
5404 address format (`family') sockaddr:fam
5405 path, for file domain addresses sockaddr:path
5406 address, for internet domain addresses sockaddr:addr
5407 TCP or UDP port, for internet sockaddr:port
5409 *** The `getpwent', `getgrent', `gethostent', `getnetent',
5410 `getprotoent', and `getservent' functions now return #f at the end of
5411 the user database. (They used to throw an exception.)
5413 Note that calling MUMBLEent function is equivalent to calling the
5414 corresponding MUMBLE function with no arguments.
5416 *** The `setpwent', `setgrent', `sethostent', `setnetent',
5417 `setprotoent', and `setservent' routines now take no arguments.
5419 *** The `gethost', `getproto', `getnet', and `getserv' functions now
5420 provide more useful information when they throw an exception.
5422 *** The `lnaof' function has been renamed to `inet-lnaof'.
5424 *** Guile now claims to have the `current-time' feature.
5426 *** The `mktime' function now takes an optional second argument ZONE,
5427 giving the time zone to use for the conversion. ZONE should be a
5428 string, in the same format as expected for the "TZ" environment variable.
5430 *** The `strptime' function now returns a pair (TIME . COUNT), where
5431 TIME is the parsed time as a vector, and COUNT is the number of
5432 characters from the string left unparsed. This function used to
5433 return the remaining characters as a string.
5435 *** The `gettimeofday' function has replaced the old `time+ticks' function.
5436 The return value is now (SECONDS . MICROSECONDS); the fractional
5437 component is no longer expressed in "ticks".
5439 *** The `ticks/sec' constant has been removed, in light of the above change.
5441 * Changes to the gh_ interface
5443 ** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
5446 ** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
5449 ** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
5450 and returns the array
5452 ** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
5453 null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
5454 the user to interpret the data both ways.
5456 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5458 ** The new function scm_symbol_value0 provides an easy way to get a
5459 symbol's value from C code:
5461 SCM scm_symbol_value0 (char *NAME)
5462 Return the value of the symbol named by the null-terminated string
5463 NAME in the current module. If the symbol named NAME is unbound in
5464 the current module, return SCM_UNDEFINED.
5466 ** The new function scm_sysintern0 creates new top-level variables,
5467 without assigning them a value.
5469 SCM scm_sysintern0 (char *NAME)
5470 Create a new Scheme top-level variable named NAME. NAME is a
5471 null-terminated string. Return the variable's value cell.
5473 ** The function scm_internal_catch is the guts of catch. It handles
5474 all the mechanics of setting up a catch target, invoking the catch
5475 body, and perhaps invoking the handler if the body does a throw.
5477 The function is designed to be usable from C code, but is general
5478 enough to implement all the semantics Guile Scheme expects from throw.
5480 TAG is the catch tag. Typically, this is a symbol, but this function
5481 doesn't actually care about that.
5483 BODY is a pointer to a C function which runs the body of the catch;
5484 this is the code you can throw from. We call it like this:
5485 BODY (BODY_DATA, JMPBUF)
5487 BODY_DATA is just the BODY_DATA argument we received; we pass it
5488 through to BODY as its first argument. The caller can make
5489 BODY_DATA point to anything useful that BODY might need.
5490 JMPBUF is the Scheme jmpbuf object corresponding to this catch,
5491 which we have just created and initialized.
5493 HANDLER is a pointer to a C function to deal with a throw to TAG,
5494 should one occur. We call it like this:
5495 HANDLER (HANDLER_DATA, THROWN_TAG, THROW_ARGS)
5497 HANDLER_DATA is the HANDLER_DATA argument we recevied; it's the
5498 same idea as BODY_DATA above.
5499 THROWN_TAG is the tag that the user threw to; usually this is
5500 TAG, but it could be something else if TAG was #t (i.e., a
5501 catch-all), or the user threw to a jmpbuf.
5502 THROW_ARGS is the list of arguments the user passed to the THROW
5505 BODY_DATA is just a pointer we pass through to BODY. HANDLER_DATA
5506 is just a pointer we pass through to HANDLER. We don't actually
5507 use either of those pointers otherwise ourselves. The idea is
5508 that, if our caller wants to communicate something to BODY or
5509 HANDLER, it can pass a pointer to it as MUMBLE_DATA, which BODY and
5510 HANDLER can then use. Think of it as a way to make BODY and
5511 HANDLER closures, not just functions; MUMBLE_DATA points to the
5514 Of course, it's up to the caller to make sure that any data a
5515 MUMBLE_DATA needs is protected from GC. A common way to do this is
5516 to make MUMBLE_DATA a pointer to data stored in an automatic
5517 structure variable; since the collector must scan the stack for
5518 references anyway, this assures that any references in MUMBLE_DATA
5521 ** The new function scm_internal_lazy_catch is exactly like
5522 scm_internal_catch, except:
5524 - It does not unwind the stack (this is the major difference).
5525 - If handler returns, its value is returned from the throw.
5526 - BODY always receives #f as its JMPBUF argument (since there's no
5527 jmpbuf associated with a lazy catch, because we don't unwind the
5530 ** scm_body_thunk is a new body function you can pass to
5531 scm_internal_catch if you want the body to be like Scheme's `catch'
5532 --- a thunk, or a function of one argument if the tag is #f.
5534 BODY_DATA is a pointer to a scm_body_thunk_data structure, which
5535 contains the Scheme procedure to invoke as the body, and the tag
5536 we're catching. If the tag is #f, then we pass JMPBUF (created by
5537 scm_internal_catch) to the body procedure; otherwise, the body gets
5540 ** scm_handle_by_proc is a new handler function you can pass to
5541 scm_internal_catch if you want the handler to act like Scheme's catch
5542 --- call a procedure with the tag and the throw arguments.
5544 If the user does a throw to this catch, this function runs a handler
5545 procedure written in Scheme. HANDLER_DATA is a pointer to an SCM
5546 variable holding the Scheme procedure object to invoke. It ought to
5547 be a pointer to an automatic variable (i.e., one living on the stack),
5548 or the procedure object should be otherwise protected from GC.
5550 ** scm_handle_by_message is a new handler function to use with
5551 `scm_internal_catch' if you want Guile to print a message and die.
5552 It's useful for dealing with throws to uncaught keys at the top level.
5554 HANDLER_DATA, if non-zero, is assumed to be a char * pointing to a
5555 message header to print; if zero, we use "guile" instead. That
5556 text is followed by a colon, then the message described by ARGS.
5558 ** The return type of scm_boot_guile is now void; the function does
5559 not return a value, and indeed, never returns at all.
5561 ** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
5562 process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
5563 stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
5566 To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
5567 linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
5568 of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will add
5569 any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
5570 argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
5571 generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
5572 command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
5575 ** The new functions scm_get_meta_args and scm_count_argv help you
5576 implement the SCSH-style meta-argument, `\'.
5578 char **scm_get_meta_args (int ARGC, char **ARGV)
5579 If the second element of ARGV is a string consisting of a single
5580 backslash character (i.e. "\\" in Scheme notation), open the file
5581 named by the following argument, parse arguments from it, and return
5582 the spliced command line. The returned array is terminated by a
5585 For details of argument parsing, see above, under "guile now accepts
5586 command-line arguments compatible with SCSH..."
5588 int scm_count_argv (char **ARGV)
5589 Count the arguments in ARGV, assuming it is terminated by a null
5592 For an example of how these functions might be used, see the source
5593 code for the function scm_shell in libguile/script.c.
5595 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
5598 ** The new function scm_compile_shell_switches turns an array of
5599 command-line arguments into Scheme code to carry out the actions they
5600 describe. Given ARGC and ARGV, it returns a Scheme expression to
5601 evaluate, and calls scm_set_program_arguments to make any remaining
5602 command-line arguments available to the Scheme code. For example,
5603 given the following arguments:
5605 -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
5607 scm_set_program_arguments will return the following expression:
5609 (begin (load "ekko") (main (command-line)) (quit))
5611 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
5614 ** The function scm_shell_usage prints a usage message appropriate for
5615 an interpreter that uses scm_compile_shell_switches to handle its
5616 command-line arguments.
5618 void scm_shell_usage (int FATAL, char *MESSAGE)
5619 Print a usage message to the standard error output. If MESSAGE is
5620 non-zero, write it before the usage message, followed by a newline.
5621 If FATAL is non-zero, exit the process, using FATAL as the
5622 termination status. (If you want to be compatible with Guile,
5623 always use 1 as the exit status when terminating due to command-line
5626 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
5629 ** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
5630 expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL. Earth-shattering.
5632 ** The macros for declaring scheme objects in C code have been
5633 rearranged slightly. They are now:
5635 SCM_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
5636 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
5637 point to the Scheme symbol whose name is SCHEME_NAME. C_NAME should
5638 be a C identifier, and SCHEME_NAME should be a C string.
5640 SCM_GLOBAL_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
5641 Just like SCM_SYMBOL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
5643 SCM_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
5644 Create a global variable at the Scheme level named SCHEME_NAME.
5645 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
5646 point to the Scheme variable's value cell.
5648 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
5649 Just like SCM_VCELL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
5651 The `guile-snarf' script writes initialization code for these macros
5652 to its standard output, given C source code as input.
5654 The SCM_GLOBAL macro is gone.
5656 ** The scm_read_line and scm_read_line_x functions have been replaced
5657 by Scheme code based on the %read-delimited! procedure (known to C
5658 code as scm_read_delimited_x). See its description above for more
5661 ** The function scm_sys_open has been renamed to scm_open. It now
5662 returns a port instead of an FD object.
5664 * The dynamic linking support has changed. For more information, see
5665 libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING.
5670 User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
5673 * Changes to the 'guile' program:
5675 ** Guile now loads some new files when it starts up. Guile first
5676 searches the load path for init.scm, and loads it if found. Then, if
5677 Guile is not being used to execute a script, and the user's home
5678 directory contains a file named `.guile', Guile loads that.
5680 ** You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
5682 To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
5684 When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
5685 characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
5686 be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
5687 to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
5688 specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
5689 the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
5690 and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
5691 filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
5692 following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
5693 for more information.
5695 Now you can use Guile as an interpreter, using a mechanism which is a
5696 compatible subset of that provided by SCSH.
5698 Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
5699 name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
5700 characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
5701 to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
5702 following two lines at the top of the file:
5704 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
5707 Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
5708 of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
5709 start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
5711 For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
5713 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
5715 (let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
5718 (display (car args))
5719 (if (pair? (cdr args))
5721 (loop (cdr args)))))
5724 Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
5725 end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
5726 don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
5727 we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
5728 scripts once we do. Furthermore, if the path to Guile on your system
5729 is too long for your kernel, you can start the script with this
5733 exec /really/long/path/to/guile -s "$0" ${1+"$@"}
5736 Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
5739 ** You can now run Guile without installing it.
5741 Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
5742 couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
5743 they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
5744 later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
5745 itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
5748 To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
5749 then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
5750 colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
5751 of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
5752 full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
5755 export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
5758 ** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
5759 results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
5760 expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
5763 ** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
5764 however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
5765 request that they be displayed by default. After an error, evaluate
5767 to see a backtrace, and
5768 (debug-enable 'backtrace)
5769 to see them by default.
5773 * Changes to Guile Scheme:
5775 ** Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
5777 This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
5778 upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
5781 Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
5782 type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
5783 caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
5784 way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
5787 ** Guile's delq, delv, delete functions, and their destructive
5788 counterparts, delq!, delv!, and delete!, now remove all matching
5789 elements from the list, not just the first. This matches the behavior
5790 of the corresponding Emacs Lisp functions, and (I believe) the Maclisp
5791 functions which inspired them.
5793 I recognize that this change may break code in subtle ways, but it
5794 seems best to make the change before the FSF's first Guile release,
5798 ** The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
5800 ** The facilities for loading Scheme source files have changed.
5802 *** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
5803 for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
5806 *** The variable %load-extensions now tells Guile which extensions to
5807 try appending to a filename when searching the load path. Its value
5808 is a list of strings. Its default value is ("" ".scm").
5810 *** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
5811 value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME,
5812 with all the extensions listed in %load-extensions. If it finds a
5813 match, then it returns its full filename. If FILENAME is absolute, it
5814 returns it unchanged. Otherwise, it returns #f.
5816 %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to directories.
5818 *** (primitive-load FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
5819 uses %seach-load-path to find a file named FILENAME, and loads it if
5820 it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for any reason, it throws an
5823 The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
5826 *** load uses the same searching semantics as primitive-load.
5828 *** The functions %try-load, try-load-with-path, %load, load-with-path,
5829 basic-try-load-with-path, basic-load-with-path, try-load-module-with-
5830 path, and load-module-with-path have been deleted. The functions
5831 above should serve their purposes.
5833 *** If the value of the variable %load-hook is a procedure,
5834 `primitive-load' applies its value to the name of the file being
5835 loaded (without the load path directory name prepended). If its value
5836 is #f, it is ignored. Otherwise, an error occurs.
5838 This is mostly useful for printing load notification messages.
5841 ** The function `eval!' is no longer accessible from the scheme level.
5842 We can't allow operations which introduce glocs into the scheme level,
5843 because Guile's type system can't handle these as data. Use `eval' or
5844 `read-and-eval!' (see below) as replacement.
5846 ** The new function read-and-eval! reads an expression from PORT,
5847 evaluates it, and returns the result. This is more efficient than
5848 simply calling `read' and `eval', since it is not necessary to make a
5849 copy of the expression for the evaluator to munge.
5851 Its optional arguments CASE_INSENSITIVE_P and SHARP are interpreted as
5852 for the `read' function.
5855 ** The function `int?' has been removed; its definition was identical
5856 to that of `integer?'.
5858 ** The functions `<?', `<?', `<=?', `=?', `>?', and `>=?'. Code should
5859 use the R4RS names for these functions.
5861 ** The function object-properties no longer returns the hash handle;
5862 it simply returns the object's property list.
5864 ** Many functions have been changed to throw errors, instead of
5865 returning #f on failure. The point of providing exception handling in
5866 the language is to simplify the logic of user code, but this is less
5867 useful if Guile's primitives don't throw exceptions.
5869 ** The function `fileno' has been renamed from `%fileno'.
5871 ** The function primitive-mode->fdes returns #t or #f now, not 1 or 0.
5874 * Changes to Guile's C interface:
5876 ** The library's initialization procedure has been simplified.
5877 scm_boot_guile now has the prototype:
5879 void scm_boot_guile (int ARGC,
5881 void (*main_func) (),
5884 scm_boot_guile calls MAIN_FUNC, passing it CLOSURE, ARGC, and ARGV.
5885 MAIN_FUNC should do all the work of the program (initializing other
5886 packages, reading user input, etc.) before returning. When MAIN_FUNC
5887 returns, call exit (0); this function never returns. If you want some
5888 other exit value, MAIN_FUNC may call exit itself.
5890 scm_boot_guile arranges for program-arguments to return the strings
5891 given by ARGC and ARGV. If MAIN_FUNC modifies ARGC/ARGV, should call
5892 scm_set_program_arguments with the final list, so Scheme code will
5893 know which arguments have been processed.
5895 scm_boot_guile establishes a catch-all catch handler which prints an
5896 error message and exits the process. This means that Guile exits in a
5897 coherent way when system errors occur and the user isn't prepared to
5898 handle it. If the user doesn't like this behavior, they can establish
5899 their own universal catcher in MAIN_FUNC to shadow this one.
5901 Why must the caller do all the real work from MAIN_FUNC? The garbage
5902 collector assumes that all local variables of type SCM will be above
5903 scm_boot_guile's stack frame on the stack. If you try to manipulate
5904 SCM values after this function returns, it's the luck of the draw
5905 whether the GC will be able to find the objects you allocate. So,
5906 scm_boot_guile function exits, rather than returning, to discourage
5907 people from making that mistake.
5909 The IN, OUT, and ERR arguments were removed; there are other
5910 convenient ways to override these when desired.
5912 The RESULT argument was deleted; this function should never return.
5914 The BOOT_CMD argument was deleted; the MAIN_FUNC argument is more
5918 ** Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
5921 In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
5922 versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
5923 Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
5924 Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
5927 Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
5928 refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
5929 Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
5930 the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
5933 ** Two new C functions, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object,
5934 have been added to the Guile library.
5936 scm_protect_object (OBJ) protects OBJ from the garbage collector.
5937 OBJ will not be freed, even if all other references are dropped,
5938 until someone does scm_unprotect_object (OBJ). Both functions
5941 Note that calls to scm_protect_object do not nest. You can call
5942 scm_protect_object any number of times on a given object, and the
5943 next call to scm_unprotect_object will unprotect it completely.
5945 Basically, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object just
5946 maintain a list of references to things. Since the GC knows about
5947 this list, all objects it mentions stay alive. scm_protect_object
5948 adds its argument to the list; scm_unprotect_object remove its
5949 argument from the list.
5952 ** scm_eval_0str now returns the value of the last expression
5955 ** The new function scm_read_0str reads an s-expression from a
5956 null-terminated string, and returns it.
5958 ** The new function `scm_stdio_to_port' converts a STDIO file pointer
5959 to a Scheme port object.
5961 ** The new function `scm_set_program_arguments' allows C code to set
5962 the value returned by the Scheme `program-arguments' function.
5967 * Guile no longer includes sophisticated Tcl/Tk support.
5969 The old Tcl/Tk support was unsatisfying to us, because it required the
5970 user to link against the Tcl library, as well as Tk and Guile. The
5971 interface was also un-lispy, in that it preserved Tcl/Tk's practice of
5972 referring to widgets by names, rather than exporting widgets to Scheme
5973 code as a special datatype.
5975 In the Usenix Tk Developer's Workshop held in July 1996, the Tcl/Tk
5976 maintainers described some very interesting changes in progress to the
5977 Tcl/Tk internals, which would facilitate clean interfaces between lone
5978 Tk and other interpreters --- even for garbage-collected languages
5979 like Scheme. They expected the new Tk to be publicly available in the
5982 Since it seems that Guile might soon have a new, cleaner interface to
5983 lone Tk, and that the old Guile/Tk glue code would probably need to be
5984 completely rewritten, we (Jim Blandy and Richard Stallman) have
5985 decided not to support the old code. We'll spend the time instead on
5986 a good interface to the newer Tk, as soon as it is available.
5988 Until then, gtcltk-lib provides trivial, low-maintenance functionality.
5991 Copyright information:
5993 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5995 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
5996 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
5997 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
5998 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
6000 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
6001 of this document, or of portions of it,
6002 under the above conditions, provided also that they
6003 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
6008 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"