1 Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes.
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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9 Each release reports the NEWS in the following sections:
11 * Changes to the distribution
12 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
13 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
14 * Changes to the C interface
17 Changes in 1.9.XXXXXXXX:
19 * Changes to the distribution
20 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
21 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
23 ** A new 'memoize-symbol evaluator trap has been added. This trap can
24 be used for efficiently implementing a Scheme code coverage.
26 * Changes to the C interface
28 ** Functions for handling scm_option now no longer require an argument
29 indicating length of the scm_t_option array.
32 Changes in 1.8.2 (since 1.8.1):
34 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
36 ** set-program-arguments
41 ** Fractions were not `equal?' if stored in unreduced form.
42 (A subtle problem, since printing a value reduced it, making it work.)
43 ** srfi-60 `copy-bit' failed on 64-bit systems
44 ** "guile --use-srfi" option at the REPL can replace core functions
45 (Programs run with that option were ok, but in the interactive REPL
46 the core bindings got priority, preventing SRFI replacements or
48 ** `regexp-exec' doesn't abort() on #\nul in the input or bad flags arg
49 ** `kill' on mingw throws an error for a pid other than oneself
50 ** Procedure names are attached to procedure-with-setters
51 ** Array read syntax works with negative lower bound
52 ** `array-in-bounds?' fix if an array has different lower bounds on each index
53 ** `*' returns exact 0 for "(* inexact 0)"
54 This follows what it always did for "(* 0 inexact)".
55 ** SRFI-19: Value returned by `(current-time time-process)' was incorrect
56 ** `ttyname' no longer crashes when passed a non-tty argument
57 ** `inet-ntop' no longer crashes on SPARC when passed an `AF_INET' address
58 ** Build problems on Solaris fixed
59 ** Build problems on Mingw fixed
62 Changes in 1.8.1 (since 1.8.0):
64 * LFS functions are now used to access 64-bit files on 32-bit systems.
66 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
68 ** primitive-_exit - [Scheme] the-root-module
69 ** scm_primitive__exit - [C]
70 ** make-completion-function - [Scheme] (ice-9 readline)
71 ** scm_c_locale_stringn_to_number - [C]
72 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse [C]
73 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse_x [C]
79 * New `(ice-9 i18n)' module (see the manual for details)
83 ** Build problems have been fixed on MacOS, SunOS, and QNX.
85 ** `strftime' fix sign of %z timezone offset.
87 ** A one-dimensional array can now be 'equal?' to a vector.
89 ** Structures, records, and SRFI-9 records can now be compared with `equal?'.
91 ** SRFI-14 standard char sets are recomputed upon a successful `setlocale'.
93 ** `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' now have strict type checks.
95 Record accessor and modifier procedures now throw an error if the
96 record type of the record they're given is not the type expected.
97 (Previously accessors returned #f and modifiers silently did nothing).
99 ** It is now OK to use both autoload and use-modules on a given module.
101 ** `apply' checks the number of arguments more carefully on "0 or 1" funcs.
103 Previously there was no checking on primatives like make-vector that
104 accept "one or two" arguments. Now there is.
106 ** The srfi-1 assoc function now calls its equality predicate properly.
108 Previously srfi-1 assoc would call the equality predicate with the key
109 last. According to the SRFI, the key should be first.
111 ** A bug in n-par-for-each and n-for-each-par-map has been fixed.
113 ** The array-set! procedure no longer segfaults when given a bit vector.
115 ** Bugs in make-shared-array have been fixed.
117 ** string<? and friends now follow char<? etc order on 8-bit chars.
119 ** The format procedure now handles inf and nan values for ~f correctly.
121 ** exact->inexact should no longer overflow when given certain large fractions.
123 ** srfi-9 accessor and modifier procedures now have strict record type checks.
125 This matches the srfi-9 specification.
127 ** (ice-9 ftw) procedures won't ignore different files with same inode number.
129 Previously the (ice-9 ftw) procedures would ignore any file that had
130 the same inode number as a file they had already seen, even if that
131 file was on a different device.
134 Changes in 1.8.0 (changes since the 1.6.x series):
136 * Changes to the distribution
138 ** Guile is now licensed with the GNU Lesser General Public License.
140 ** The manual is now licensed with the GNU Free Documentation License.
142 ** Guile now requires GNU MP (http://swox.com/gmp).
144 Guile now uses the GNU MP library for arbitrary precision arithmetic.
146 ** Guile now has separate private and public configuration headers.
148 That is, things like HAVE_STRING_H no longer leak from Guile's
151 ** Guile now provides and uses an "effective" version number.
153 Guile now provides scm_effective_version and effective-version
154 functions which return the "effective" version number. This is just
155 the normal full version string without the final micro-version number,
156 so the current effective-version is "1.8". The effective version
157 should remain unchanged during a stable series, and should be used for
158 items like the versioned share directory name
159 i.e. /usr/share/guile/1.8.
161 Providing an unchanging version number during a stable release for
162 things like the versioned share directory can be particularly
163 important for Guile "add-on" packages, since it provides a directory
164 that they can install to that won't be changed out from under them
165 with each micro release during a stable series.
167 ** Thread implementation has changed.
169 When you configure "--with-threads=null", you will get the usual
170 threading API (call-with-new-thread, make-mutex, etc), but you can't
171 actually create new threads. Also, "--with-threads=no" is now
172 equivalent to "--with-threads=null". This means that the thread API
173 is always present, although you might not be able to create new
176 When you configure "--with-threads=pthreads" or "--with-threads=yes",
177 you will get threads that are implemented with the portable POSIX
178 threads. These threads can run concurrently (unlike the previous
179 "coop" thread implementation), but need to cooperate for things like
182 The default is "pthreads", unless your platform doesn't have pthreads,
183 in which case "null" threads are used.
185 See the manual for details, nodes "Initialization", "Multi-Threading",
186 "Blocking", and others.
188 ** There is the new notion of 'discouraged' features.
190 This is a milder form of deprecation.
192 Things that are discouraged should not be used in new code, but it is
193 OK to leave them in old code for now. When a discouraged feature is
194 used, no warning message is printed like there is for 'deprecated'
195 features. Also, things that are merely discouraged are nevertheless
196 implemented efficiently, while deprecated features can be very slow.
198 You can omit discouraged features from libguile by configuring it with
199 the '--disable-discouraged' option.
201 ** Deprecation warnings can be controlled at run-time.
203 (debug-enable 'warn-deprecated) switches them on and (debug-disable
204 'warn-deprecated) switches them off.
206 ** Support for SRFI 61, extended cond syntax for multiple values has
209 This SRFI is always available.
211 ** Support for require-extension, SRFI-55, has been added.
213 The SRFI-55 special form `require-extension' has been added. It is
214 available at startup, and provides a portable way to load Scheme
215 extensions. SRFI-55 only requires support for one type of extension,
216 "srfi"; so a set of SRFIs may be loaded via (require-extension (srfi 1
219 ** New module (srfi srfi-26) provides support for `cut' and `cute'.
221 The (srfi srfi-26) module is an implementation of SRFI-26 which
222 provides the `cut' and `cute' syntax. These may be used to specialize
223 parameters without currying.
225 ** New module (srfi srfi-31)
227 This is an implementation of SRFI-31 which provides a special form
228 `rec' for recursive evaluation.
230 ** The modules (srfi srfi-13), (srfi srfi-14) and (srfi srfi-4) have
231 been merged with the core, making their functionality always
234 The modules are still available, tho, and you could use them together
235 with a renaming import, for example.
237 ** Guile no longer includes its own version of libltdl.
239 The official version is good enough now.
241 ** The --enable-htmldoc option has been removed from 'configure'.
243 Support for translating the documentation into HTML is now always
244 provided. Use 'make html'.
246 ** New module (ice-9 serialize):
248 (serialize FORM1 ...) and (parallelize FORM1 ...) are useful when you
249 don't trust the thread safety of most of your program, but where you
250 have some section(s) of code which you consider can run in parallel to
251 other sections. See ice-9/serialize.scm for more information.
253 ** The configure option '--disable-arrays' has been removed.
255 Support for arrays and uniform numeric arrays is now always included
258 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
260 ** New command line option `-L'.
262 This option adds a directory to the front of the load path.
264 ** New command line option `--no-debug'.
266 Specifying `--no-debug' on the command line will keep the debugging
267 evaluator turned off, even for interactive sessions.
269 ** User-init file ~/.guile is now loaded with the debugging evaluator.
271 Previously, the normal evaluator would have been used. Using the
272 debugging evaluator gives better error messages.
274 ** The '-e' option now 'read's its argument.
276 This is to allow the new '(@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)' construct to
277 be used with '-e'. For example, you can now write a script like
280 exec guile -e '(@ (demo) main)' -s "$0" "$@"
283 (define-module (demo)
287 (format #t "Demo: ~a~%" args))
290 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
292 ** Guardians have changed back to their original semantics
294 Guardians now behave like described in the paper by Dybvig et al. In
295 particular, they no longer make guarantees about the order in which
296 they return objects, and they can no longer be greedy.
298 They no longer drop cyclic data structures.
300 The C function scm_make_guardian has been changed incompatibly and no
301 longer takes the 'greedy_p' argument.
303 ** New function hashx-remove!
305 This function completes the set of 'hashx' functions.
307 ** The concept of dynamic roots has been factored into continuation
308 barriers and dynamic states.
310 Each thread has a current dynamic state that carries the values of the
311 fluids. You can create and copy dynamic states and use them as the
312 second argument for 'eval'. See "Fluids and Dynamic States" in the
315 To restrict the influence that captured continuations can have on the
316 control flow, you can errect continuation barriers. See "Continuation
317 Barriers" in the manual.
319 The function call-with-dynamic-root now essentially temporarily
320 installs a new dynamic state and errects a continuation barrier.
322 ** The default load path no longer includes "." at the end.
324 Automatically loading modules from the current directory should not
325 happen by default. If you want to allow it in a more controlled
326 manner, set the environment variable GUILE_LOAD_PATH or the Scheme
329 ** The uniform vector and array support has been overhauled.
331 It now complies with SRFI-4 and the weird prototype based uniform
332 array creation has been deprecated. See the manual for more details.
334 Some non-compatible changes have been made:
335 - characters can no longer be stored into byte arrays.
336 - strings and bit vectors are no longer considered to be uniform numeric
338 - array-rank throws an error for non-arrays instead of returning zero.
339 - array-ref does no longer accept non-arrays when no indices are given.
341 There is the new notion of 'generalized vectors' and corresponding
342 procedures like 'generalized-vector-ref'. Generalized vectors include
343 strings, bitvectors, ordinary vectors, and uniform numeric vectors.
345 Arrays use generalized vectors as their storage, so that you still
346 have arrays of characters, bits, etc. However, uniform-array-read!
347 and uniform-array-write can no longer read/write strings and
350 ** There is now support for copy-on-write substrings, mutation-sharing
351 substrings and read-only strings.
353 Three new procedures are related to this: substring/shared,
354 substring/copy, and substring/read-only. See the manual for more
357 ** Backtraces will now highlight the value that caused the error.
359 By default, these values are enclosed in "{...}", such as in this
368 <unnamed port>:1:1: In procedure car in expression (car (quote a)):
369 <unnamed port>:1:1: Wrong type (expecting pair): a
370 ABORT: (wrong-type-arg)
372 The prefix and suffix used for highlighting can be set via the two new
373 printer options 'highlight-prefix' and 'highlight-suffix'. For
374 example, putting this into ~/.guile will output the bad value in bold
377 (print-set! highlight-prefix "\x1b[1m")
378 (print-set! highlight-suffix "\x1b[22m")
381 ** 'gettext' support for internationalization has been added.
383 See the manual for details.
385 ** New syntax '@' and '@@':
387 You can now directly refer to variables exported from a module by
390 (@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)
392 For example (@ (ice-9 pretty-print) pretty-print) will directly access
393 the pretty-print variable exported from the (ice-9 pretty-print)
394 module. You don't need to 'use' that module first. You can also use
395 '@' as a target of 'set!', as in (set! (@ mod var) val).
397 The related syntax (@@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME) works just like '@',
398 but it can also access variables that have not been exported. It is
399 intended only for kluges and temporary fixes and for debugging, not
402 ** Keyword syntax has been made more disciplined.
404 Previously, the name of a keyword was read as a 'token' but printed as
405 a symbol. Now, it is read as a general Scheme datum which must be a
416 ERROR: In expression (a b c):
420 ERROR: Unbound variable: foo
425 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): 12
429 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): (a b c)
433 ** The printing of symbols that might look like keywords can be
436 The new printer option 'quote-keywordish-symbols' controls how symbols
437 are printed that have a colon as their first or last character. The
438 default now is to only quote a symbol with #{...}# when the read
439 option 'keywords' is not '#f'. Thus:
441 guile> (define foo (string->symbol ":foo"))
442 guile> (read-set! keywords #f)
445 guile> (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
448 guile> (print-set! quote-keywordish-symbols #f)
452 ** 'while' now provides 'break' and 'continue'
454 break and continue were previously bound in a while loop, but not
455 documented, and continue didn't quite work properly. The undocumented
456 parameter to break which gave a return value for the while has been
459 ** 'call-with-current-continuation' is now also available under the name
462 ** The module system now checks for duplicate bindings.
464 The module system now can check for name conflicts among imported
467 The behavior can be controlled by specifying one or more 'duplicates'
468 handlers. For example, to make Guile return an error for every name
476 The new default behavior of the module system when a name collision
477 has been detected is to
479 1. Give priority to bindings marked as a replacement.
480 2. Issue a warning (different warning if overriding core binding).
481 3. Give priority to the last encountered binding (this corresponds to
484 If you want the old behavior back without replacements or warnings you
487 (default-duplicate-binding-handler 'last)
489 to your .guile init file.
491 ** New define-module option: :replace
493 :replace works as :export, but, in addition, marks the binding as a
496 A typical example is `format' in (ice-9 format) which is a replacement
497 for the core binding `format'.
499 ** Adding prefixes to imported bindings in the module system
501 There is now a new :use-module option :prefix. It can be used to add
502 a prefix to all imported bindings.
505 :use-module ((bar) :prefix bar:))
507 will import all bindings exported from bar, but rename them by adding
510 ** Conflicting generic functions can be automatically merged.
512 When two imported bindings conflict and they are both generic
513 functions, the two functions can now be merged automatically. This is
514 activated with the 'duplicates' handler 'merge-generics'.
516 ** New function: effective-version
518 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
519 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
520 to the distribution" above.
522 ** New threading functions: parallel, letpar, par-map, and friends
524 These are convenient ways to run calculations in parallel in new
525 threads. See "Parallel forms" in the manual for details.
527 ** New function 'try-mutex'.
529 This function will attempt to lock a mutex but will return immediately
530 instead of blocking and indicate failure.
532 ** Waiting on a condition variable can have a timeout.
534 The function 'wait-condition-variable' now takes a third, optional
535 argument that specifies the point in time where the waiting should be
538 ** New function 'broadcast-condition-variable'.
540 ** New functions 'all-threads' and 'current-thread'.
542 ** Signals and system asyncs work better with threads.
544 The function 'sigaction' now takes a fourth, optional, argument that
545 specifies the thread that the handler should run in. When the
546 argument is omitted, the handler will run in the thread that called
549 Likewise, 'system-async-mark' takes a second, optional, argument that
550 specifies the thread that the async should run in. When it is
551 omitted, the async will run in the thread that called
554 C code can use the new functions scm_sigaction_for_thread and
555 scm_system_async_mark_for_thread to pass the new thread argument.
557 When a thread blocks on a mutex, a condition variable or is waiting
558 for IO to be possible, it will still execute system asyncs. This can
559 be used to interrupt such a thread by making it execute a 'throw', for
562 ** The function 'system-async' is deprecated.
564 You can now pass any zero-argument procedure to 'system-async-mark'.
565 The function 'system-async' will just return its argument unchanged
568 ** New functions 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' and
569 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
571 The expression (call-with-blocked-asyncs PROC) will call PROC and will
572 block execution of system asyncs for the current thread by one level
573 while PROC runs. Likewise, call-with-unblocked-asyncs will call a
574 procedure and will unblock the execution of system asyncs by one
575 level for the current thread.
577 Only system asyncs are affected by these functions.
579 ** The functions 'mask-signals' and 'unmask-signals' are deprecated.
581 Use 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' or 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
582 instead. Those functions are easier to use correctly and can be
585 ** New function 'unsetenv'.
587 ** New macro 'define-syntax-public'.
589 It works like 'define-syntax' and also exports the defined macro (but
592 ** There is support for Infinity and NaNs.
594 Following PLT Scheme, Guile can now work with infinite numbers, and
597 There is new syntax for numbers: "+inf.0" (infinity), "-inf.0"
598 (negative infinity), "+nan.0" (not-a-number), and "-nan.0" (same as
599 "+nan.0"). These numbers are inexact and have no exact counterpart.
601 Dividing by an inexact zero returns +inf.0 or -inf.0, depending on the
602 sign of the dividend. The infinities are integers, and they answer #t
603 for both 'even?' and 'odd?'. The +nan.0 value is not an integer and is
604 not '=' to itself, but '+nan.0' is 'eqv?' to itself.
615 ERROR: Numerical overflow
617 Two new predicates 'inf?' and 'nan?' can be used to test for the
620 ** Inexact zero can have a sign.
622 Guile can now distinguish between plus and minus inexact zero, if your
623 platform supports this, too. The two zeros are equal according to
624 '=', but not according to 'eqv?'. For example
635 ** Guile now has exact rationals.
637 Guile can now represent fractions such as 1/3 exactly. Computing with
638 them is also done exactly, of course:
643 ** 'floor', 'ceiling', 'round' and 'truncate' now return exact numbers
646 For example: (floor 2) now returns an exact 2 where in the past it
647 returned an inexact 2.0. Likewise, (floor 5/4) returns an exact 1.
649 ** inexact->exact no longer returns only integers.
651 Without exact rationals, the closest exact number was always an
652 integer, but now inexact->exact returns the fraction that is exactly
653 equal to a floating point number. For example:
655 (inexact->exact 1.234)
656 => 694680242521899/562949953421312
658 When you want the old behavior, use 'round' explicitly:
660 (inexact->exact (round 1.234))
663 ** New function 'rationalize'.
665 This function finds a simple fraction that is close to a given real
666 number. For example (and compare with inexact->exact above):
668 (rationalize (inexact->exact 1.234) 1/2000)
671 Note that, as required by R5RS, rationalize returns only then an exact
672 result when both its arguments are exact.
674 ** 'odd?' and 'even?' work also for inexact integers.
676 Previously, (odd? 1.0) would signal an error since only exact integers
677 were recognized as integers. Now (odd? 1.0) returns #t, (odd? 2.0)
678 returns #f and (odd? 1.5) signals an error.
680 ** Guile now has uninterned symbols.
682 The new function 'make-symbol' will return an uninterned symbol. This
683 is a symbol that is unique and is guaranteed to remain unique.
684 However, uninterned symbols can not yet be read back in.
686 Use the new function 'symbol-interned?' to check whether a symbol is
689 ** pretty-print has more options.
691 The function pretty-print from the (ice-9 pretty-print) module can now
692 also be invoked with keyword arguments that control things like
693 maximum output width. See the manual for details.
695 ** Variables have no longer a special behavior for `equal?'.
697 Previously, comparing two variables with `equal?' would recursivly
698 compare their values. This is no longer done. Variables are now only
699 `equal?' if they are `eq?'.
701 ** `(begin)' is now valid.
703 You can now use an empty `begin' form. It will yield #<unspecified>
704 when evaluated and simply be ignored in a definition context.
706 ** Deprecated: procedure->macro
708 Change your code to use 'define-macro' or r5rs macros. Also, be aware
709 that macro expansion will not be done during evaluation, but prior to
712 ** Soft ports now allow a `char-ready?' procedure
714 The vector argument to `make-soft-port' can now have a length of
715 either 5 or 6. (Previously the length had to be 5.) The optional 6th
716 element is interpreted as an `input-waiting' thunk -- i.e. a thunk
717 that returns the number of characters that can be read immediately
718 without the soft port blocking.
720 ** Deprecated: undefine
722 There is no replacement for undefine.
724 ** The functions make-keyword-from-dash-symbol and keyword-dash-symbol
725 have been discouraged.
727 They are relics from a time where a keyword like #:foo was used
728 directly as a Tcl option "-foo" and thus keywords were internally
729 stored as a symbol with a starting dash. We now store a symbol
732 Use symbol->keyword and keyword->symbol instead.
734 ** The `cheap' debug option is now obsolete
736 Evaluator trap calls are now unconditionally "cheap" - in other words,
737 they pass a debug object to the trap handler rather than a full
738 continuation. The trap handler code can capture a full continuation
739 by using `call-with-current-continuation' in the usual way, if it so
742 The `cheap' option is retained for now so as not to break existing
743 code which gets or sets it, but setting it now has no effect. It will
744 be removed in the next major Guile release.
746 ** Evaluator trap calls now support `tweaking'
748 `Tweaking' means that the trap handler code can modify the Scheme
749 expression that is about to be evaluated (in the case of an
750 enter-frame trap) or the value that is being returned (in the case of
751 an exit-frame trap). The trap handler code indicates that it wants to
752 do this by returning a pair whose car is the symbol 'instead and whose
753 cdr is the modified expression or return value.
755 * Changes to the C interface
757 ** The functions scm_hash_fn_remove_x and scm_hashx_remove_x no longer
758 take a 'delete' function argument.
760 This argument makes no sense since the delete function is used to
761 remove a pair from an alist, and this must not be configurable.
763 This is an incompatible change.
765 ** The GH interface is now subject to the deprecation mechanism
767 The GH interface has been deprecated for quite some time but now it is
768 actually removed from Guile when it is configured with
769 --disable-deprecated.
771 See the manual "Transitioning away from GH" for more information.
773 ** A new family of functions for converting between C values and
774 Scheme values has been added.
776 These functions follow a common naming scheme and are designed to be
777 easier to use, thread-safe and more future-proof than the older
782 These are predicates that return a C boolean: 1 or 0. Instead of
783 SCM_NFALSEP, you can now use scm_is_true, for example.
785 - <type> scm_to_<type> (SCM val, ...)
787 These are functions that convert a Scheme value into an appropriate
788 C value. For example, you can use scm_to_int to safely convert from
791 - SCM scm_from_<type> (<type> val, ...)
793 These functions convert from a C type to a SCM value; for example,
794 scm_from_int for ints.
796 There is a huge number of these functions, for numbers, strings,
797 symbols, vectors, etc. They are documented in the reference manual in
798 the API section together with the types that they apply to.
800 ** New functions for dealing with complex numbers in C have been added.
802 The new functions are scm_c_make_rectangular, scm_c_make_polar,
803 scm_c_real_part, scm_c_imag_part, scm_c_magnitude and scm_c_angle.
804 They work like scm_make_rectangular etc but take or return doubles
807 ** The function scm_make_complex has been discouraged.
809 Use scm_c_make_rectangular instead.
811 ** The INUM macros have been deprecated.
813 A lot of code uses these macros to do general integer conversions,
814 although the macros only work correctly with fixnums. Use the
815 following alternatives.
817 SCM_INUMP -> scm_is_integer or similar
818 SCM_NINUMP -> !scm_is_integer or similar
819 SCM_MAKINUM -> scm_from_int or similar
820 SCM_INUM -> scm_to_int or similar
822 SCM_VALIDATE_INUM_* -> Do not use these; scm_to_int, etc. will
823 do the validating for you.
825 ** The scm_num2<type> and scm_<type>2num functions and scm_make_real
826 have been discouraged.
828 Use the newer scm_to_<type> and scm_from_<type> functions instead for
829 new code. The functions have been discouraged since they don't fit
832 ** The 'boolean' macros SCM_FALSEP etc have been discouraged.
834 They have strange names, especially SCM_NFALSEP, and SCM_BOOLP
835 evaluates its argument twice. Use scm_is_true, etc. instead for new
838 ** The macro SCM_EQ_P has been discouraged.
840 Use scm_is_eq for new code, which fits better into the naming
843 ** The macros SCM_CONSP, SCM_NCONSP, SCM_NULLP, and SCM_NNULLP have
846 Use the function scm_is_pair or scm_is_null instead.
848 ** The functions scm_round and scm_truncate have been deprecated and
849 are now available as scm_c_round and scm_c_truncate, respectively.
851 These functions occupy the names that scm_round_number and
852 scm_truncate_number should have.
854 ** The functions scm_c_string2str, scm_c_substring2str, and
855 scm_c_symbol2str have been deprecated.
857 Use scm_to_locale_stringbuf or similar instead, maybe together with
860 ** New functions scm_c_make_string, scm_c_string_length,
861 scm_c_string_ref, scm_c_string_set_x, scm_c_substring,
862 scm_c_substring_shared, scm_c_substring_copy.
864 These are like scm_make_string, scm_length, etc. but are slightly
865 easier to use from C.
867 ** The macros SCM_STRINGP, SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_STRING_LENGTH,
868 SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, and SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH have been deprecated.
870 They export too many assumptions about the implementation of strings
871 and symbols that are no longer true in the presence of
872 mutation-sharing substrings and when Guile switches to some form of
875 When working with strings, it is often best to use the normal string
876 functions provided by Guile, such as scm_c_string_ref,
877 scm_c_string_set_x, scm_string_append, etc. Be sure to look in the
878 manual since many more such functions are now provided than
881 When you want to convert a SCM string to a C string, use the
882 scm_to_locale_string function or similar instead. For symbols, use
883 scm_symbol_to_string and then work with that string. Because of the
884 new string representation, scm_symbol_to_string does not need to copy
885 and is thus quite efficient.
887 ** Some string, symbol and keyword functions have been discouraged.
889 They don't fit into the uniform naming scheme and are not explicit
890 about the character encoding.
892 Replace according to the following table:
894 scm_allocate_string -> scm_c_make_string
895 scm_take_str -> scm_take_locale_stringn
896 scm_take0str -> scm_take_locale_string
897 scm_mem2string -> scm_from_locale_stringn
898 scm_str2string -> scm_from_locale_string
899 scm_makfrom0str -> scm_from_locale_string
900 scm_mem2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symboln
901 scm_mem2uninterned_symbol -> scm_from_locale_stringn + scm_make_symbol
902 scm_str2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symbol
904 SCM_SYMBOL_HASH -> scm_hashq
905 SCM_SYMBOL_INTERNED_P -> scm_symbol_interned_p
907 scm_c_make_keyword -> scm_from_locale_keyword
909 ** The functions scm_keyword_to_symbol and sym_symbol_to_keyword are
910 now also available to C code.
912 ** SCM_KEYWORDP and SCM_KEYWORDSYM have been deprecated.
914 Use scm_is_keyword and scm_keyword_to_symbol instead, but note that
915 the latter returns the true name of the keyword, not the 'dash name',
916 as SCM_KEYWORDSYM used to do.
918 ** A new way to access arrays in a thread-safe and efficient way has
921 See the manual, node "Accessing Arrays From C".
923 ** The old uniform vector and bitvector implementations have been
924 unceremoniously removed.
926 This implementation exposed the details of the tagging system of
927 Guile. Use the new C API explained in the manual in node "Uniform
928 Numeric Vectors" and "Bit Vectors", respectively.
930 The following macros are gone: SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE,
931 SCM_UVECTOR_MAXLENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_UVECTOR_TAG,
932 SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVECTOR_P, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE,
933 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
934 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_BITVECTOR_TAG,
935 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVEC_REF, SCM_BITVEC_SET,
938 ** The macros dealing with vectors have been deprecated.
940 Use the new functions scm_is_vector, scm_vector_elements,
941 scm_vector_writable_elements, etc, or scm_is_simple_vector,
942 SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_REF, SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_SET, etc instead. See the
943 manual for more details.
945 Deprecated are SCM_VECTORP, SCM_VELTS, SCM_VECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
946 SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_REF, SCM_VECTOR_SET, SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS.
948 The following macros have been removed: SCM_VECTOR_BASE,
949 SCM_SET_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_MAKE_VECTOR_TAG, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH,
950 SCM_VELTS_AS_STACKITEMS, SCM_SETVELTS, SCM_GC_WRITABLE_VELTS.
952 ** Some C functions and macros related to arrays have been deprecated.
954 Migrate according to the following table:
956 scm_make_uve -> scm_make_typed_array, scm_make_u8vector etc.
957 scm_make_ra -> scm_make_array
958 scm_shap2ra -> scm_make_array
959 scm_cvref -> scm_c_generalized_vector_ref
960 scm_ra_set_contp -> do not use
961 scm_aind -> scm_array_handle_pos
962 scm_raprin1 -> scm_display or scm_write
964 SCM_ARRAYP -> scm_is_array
965 SCM_ARRAY_NDIM -> scm_c_array_rank
966 SCM_ARRAY_DIMS -> scm_array_handle_dims
967 SCM_ARRAY_CONTP -> do not use
968 SCM_ARRAY_MEM -> do not use
969 SCM_ARRAY_V -> scm_array_handle_elements or similar
970 SCM_ARRAY_BASE -> do not use
972 ** SCM_CELL_WORD_LOC has been deprecated.
974 Use the new macro SCM_CELL_OBJECT_LOC instead, which returns a pointer
975 to a SCM, as opposed to a pointer to a scm_t_bits.
977 This was done to allow the correct use of pointers into the Scheme
978 heap. Previously, the heap words were of type scm_t_bits and local
979 variables and function arguments were of type SCM, making it
980 non-standards-conformant to have a pointer that can point to both.
982 ** New macros SCM_SMOB_DATA_2, SCM_SMOB_DATA_3, etc.
984 These macros should be used instead of SCM_CELL_WORD_2/3 to access the
985 second and third words of double smobs. Likewise for
986 SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_2 and SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_3.
988 Also, there is SCM_SMOB_FLAGS and SCM_SET_SMOB_FLAGS that should be
989 used to get and set the 16 exra bits in the zeroth word of a smob.
991 And finally, there is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT and SCM_SMOB_SET_OBJECT for
992 accesing the first immediate word of a smob as a SCM value, and there
993 is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_LOC for getting a pointer to the first immediate
994 smob word. Like wise for SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_2, etc.
996 ** New way to deal with non-local exits and re-entries.
998 There is a new set of functions that essentially do what
999 scm_internal_dynamic_wind does, but in a way that is more convenient
1000 for C code in some situations. Here is a quick example of how to
1001 prevent a potential memory leak:
1008 scm_dynwind_begin (0);
1010 mem = scm_malloc (100);
1011 scm_dynwind_unwind_handler (free, mem, SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY);
1013 /* MEM would leak if BAR throws an error.
1014 SCM_DYNWIND_UNWIND_HANDLER frees it nevertheless.
1021 /* Because of SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY, MEM will be freed by
1022 SCM_DYNWIND_END as well.
1026 For full documentation, see the node "Dynamic Wind" in the manual.
1028 ** New function scm_dynwind_free
1030 This function calls 'free' on a given pointer when a dynwind context
1031 is left. Thus the call to scm_dynwind_unwind_handler above could be
1032 replaced with simply scm_dynwind_free (mem).
1034 ** New functions scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
1035 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs
1037 Like scm_call_with_blocked_asyncs etc. but for C functions.
1039 ** New functions scm_dynwind_block_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs
1041 In addition to scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs you can now also use
1042 scm_dynwind_block_asyncs in a 'dynwind context' (see above). Likewise for
1043 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs.
1045 ** The macros SCM_DEFER_INTS, SCM_ALLOW_INTS, SCM_REDEFER_INTS,
1046 SCM_REALLOW_INTS have been deprecated.
1048 They do no longer fulfill their original role of blocking signal
1049 delivery. Depending on what you want to achieve, replace a pair of
1050 SCM_DEFER_INTS and SCM_ALLOW_INTS with a dynwind context that locks a
1051 mutex, blocks asyncs, or both. See node "Critical Sections" in the
1054 ** The value 'scm_mask_ints' is no longer writable.
1056 Previously, you could set scm_mask_ints directly. This is no longer
1057 possible. Use scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
1058 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs instead.
1060 ** New way to temporarily set the current input, output or error ports
1062 C code can now use scm_dynwind_current_<foo>_port in a 'dynwind
1063 context' (see above). <foo> is one of "input", "output" or "error".
1065 ** New way to temporarily set fluids
1067 C code can now use scm_dynwind_fluid in a 'dynwind context' (see
1068 above) to temporarily set the value of a fluid.
1070 ** New types scm_t_intmax and scm_t_uintmax.
1072 On platforms that have them, these types are identical to intmax_t and
1073 uintmax_t, respectively. On other platforms, they are identical to
1074 the largest integer types that Guile knows about.
1076 ** The functions scm_unmemocopy and scm_unmemoize have been removed.
1078 You should not have used them.
1080 ** Many public #defines with generic names have been made private.
1082 #defines with generic names like HAVE_FOO or SIZEOF_FOO have been made
1083 private or renamed with a more suitable public name.
1085 ** The macro SCM_TYP16S has been deprecated.
1087 This macro is not intended for public use.
1089 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_INEXACTP has been deprecated.
1091 Use scm_is_true (scm_inexact_p (...)) instead.
1093 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_REALP has been deprecated.
1095 Use scm_is_real instead.
1097 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_COMPLEXP has been deprecated.
1099 Use scm_is_complex instead.
1101 ** Some preprocessor defines have been deprecated.
1103 These defines indicated whether a certain feature was present in Guile
1104 or not. Going forward, assume that the features are always present.
1106 The macros are: USE_THREADS, GUILE_ISELECT, READER_EXTENSIONS,
1107 DEBUG_EXTENSIONS, DYNAMIC_LINKING.
1109 The following macros have been removed completely: MEMOIZE_LOCALS,
1110 SCM_RECKLESS, SCM_CAUTIOUS.
1112 ** The preprocessor define STACK_DIRECTION has been deprecated.
1114 There should be no need to know about the stack direction for ordinary
1117 ** New function: scm_effective_version
1119 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
1120 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
1121 to the distribution" above.
1123 ** The function scm_call_with_new_thread has a new prototype.
1125 Instead of taking a list with the thunk and handler, these two
1126 arguments are now passed directly:
1128 SCM scm_call_with_new_thread (SCM thunk, SCM handler);
1130 This is an incompatible change.
1132 ** New snarfer macro SCM_DEFINE_PUBLIC.
1134 This is like SCM_DEFINE, but also calls scm_c_export for the defined
1135 function in the init section.
1137 ** The snarfer macro SCM_SNARF_INIT is now officially supported.
1139 ** Garbage collector rewrite.
1141 The garbage collector is cleaned up a lot, and now uses lazy
1142 sweeping. This is reflected in the output of (gc-stats); since cells
1143 are being freed when they are allocated, the cells-allocated field
1144 stays roughly constant.
1146 For malloc related triggers, the behavior is changed. It uses the same
1147 heuristic as the cell-triggered collections. It may be tuned with the
1148 environment variables GUILE_MIN_YIELD_MALLOC. This is the percentage
1149 for minimum yield of malloc related triggers. The default is 40.
1150 GUILE_INIT_MALLOC_LIMIT sets the initial trigger for doing a GC. The
1153 Debugging operations for the freelist have been deprecated, along with
1154 the C variables that control garbage collection. The environment
1155 variables GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE, GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2,
1156 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1, and GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2 should be used.
1158 For understanding the memory usage of a GUILE program, the routine
1159 gc-live-object-stats returns an alist containing the number of live
1160 objects for every type.
1163 ** The function scm_definedp has been renamed to scm_defined_p
1165 The name scm_definedp is deprecated.
1167 ** The struct scm_cell type has been renamed to scm_t_cell
1169 This is in accordance to Guile's naming scheme for types. Note that
1170 the name scm_cell is now used for a function that allocates and
1171 initializes a new cell (see below).
1173 ** New functions for memory management
1175 A new set of functions for memory management has been added since the
1176 old way (scm_must_malloc, scm_must_free, etc) was error prone and
1177 indeed, Guile itself contained some long standing bugs that could
1178 cause aborts in long running programs.
1180 The new functions are more symmetrical and do not need cooperation
1181 from smob free routines, among other improvements.
1183 The new functions are scm_malloc, scm_realloc, scm_calloc, scm_strdup,
1184 scm_strndup, scm_gc_malloc, scm_gc_calloc, scm_gc_realloc,
1185 scm_gc_free, scm_gc_register_collectable_memory, and
1186 scm_gc_unregister_collectable_memory. Refer to the manual for more
1187 details and for upgrading instructions.
1189 The old functions for memory management have been deprecated. They
1190 are: scm_must_malloc, scm_must_realloc, scm_must_free,
1191 scm_must_strdup, scm_must_strndup, scm_done_malloc, scm_done_free.
1193 ** Declarations of exported features are marked with SCM_API.
1195 Every declaration of a feature that belongs to the exported Guile API
1196 has been marked by adding the macro "SCM_API" to the start of the
1197 declaration. This macro can expand into different things, the most
1198 common of which is just "extern" for Unix platforms. On Win32, it can
1199 be used to control which symbols are exported from a DLL.
1201 If you `#define SCM_IMPORT' before including <libguile.h>, SCM_API
1202 will expand into "__declspec (dllimport) extern", which is needed for
1203 linking to the Guile DLL in Windows.
1205 There are also SCM_RL_IMPORT, SCM_SRFI1314_IMPORT, and
1206 SCM_SRFI4_IMPORT, for the corresponding libraries.
1208 ** SCM_NEWCELL and SCM_NEWCELL2 have been deprecated.
1210 Use the new functions scm_cell and scm_double_cell instead. The old
1211 macros had problems because with them allocation and initialization
1212 was separated and the GC could sometimes observe half initialized
1213 cells. Only careful coding by the user of SCM_NEWCELL and
1214 SCM_NEWCELL2 could make this safe and efficient.
1216 ** CHECK_ENTRY, CHECK_APPLY and CHECK_EXIT have been deprecated.
1218 Use the variables scm_check_entry_p, scm_check_apply_p and scm_check_exit_p
1221 ** SRCBRKP has been deprecated.
1223 Use scm_c_source_property_breakpoint_p instead.
1225 ** Deprecated: scm_makmacro
1227 Change your code to use either scm_makmmacro or to define macros in
1228 Scheme, using 'define-macro'.
1230 ** New function scm_c_port_for_each.
1232 This function is like scm_port_for_each but takes a pointer to a C
1233 function as the callback instead of a SCM value.
1235 ** The names scm_internal_select, scm_thread_sleep, and
1236 scm_thread_usleep have been discouraged.
1238 Use scm_std_select, scm_std_sleep, scm_std_usleep instead.
1240 ** The GC can no longer be blocked.
1242 The global flags scm_gc_heap_lock and scm_block_gc have been removed.
1243 The GC can now run (partially) concurrently with other code and thus
1244 blocking it is not well defined.
1246 ** Many definitions have been removed that were previously deprecated.
1248 scm_lisp_nil, scm_lisp_t, s_nil_ify, scm_m_nil_ify, s_t_ify,
1249 scm_m_t_ify, s_0_cond, scm_m_0_cond, s_0_ify, scm_m_0_ify, s_1_ify,
1250 scm_m_1_ify, scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2,
1251 scm_tc16_allocated, SCM_SET_SYMBOL_HASH, SCM_IM_NIL_IFY, SCM_IM_T_IFY,
1252 SCM_IM_0_COND, SCM_IM_0_IFY, SCM_IM_1_IFY, SCM_GC_SET_ALLOCATED,
1253 scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL, SCM_INT_SIGNAL,
1254 SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL, SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL,
1255 SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD, SCM_ORD_SIG,
1256 SCM_NUM_SIGS, scm_top_level_lookup_closure_var,
1257 *top-level-lookup-closure*, scm_system_transformer, scm_eval_3,
1258 scm_eval2, root_module_lookup_closure, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
1259 SCM_RWSTRINGP, scm_read_only_string_p, scm_make_shared_substring,
1260 scm_tc7_substring, sym_huh, SCM_VARVCELL, SCM_UDVARIABLEP,
1261 SCM_DEFVARIABLEP, scm_mkbig, scm_big2inum, scm_adjbig, scm_normbig,
1262 scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl, SCM_FIXNUM_BIT,
1263 SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_SLOPPY_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET,
1264 SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_ROLENGTH,
1265 SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
1266 scm_sym2vcell, scm_intern, scm_intern0, scm_sysintern, scm_sysintern0,
1267 scm_sysintern0_no_module_lookup, scm_init_symbols_deprecated,
1268 scm_vector_set_length_x, scm_contregs, scm_debug_info,
1269 scm_debug_frame, SCM_DSIDEVAL, SCM_CONST_LONG, SCM_VCELL,
1270 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL, SCM_VCELL_INIT, SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL_INIT,
1271 SCM_HUGE_LENGTH, SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING,
1272 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY, SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY,
1273 SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, DIGITS, scm_small_istr2int, scm_istr2int,
1274 scm_istr2flo, scm_istring2number, scm_istr2int, scm_istr2flo,
1275 scm_istring2number, scm_vtable_index_vcell, scm_si_vcell, SCM_ECONSP,
1276 SCM_NECONSP, SCM_GLOC_VAR, SCM_GLOC_VAL, SCM_GLOC_SET_VAL,
1277 SCM_GLOC_VAL_LOC, scm_make_gloc, scm_gloc_p, scm_tc16_variable,
1278 SCM_CHARS, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH.
1280 * Changes to bundled modules
1284 Using the (ice-9 debug) module no longer automatically switches Guile
1285 to use the debugging evaluator. If you want to switch to the
1286 debugging evaluator (which is needed for backtrace information if you
1287 hit an error), please add an explicit "(debug-enable 'debug)" to your
1288 code just after the code to use (ice-9 debug).
1291 Changes since Guile 1.4:
1293 * Changes to the distribution
1295 ** A top-level TODO file is included.
1297 ** Guile now uses a versioning scheme similar to that of the Linux kernel.
1299 Guile now always uses three numbers to represent the version,
1300 i.e. "1.6.5". The first number, 1, is the major version number, the
1301 second number, 6, is the minor version number, and the third number,
1302 5, is the micro version number. Changes in major version number
1303 indicate major changes in Guile.
1305 Minor version numbers that are even denote stable releases, and odd
1306 minor version numbers denote development versions (which may be
1307 unstable). The micro version number indicates a minor sub-revision of
1308 a given MAJOR.MINOR release.
1310 In keeping with the new scheme, (minor-version) and scm_minor_version
1311 no longer return everything but the major version number. They now
1312 just return the minor version number. Two new functions
1313 (micro-version) and scm_micro_version have been added to report the
1314 micro version number.
1316 In addition, ./GUILE-VERSION now defines GUILE_MICRO_VERSION.
1318 ** New preprocessor definitions are available for checking versions.
1320 version.h now #defines SCM_MAJOR_VERSION, SCM_MINOR_VERSION, and
1321 SCM_MICRO_VERSION to the appropriate integer values.
1323 ** Guile now actively warns about deprecated features.
1325 The new configure option `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' and the
1326 environment variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED control this mechanism.
1327 See INSTALL and README for more information.
1329 ** Guile is much more likely to work on 64-bit architectures.
1331 Guile now compiles and passes "make check" with only two UNRESOLVED GC
1332 cases on Alpha and ia64 based machines now. Thanks to John Goerzen
1333 for the use of a test machine, and thanks to Stefan Jahn for ia64
1336 ** New functions: setitimer and getitimer.
1338 These implement a fairly direct interface to the libc functions of the
1341 ** The #. reader extension is now disabled by default.
1343 For safety reasons, #. evaluation is disabled by default. To
1344 re-enable it, set the fluid read-eval? to #t. For example:
1346 (fluid-set! read-eval? #t)
1348 but make sure you realize the potential security risks involved. With
1349 read-eval? enabled, reading a data file from an untrusted source can
1352 ** New SRFI modules have been added:
1354 SRFI-0 `cond-expand' is now supported in Guile, without requiring
1357 (srfi srfi-1) is a library containing many useful pair- and list-processing
1360 (srfi srfi-2) exports and-let*.
1362 (srfi srfi-4) implements homogeneous numeric vector datatypes.
1364 (srfi srfi-6) is a dummy module for now, since guile already provides
1365 all of the srfi-6 procedures by default: open-input-string,
1366 open-output-string, get-output-string.
1368 (srfi srfi-8) exports receive.
1370 (srfi srfi-9) exports define-record-type.
1372 (srfi srfi-10) exports define-reader-ctor and implements the reader
1375 (srfi srfi-11) exports let-values and let*-values.
1377 (srfi srfi-13) implements the SRFI String Library.
1379 (srfi srfi-14) implements the SRFI Character-Set Library.
1381 (srfi srfi-17) implements setter and getter-with-setter and redefines
1382 some accessor procedures as procedures with getters. (such as car,
1383 cdr, vector-ref etc.)
1385 (srfi srfi-19) implements the SRFI Time/Date Library.
1387 ** New scripts / "executable modules"
1389 Subdirectory "scripts" contains Scheme modules that are packaged to
1390 also be executable as scripts. At this time, these scripts are available:
1399 See README there for more info.
1401 These scripts can be invoked from the shell with the new program
1402 "guile-tools", which keeps track of installation directory for you.
1405 $ guile-tools display-commentary srfi/*.scm
1407 guile-tools is copied to the standard $bindir on "make install".
1409 ** New module (ice-9 stack-catch):
1411 stack-catch is like catch, but saves the current state of the stack in
1412 the fluid the-last-stack. This fluid can be useful when using the
1413 debugger and when re-throwing an error.
1415 ** The module (ice-9 and-let*) has been renamed to (ice-9 and-let-star)
1417 This has been done to prevent problems on lesser operating systems
1418 that can't tolerate `*'s in file names. The exported macro continues
1419 to be named `and-let*', of course.
1421 On systems that support it, there is also a compatibility module named
1422 (ice-9 and-let*). It will go away in the next release.
1424 ** New modules (oop goops) etc.:
1427 (oop goops describe)
1429 (oop goops active-slot)
1430 (oop goops composite-slot)
1432 The Guile Object Oriented Programming System (GOOPS) has been
1433 integrated into Guile. For further information, consult the GOOPS
1434 manual and tutorial in the `doc' directory.
1436 ** New module (ice-9 rdelim).
1438 This exports the following procedures which were previously defined
1439 in the default environment:
1441 read-line read-line! read-delimited read-delimited! %read-delimited!
1442 %read-line write-line
1444 For backwards compatibility the definitions are still imported into the
1445 default environment in this version of Guile. However you should add:
1447 (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim))
1449 to any program which uses the definitions, since this may change in
1452 Alternatively, if guile-scsh is installed, the (scsh rdelim) module
1453 can be used for similar functionality.
1455 ** New module (ice-9 rw)
1457 This is a subset of the (scsh rw) module from guile-scsh. Currently
1458 it defines two procedures:
1460 *** New function: read-string!/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
1462 Read characters from a port or file descriptor into a string STR.
1463 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
1464 fport. This procedure is scsh-compatible and can efficiently read
1467 *** New function: write-string/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
1469 Write characters from a string STR to a port or file descriptor.
1470 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
1471 fport. This procedure is mostly compatible and can efficiently
1472 write large strings.
1474 ** New module (ice-9 match)
1476 This module includes Andrew K. Wright's pattern matcher. See
1477 ice-9/match.scm for brief description or
1479 http://www.star-lab.com/wright/code.html
1481 for complete documentation.
1483 ** New module (ice-9 buffered-input)
1485 This module provides procedures to construct an input port from an
1486 underlying source of input that reads and returns its input in chunks.
1487 The underlying input source is a Scheme procedure, specified by the
1488 caller, which the port invokes whenever it needs more input.
1490 This is useful when building an input port whose back end is Readline
1491 or a UI element such as the GtkEntry widget.
1495 The reference and tutorial documentation that was previously
1496 distributed separately, as `guile-doc', is now included in the core
1497 Guile distribution. The documentation consists of the following
1500 - The Guile Tutorial (guile-tut.texi) contains a tutorial introduction
1503 - The Guile Reference Manual (guile.texi) contains (or is intended to
1504 contain) reference documentation on all aspects of Guile.
1506 - The GOOPS Manual (goops.texi) contains both tutorial-style and
1507 reference documentation for using GOOPS, Guile's Object Oriented
1510 - The Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
1513 See the README file in the `doc' directory for more details.
1515 ** There are a couple of examples in the examples/ directory now.
1517 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
1519 ** New command line option `--use-srfi'
1521 Using this option, SRFI modules can be loaded on startup and be
1522 available right from the beginning. This makes programming portable
1523 Scheme programs easier.
1525 The option `--use-srfi' expects a comma-separated list of numbers,
1526 each representing a SRFI number to be loaded into the interpreter
1527 before starting evaluating a script file or the REPL. Additionally,
1528 the feature identifier for the loaded SRFIs is recognized by
1529 `cond-expand' when using this option.
1532 $ guile --use-srfi=8,13
1533 guile> (receive (x z) (values 1 2) (+ 1 2))
1535 guile> (string-pad "bla" 20)
1538 ** Guile now always starts up in the `(guile-user)' module.
1540 Previously, scripts executed via the `-s' option would run in the
1541 `(guile)' module and the repl would run in the `(guile-user)' module.
1542 Now every user action takes place in the `(guile-user)' module by
1545 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
1547 ** Character classifiers work for non-ASCII characters.
1549 The predicates `char-alphabetic?', `char-numeric?',
1550 `char-whitespace?', `char-lower?', `char-upper?' and `char-is-both?'
1551 no longer check whether their arguments are ASCII characters.
1552 Previously, a character would only be considered alphabetic when it
1553 was also ASCII, for example.
1555 ** Previously deprecated Scheme functions have been removed:
1557 tag - no replacement.
1558 fseek - replaced by seek.
1559 list* - replaced by cons*.
1561 ** It's now possible to create modules with controlled environments
1565 (use-modules (ice-9 safe))
1566 (define m (make-safe-module))
1567 ;;; m will now be a module containing only a safe subset of R5RS
1568 (eval '(+ 1 2) m) --> 3
1569 (eval 'load m) --> ERROR: Unbound variable: load
1571 ** Evaluation of "()", the empty list, is now an error.
1573 Previously, the expression "()" evaluated to the empty list. This has
1574 been changed to signal a "missing expression" error. The correct way
1575 to write the empty list as a literal constant is to use quote: "'()".
1577 ** New concept of `Guile Extensions'.
1579 A Guile Extension is just a ordinary shared library that can be linked
1580 at run-time. We found it advantageous to give this simple concept a
1581 dedicated name to distinguish the issues related to shared libraries
1582 from the issues related to the module system.
1584 *** New function: load-extension
1586 Executing (load-extension lib init) is mostly equivalent to
1588 (dynamic-call init (dynamic-link lib))
1590 except when scm_register_extension has been called previously.
1591 Whenever appropriate, you should use `load-extension' instead of
1592 dynamic-link and dynamic-call.
1594 *** New C function: scm_c_register_extension
1596 This function registers a initialization function for use by
1597 `load-extension'. Use it when you don't want specific extensions to
1598 be loaded as shared libraries (for example on platforms that don't
1599 support dynamic linking).
1601 ** Auto-loading of compiled-code modules is deprecated.
1603 Guile used to be able to automatically find and link a shared
1604 library to satisfy requests for a module. For example, the module
1605 `(foo bar)' could be implemented by placing a shared library named
1606 "foo/libbar.so" (or with a different extension) in a directory on the
1609 This has been found to be too tricky, and is no longer supported. The
1610 shared libraries are now called "extensions". You should now write a
1611 small Scheme file that calls `load-extension' to load the shared
1612 library and initialize it explicitly.
1614 The shared libraries themselves should be installed in the usual
1615 places for shared libraries, with names like "libguile-foo-bar".
1617 For example, place this into a file "foo/bar.scm"
1619 (define-module (foo bar))
1621 (load-extension "libguile-foo-bar" "foobar_init")
1623 ** Backward incompatible change: eval EXP ENVIRONMENT-SPECIFIER
1625 `eval' is now R5RS, that is it takes two arguments.
1626 The second argument is an environment specifier, i.e. either
1628 (scheme-report-environment 5)
1629 (null-environment 5)
1630 (interaction-environment)
1636 ** The module system has been made more disciplined.
1638 The function `eval' will save and restore the current module around
1639 the evaluation of the specified expression. While this expression is
1640 evaluated, `(current-module)' will now return the right module, which
1641 is the module specified as the second argument to `eval'.
1643 A consequence of this change is that `eval' is not particularly
1644 useful when you want allow the evaluated code to change what module is
1645 designated as the current module and have this change persist from one
1646 call to `eval' to the next. The read-eval-print-loop is an example
1647 where `eval' is now inadequate. To compensate, there is a new
1648 function `primitive-eval' that does not take a module specifier and
1649 that does not save/restore the current module. You should use this
1650 function together with `set-current-module', `current-module', etc
1651 when you want to have more control over the state that is carried from
1652 one eval to the next.
1654 Additionally, it has been made sure that forms that are evaluated at
1655 the top level are always evaluated with respect to the current module.
1656 Previously, subforms of top-level forms such as `begin', `case',
1657 etc. did not respect changes to the current module although these
1658 subforms are at the top-level as well.
1660 To prevent strange behavior, the forms `define-module',
1661 `use-modules', `use-syntax', and `export' have been restricted to only
1662 work on the top level. The forms `define-public' and
1663 `defmacro-public' only export the new binding on the top level. They
1664 behave just like `define' and `defmacro', respectively, when they are
1665 used in a lexical environment.
1667 Also, `export' will no longer silently re-export bindings imported
1668 from a used module. It will emit a `deprecation' warning and will
1669 cease to perform any re-export in the next version. If you actually
1670 want to re-export bindings, use the new `re-export' in place of
1671 `export'. The new `re-export' will not make copies of variables when
1672 rexporting them, as `export' did wrongly.
1674 ** Module system now allows selection and renaming of imported bindings
1676 Previously, when using `use-modules' or the `#:use-module' clause in
1677 the `define-module' form, all the bindings (association of symbols to
1678 values) for imported modules were added to the "current module" on an
1679 as-is basis. This has been changed to allow finer control through two
1680 new facilities: selection and renaming.
1682 You can now select which of the imported module's bindings are to be
1683 visible in the current module by using the `:select' clause. This
1684 clause also can be used to rename individual bindings. For example:
1686 ;; import all bindings no questions asked
1687 (use-modules (ice-9 common-list))
1689 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them;
1690 ;; the current module sees: every some zonk-y zonk-n
1691 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1693 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1694 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))))
1696 You can also programmatically rename all selected bindings using the
1697 `:renamer' clause, which specifies a proc that takes a symbol and
1698 returns another symbol. Because it is common practice to use a prefix,
1699 we now provide the convenience procedure `symbol-prefix-proc'. For
1702 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
1703 ;; and all four w/ prefix "CL:";
1704 ;; the current module sees: CL:every CL:some CL:zonk-y CL:zonk-n
1705 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1707 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1708 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
1709 :renamer (symbol-prefix-proc 'CL:)))
1711 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
1712 ;; and all four by upcasing.
1713 ;; the current module sees: EVERY SOME ZONK-Y ZONK-N
1714 (define (upcase-symbol sym)
1715 (string->symbol (string-upcase (symbol->string sym))))
1717 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1719 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1720 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
1721 :renamer upcase-symbol))
1723 Note that programmatic renaming is done *after* individual renaming.
1724 Also, the above examples show `use-modules', but the same facilities are
1725 available for the `#:use-module' clause of `define-module'.
1727 See manual for more info.
1729 ** The semantics of guardians have changed.
1731 The changes are for the most part compatible. An important criterion
1732 was to keep the typical usage of guardians as simple as before, but to
1733 make the semantics safer and (as a result) more useful.
1735 *** All objects returned from guardians are now properly alive.
1737 It is now guaranteed that any object referenced by an object returned
1738 from a guardian is alive. It's now impossible for a guardian to
1739 return a "contained" object before its "containing" object.
1741 One incompatible (but probably not very important) change resulting
1742 from this is that it is no longer possible to guard objects that
1743 indirectly reference themselves (i.e. are parts of cycles). If you do
1744 so accidentally, you'll get a warning.
1746 *** There are now two types of guardians: greedy and sharing.
1748 If you call (make-guardian #t) or just (make-guardian), you'll get a
1749 greedy guardian, and for (make-guardian #f) a sharing guardian.
1751 Greedy guardians are the default because they are more "defensive".
1752 You can only greedily guard an object once. If you guard an object
1753 more than once, once in a greedy guardian and the rest of times in
1754 sharing guardians, then it is guaranteed that the object won't be
1755 returned from sharing guardians as long as it is greedily guarded
1758 Guardians returned by calls to `make-guardian' can now take one more
1759 optional parameter, which says whether to throw an error in case an
1760 attempt is made to greedily guard an object that is already greedily
1761 guarded. The default is true, i.e. throw an error. If the parameter
1762 is false, the guardian invocation returns #t if guarding was
1763 successful and #f if it wasn't.
1765 Also, since greedy guarding is, in effect, a side-effecting operation
1766 on objects, a new function is introduced: `destroy-guardian!'.
1767 Invoking this function on a guardian renders it unoperative and, if
1768 the guardian is greedy, clears the "greedily guarded" property of the
1769 objects that were guarded by it, thus undoing the side effect.
1771 Note that all this hair is hardly very important, since guardian
1772 objects are usually permanent.
1774 ** Continuations created by call-with-current-continuation now accept
1775 any number of arguments, as required by R5RS.
1777 ** New function `issue-deprecation-warning'
1779 This function is used to display the deprecation messages that are
1780 controlled by GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION as explained in the README.
1783 (issue-deprecation-warning "`id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.")
1787 ;; `id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.
1792 ** New syntax `begin-deprecated'
1794 When deprecated features are included (as determined by the configure
1795 option --enable-deprecated), `begin-deprecated' is identical to
1796 `begin'. When deprecated features are excluded, it always evaluates
1797 to `#f', ignoring the body forms.
1799 ** New function `make-object-property'
1801 This function returns a new `procedure with setter' P that can be used
1802 to attach a property to objects. When calling P as
1806 where `obj' is any kind of object, it attaches `val' to `obj' in such
1807 a way that it can be retrieved by calling P as
1811 This function will replace procedure properties, symbol properties and
1812 source properties eventually.
1814 ** Module (ice-9 optargs) now uses keywords instead of `#&'.
1816 Instead of #&optional, #&key, etc you should now use #:optional,
1817 #:key, etc. Since #:optional is a keyword, you can write it as just
1818 :optional when (read-set! keywords 'prefix) is active.
1820 The old reader syntax `#&' is still supported, but deprecated. It
1821 will be removed in the next release.
1823 ** New define-module option: pure
1825 Tells the module system not to include any bindings from the root
1830 (define-module (totally-empty-module)
1833 ** New define-module option: export NAME1 ...
1835 Export names NAME1 ...
1837 This option is required if you want to be able to export bindings from
1838 a module which doesn't import one of `define-public' or `export'.
1842 (define-module (foo)
1844 :use-module (ice-9 r5rs)
1847 ;;; Note that we're pure R5RS below this point!
1852 ** New function: object->string OBJ
1854 Return a Scheme string obtained by printing a given object.
1856 ** New function: port? X
1858 Returns a boolean indicating whether X is a port. Equivalent to
1859 `(or (input-port? X) (output-port? X))'.
1861 ** New function: file-port?
1863 Determines whether a given object is a port that is related to a file.
1865 ** New function: port-for-each proc
1867 Apply PROC to each port in the Guile port table in turn. The return
1868 value is unspecified. More specifically, PROC is applied exactly once
1869 to every port that exists in the system at the time PORT-FOR-EACH is
1870 invoked. Changes to the port table while PORT-FOR-EACH is running
1871 have no effect as far as PORT-FOR-EACH is concerned.
1873 ** New function: dup2 oldfd newfd
1875 A simple wrapper for the `dup2' system call. Copies the file
1876 descriptor OLDFD to descriptor number NEWFD, replacing the
1877 previous meaning of NEWFD. Both OLDFD and NEWFD must be integers.
1878 Unlike for dup->fdes or primitive-move->fdes, no attempt is made
1879 to move away ports which are using NEWFD. The return value is
1882 ** New function: close-fdes fd
1884 A simple wrapper for the `close' system call. Close file
1885 descriptor FD, which must be an integer. Unlike close (*note
1886 close: Ports and File Descriptors.), the file descriptor will be
1887 closed even if a port is using it. The return value is
1890 ** New function: crypt password salt
1892 Encrypts `password' using the standard unix password encryption
1895 ** New function: chroot path
1897 Change the root directory of the running process to `path'.
1899 ** New functions: getlogin, cuserid
1901 Return the login name or the user name of the current effective user
1904 ** New functions: getpriority which who, setpriority which who prio
1906 Get or set the priority of the running process.
1908 ** New function: getpass prompt
1910 Read a password from the terminal, first displaying `prompt' and
1913 ** New function: flock file operation
1915 Set/remove an advisory shared or exclusive lock on `file'.
1917 ** New functions: sethostname name, gethostname
1919 Set or get the hostname of the machine the current process is running
1922 ** New function: mkstemp! tmpl
1924 mkstemp creates a new unique file in the file system and returns a
1925 new buffered port open for reading and writing to the file. TMPL
1926 is a string specifying where the file should be created: it must
1927 end with `XXXXXX' and will be changed in place to return the name
1928 of the temporary file.
1930 ** New function: open-input-string string
1932 Return an input string port which delivers the characters from
1933 `string'. This procedure, together with `open-output-string' and
1934 `get-output-string' implements SRFI-6.
1936 ** New function: open-output-string
1938 Return an output string port which collects all data written to it.
1939 The data can then be retrieved by `get-output-string'.
1941 ** New function: get-output-string
1943 Return the contents of an output string port.
1945 ** New function: identity
1947 Return the argument.
1949 ** socket, connect, accept etc., now have support for IPv6. IPv6 addresses
1950 are represented in Scheme as integers with normal host byte ordering.
1952 ** New function: inet-pton family address
1954 Convert a printable string network address into an integer. Note that
1955 unlike the C version of this function, the result is an integer with
1956 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
1959 (inet-pton AF_INET "127.0.0.1") => 2130706433
1960 (inet-pton AF_INET6 "::1") => 1
1962 ** New function: inet-ntop family address
1964 Convert an integer network address into a printable string. Note that
1965 unlike the C version of this function, the input is an integer with
1966 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
1969 (inet-ntop AF_INET 2130706433) => "127.0.0.1"
1970 (inet-ntop AF_INET6 (- (expt 2 128) 1)) =>
1971 ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
1975 Use `identity' instead.
1981 ** Deprecated: return-it
1985 ** Deprecated: string-character-length
1987 Use `string-length' instead.
1989 ** Deprecated: flags
1991 Use `logior' instead.
1993 ** Deprecated: close-all-ports-except.
1995 This was intended for closing ports in a child process after a fork,
1996 but it has the undesirable side effect of flushing buffers.
1997 port-for-each is more flexible.
1999 ** The (ice-9 popen) module now attempts to set up file descriptors in
2000 the child process from the current Scheme ports, instead of using the
2001 current values of file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 in the parent process.
2003 ** Removed function: builtin-weak-bindings
2005 There is no such concept as a weak binding any more.
2007 ** Removed constants: bignum-radix, scm-line-incrementors
2009 ** define-method: New syntax mandatory.
2011 The new method syntax is now mandatory:
2013 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ...) BODY ...)
2014 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ... . REST-ARG) BODY ...)
2016 ARG-SPEC ::= ARG-NAME | (ARG-NAME TYPE)
2017 REST-ARG ::= ARG-NAME
2019 If you have old code using the old syntax, import
2020 (oop goops old-define-method) before (oop goops) as in:
2022 (use-modules (oop goops old-define-method) (oop goops))
2024 ** Deprecated function: builtin-variable
2025 Removed function: builtin-bindings
2027 There is no longer a distinction between builtin or other variables.
2028 Use module system operations for all variables.
2030 ** Lazy-catch handlers are no longer allowed to return.
2032 That is, a call to `throw', `error', etc is now guaranteed to not
2035 ** Bugfixes for (ice-9 getopt-long)
2037 This module is now tested using test-suite/tests/getopt-long.test.
2038 The following bugs have been fixed:
2040 *** Parsing for options that are specified to have `optional' args now checks
2041 if the next element is an option instead of unconditionally taking it as the
2044 *** An error is now thrown for `--opt=val' when the option description
2045 does not specify `(value #t)' or `(value optional)'. This condition used to
2046 be accepted w/o error, contrary to the documentation.
2048 *** The error message for unrecognized options is now more informative.
2049 It used to be "not a record", an artifact of the implementation.
2051 *** The error message for `--opt' terminating the arg list (no value), when
2052 `(value #t)' is specified, is now more informative. It used to be "not enough
2055 *** "Clumped" single-char args now preserve trailing string, use it as arg.
2056 The expansion used to be like so:
2058 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "--xyz")
2060 Note that the "5d" is dropped. Now it is like so:
2062 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "5d" "--xyz")
2064 This enables single-char options to have adjoining arguments as long as their
2065 constituent characters are not potential single-char options.
2067 ** (ice-9 session) procedure `arity' now works with (ice-9 optargs) `lambda*'
2069 The `lambda*' and derivative forms in (ice-9 optargs) now set a procedure
2070 property `arglist', which can be retrieved by `arity'. The result is that
2071 `arity' can give more detailed information than before:
2075 guile> (use-modules (ice-9 optargs))
2076 guile> (define* (foo #:optional a b c) a)
2078 0 or more arguments in `lambda*:G0'.
2083 3 optional arguments: `a', `b' and `c'.
2084 guile> (define* (bar a b #:key c d #:allow-other-keys) a)
2086 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 2 keyword arguments: `c'
2087 and `d', other keywords allowed.
2088 guile> (define* (baz a b #:optional c #:rest r) a)
2090 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 1 optional argument: `c',
2093 * Changes to the C interface
2095 ** Types have been renamed from scm_*_t to scm_t_*.
2097 This has been done for POSIX sake. It reserves identifiers ending
2098 with "_t". What a concept.
2100 The old names are still available with status `deprecated'.
2102 ** scm_t_bits (former scm_bits_t) is now a unsigned type.
2104 ** Deprecated features have been removed.
2108 SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP SCM_ICHRP, SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR
2109 SCM_SETJMPBUF SCM_NSTRINGP SCM_NRWSTRINGP SCM_NVECTORP SCM_DOUBLE_CELLP
2111 *** C Functions removed
2113 scm_sysmissing scm_tag scm_tc16_flo scm_tc_flo
2114 scm_fseek - replaced by scm_seek.
2115 gc-thunk - replaced by after-gc-hook.
2116 gh_int2scmb - replaced by gh_bool2scm.
2117 scm_tc_dblr - replaced by scm_tc16_real.
2118 scm_tc_dblc - replaced by scm_tc16_complex.
2119 scm_list_star - replaced by scm_cons_star.
2121 ** Deprecated: scm_makfromstr
2123 Use scm_mem2string instead.
2125 ** Deprecated: scm_make_shared_substring
2127 Explicit shared substrings will disappear from Guile.
2129 Instead, "normal" strings will be implemented using sharing
2130 internally, combined with a copy-on-write strategy.
2132 ** Deprecated: scm_read_only_string_p
2134 The concept of read-only strings will disappear in next release of
2137 ** Deprecated: scm_sloppy_memq, scm_sloppy_memv, scm_sloppy_member
2139 Instead, use scm_c_memq or scm_memq, scm_memv, scm_member.
2141 ** New functions: scm_call_0, scm_call_1, scm_call_2, scm_call_3
2143 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments. See "Fly
2144 Evaluation" in the manual.
2146 ** New functions: scm_apply_0, scm_apply_1, scm_apply_2, scm_apply_3
2148 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments and a list of
2149 further arguments. See "Fly Evaluation" in the manual.
2151 ** New functions: scm_list_1, scm_list_2, scm_list_3, scm_list_4, scm_list_5
2153 Create a list of the given number of elements. See "List
2154 Constructors" in the manual.
2156 ** Renamed function: scm_listify has been replaced by scm_list_n.
2158 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_LIST0, SCM_LIST1, SCM_LIST2, SCM_LIST3, SCM_LIST4,
2159 SCM_LIST5, SCM_LIST6, SCM_LIST7, SCM_LIST8, SCM_LIST9.
2161 Use functions scm_list_N instead.
2163 ** New function: scm_c_read (SCM port, void *buffer, scm_sizet size)
2165 Used by an application to read arbitrary number of bytes from a port.
2166 Same semantics as libc read, except that scm_c_read only returns less
2167 than SIZE bytes if at end-of-file.
2169 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
2171 ** New function: scm_c_write (SCM port, const void *ptr, scm_sizet size)
2173 Used by an application to write arbitrary number of bytes to an SCM
2174 port. Similar semantics as libc write. However, unlike libc
2175 write, scm_c_write writes the requested number of bytes and has no
2178 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
2180 ** New function: scm_init_guile ()
2182 In contrast to scm_boot_guile, scm_init_guile will return normally
2183 after initializing Guile. It is not available on all systems, tho.
2185 ** New functions: scm_str2symbol, scm_mem2symbol
2187 The function scm_str2symbol takes a const char* pointing to a zero-terminated
2188 field of characters and creates a scheme symbol object from that C string.
2189 The function scm_mem2symbol takes a const char* and a number of characters and
2190 creates a symbol from the characters in that memory area.
2192 ** New functions: scm_primitive_make_property
2193 scm_primitive_property_ref
2194 scm_primitive_property_set_x
2195 scm_primitive_property_del_x
2197 These functions implement a new way to deal with object properties.
2198 See libguile/properties.c for their documentation.
2200 ** New function: scm_done_free (long size)
2202 This function is the inverse of scm_done_malloc. Use it to report the
2203 amount of smob memory you free. The previous method, which involved
2204 calling scm_done_malloc with negative argument, was somewhat
2205 unintuitive (and is still available, of course).
2207 ** New function: scm_c_memq (SCM obj, SCM list)
2209 This function provides a fast C level alternative for scm_memq for the case
2210 that the list parameter is known to be a proper list. The function is a
2211 replacement for scm_sloppy_memq, but is stricter in its requirements on its
2212 list input parameter, since for anything else but a proper list the function's
2213 behaviour is undefined - it may even crash or loop endlessly. Further, for
2214 the case that the object is not found in the list, scm_c_memq returns #f which
2215 is similar to scm_memq, but different from scm_sloppy_memq's behaviour.
2217 ** New functions: scm_remember_upto_here_1, scm_remember_upto_here_2,
2218 scm_remember_upto_here
2220 These functions replace the function scm_remember.
2222 ** Deprecated function: scm_remember
2224 Use one of the new functions scm_remember_upto_here_1,
2225 scm_remember_upto_here_2 or scm_remember_upto_here instead.
2227 ** New function: scm_allocate_string
2229 This function replaces the function scm_makstr.
2231 ** Deprecated function: scm_makstr
2233 Use the new function scm_allocate_string instead.
2235 ** New global variable scm_gc_running_p introduced.
2237 Use this variable to find out if garbage collection is being executed. Up to
2238 now applications have used scm_gc_heap_lock to test if garbage collection was
2239 running, which also works because of the fact that up to know only the garbage
2240 collector has set this variable. But, this is an implementation detail that
2241 may change. Further, scm_gc_heap_lock is not set throughout gc, thus the use
2242 of this variable is (and has been) not fully safe anyway.
2244 ** New macros: SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH
2246 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
2248 ** New macros: SCM_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_CCLO_LENGTH, SCM_STACK_LENGTH,
2249 SCM_STRING_LENGTH, SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
2250 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH.
2252 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH.
2254 ** New macros: SCM_SET_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH,
2255 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
2256 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH
2258 Use these instead of SCM_SETLENGTH
2260 ** New macros: SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_CCLO_BASE,
2261 SCM_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_COMPLEX_MEM,
2264 Use these instead of SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS, SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS or
2267 ** New macros: SCM_SET_BIGNUM_BASE, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS,
2268 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE,
2271 Use these instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
2273 ** New macro: SCM_BITVECTOR_P
2275 ** New macro: SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X
2277 Use instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
2279 ** New macros: SCM_DIR_OPEN_P, SCM_DIR_FLAG_OPEN
2281 For directory objects, use these instead of SCM_OPDIRP and SCM_OPN.
2283 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_OUTOFRANGE, SCM_NALLOC, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL,
2284 SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL,
2285 SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD,
2286 SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS, SCM_SYMBOL_SLOTS, SCM_SLOTS, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
2287 SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_FREEP, SCM_NFREEP, SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS,
2288 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY,
2289 SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_HUGE_LENGTH,
2290 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
2291 SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_RWSTRINGP, SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, SCM_ROCHARS,
2292 SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_GC8MARKP,
2293 SCM_SETGC8MARK, SCM_CLRGC8MARK, SCM_GCTYP16, SCM_GCCDR, SCM_SUBR_DOC,
2294 SCM_OPDIRP, SCM_VALIDATE_OPDIR, SCM_WTA, RETURN_SCM_WTA, SCM_CONST_LONG,
2295 SCM_WNA, SCM_FUNC_NAME, SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_COPY,
2296 SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_DEF_COPY, SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP, SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP,
2297 SCM_SETAND_CDR, SCM_SETOR_CDR, SCM_SETAND_CAR, SCM_SETOR_CAR
2299 Use SCM_ASSERT_RANGE or SCM_VALIDATE_XXX_RANGE instead of SCM_OUTOFRANGE.
2300 Use scm_memory_error instead of SCM_NALLOC.
2301 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP.
2302 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR.
2303 Use SCM_FREE_CELL_P instead of SCM_FREEP/SCM_NFREEP
2304 Use a type specific accessor macro instead of SCM_CHARS/SCM_UCHARS.
2305 Use a type specific accessor instead of SCM(_|_RO|_HUGE_)LENGTH.
2306 Use SCM_VALIDATE_(SYMBOL|STRING) instead of SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING.
2307 Use SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
2308 Use SCM_STRINGP or SCM_SYMBOLP instead of SCM_ROSTRINGP.
2309 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_RWSTRINGP.
2310 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING.
2311 Use SCM_STRING_CHARS instead of SCM_ROCHARS.
2312 Use SCM_STRING_UCHARS instead of SCM_ROUCHARS.
2313 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETLENGTH.
2314 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
2315 Use a type specific length macro instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
2316 Use SCM_GCMARKP instead of SCM_GC8MARKP.
2317 Use SCM_SETGCMARK instead of SCM_SETGC8MARK.
2318 Use SCM_CLRGCMARK instead of SCM_CLRGC8MARK.
2319 Use SCM_TYP16 instead of SCM_GCTYP16.
2320 Use SCM_CDR instead of SCM_GCCDR.
2321 Use SCM_DIR_OPEN_P instead of SCM_OPDIRP.
2322 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of SCM_WTA.
2323 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of RETURN_SCM_WTA.
2324 Use SCM_VCELL_INIT instead of SCM_CONST_LONG.
2325 Use SCM_WRONG_NUM_ARGS instead of SCM_WNA.
2326 Use SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP.
2327 Use !SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP.
2329 ** Removed function: scm_struct_init
2331 ** Removed variable: scm_symhash_dim
2333 ** Renamed function: scm_make_cont has been replaced by
2334 scm_make_continuation, which has a different interface.
2336 ** Deprecated function: scm_call_catching_errors
2338 Use scm_catch or scm_lazy_catch from throw.[ch] instead.
2340 ** Deprecated function: scm_strhash
2342 Use scm_string_hash instead.
2344 ** Deprecated function: scm_vector_set_length_x
2346 Instead, create a fresh vector of the desired size and copy the contents.
2348 ** scm_gensym has changed prototype
2350 scm_gensym now only takes one argument.
2352 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc7_ssymbol, scm_tc7_msymbol, scm_tcs_symbols,
2355 There is now only a single symbol type scm_tc7_symbol.
2356 The tag scm_tc7_lvector was not used anyway.
2358 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe, scm_set_smob_mfpe.
2360 Use scm_make_smob_type and scm_set_smob_XXX instead.
2362 ** New function scm_set_smob_apply.
2364 This can be used to set an apply function to a smob type.
2366 ** Deprecated function: scm_strprint_obj
2368 Use scm_object_to_string instead.
2370 ** Deprecated function: scm_wta
2372 Use scm_wrong_type_arg, or another appropriate error signalling function
2375 ** Explicit support for obarrays has been deprecated.
2377 Use `scm_str2symbol' and the generic hashtable functions instead.
2379 ** The concept of `vcells' has been deprecated.
2381 The data type `variable' is now used exclusively. `Vcells' have been
2382 a low-level concept so you are likely not affected by this change.
2384 *** Deprecated functions: scm_sym2vcell, scm_sysintern,
2385 scm_sysintern0, scm_symbol_value0, scm_intern, scm_intern0.
2387 Use scm_c_define or scm_c_lookup instead, as appropriate.
2389 *** New functions: scm_c_module_lookup, scm_c_lookup,
2390 scm_c_module_define, scm_c_define, scm_module_lookup, scm_lookup,
2391 scm_module_define, scm_define.
2393 These functions work with variables instead of with vcells.
2395 ** New functions for creating and defining `subr's and `gsubr's.
2397 The new functions more clearly distinguish between creating a subr (or
2398 gsubr) object and adding it to the current module.
2400 These new functions are available: scm_c_make_subr, scm_c_define_subr,
2401 scm_c_make_subr_with_generic, scm_c_define_subr_with_generic,
2402 scm_c_make_gsubr, scm_c_define_gsubr, scm_c_make_gsubr_with_generic,
2403 scm_c_define_gsubr_with_generic.
2405 ** Deprecated functions: scm_make_subr, scm_make_subr_opt,
2406 scm_make_subr_with_generic, scm_make_gsubr,
2407 scm_make_gsubr_with_generic.
2409 Use the new ones from above instead.
2411 ** C interface to the module system has changed.
2413 While we suggest that you avoid as many explicit module system
2414 operations from C as possible for the time being, the C interface has
2415 been made more similar to the high-level Scheme module system.
2417 *** New functions: scm_c_define_module, scm_c_use_module,
2418 scm_c_export, scm_c_resolve_module.
2420 They mostly work like their Scheme namesakes. scm_c_define_module
2421 takes a function that is called a context where the new module is
2424 *** Deprecated functions: scm_the_root_module, scm_make_module,
2425 scm_ensure_user_module, scm_load_scheme_module.
2427 Use the new functions instead.
2429 ** Renamed function: scm_internal_with_fluids becomes
2432 scm_internal_with_fluids is available as a deprecated function.
2434 ** New function: scm_c_with_fluid.
2436 Just like scm_c_with_fluids, but takes one fluid and one value instead
2439 ** Deprecated typedefs: long_long, ulong_long.
2441 They are of questionable utility and they pollute the global
2444 ** Deprecated typedef: scm_sizet
2446 It is of questionable utility now that Guile requires ANSI C, and is
2449 ** Deprecated typedefs: scm_port_rw_active, scm_port,
2450 scm_ptob_descriptor, scm_debug_info, scm_debug_frame, scm_fport,
2451 scm_option, scm_rstate, scm_rng, scm_array, scm_array_dim.
2453 Made more compliant with the naming policy by adding a _t at the end.
2455 ** Deprecated functions: scm_mkbig, scm_big2num, scm_adjbig,
2456 scm_normbig, scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl
2458 With the exception of the mysterious scm_2ulong2big, they are still
2459 available under new names (scm_i_mkbig etc). These functions are not
2460 intended to be used in user code. You should avoid dealing with
2461 bignums directly, and should deal with numbers in general (which can
2464 ** Change in behavior: scm_num2long, scm_num2ulong
2466 The scm_num2[u]long functions don't any longer accept an inexact
2467 argument. This change in behavior is motivated by concordance with
2468 R5RS: It is more common that a primitive doesn't want to accept an
2469 inexact for an exact.
2471 ** New functions: scm_short2num, scm_ushort2num, scm_int2num,
2472 scm_uint2num, scm_size2num, scm_ptrdiff2num, scm_num2short,
2473 scm_num2ushort, scm_num2int, scm_num2uint, scm_num2ptrdiff,
2476 These are conversion functions between the various ANSI C integral
2477 types and Scheme numbers. NOTE: The scm_num2xxx functions don't
2478 accept an inexact argument.
2480 ** New functions: scm_float2num, scm_double2num,
2481 scm_num2float, scm_num2double.
2483 These are conversion functions between the two ANSI C float types and
2486 ** New number validation macros:
2487 SCM_NUM2{SIZE,PTRDIFF,SHORT,USHORT,INT,UINT}[_DEF]
2491 ** New functions: scm_gc_protect_object, scm_gc_unprotect_object
2493 These are just nicer-named old scm_protect_object and
2494 scm_unprotect_object.
2496 ** Deprecated functions: scm_protect_object, scm_unprotect_object
2498 ** New functions: scm_gc_[un]register_root, scm_gc_[un]register_roots
2500 These functions can be used to register pointers to locations that
2503 ** Deprecated function: scm_create_hook.
2505 Its sins are: misleading name, non-modularity and lack of general
2509 Changes since Guile 1.3.4:
2511 * Changes to the distribution
2513 ** Trees from nightly snapshots and CVS now require you to run autogen.sh.
2515 We've changed the way we handle generated files in the Guile source
2516 repository. As a result, the procedure for building trees obtained
2517 from the nightly FTP snapshots or via CVS has changed:
2518 - You must have appropriate versions of autoconf, automake, and
2519 libtool installed on your system. See README for info on how to
2520 obtain these programs.
2521 - Before configuring the tree, you must first run the script
2522 `autogen.sh' at the top of the source tree.
2524 The Guile repository used to contain not only source files, written by
2525 humans, but also some generated files, like configure scripts and
2526 Makefile.in files. Even though the contents of these files could be
2527 derived mechanically from other files present, we thought it would
2528 make the tree easier to build if we checked them into CVS.
2530 However, this approach means that minor differences between
2531 developer's installed tools and habits affected the whole team.
2532 So we have removed the generated files from the repository, and
2533 added the autogen.sh script, which will reconstruct them
2537 ** configure now has experimental options to remove support for certain
2540 --disable-arrays omit array and uniform array support
2541 --disable-posix omit posix interfaces
2542 --disable-networking omit networking interfaces
2543 --disable-regex omit regular expression interfaces
2545 These are likely to become separate modules some day.
2547 ** New configure option --enable-debug-freelist
2549 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
2550 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
2552 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
2553 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
2555 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
2556 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
2558 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
2559 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can
2560 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
2561 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
2563 ** New configure option --enable-debug-malloc
2565 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
2569 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
2570 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
2572 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
2574 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
2575 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
2577 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
2578 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
2579 number of objects of that kind.
2581 ** All includes are now referenced relative to the root directory
2583 Since some users have had problems with mixups between Guile and
2584 system headers, we have decided to always refer to Guile headers via
2585 their parent directories. This essentially creates a "private name
2586 space" for Guile headers. This means that the compiler only is given
2587 -I options for the root build and root source directory.
2589 ** Header files kw.h and genio.h have been removed.
2591 ** The module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) has been removed.
2593 ** New module (ice-9 documentation)
2595 Implements the interface to documentation strings associated with
2598 ** New module (ice-9 time)
2600 Provides a macro `time', which displays execution time of a given form.
2602 ** New module (ice-9 history)
2604 Loading this module enables value history in the repl.
2606 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2608 ** New command line option --debug
2610 Start Guile with debugging evaluator and backtraces enabled.
2612 This is useful when debugging your .guile init file or scripts.
2614 ** New help facility
2616 Usage: (help NAME) gives documentation about objects named NAME (a symbol)
2617 (help REGEXP) ditto for objects with names matching REGEXP (a string)
2618 (help 'NAME) gives documentation for NAME, even if it is not an object
2619 (help ,EXPR) gives documentation for object returned by EXPR
2620 (help (my module)) gives module commentary for `(my module)'
2621 (help) gives this text
2623 `help' searches among bindings exported from loaded modules, while
2624 `apropos' searches among bindings visible from the "current" module.
2626 Examples: (help help)
2628 (help "output-string")
2630 ** `help' and `apropos' now prints full module names
2632 ** Dynamic linking now uses libltdl from the libtool package.
2634 The old system dependent code for doing dynamic linking has been
2635 replaced with calls to the libltdl functions which do all the hairy
2638 The major improvement is that you can now directly pass libtool
2639 library names like "libfoo.la" to `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-link'
2640 will be able to do the best shared library job you can get, via
2643 The way dynamic libraries are found has changed and is not really
2644 portable across platforms, probably. It is therefore recommended to
2645 use absolute filenames when possible.
2647 If you pass a filename without an extension to `dynamic-link', it will
2648 try a few appropriate ones. Thus, the most platform ignorant way is
2649 to specify a name like "libfoo", without any directories and
2652 ** Guile COOP threads are now compatible with LinuxThreads
2654 Previously, COOP threading wasn't possible in applications linked with
2655 Linux POSIX threads due to their use of the stack pointer to find the
2656 thread context. This has now been fixed with a workaround which uses
2657 the pthreads to allocate the stack.
2659 ** New primitives: `pkgdata-dir', `site-dir', `library-dir'
2661 ** Positions of erring expression in scripts
2663 With version 1.3.4, the location of the erring expression in Guile
2664 scipts is no longer automatically reported. (This should have been
2665 documented before the 1.3.4 release.)
2667 You can get this information by enabling recording of positions of
2668 source expressions and running the debugging evaluator. Put this at
2669 the top of your script (or in your "site" file):
2671 (read-enable 'positions)
2672 (debug-enable 'debug)
2674 ** Backtraces in scripts
2676 It is now possible to get backtraces in scripts.
2680 (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
2682 at the top of the script.
2684 (The first options enables the debugging evaluator.
2685 The second enables backtraces.)
2687 ** Part of module system symbol lookup now implemented in C
2689 The eval closure of most modules is now implemented in C. Since this
2690 was one of the bottlenecks for loading speed, Guile now loads code
2691 substantially faster than before.
2693 ** Attempting to get the value of an unbound variable now produces
2694 an exception with a key of 'unbound-variable instead of 'misc-error.
2696 ** The initial default output port is now unbuffered if it's using a
2697 tty device. Previously in this situation it was line-buffered.
2699 ** New hook: after-gc-hook
2701 after-gc-hook takes over the role of gc-thunk. This hook is run at
2702 the first SCM_TICK after a GC. (Thus, the code is run at the same
2703 point during evaluation as signal handlers.)
2705 Note that this hook should be used only for diagnostic and debugging
2706 purposes. It is not certain that it will continue to be well-defined
2707 when this hook is run in the future.
2709 C programmers: Note the new C level hooks scm_before_gc_c_hook,
2710 scm_before_sweep_c_hook, scm_after_gc_c_hook.
2712 ** Improvements to garbage collector
2714 Guile 1.4 has a new policy for triggering heap allocation and
2715 determining the sizes of heap segments. It fixes a number of problems
2718 1. The new policy can handle two separate pools of cells
2719 (2-word/4-word) better. (The old policy would run wild, allocating
2720 more and more memory for certain programs.)
2722 2. The old code would sometimes allocate far too much heap so that the
2723 Guile process became gigantic. The new code avoids this.
2725 3. The old code would sometimes allocate too little so that few cells
2726 were freed at GC so that, in turn, too much time was spent in GC.
2728 4. The old code would often trigger heap allocation several times in a
2729 row. (The new scheme predicts how large the segments needs to be
2730 in order not to need further allocation.)
2732 All in all, the new GC policy will make larger applications more
2735 The new GC scheme also is prepared for POSIX threading. Threads can
2736 allocate private pools of cells ("clusters") with just a single
2737 function call. Allocation of single cells from such a cluster can
2738 then proceed without any need of inter-thread synchronization.
2740 ** New environment variables controlling GC parameters
2742 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE Maximal segment size
2745 Allocation of 2-word cell heaps:
2747 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1 Size of initial heap segment in bytes
2750 GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1 Minimum number of freed cells at each
2751 GC in percent of total heap size
2754 Allocation of 4-word cell heaps
2755 (used for real numbers and misc other objects):
2757 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2
2759 (See entry "Way for application to customize GC parameters" under
2760 section "Changes to the scm_ interface" below.)
2762 ** Guile now implements reals using 4-word cells
2764 This speeds up computation with reals. (They were earlier allocated
2765 with `malloc'.) There is still some room for optimizations, however.
2767 ** Some further steps toward POSIX thread support have been taken
2769 *** Guile's critical sections (SCM_DEFER/ALLOW_INTS)
2770 don't have much effect any longer, and many of them will be removed in
2774 are only handled at the top of the evaluator loop, immediately after
2775 I/O, and in scm_equalp.
2777 *** The GC can allocate thread private pools of pairs.
2779 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2781 ** close-input-port and close-output-port are now R5RS
2783 These procedures have been turned into primitives and have R5RS behaviour.
2785 ** New procedure: simple-format PORT MESSAGE ARG1 ...
2787 (ice-9 boot) makes `format' an alias for `simple-format' until possibly
2788 extended by the more sophisticated version in (ice-9 format)
2790 (simple-format port message . args)
2791 Write MESSAGE to DESTINATION, defaulting to `current-output-port'.
2792 MESSAGE can contain ~A (was %s) and ~S (was %S) escapes. When printed,
2793 the escapes are replaced with corresponding members of ARGS:
2794 ~A formats using `display' and ~S formats using `write'.
2795 If DESTINATION is #t, then use the `current-output-port',
2796 if DESTINATION is #f, then return a string containing the formatted text.
2797 Does not add a trailing newline."
2799 ** string-ref: the second argument is no longer optional.
2801 ** string, list->string: no longer accept strings in their arguments,
2802 only characters, for compatibility with R5RS.
2804 ** New procedure: port-closed? PORT
2805 Returns #t if PORT is closed or #f if it is open.
2807 ** Deprecated: list*
2809 The list* functionality is now provided by cons* (SRFI-1 compliant)
2811 ** New procedure: cons* ARG1 ARG2 ... ARGn
2813 Like `list', but the last arg provides the tail of the constructed list,
2814 returning (cons ARG1 (cons ARG2 (cons ... ARGn))).
2816 Requires at least one argument. If given one argument, that argument
2817 is returned as result.
2819 This function is called `list*' in some other Schemes and in Common LISP.
2821 ** Removed deprecated: serial-map, serial-array-copy!, serial-array-map!
2823 ** New procedure: object-documentation OBJECT
2825 Returns the documentation string associated with OBJECT. The
2826 procedure uses a caching mechanism so that subsequent lookups are
2829 Exported by (ice-9 documentation).
2831 ** module-name now returns full names of modules
2833 Previously, only the last part of the name was returned (`session' for
2834 `(ice-9 session)'). Ex: `(ice-9 session)'.
2836 * Changes to the gh_ interface
2838 ** Deprecated: gh_int2scmb
2840 Use gh_bool2scm instead.
2842 * Changes to the scm_ interface
2844 ** Guile primitives now carry docstrings!
2846 Thanks to Greg Badros!
2848 ** Guile primitives are defined in a new way: SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
2850 Now Guile primitives are defined using the SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
2851 macros and must contain a docstring that is extracted into foo.doc using a new
2852 guile-doc-snarf script (that uses guile-doc-snarf.awk).
2854 However, a major overhaul of these macros is scheduled for the next release of
2857 ** Guile primitives use a new technique for validation of arguments
2859 SCM_VALIDATE_* macros are defined to ease the redundancy and improve
2860 the readability of argument checking.
2862 ** All (nearly?) K&R prototypes for functions replaced with ANSI C equivalents.
2864 ** New macros: SCM_PACK, SCM_UNPACK
2866 Compose/decompose an SCM value.
2868 The SCM type is now treated as an abstract data type and may be defined as a
2869 long, a void* or as a struct, depending on the architecture and compile time
2870 options. This makes it easier to find several types of bugs, for example when
2871 SCM values are treated as integers without conversion. Values of the SCM type
2872 should be treated as "atomic" values. These macros are used when
2873 composing/decomposing an SCM value, either because you want to access
2874 individual bits, or because you want to treat it as an integer value.
2876 E.g., in order to set bit 7 in an SCM value x, use the expression
2878 SCM_PACK (SCM_UNPACK (x) | 0x80)
2880 ** The name property of hooks is deprecated.
2881 Thus, the use of SCM_HOOK_NAME and scm_make_hook_with_name is deprecated.
2883 You can emulate this feature by using object properties.
2885 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP, SCM_CRDY, SCM_ICHRP,
2886 SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR, SCM_SETJMPBUF, SCM_NSTRINGP, SCM_NRWSTRINGP,
2889 These macros will be removed in a future release of Guile.
2891 ** The following types, functions and macros from numbers.h are deprecated:
2892 scm_dblproc, SCM_UNEGFIXABLE, SCM_FLOBUFLEN, SCM_INEXP, SCM_CPLXP, SCM_REAL,
2893 SCM_IMAG, SCM_REALPART, scm_makdbl, SCM_SINGP, SCM_NUM2DBL, SCM_NO_BIGDIG
2895 ** Port internals: the rw_random variable in the scm_port structure
2896 must be set to non-zero in any random access port. In recent Guile
2897 releases it was only set for bidirectional random-access ports.
2899 ** Port internals: the seek ptob procedure is now responsible for
2900 resetting the buffers if required. The change was made so that in the
2901 special case of reading the current position (i.e., seek p 0 SEEK_CUR)
2902 the fport and strport ptobs can avoid resetting the buffers,
2903 in particular to avoid discarding unread chars. An existing port
2904 type can be fixed by adding something like the following to the
2905 beginning of the ptob seek procedure:
2907 if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_READ)
2908 scm_end_input (object);
2909 else if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_WRITE)
2910 ptob->flush (object);
2912 although to actually avoid resetting the buffers and discard unread
2913 chars requires further hacking that depends on the characteristics
2916 ** Deprecated functions: scm_fseek, scm_tag
2918 These functions are no longer used and will be removed in a future version.
2920 ** The scm_sysmissing procedure is no longer used in libguile.
2921 Unless it turns out to be unexpectedly useful to somebody, it will be
2922 removed in a future version.
2924 ** The format of error message strings has changed
2926 The two C procedures: scm_display_error and scm_error, as well as the
2927 primitive `scm-error', now use scm_simple_format to do their work.
2928 This means that the message strings of all code must be updated to use
2929 ~A where %s was used before, and ~S where %S was used before.
2931 During the period when there still are a lot of old Guiles out there,
2932 you might want to support both old and new versions of Guile.
2934 There are basically two methods to achieve this. Both methods use
2937 AC_CHECK_FUNCS(scm_simple_format)
2939 in your configure.in.
2941 Method 1: Use the string concatenation features of ANSI C's
2946 #ifdef HAVE_SCM_SIMPLE_FORMAT
2952 Then represent each of your error messages using a preprocessor macro:
2954 #define E_SPIDER_ERROR "There's a spider in your " ## FMT_S ## "!!!"
2958 (define fmt-s (if (defined? 'simple-format) "~S" "%S"))
2959 (define make-message string-append)
2961 (define e-spider-error (make-message "There's a spider in your " fmt-s "!!!"))
2963 Method 2: Use the oldfmt function found in doc/oldfmt.c.
2967 scm_misc_error ("picnic", scm_c_oldfmt0 ("There's a spider in your ~S!!!"),
2972 (scm-error 'misc-error "picnic" (oldfmt "There's a spider in your ~S!!!")
2976 ** Deprecated: coop_mutex_init, coop_condition_variable_init
2978 Don't use the functions coop_mutex_init and
2979 coop_condition_variable_init. They will change.
2981 Use scm_mutex_init and scm_cond_init instead.
2983 ** New function: int scm_cond_timedwait (scm_cond_t *COND, scm_mutex_t *MUTEX, const struct timespec *ABSTIME)
2984 `scm_cond_timedwait' atomically unlocks MUTEX and waits on
2985 COND, as `scm_cond_wait' does, but it also bounds the duration
2986 of the wait. If COND has not been signaled before time ABSTIME,
2987 the mutex MUTEX is re-acquired and `scm_cond_timedwait'
2988 returns the error code `ETIMEDOUT'.
2990 The ABSTIME parameter specifies an absolute time, with the same
2991 origin as `time' and `gettimeofday': an ABSTIME of 0 corresponds
2992 to 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970.
2994 ** New function: scm_cond_broadcast (scm_cond_t *COND)
2995 `scm_cond_broadcast' restarts all the threads that are waiting
2996 on the condition variable COND. Nothing happens if no threads are
2999 ** New function: scm_key_create (scm_key_t *KEY, void (*destr_function) (void *))
3000 `scm_key_create' allocates a new TSD key. The key is stored in
3001 the location pointed to by KEY. There is no limit on the number
3002 of keys allocated at a given time. The value initially associated
3003 with the returned key is `NULL' in all currently executing threads.
3005 The DESTR_FUNCTION argument, if not `NULL', specifies a destructor
3006 function associated with the key. When a thread terminates,
3007 DESTR_FUNCTION is called on the value associated with the key in
3008 that thread. The DESTR_FUNCTION is not called if a key is deleted
3009 with `scm_key_delete' or a value is changed with
3010 `scm_setspecific'. The order in which destructor functions are
3011 called at thread termination time is unspecified.
3013 Destructors are not yet implemented.
3015 ** New function: scm_setspecific (scm_key_t KEY, const void *POINTER)
3016 `scm_setspecific' changes the value associated with KEY in the
3017 calling thread, storing the given POINTER instead.
3019 ** New function: scm_getspecific (scm_key_t KEY)
3020 `scm_getspecific' returns the value currently associated with
3021 KEY in the calling thread.
3023 ** New function: scm_key_delete (scm_key_t KEY)
3024 `scm_key_delete' deallocates a TSD key. It does not check
3025 whether non-`NULL' values are associated with that key in the
3026 currently executing threads, nor call the destructor function
3027 associated with the key.
3029 ** New function: scm_c_hook_init (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *HOOK_DATA, scm_c_hook_type_t TYPE)
3031 Initialize a C level hook HOOK with associated HOOK_DATA and type
3032 TYPE. (See scm_c_hook_run ().)
3034 ** New function: scm_c_hook_add (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA, int APPENDP)
3036 Add hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA to HOOK. If APPENDP
3037 is true, add it last, otherwise first. The same FUNC can be added
3038 multiple times if FUNC_DATA differ and vice versa.
3040 ** New function: scm_c_hook_remove (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA)
3042 Remove hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA from HOOK. A
3043 function is only removed if both FUNC and FUNC_DATA matches.
3045 ** New function: void *scm_c_hook_run (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *DATA)
3047 Run hook HOOK passing DATA to the hook functions.
3049 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_NORMAL, all hook functions are run. The value
3050 returned is undefined.
3052 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_OR, hook functions are run until a function
3053 returns a non-NULL value. This value is returned as the result of
3054 scm_c_hook_run. If all functions return NULL, NULL is returned.
3056 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_AND, hook functions are run until a function
3057 returns a NULL value, and NULL is returned. If all functions returns
3058 a non-NULL value, the last value is returned.
3060 ** New C level GC hooks
3062 Five new C level hooks has been added to the garbage collector.
3064 scm_before_gc_c_hook
3067 are run before locking and after unlocking the heap. The system is
3068 thus in a mode where evaluation can take place. (Except that
3069 scm_before_gc_c_hook must not allocate new cells.)
3071 scm_before_mark_c_hook
3072 scm_before_sweep_c_hook
3073 scm_after_sweep_c_hook
3075 are run when the heap is locked. These are intended for extension of
3076 the GC in a modular fashion. Examples are the weaks and guardians
3079 ** Way for application to customize GC parameters
3081 The application can set up other default values for the GC heap
3082 allocation parameters
3084 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_1, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1,
3085 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2,
3086 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE,
3090 scm_default_init_heap_size_1, scm_default_min_yield_1,
3091 scm_default_init_heap_size_2, scm_default_min_yield_2,
3092 scm_default_max_segment_size
3094 respectively before callong scm_boot_guile.
3096 (See entry "New environment variables ..." in section
3097 "Changes to the stand-alone interpreter" above.)
3099 ** scm_protect_object/scm_unprotect_object now nest
3101 This means that you can call scm_protect_object multiple times on an
3102 object and count on the object being protected until
3103 scm_unprotect_object has been call the same number of times.
3105 The functions also have better time complexity.
3107 Still, it is usually possible to structure the application in a way
3108 that you don't need to use these functions. For example, if you use a
3109 protected standard Guile list to keep track of live objects rather
3110 than some custom data type, objects will die a natural death when they
3111 are no longer needed.
3113 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc16_flo, scm_tc_flo, scm_tc_dblr, scm_tc_dblc
3115 Guile does not provide the float representation for inexact real numbers any
3116 more. Now, only doubles are used to represent inexact real numbers. Further,
3117 the tag names scm_tc_dblr and scm_tc_dblc have been changed to scm_tc16_real
3118 and scm_tc16_complex, respectively.
3120 ** Removed deprecated type scm_smobfuns
3122 ** Removed deprecated function scm_newsmob
3124 ** Warning: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe might become deprecated in a future release
3126 There is an ongoing discussion among the developers whether to
3127 deprecate `scm_make_smob_type_mfpe' or not. Please use the current
3128 standard interface (scm_make_smob_type, scm_set_smob_XXX) in new code
3129 until this issue has been settled.
3131 ** Removed deprecated type tag scm_tc16_kw
3133 ** Added type tag scm_tc16_keyword
3135 (This was introduced already in release 1.3.4 but was not documented
3138 ** gdb_print now prints "*** Guile not initialized ***" until Guile initialized
3140 * Changes to system call interfaces:
3142 ** The "select" procedure now tests port buffers for the ability to
3143 provide input or accept output. Previously only the underlying file
3144 descriptors were checked.
3146 ** New variable PIPE_BUF: the maximum number of bytes that can be
3147 atomically written to a pipe.
3149 ** If a facility is not available on the system when Guile is
3150 compiled, the corresponding primitive procedure will not be defined.
3151 Previously it would have been defined but would throw a system-error
3152 exception if called. Exception handlers which catch this case may
3153 need minor modification: an error will be thrown with key
3154 'unbound-variable instead of 'system-error. Alternatively it's
3155 now possible to use `defined?' to check whether the facility is
3158 ** Procedures which depend on the timezone should now give the correct
3159 result on systems which cache the TZ environment variable, even if TZ
3160 is changed without calling tzset.
3162 * Changes to the networking interfaces:
3164 ** New functions: htons, ntohs, htonl, ntohl: for converting short and
3165 long integers between network and host format. For now, it's not
3166 particularly convenient to do this kind of thing, but consider:
3168 (define write-network-long
3169 (lambda (value port)
3170 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
3171 (uniform-vector-set! v 0 (htonl value))
3172 (uniform-vector-write v port))))
3174 (define read-network-long
3176 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
3177 (uniform-vector-read! v port)
3178 (ntohl (uniform-vector-ref v 0)))))
3180 ** If inet-aton fails, it now throws an error with key 'misc-error
3181 instead of 'system-error, since errno is not relevant.
3183 ** Certain gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr failures now throw errors with
3184 specific keys instead of 'system-error. The latter is inappropriate
3185 since errno will not have been set. The keys are:
3186 'host-not-found, 'try-again, 'no-recovery and 'no-data.
3188 ** sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent: now take an
3189 optional argument STAYOPEN, which specifies whether the database
3190 remains open after a database entry is accessed randomly (e.g., using
3191 gethostbyname for the hosts database.) The default is #f. Previously
3195 Changes since Guile 1.3.2:
3197 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3201 An initial version of the Guile debugger written by Chris Hanson has
3202 been added. The debugger is still under development but is included
3203 in the distribution anyway since it is already quite useful.
3209 after an error to enter the debugger. Type `help' inside the debugger
3210 for a description of available commands.
3212 If you prefer to have stack frames numbered and printed in
3213 anti-chronological order and prefer up in the stack to be down on the
3214 screen as is the case in gdb, you can put
3216 (debug-enable 'backwards)
3218 in your .guile startup file. (However, this means that Guile can't
3219 use indentation to indicate stack level.)
3221 The debugger is autoloaded into Guile at the first use.
3223 ** Further enhancements to backtraces
3225 There is a new debug option `width' which controls the maximum width
3226 on the screen of printed stack frames. Fancy printing parameters
3227 ("level" and "length" as in Common LISP) are adaptively adjusted for
3228 each stack frame to give maximum information while still fitting
3229 within the bounds. If the stack frame can't be made to fit by
3230 adjusting parameters, it is simply cut off at the end. This is marked
3233 ** Some modules are now only loaded when the repl is started
3235 The modules (ice-9 debug), (ice-9 session), (ice-9 threads) and (ice-9
3236 regex) are now loaded into (guile-user) only if the repl has been
3237 started. The effect is that the startup time for scripts has been
3238 reduced to 30% of what it was previously.
3240 Correctly written scripts load the modules they require at the top of
3241 the file and should not be affected by this change.
3243 ** Hooks are now represented as smobs
3245 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3247 ** Readline support has changed again.
3249 The old (readline-activator) module is gone. Use (ice-9 readline)
3250 instead, which now contains all readline functionality. So the code
3251 to activate readline is now
3253 (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
3256 This should work at any time, including from the guile prompt.
3258 To avoid confusion about the terms of Guile's license, please only
3259 enable readline for your personal use; please don't make it the
3260 default for others. Here is why we make this rather odd-sounding
3263 Guile is normally licensed under a weakened form of the GNU General
3264 Public License, which allows you to link code with Guile without
3265 placing that code under the GPL. This exception is important to some
3268 However, since readline is distributed under the GNU General Public
3269 License, when you link Guile with readline, either statically or
3270 dynamically, you effectively change Guile's license to the strict GPL.
3271 Whenever you link any strictly GPL'd code into Guile, uses of Guile
3272 which are normally permitted become forbidden. This is a rather
3273 non-obvious consequence of the licensing terms.
3275 So, to make sure things remain clear, please let people choose for
3276 themselves whether to link GPL'd libraries like readline with Guile.
3278 ** regexp-substitute/global has changed slightly, but incompatibly.
3280 If you include a function in the item list, the string of the match
3281 object it receives is the same string passed to
3282 regexp-substitute/global, not some suffix of that string.
3283 Correspondingly, the match's positions are relative to the entire
3284 string, not the suffix.
3286 If the regexp can match the empty string, the way matches are chosen
3287 from the string has changed. regexp-substitute/global recognizes the
3288 same set of matches that list-matches does; see below.
3290 ** New function: list-matches REGEXP STRING [FLAGS]
3292 Return a list of match objects, one for every non-overlapping, maximal
3293 match of REGEXP in STRING. The matches appear in left-to-right order.
3294 list-matches only reports matches of the empty string if there are no
3295 other matches which begin on, end at, or include the empty match's
3298 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
3300 ** New function: fold-matches REGEXP STRING INIT PROC [FLAGS]
3302 For each match of REGEXP in STRING, apply PROC to the match object,
3303 and the last value PROC returned, or INIT for the first call. Return
3304 the last value returned by PROC. We apply PROC to the matches as they
3305 appear from left to right.
3307 This function recognizes matches according to the same criteria as
3310 Thus, you could define list-matches like this:
3312 (define (list-matches regexp string . flags)
3313 (reverse! (apply fold-matches regexp string '() cons flags)))
3315 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
3319 *** New function: hook? OBJ
3321 Return #t if OBJ is a hook, otherwise #f.
3323 *** New function: make-hook-with-name NAME [ARITY]
3325 Return a hook with name NAME and arity ARITY. The default value for
3326 ARITY is 0. The only effect of NAME is that it will appear when the
3327 hook object is printed to ease debugging.
3329 *** New function: hook-empty? HOOK
3331 Return #t if HOOK doesn't contain any procedures, otherwise #f.
3333 *** New function: hook->list HOOK
3335 Return a list of the procedures that are called when run-hook is
3338 ** `map' signals an error if its argument lists are not all the same length.
3340 This is the behavior required by R5RS, so this change is really a bug
3341 fix. But it seems to affect a lot of people's code, so we're
3342 mentioning it here anyway.
3344 ** Print-state handling has been made more transparent
3346 Under certain circumstances, ports are represented as a port with an
3347 associated print state. Earlier, this pair was represented as a pair
3348 (see "Some magic has been added to the printer" below). It is now
3349 indistinguishable (almost; see `get-print-state') from a port on the
3352 *** New function: port-with-print-state OUTPUT-PORT PRINT-STATE
3354 Return a new port with the associated print state PRINT-STATE.
3356 *** New function: get-print-state OUTPUT-PORT
3358 Return the print state associated with this port if it exists,
3359 otherwise return #f.
3361 *** New function: directory-stream? OBJECT
3363 Returns true iff OBJECT is a directory stream --- the sort of object
3364 returned by `opendir'.
3366 ** New function: using-readline?
3368 Return #t if readline is in use in the current repl.
3370 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
3372 Structs will be replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into Guile
3373 and use GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
3375 * Changes to the scm_ interface
3377 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
3379 The entire current struct interface (struct.c, struct.h) will be
3380 replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into libguile and use
3381 GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
3383 ** The internal representation of subr's has changed
3385 Instead of giving a hint to the subr name, the CAR field of the subr
3386 now contains an index to a subr entry in scm_subr_table.
3388 *** New variable: scm_subr_table
3390 An array of subr entries. A subr entry contains the name, properties
3391 and documentation associated with the subr. The properties and
3392 documentation slots are not yet used.
3394 ** A new scheme for "forwarding" calls to a builtin to a generic function
3396 It is now possible to extend the functionality of some Guile
3397 primitives by letting them defer a call to a GOOPS generic function on
3398 argument mismatch. This means that there is no loss of efficiency in
3403 (use-modules (oop goops)) ; Must be GOOPS version 0.2.
3404 (define-method + ((x <string>) (y <string>))
3405 (string-append x y))
3407 + will still be as efficient as usual in numerical calculations, but
3408 can also be used for concatenating strings.
3410 Who will be the first one to extend Guile's numerical tower to
3411 rationals? :) [OK, there a few other things to fix before this can
3412 be made in a clean way.]
3414 *** New snarf macros for defining primitives: SCM_GPROC, SCM_GPROC1
3416 New macro: SCM_GPROC (CNAME, SNAME, REQ, OPT, VAR, CFUNC, GENERIC)
3418 New macro: SCM_GPROC1 (CNAME, SNAME, TYPE, CFUNC, GENERIC)
3420 These do the same job as SCM_PROC and SCM_PROC1, but they also define
3421 a variable GENERIC which can be used by the dispatch macros below.
3423 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3425 *** New macros for forwarding control to a generic on arg type error
3427 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_1 (GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
3429 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
3431 These correspond to the scm_wta function call, and have the same
3432 behaviour until the user has called the GOOPS primitive
3433 `enable-primitive-generic!'. After that, these macros will apply the
3434 generic function GENERIC to the argument(s) instead of calling
3437 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3439 *** New macros for argument testing with generic dispatch
3441 New macro: SCM_GASSERT1 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
3443 New macro: SCM_GASSERT2 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
3445 These correspond to the SCM_ASSERT macro, but will defer control to
3446 GENERIC on error after `enable-primitive-generic!' has been called.
3448 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3450 ** New function: SCM scm_eval_body (SCM body, SCM env)
3452 Evaluates the body of a special form.
3454 ** The internal representation of struct's has changed
3456 Previously, four slots were allocated for the procedure(s) of entities
3457 and operators. The motivation for this representation had to do with
3458 the structure of the evaluator, the wish to support tail-recursive
3459 generic functions, and efficiency. Since the generic function
3460 dispatch mechanism has changed, there is no longer a need for such an
3461 expensive representation, and the representation has been simplified.
3463 This should not make any difference for most users.
3465 ** GOOPS support has been cleaned up.
3467 Some code has been moved from eval.c to objects.c and code in both of
3468 these compilation units has been cleaned up and better structured.
3470 *** New functions for applying generic functions
3472 New function: SCM scm_apply_generic (GENERIC, ARGS)
3473 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_0 (GENERIC)
3474 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_1 (GENERIC, ARG1)
3475 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2)
3476 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_3 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, ARG3)
3478 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_named_hook
3480 It is now replaced by:
3482 ** New function: SCM scm_create_hook (const char *name, int arity)
3484 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
3485 binds a variable named NAME to it.
3487 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
3489 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module.
3490 This might change when we get the new module system.
3492 [The behaviour is identical to scm_make_named_hook.]
3496 Changes since Guile 1.3:
3498 * Changes to mailing lists
3500 ** Some of the Guile mailing lists have moved to sourceware.cygnus.com.
3502 See the README file to find current addresses for all the Guile
3505 * Changes to the distribution
3507 ** Readline support is no longer included with Guile by default.
3509 Based on the different license terms of Guile and Readline, we
3510 concluded that Guile should not *by default* cause the linking of
3511 Readline into an application program. Readline support is now offered
3512 as a separate module, which is linked into an application only when
3513 you explicitly specify it.
3515 Although Guile is GNU software, its distribution terms add a special
3516 exception to the usual GNU General Public License (GPL). Guile's
3517 license includes a clause that allows you to link Guile with non-free
3518 programs. We add this exception so as not to put Guile at a
3519 disadvantage vis-a-vis other extensibility packages that support other
3522 In contrast, the GNU Readline library is distributed under the GNU
3523 General Public License pure and simple. This means that you may not
3524 link Readline, even dynamically, into an application unless it is
3525 distributed under a free software license that is compatible the GPL.
3527 Because of this difference in distribution terms, an application that
3528 can use Guile may not be able to use Readline. Now users will be
3529 explicitly offered two independent decisions about the use of these
3532 You can activate the readline support by issuing
3534 (use-modules (readline-activator))
3537 from your ".guile" file, for example.
3539 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3541 ** All builtins now print as primitives.
3542 Previously builtin procedures not belonging to the fundamental subr
3543 types printed as #<compiled closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>.
3544 Now, they print as #<primitive-procedure NAME>.
3546 ** Backtraces slightly more intelligible.
3547 gsubr-apply and macro transformer application frames no longer appear
3550 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3552 ** Guile now correctly handles internal defines by rewriting them into
3553 their equivalent letrec. Previously, internal defines would
3554 incrementally add to the innermost environment, without checking
3555 whether the restrictions specified in RnRS were met. This lead to the
3556 correct behaviour when these restriction actually were met, but didn't
3557 catch all illegal uses. Such an illegal use could lead to crashes of
3558 the Guile interpreter or or other unwanted results. An example of
3559 incorrect internal defines that made Guile behave erratically:
3571 The problem with this example is that the definition of `c' uses the
3572 value of `b' directly. This confuses the meoization machine of Guile
3573 so that the second call of `b' (this time in a larger environment that
3574 also contains bindings for `c' and `d') refers to the binding of `c'
3575 instead of `a'. You could also make Guile crash with a variation on
3580 (define (b flag) (if flag a 1))
3581 (define c (1+ (b flag)))
3589 From now on, Guile will issue an `Unbound variable: b' error message
3594 A hook contains a list of functions which should be called on
3595 particular occasions in an existing program. Hooks are used for
3598 A window manager might have a hook before-window-map-hook. The window
3599 manager uses the function run-hooks to call all functions stored in
3600 before-window-map-hook each time a window is mapped. The user can
3601 store functions in the hook using add-hook!.
3603 In Guile, hooks are first class objects.
3605 *** New function: make-hook [N_ARGS]
3607 Return a hook for hook functions which can take N_ARGS arguments.
3608 The default value for N_ARGS is 0.
3610 (See also scm_make_named_hook below.)
3612 *** New function: add-hook! HOOK PROC [APPEND_P]
3614 Put PROC at the beginning of the list of functions stored in HOOK.
3615 If APPEND_P is supplied, and non-false, put PROC at the end instead.
3617 PROC must be able to take the number of arguments specified when the
3620 If PROC already exists in HOOK, then remove it first.
3622 *** New function: remove-hook! HOOK PROC
3624 Remove PROC from the list of functions in HOOK.
3626 *** New function: reset-hook! HOOK
3628 Clear the list of hook functions stored in HOOK.
3630 *** New function: run-hook HOOK ARG1 ...
3632 Run all hook functions stored in HOOK with arguments ARG1 ... .
3633 The number of arguments supplied must correspond to the number given
3634 when the hook was created.
3636 ** The function `dynamic-link' now takes optional keyword arguments.
3637 The only keyword argument that is currently defined is `:global
3638 BOOL'. With it, you can control whether the shared library will be
3639 linked in global mode or not. In global mode, the symbols from the
3640 linked library can be used to resolve references from other
3641 dynamically linked libraries. In non-global mode, the linked
3642 library is essentially invisible and can only be accessed via
3643 `dynamic-func', etc. The default is now to link in global mode.
3644 Previously, the default has been non-global mode.
3646 The `#:global' keyword is only effective on platforms that support
3647 the dlopen family of functions.
3649 ** New function `provided?'
3651 - Function: provided? FEATURE
3652 Return true iff FEATURE is supported by this installation of
3653 Guile. FEATURE must be a symbol naming a feature; the global
3654 variable `*features*' is a list of available features.
3656 ** Changes to the module (ice-9 expect):
3658 *** The expect-strings macro now matches `$' in a regular expression
3659 only at a line-break or end-of-file by default. Previously it would
3660 match the end of the string accumulated so far. The old behaviour
3661 can be obtained by setting the variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
3664 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
3665 for the regexp-exec flags. If `regexp/noteol' is included, then `$'
3666 in a regular expression will still match before a line-break or
3667 end-of-file. The default is `regexp/noteol'.
3669 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable
3670 `expect-strings-compile-flags' for the flags to be supplied to
3671 `make-regexp'. The default is `regexp/newline', which was previously
3674 *** The expect macro now supplies two arguments to a match procedure:
3675 the current accumulated string and a flag to indicate whether
3676 end-of-file has been reached. Previously only the string was supplied.
3677 If end-of-file is reached, the match procedure will be called an
3678 additional time with the same accumulated string as the previous call
3679 but with the flag set.
3681 ** New module (ice-9 format), implementing the Common Lisp `format' function.
3683 This code, and the documentation for it that appears here, was
3684 borrowed from SLIB, with minor adaptations for Guile.
3686 - Function: format DESTINATION FORMAT-STRING . ARGUMENTS
3687 An almost complete implementation of Common LISP format description
3688 according to the CL reference book `Common LISP' from Guy L.
3689 Steele, Digital Press. Backward compatible to most of the
3690 available Scheme format implementations.
3692 Returns `#t', `#f' or a string; has side effect of printing
3693 according to FORMAT-STRING. If DESTINATION is `#t', the output is
3694 to the current output port and `#t' is returned. If DESTINATION
3695 is `#f', a formatted string is returned as the result of the call.
3696 NEW: If DESTINATION is a string, DESTINATION is regarded as the
3697 format string; FORMAT-STRING is then the first argument and the
3698 output is returned as a string. If DESTINATION is a number, the
3699 output is to the current error port if available by the
3700 implementation. Otherwise DESTINATION must be an output port and
3703 FORMAT-STRING must be a string. In case of a formatting error
3704 format returns `#f' and prints a message on the current output or
3705 error port. Characters are output as if the string were output by
3706 the `display' function with the exception of those prefixed by a
3707 tilde (~). For a detailed description of the FORMAT-STRING syntax
3708 please consult a Common LISP format reference manual. For a test
3709 suite to verify this format implementation load `formatst.scm'.
3710 Please send bug reports to `lutzeb@cs.tu-berlin.de'.
3712 Note: `format' is not reentrant, i.e. only one `format'-call may
3713 be executed at a time.
3716 *** Format Specification (Format version 3.0)
3718 Please consult a Common LISP format reference manual for a detailed
3719 description of the format string syntax. For a demonstration of the
3720 implemented directives see `formatst.scm'.
3722 This implementation supports directive parameters and modifiers (`:'
3723 and `@' characters). Multiple parameters must be separated by a comma
3724 (`,'). Parameters can be numerical parameters (positive or negative),
3725 character parameters (prefixed by a quote character (`''), variable
3726 parameters (`v'), number of rest arguments parameter (`#'), empty and
3727 default parameters. Directive characters are case independent. The
3728 general form of a directive is:
3730 DIRECTIVE ::= ~{DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER,}[:][@]DIRECTIVE-CHARACTER
3732 DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER ::= [ [-|+]{0-9}+ | 'CHARACTER | v | # ]
3734 *** Implemented CL Format Control Directives
3736 Documentation syntax: Uppercase characters represent the
3737 corresponding control directive characters. Lowercase characters
3738 represent control directive parameter descriptions.
3741 Any (print as `display' does).
3745 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARA'
3749 S-expression (print as `write' does).
3753 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARS'
3759 print number sign always.
3762 print comma separated.
3764 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARD'
3770 print number sign always.
3773 print comma separated.
3775 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARX'
3781 print number sign always.
3784 print comma separated.
3786 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARO'
3792 print number sign always.
3795 print comma separated.
3797 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARB'
3802 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARR'
3806 print a number as a Roman numeral.
3809 print a number as an "old fashioned" Roman numeral.
3812 print a number as an ordinal English number.
3815 print a number as a cardinal English number.
3820 prints `y' and `ies'.
3823 as `~P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
3826 as `~@P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
3831 prints a character as the reader can understand it (i.e. `#\'
3835 prints a character as emacs does (eg. `^C' for ASCII 03).
3838 Fixed-format floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN).
3839 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHARF'
3841 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3844 Exponential floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN`E'EE).
3845 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARE'
3847 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3850 General floating-point (prints a flonum either fixed or
3852 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARG'
3854 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3857 Dollars floating-point (prints a flonum in fixed with signs
3859 `~DIGITS,SCALE,WIDTH,PADCHAR$'
3861 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3864 A sign is always printed and appears before the padding.
3867 The sign appears before the padding.
3875 print newline if not at the beginning of the output line.
3877 prints `~&' and then N-1 newlines.
3882 print N page separators.
3892 newline is ignored, white space left.
3895 newline is left, white space ignored.
3900 relative tabulation.
3906 Indirection (expects indirect arguments as a list).
3908 extracts indirect arguments from format arguments.
3911 Case conversion (converts by `string-downcase').
3913 converts by `string-capitalize'.
3916 converts by `string-capitalize-first'.
3919 converts by `string-upcase'.
3922 Argument Jumping (jumps 1 argument forward).
3924 jumps N arguments forward.
3927 jumps 1 argument backward.
3930 jumps N arguments backward.
3933 jumps to the 0th argument.
3936 jumps to the Nth argument (beginning from 0)
3938 `~[STR0~;STR1~;...~;STRN~]'
3939 Conditional Expression (numerical clause conditional).
3941 take argument from N.
3944 true test conditional.
3947 if-else-then conditional.
3953 default clause follows.
3956 Iteration (args come from the next argument (a list)).
3958 at most N iterations.
3961 args from next arg (a list of lists).
3964 args from the rest of arguments.
3967 args from the rest args (lists).
3978 aborts if N <= M <= K
3980 *** Not Implemented CL Format Control Directives
3983 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
3986 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
3992 (sorry I don't understand its semantics completely)
3994 *** Extended, Replaced and Additional Control Directives
3996 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHD'
3997 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHX'
3998 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHO'
3999 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHB'
4000 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHR'
4001 COMMAWIDTH is the number of characters between two comma
4005 print a R4RS complex number as `~F~@Fi' with passed parameters for
4009 Pretty print formatting of an argument for scheme code lists.
4015 Flushes the output if format DESTINATION is a port.
4018 Print a `#\space' character
4020 print N `#\space' characters.
4023 Print a `#\tab' character
4025 print N `#\tab' characters.
4028 Takes N as an integer representation for a character. No arguments
4029 are consumed. N is converted to a character by `integer->char'. N
4030 must be a positive decimal number.
4033 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
4034 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
4035 be processed by `read'.
4038 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
4039 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
4040 be processed by `read'.
4043 Prints information and a copyright notice on the format
4046 prints format version.
4049 may also print number strings, i.e. passing a number as a string
4050 and format it accordingly.
4052 *** Configuration Variables
4054 The format module exports some configuration variables to suit the
4055 systems and users needs. There should be no modification necessary for
4056 the configuration that comes with Guile. Format detects automatically
4057 if the running scheme system implements floating point numbers and
4060 format:symbol-case-conv
4061 Symbols are converted by `symbol->string' so the case type of the
4062 printed symbols is implementation dependent.
4063 `format:symbol-case-conv' is a one arg closure which is either
4064 `#f' (no conversion), `string-upcase', `string-downcase' or
4065 `string-capitalize'. (default `#f')
4067 format:iobj-case-conv
4068 As FORMAT:SYMBOL-CASE-CONV but applies for the representation of
4069 implementation internal objects. (default `#f')
4072 The character prefixing the exponent value in `~E' printing.
4075 *** Compatibility With Other Format Implementations
4081 Downward compatible except for padding support and `~A', `~S',
4082 `~P', `~X' uppercase printing. SLIB format 1.4 uses C-style
4083 `printf' padding support which is completely replaced by the CL
4084 `format' padding style.
4087 Downward compatible except for `~', which is not documented
4088 (ignores all characters inside the format string up to a newline
4089 character). (7.1 implements `~a', `~s', ~NEWLINE, `~~', `~%',
4090 numerical and variable parameters and `:/@' modifiers in the CL
4094 Downward compatible except for `~A' and `~S' which print in
4095 uppercase. (Elk implements `~a', `~s', `~~', and `~%' (no
4096 directive parameters or modifiers)).
4099 Downward compatible except for an optional destination parameter:
4100 S2C accepts a format call without a destination which returns a
4101 formatted string. This is equivalent to a #f destination in S2C.
4102 (S2C implements `~a', `~s', `~c', `~%', and `~~' (no directive
4103 parameters or modifiers)).
4106 ** Changes to string-handling functions.
4108 These functions were added to support the (ice-9 format) module, above.
4110 *** New function: string-upcase STRING
4111 *** New function: string-downcase STRING
4113 These are non-destructive versions of the existing string-upcase! and
4114 string-downcase! functions.
4116 *** New function: string-capitalize! STRING
4117 *** New function: string-capitalize STRING
4119 These functions convert the first letter of each word in the string to
4122 (string-capitalize "howdy there")
4125 As with the other functions, string-capitalize! modifies the string in
4126 place, while string-capitalize returns a modified copy of its argument.
4128 *** New function: string-ci->symbol STRING
4130 Return a symbol whose name is STRING, but having the same case as if
4131 the symbol had be read by `read'.
4133 Guile can be configured to be sensitive or insensitive to case
4134 differences in Scheme identifiers. If Guile is case-insensitive, all
4135 symbols are converted to lower case on input. The `string-ci->symbol'
4136 function returns a symbol whose name in STRING, transformed as Guile
4137 would if STRING were input.
4139 *** New function: substring-move! STRING1 START END STRING2 START
4141 Copy the substring of STRING1 from START (inclusive) to END
4142 (exclusive) to STRING2 at START. STRING1 and STRING2 may be the same
4143 string, and the source and destination areas may overlap; in all
4144 cases, the function behaves as if all the characters were copied
4147 *** Extended functions: substring-move-left! substring-move-right!
4149 These functions now correctly copy arbitrarily overlapping substrings;
4150 they are both synonyms for substring-move!.
4153 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-long), with the function `getopt-long'.
4155 getopt-long is a function for parsing command-line arguments in a
4156 manner consistent with other GNU programs.
4158 (getopt-long ARGS GRAMMAR)
4159 Parse the arguments ARGS according to the argument list grammar GRAMMAR.
4161 ARGS should be a list of strings. Its first element should be the
4162 name of the program; subsequent elements should be the arguments
4163 that were passed to the program on the command line. The
4164 `program-arguments' procedure returns a list of this form.
4166 GRAMMAR is a list of the form:
4167 ((OPTION (PROPERTY VALUE) ...) ...)
4169 Each OPTION should be a symbol. `getopt-long' will accept a
4170 command-line option named `--OPTION'.
4171 Each option can have the following (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs:
4173 (single-char CHAR) --- Accept `-CHAR' as a single-character
4174 equivalent to `--OPTION'. This is how to specify traditional
4176 (required? BOOL) --- If BOOL is true, the option is required.
4177 getopt-long will raise an error if it is not found in ARGS.
4178 (value BOOL) --- If BOOL is #t, the option accepts a value; if
4179 it is #f, it does not; and if it is the symbol
4180 `optional', the option may appear in ARGS with or
4182 (predicate FUNC) --- If the option accepts a value (i.e. you
4183 specified `(value #t)' for this option), then getopt
4184 will apply FUNC to the value, and throw an exception
4185 if it returns #f. FUNC should be a procedure which
4186 accepts a string and returns a boolean value; you may
4187 need to use quasiquotes to get it into GRAMMAR.
4189 The (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs may occur in any order, but each
4190 property may occur only once. By default, options do not have
4191 single-character equivalents, are not required, and do not take
4194 In ARGS, single-character options may be combined, in the usual
4195 Unix fashion: ("-x" "-y") is equivalent to ("-xy"). If an option
4196 accepts values, then it must be the last option in the
4197 combination; the value is the next argument. So, for example, using
4198 the following grammar:
4199 ((apples (single-char #\a))
4200 (blimps (single-char #\b) (value #t))
4201 (catalexis (single-char #\c) (value #t)))
4202 the following argument lists would be acceptable:
4203 ("-a" "-b" "bang" "-c" "couth") ("bang" and "couth" are the values
4204 for "blimps" and "catalexis")
4205 ("-ab" "bang" "-c" "couth") (same)
4206 ("-ac" "couth" "-b" "bang") (same)
4207 ("-abc" "couth" "bang") (an error, since `-b' is not the
4208 last option in its combination)
4210 If an option's value is optional, then `getopt-long' decides
4211 whether it has a value by looking at what follows it in ARGS. If
4212 the next element is a string, and it does not appear to be an
4213 option itself, then that string is the option's value.
4215 The value of a long option can appear as the next element in ARGS,
4216 or it can follow the option name, separated by an `=' character.
4217 Thus, using the same grammar as above, the following argument lists
4219 ("--apples" "Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
4220 ("--apples=Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
4221 ("--blimps" "Goodyear" "--apples=Braeburn")
4223 If the option "--" appears in ARGS, argument parsing stops there;
4224 subsequent arguments are returned as ordinary arguments, even if
4225 they resemble options. So, in the argument list:
4226 ("--apples" "Granny Smith" "--" "--blimp" "Goodyear")
4227 `getopt-long' will recognize the `apples' option as having the
4228 value "Granny Smith", but it will not recognize the `blimp'
4229 option; it will return the strings "--blimp" and "Goodyear" as
4230 ordinary argument strings.
4232 The `getopt-long' function returns the parsed argument list as an
4233 assocation list, mapping option names --- the symbols from GRAMMAR
4234 --- onto their values, or #t if the option does not accept a value.
4235 Unused options do not appear in the alist.
4237 All arguments that are not the value of any option are returned
4238 as a list, associated with the empty list.
4240 `getopt-long' throws an exception if:
4241 - it finds an unrecognized option in ARGS
4242 - a required option is omitted
4243 - an option that requires an argument doesn't get one
4244 - an option that doesn't accept an argument does get one (this can
4245 only happen using the long option `--opt=value' syntax)
4246 - an option predicate fails
4251 `((lockfile-dir (required? #t)
4254 (predicate ,file-is-directory?))
4255 (verbose (required? #f)
4258 (x-includes (single-char #\x))
4259 (rnet-server (single-char #\y)
4260 (predicate ,string?))))
4262 (getopt-long '("my-prog" "-vk" "/tmp" "foo1" "--x-includes=/usr/include"
4263 "--rnet-server=lamprod" "--" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
4265 => ((() "foo1" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
4266 (rnet-server . "lamprod")
4267 (x-includes . "/usr/include")
4268 (lockfile-dir . "/tmp")
4271 ** The (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) module is obsolete; use (ice-9 getopt-long).
4273 It will be removed in a few releases.
4275 ** New syntax: lambda*
4276 ** New syntax: define*
4277 ** New syntax: define*-public
4278 ** New syntax: defmacro*
4279 ** New syntax: defmacro*-public
4280 Guile now supports optional arguments.
4282 `lambda*', `define*', `define*-public', `defmacro*' and
4283 `defmacro*-public' are identical to the non-* versions except that
4284 they use an extended type of parameter list that has the following BNF
4285 syntax (parentheses are literal, square brackets indicate grouping,
4286 and `*', `+' and `?' have the usual meaning):
4288 ext-param-list ::= ( [identifier]* [#&optional [ext-var-decl]+]?
4289 [#&key [ext-var-decl]+ [#&allow-other-keys]?]?
4290 [[#&rest identifier]|[. identifier]]? ) | [identifier]
4292 ext-var-decl ::= identifier | ( identifier expression )
4294 The semantics are best illustrated with the following documentation
4295 and examples for `lambda*':
4298 lambda extended for optional and keyword arguments
4300 lambda* creates a procedure that takes optional arguments. These
4301 are specified by putting them inside brackets at the end of the
4302 paramater list, but before any dotted rest argument. For example,
4303 (lambda* (a b #&optional c d . e) '())
4304 creates a procedure with fixed arguments a and b, optional arguments c
4305 and d, and rest argument e. If the optional arguments are omitted
4306 in a call, the variables for them are unbound in the procedure. This
4307 can be checked with the bound? macro.
4309 lambda* can also take keyword arguments. For example, a procedure
4311 (lambda* (#&key xyzzy larch) '())
4312 can be called with any of the argument lists (#:xyzzy 11)
4313 (#:larch 13) (#:larch 42 #:xyzzy 19) (). Whichever arguments
4314 are given as keywords are bound to values.
4316 Optional and keyword arguments can also be given default values
4317 which they take on when they are not present in a call, by giving a
4318 two-item list in place of an optional argument, for example in:
4319 (lambda* (foo #&optional (bar 42) #&key (baz 73)) (list foo bar baz))
4320 foo is a fixed argument, bar is an optional argument with default
4321 value 42, and baz is a keyword argument with default value 73.
4322 Default value expressions are not evaluated unless they are needed
4323 and until the procedure is called.
4325 lambda* now supports two more special parameter list keywords.
4327 lambda*-defined procedures now throw an error by default if a
4328 keyword other than one of those specified is found in the actual
4329 passed arguments. However, specifying #&allow-other-keys
4330 immediately after the kyword argument declarations restores the
4331 previous behavior of ignoring unknown keywords. lambda* also now
4332 guarantees that if the same keyword is passed more than once, the
4333 last one passed is the one that takes effect. For example,
4334 ((lambda* (#&key (heads 0) (tails 0)) (display (list heads tails)))
4335 #:heads 37 #:tails 42 #:heads 99)
4336 would result in (99 47) being displayed.
4338 #&rest is also now provided as a synonym for the dotted syntax rest
4339 argument. The argument lists (a . b) and (a #&rest b) are equivalent in
4340 all respects to lambda*. This is provided for more similarity to DSSSL,
4341 MIT-Scheme and Kawa among others, as well as for refugees from other
4344 Further documentation may be found in the optargs.scm file itself.
4346 The optional argument module also exports the macros `let-optional',
4347 `let-optional*', `let-keywords', `let-keywords*' and `bound?'. These
4348 are not documented here because they may be removed in the future, but
4349 full documentation is still available in optargs.scm.
4351 ** New syntax: and-let*
4352 Guile now supports the `and-let*' form, described in the draft SRFI-2.
4354 Syntax: (land* (<clause> ...) <body> ...)
4355 Each <clause> should have one of the following forms:
4356 (<variable> <expression>)
4359 Each <variable> or <bound-variable> should be an identifier. Each
4360 <expression> should be a valid expression. The <body> should be a
4361 possibly empty sequence of expressions, like the <body> of a
4364 Semantics: A LAND* expression is evaluated by evaluating the
4365 <expression> or <bound-variable> of each of the <clause>s from
4366 left to right. The value of the first <expression> or
4367 <bound-variable> that evaluates to a false value is returned; the
4368 remaining <expression>s and <bound-variable>s are not evaluated.
4369 The <body> forms are evaluated iff all the <expression>s and
4370 <bound-variable>s evaluate to true values.
4372 The <expression>s and the <body> are evaluated in an environment
4373 binding each <variable> of the preceding (<variable> <expression>)
4374 clauses to the value of the <expression>. Later bindings
4375 shadow earlier bindings.
4377 Guile's and-let* macro was contributed by Michael Livshin.
4379 ** New sorting functions
4381 *** New function: sorted? SEQUENCE LESS?
4382 Returns `#t' when the sequence argument is in non-decreasing order
4383 according to LESS? (that is, there is no adjacent pair `... x y
4384 ...' for which `(less? y x)').
4386 Returns `#f' when the sequence contains at least one out-of-order
4387 pair. It is an error if the sequence is neither a list nor a
4390 *** New function: merge LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
4391 LIST1 and LIST2 are sorted lists.
4392 Returns the sorted list of all elements in LIST1 and LIST2.
4394 Assume that the elements a and b1 in LIST1 and b2 in LIST2 are "equal"
4395 in the sense that (LESS? x y) --> #f for x, y in {a, b1, b2},
4396 and that a < b1 in LIST1. Then a < b1 < b2 in the result.
4397 (Here "<" should read "comes before".)
4399 *** New procedure: merge! LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
4400 Merges two lists, re-using the pairs of LIST1 and LIST2 to build
4401 the result. If the code is compiled, and LESS? constructs no new
4402 pairs, no pairs at all will be allocated. The first pair of the
4403 result will be either the first pair of LIST1 or the first pair of
4406 *** New function: sort SEQUENCE LESS?
4407 Accepts either a list or a vector, and returns a new sequence
4408 which is sorted. The new sequence is the same type as the input.
4409 Always `(sorted? (sort sequence less?) less?)'. The original
4410 sequence is not altered in any way. The new sequence shares its
4411 elements with the old one; no elements are copied.
4413 *** New procedure: sort! SEQUENCE LESS
4414 Returns its sorted result in the original boxes. No new storage is
4415 allocated at all. Proper usage: (set! slist (sort! slist <))
4417 *** New function: stable-sort SEQUENCE LESS?
4418 Similar to `sort' but stable. That is, if "equal" elements are
4419 ordered a < b in the original sequence, they will have the same order
4422 *** New function: stable-sort! SEQUENCE LESS?
4423 Similar to `sort!' but stable.
4424 Uses temporary storage when sorting vectors.
4426 *** New functions: sort-list, sort-list!
4427 Added for compatibility with scsh.
4429 ** New built-in random number support
4431 *** New function: random N [STATE]
4432 Accepts a positive integer or real N and returns a number of the
4433 same type between zero (inclusive) and N (exclusive). The values
4434 returned have a uniform distribution.
4436 The optional argument STATE must be of the type produced by
4437 `copy-random-state' or `seed->random-state'. It defaults to the value
4438 of the variable `*random-state*'. This object is used to maintain the
4439 state of the pseudo-random-number generator and is altered as a side
4440 effect of the `random' operation.
4442 *** New variable: *random-state*
4443 Holds a data structure that encodes the internal state of the
4444 random-number generator that `random' uses by default. The nature
4445 of this data structure is implementation-dependent. It may be
4446 printed out and successfully read back in, but may or may not
4447 function correctly as a random-number state object in another
4450 *** New function: copy-random-state [STATE]
4451 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
4452 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
4453 If argument STATE is given, a copy of it is returned. Otherwise a
4454 copy of `*random-state*' is returned.
4456 *** New function: seed->random-state SEED
4457 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
4458 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
4459 SEED is a string or a number. A new state is generated and
4460 initialized using SEED.
4462 *** New function: random:uniform [STATE]
4463 Returns an uniformly distributed inexact real random number in the
4464 range between 0 and 1.
4466 *** New procedure: random:solid-sphere! VECT [STATE]
4467 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose
4468 squares is less than 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in
4469 space of dimension N = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are
4470 uniformly distributed within the unit N-shere. The sum of the
4471 squares of the numbers is returned. VECT can be either a vector
4472 or a uniform vector of doubles.
4474 *** New procedure: random:hollow-sphere! VECT [STATE]
4475 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose squares
4476 is equal to 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in space of
4477 dimension n = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are uniformly
4478 distributed over the surface of the unit n-shere. VECT can be either
4479 a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
4481 *** New function: random:normal [STATE]
4482 Returns an inexact real in a normal distribution with mean 0 and
4483 standard deviation 1. For a normal distribution with mean M and
4484 standard deviation D use `(+ M (* D (random:normal)))'.
4486 *** New procedure: random:normal-vector! VECT [STATE]
4487 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers which are independent and
4488 standard normally distributed (i.e., with mean 0 and variance 1).
4489 VECT can be either a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
4491 *** New function: random:exp STATE
4492 Returns an inexact real in an exponential distribution with mean 1.
4493 For an exponential distribution with mean U use (* U (random:exp)).
4495 ** The range of logand, logior, logxor, logtest, and logbit? have changed.
4497 These functions now operate on numbers in the range of a C unsigned
4500 These functions used to operate on numbers in the range of a C signed
4501 long; however, this seems inappropriate, because Guile integers don't
4504 ** New function: make-guardian
4505 This is an implementation of guardians as described in
4506 R. Kent Dybvig, Carl Bruggeman, and David Eby (1993) "Guardians in a
4507 Generation-Based Garbage Collector" ACM SIGPLAN Conference on
4508 Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1993
4509 ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/guardians.ps.gz
4511 ** New functions: delq1!, delv1!, delete1!
4512 These procedures behave similar to delq! and friends but delete only
4513 one object if at all.
4515 ** New function: unread-string STRING PORT
4516 Unread STRING to PORT, that is, push it back onto the port so that
4517 next read operation will work on the pushed back characters.
4519 ** unread-char can now be called multiple times
4520 If unread-char is called multiple times, the unread characters will be
4521 read again in last-in first-out order.
4523 ** the procedures uniform-array-read! and uniform-array-write! now
4524 work on any kind of port, not just ports which are open on a file.
4526 ** Now 'l' in a port mode requests line buffering.
4528 ** The procedure truncate-file now works on string ports as well
4529 as file ports. If the size argument is omitted, the current
4530 file position is used.
4532 ** new procedure: seek PORT/FDES OFFSET WHENCE
4533 The arguments are the same as for the old fseek procedure, but it
4534 works on string ports as well as random-access file ports.
4536 ** the fseek procedure now works on string ports, since it has been
4537 redefined using seek.
4539 ** the setvbuf procedure now uses a default size if mode is _IOFBF and
4540 size is not supplied.
4542 ** the newline procedure no longer flushes the port if it's not
4543 line-buffered: previously it did if it was the current output port.
4545 ** open-pipe and close-pipe are no longer primitive procedures, but
4546 an emulation can be obtained using `(use-modules (ice-9 popen))'.
4548 ** the freopen procedure has been removed.
4550 ** new procedure: drain-input PORT
4551 Drains PORT's read buffers (including any pushed-back characters)
4552 and returns the contents as a single string.
4554 ** New function: map-in-order PROC LIST1 LIST2 ...
4555 Version of `map' which guarantees that the procedure is applied to the
4556 lists in serial order.
4558 ** Renamed `serial-array-copy!' and `serial-array-map!' to
4559 `array-copy-in-order!' and `array-map-in-order!'. The old names are
4560 now obsolete and will go away in release 1.5.
4562 ** New syntax: collect BODY1 ...
4563 Version of `begin' which returns a list of the results of the body
4564 forms instead of the result of the last body form. In contrast to
4565 `begin', `collect' allows an empty body.
4567 ** New functions: read-history FILENAME, write-history FILENAME
4568 Read/write command line history from/to file. Returns #t on success
4569 and #f if an error occured.
4571 ** `ls' and `lls' in module (ice-9 ls) now handle no arguments.
4573 These procedures return a list of definitions available in the specified
4574 argument, a relative module reference. In the case of no argument,
4575 `(current-module)' is now consulted for definitions to return, instead
4576 of simply returning #f, the former behavior.
4578 ** The #/ syntax for lists is no longer supported.
4580 Earlier versions of Scheme accepted this syntax, but printed a
4583 ** Guile no longer consults the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable.
4585 Instead, you should set GUILE_LOAD_PATH to tell Guile where to find
4588 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4592 Now takes a second argument which is the result array. If this
4593 pointer is NULL, a new array is malloced (the old behaviour).
4595 ** gh_chars2byvect, gh_shorts2svect, gh_floats2fvect, gh_scm2chars,
4596 gh_scm2shorts, gh_scm2longs, gh_scm2floats
4600 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4602 ** Function: scm_make_named_hook (char* name, int n_args)
4604 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
4605 binds a variable named NAME to it.
4607 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
4609 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module. This
4610 might change when we get the new module system.
4612 ** The smob interface
4614 The interface for creating smobs has changed. For documentation, see
4615 data-rep.info (made from guile-core/doc/data-rep.texi).
4617 *** Deprecated function: SCM scm_newsmob (scm_smobfuns *)
4619 >>> This function will be removed in 1.3.4. <<<
4623 *** Function: SCM scm_make_smob_type (const char *name, scm_sizet size)
4624 This function adds a new smob type, named NAME, with instance size
4625 SIZE to the system. The return value is a tag that is used in
4626 creating instances of the type. If SIZE is 0, then no memory will
4627 be allocated when instances of the smob are created, and nothing
4628 will be freed by the default free function.
4630 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_mark (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
4631 This function sets the smob marking procedure for the smob type
4632 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4633 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4635 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_free (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
4636 This function sets the smob freeing procedure for the smob type
4637 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4638 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4640 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_print (tc, print)
4642 - Function: void scm_set_smob_print (long tc,
4643 scm_sizet (*print) (SCM,
4647 This function sets the smob printing procedure for the smob type
4648 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4649 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4651 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_equalp (long tc, SCM (*equalp) (SCM, SCM))
4652 This function sets the smob equality-testing predicate for the
4653 smob type specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4654 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4656 *** Macro: void SCM_NEWSMOB (SCM var, long tc, void *data)
4657 Make VALUE contain a smob instance of the type with type code TC and
4658 smob data DATA. VALUE must be previously declared as C type `SCM'.
4660 *** Macro: fn_returns SCM_RETURN_NEWSMOB (long tc, void *data)
4661 This macro expands to a block of code that creates a smob instance
4662 of the type with type code TC and smob data DATA, and returns that
4663 `SCM' value. It should be the last piece of code in a block.
4665 ** The interfaces for using I/O ports and implementing port types
4666 (ptobs) have changed significantly. The new interface is based on
4667 shared access to buffers and a new set of ptob procedures.
4669 *** scm_newptob has been removed
4673 *** Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (type_name, fill_buffer, write_flush)
4675 - Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (char *type_name,
4676 int (*fill_buffer) (SCM port),
4677 void (*write_flush) (SCM port));
4679 Similarly to the new smob interface, there is a set of function
4680 setters by which the user can customize the behaviour of his port
4681 type. See ports.h (scm_set_port_XXX).
4683 ** scm_strport_to_string: New function: creates a new string from
4684 a string port's buffer.
4686 ** Plug in interface for random number generators
4687 The variable `scm_the_rng' in random.c contains a value and three
4688 function pointers which together define the current random number
4689 generator being used by the Scheme level interface and the random
4690 number library functions.
4692 The user is free to replace the default generator with the generator
4695 *** Variable: size_t scm_the_rng.rstate_size
4696 The size of the random state type used by the current RNG
4699 *** Function: unsigned long scm_the_rng.random_bits (scm_rstate *STATE)
4700 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
4702 *** Function: void scm_the_rng.init_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE, chars *S, int N)
4703 Seed random state STATE using string S of length N.
4705 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_the_rng.copy_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE)
4706 Given random state STATE, return a malloced copy.
4709 The default RNG is the MWC (Multiply With Carry) random number
4710 generator described by George Marsaglia at the Department of
4711 Statistics and Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The
4712 Florida State University (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo).
4714 It uses 64 bits, has a period of 4578426017172946943 (4.6e18), and
4715 passes all tests in the DIEHARD test suite
4716 (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo/diehard.html). The generation of 32 bits
4717 costs one multiply and one add on platforms which either supports long
4718 longs (gcc does this on most systems) or have 64 bit longs. The cost
4719 is four multiply on other systems but this can be optimized by writing
4720 scm_i_uniform32 in assembler.
4722 These functions are provided through the scm_the_rng interface for use
4723 by libguile and the application.
4725 *** Function: unsigned long scm_i_uniform32 (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
4726 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
4727 Don't use this function directly. Instead go through the plugin
4728 interface (see "Plug in interface" above).
4730 *** Function: void scm_i_init_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE, char *SEED, int N)
4731 Initialize STATE using SEED of length N.
4733 *** Function: scm_i_rstate *scm_i_copy_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
4734 Return a malloc:ed copy of STATE. This function can easily be re-used
4735 in the interfaces to other RNGs.
4737 ** Random number library functions
4738 These functions use the current RNG through the scm_the_rng interface.
4739 It might be a good idea to use these functions from your C code so
4740 that only one random generator is used by all code in your program.
4742 The default random state is stored in:
4744 *** Variable: SCM scm_var_random_state
4745 Contains the vcell of the Scheme variable "*random-state*" which is
4746 used as default state by all random number functions in the Scheme
4751 double x = scm_c_uniform01 (SCM_RSTATE (SCM_CDR (scm_var_random_state)));
4753 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_default_rstate (void)
4754 This is a convenience function which returns the value of
4755 scm_var_random_state. An error message is generated if this value
4756 isn't a random state.
4758 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_make_rstate (char *SEED, int LENGTH)
4759 Make a new random state from the string SEED of length LENGTH.
4761 It is generally not a good idea to use multiple random states in a
4762 program. While subsequent random numbers generated from one random
4763 state are guaranteed to be reasonably independent, there is no such
4764 guarantee for numbers generated from different random states.
4766 *** Macro: unsigned long scm_c_uniform32 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4767 Return 32 random bits.
4769 *** Function: double scm_c_uniform01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4770 Return a sample from the uniform(0,1) distribution.
4772 *** Function: double scm_c_normal01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4773 Return a sample from the normal(0,1) distribution.
4775 *** Function: double scm_c_exp1 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4776 Return a sample from the exp(1) distribution.
4778 *** Function: unsigned long scm_c_random (scm_rstate *STATE, unsigned long M)
4779 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
4781 *** Function: SCM scm_c_random_bignum (scm_rstate *STATE, SCM M)
4782 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
4783 M must be a bignum object. The returned value may be an INUM.
4787 Changes in Guile 1.3 (released Monday, October 19, 1998):
4789 * Changes to the distribution
4791 ** We renamed the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable to GUILE_LOAD_PATH.
4792 To avoid conflicts, programs should name environment variables after
4793 themselves, except when there's a common practice establishing some
4796 For now, Guile supports both GUILE_LOAD_PATH and SCHEME_LOAD_PATH,
4797 giving the former precedence, and printing a warning message if the
4798 latter is set. Guile 1.4 will not recognize SCHEME_LOAD_PATH at all.
4800 ** The header files related to multi-byte characters have been removed.
4801 They were: libguile/extchrs.h and libguile/mbstrings.h. Any C code
4802 which referred to these explicitly will probably need to be rewritten,
4803 since the support for the variant string types has been removed; see
4806 ** The header files append.h and sequences.h have been removed. These
4807 files implemented non-R4RS operations which would encourage
4808 non-portable programming style and less easy-to-read code.
4810 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
4812 ** New procedures have been added to implement a "batch mode":
4814 *** Function: batch-mode?
4816 Returns a boolean indicating whether the interpreter is in batch
4819 *** Function: set-batch-mode?! ARG
4821 If ARG is true, switches the interpreter to batch mode. The `#f'
4822 case has not been implemented.
4824 ** Guile now provides full command-line editing, when run interactively.
4825 To use this feature, you must have the readline library installed.
4826 The Guile build process will notice it, and automatically include
4829 The readline library is available via anonymous FTP from any GNU
4830 mirror site; the canonical location is "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
4832 ** the-last-stack is now a fluid.
4834 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
4836 ** You can now use the `guile-config' utility to build programs that use Guile.
4838 Guile now includes a command-line utility called `guile-config', which
4839 can provide information about how to compile and link programs that
4842 *** `guile-config compile' prints any C compiler flags needed to use Guile.
4843 You should include this command's output on the command line you use
4844 to compile C or C++ code that #includes the Guile header files. It's
4845 usually just a `-I' flag to help the compiler find the Guile headers.
4848 *** `guile-config link' prints any linker flags necessary to link with Guile.
4850 This command writes to its standard output a list of flags which you
4851 must pass to the linker to link your code against the Guile library.
4852 The flags include '-lguile' itself, any other libraries the Guile
4853 library depends upon, and any `-L' flags needed to help the linker
4854 find those libraries.
4856 For example, here is a Makefile rule that builds a program named 'foo'
4857 from the object files ${FOO_OBJECTS}, and links them against Guile:
4860 ${CC} ${CFLAGS} ${FOO_OBJECTS} `guile-config link` -o foo
4862 Previous Guile releases recommended that you use autoconf to detect
4863 which of a predefined set of libraries were present on your system.
4864 It is more robust to use `guile-config', since it records exactly which
4865 libraries the installed Guile library requires.
4867 This was originally called `build-guile', but was renamed to
4868 `guile-config' before Guile 1.3 was released, to be consistent with
4869 the analogous script for the GTK+ GUI toolkit, which is called
4873 ** Use the GUILE_FLAGS macro in your configure.in file to find Guile.
4875 If you are using the GNU autoconf package to configure your program,
4876 you can use the GUILE_FLAGS autoconf macro to call `guile-config'
4877 (described above) and gather the necessary values for use in your
4880 The GUILE_FLAGS macro expands to configure script code which runs the
4881 `guile-config' script, to find out where Guile's header files and
4882 libraries are installed. It sets two variables, marked for
4883 substitution, as by AC_SUBST.
4885 GUILE_CFLAGS --- flags to pass to a C or C++ compiler to build
4886 code that uses Guile header files. This is almost always just a
4889 GUILE_LDFLAGS --- flags to pass to the linker to link a
4890 program against Guile. This includes `-lguile' for the Guile
4891 library itself, any libraries that Guile itself requires (like
4892 -lqthreads), and so on. It may also include a -L flag to tell the
4893 compiler where to find the libraries.
4895 GUILE_FLAGS is defined in the file guile.m4, in the top-level
4896 directory of the Guile distribution. You can copy it into your
4897 package's aclocal.m4 file, and then use it in your configure.in file.
4899 If you are using the `aclocal' program, distributed with GNU automake,
4900 to maintain your aclocal.m4 file, the Guile installation process
4901 installs guile.m4 where aclocal will find it. All you need to do is
4902 use GUILE_FLAGS in your configure.in file, and then run `aclocal';
4903 this will copy the definition of GUILE_FLAGS into your aclocal.m4
4907 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
4909 ** Multi-byte strings have been removed, as have multi-byte and wide
4910 ports. We felt that these were the wrong approach to
4911 internationalization support.
4913 ** New function: readline [PROMPT]
4914 Read a line from the terminal, and allow the user to edit it,
4915 prompting with PROMPT. READLINE provides a large set of Emacs-like
4916 editing commands, lets the user recall previously typed lines, and
4917 works on almost every kind of terminal, including dumb terminals.
4919 READLINE assumes that the cursor is at the beginning of the line when
4920 it is invoked. Thus, you can't print a prompt yourself, and then call
4921 READLINE; you need to package up your prompt as a string, pass it to
4922 the function, and let READLINE print the prompt itself. This is
4923 because READLINE needs to know the prompt's screen width.
4925 For Guile to provide this function, you must have the readline
4926 library, version 2.1 or later, installed on your system. Readline is
4927 available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in pub/gnu, or from
4928 any GNU mirror site.
4930 See also ADD-HISTORY function.
4932 ** New function: add-history STRING
4933 Add STRING as the most recent line in the history used by the READLINE
4934 command. READLINE does not add lines to the history itself; you must
4935 call ADD-HISTORY to make previous input available to the user.
4937 ** The behavior of the read-line function has changed.
4939 This function now uses standard C library functions to read the line,
4940 for speed. This means that it doesn not respect the value of
4941 scm-line-incrementors; it assumes that lines are delimited with
4944 (Note that this is read-line, the function that reads a line of text
4945 from a port, not readline, the function that reads a line from a
4946 terminal, providing full editing capabilities.)
4948 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style): Parse command-line arguments.
4950 This module provides some simple argument parsing. It exports one
4953 Function: getopt-gnu-style ARG-LS
4954 Parse a list of program arguments into an alist of option
4957 Each item in the list of program arguments is examined to see if
4958 it meets the syntax of a GNU long-named option. An argument like
4959 `--MUMBLE' produces an element of the form (MUMBLE . #t) in the
4960 returned alist, where MUMBLE is a keyword object with the same
4961 name as the argument. An argument like `--MUMBLE=FROB' produces
4962 an element of the form (MUMBLE . FROB), where FROB is a string.
4964 As a special case, the returned alist also contains a pair whose
4965 car is the symbol `rest'. The cdr of this pair is a list
4966 containing all the items in the argument list that are not options
4967 of the form mentioned above.
4969 The argument `--' is treated specially: all items in the argument
4970 list appearing after such an argument are not examined, and are
4971 returned in the special `rest' list.
4973 This function does not parse normal single-character switches.
4974 You will need to parse them out of the `rest' list yourself.
4976 ** The read syntax for byte vectors and short vectors has changed.
4978 Instead of #bytes(...), write #y(...).
4980 Instead of #short(...), write #h(...).
4982 This may seem nutty, but, like the other uniform vectors, byte vectors
4983 and short vectors want to have the same print and read syntax (and,
4984 more basic, want to have read syntax!). Changing the read syntax to
4985 use multiple characters after the hash sign breaks with the
4986 conventions used in R5RS and the conventions used for the other
4987 uniform vectors. It also introduces complexity in the current reader,
4988 both on the C and Scheme levels. (The Right solution is probably to
4989 change the syntax and prototypes for uniform vectors entirely.)
4992 ** The new module (ice-9 session) provides useful interactive functions.
4994 *** New procedure: (apropos REGEXP OPTION ...)
4996 Display a list of top-level variables whose names match REGEXP, and
4997 the modules they are imported from. Each OPTION should be one of the
5000 value --- Show the value of each matching variable.
5001 shadow --- Show bindings shadowed by subsequently imported modules.
5002 full --- Same as both `shadow' and `value'.
5006 guile> (apropos "trace" 'full)
5007 debug: trace #<procedure trace args>
5008 debug: untrace #<procedure untrace args>
5009 the-scm-module: display-backtrace #<compiled-closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>
5010 the-scm-module: before-backtrace-hook ()
5011 the-scm-module: backtrace #<primitive-procedure backtrace>
5012 the-scm-module: after-backtrace-hook ()
5013 the-scm-module: has-shown-backtrace-hint? #f
5016 ** There are new functions and syntax for working with macros.
5018 Guile implements macros as a special object type. Any variable whose
5019 top-level binding is a macro object acts as a macro. The macro object
5020 specifies how the expression should be transformed before evaluation.
5022 *** Macro objects now print in a reasonable way, resembling procedures.
5024 *** New function: (macro? OBJ)
5025 True iff OBJ is a macro object.
5027 *** New function: (primitive-macro? OBJ)
5028 Like (macro? OBJ), but true only if OBJ is one of the Guile primitive
5029 macro transformers, implemented in eval.c rather than Scheme code.
5031 Why do we have this function?
5032 - For symmetry with procedure? and primitive-procedure?,
5033 - to allow custom print procedures to tell whether a macro is
5034 primitive, and display it differently, and
5035 - to allow compilers and user-written evaluators to distinguish
5036 builtin special forms from user-defined ones, which could be
5039 *** New function: (macro-type OBJ)
5040 Return a value indicating what kind of macro OBJ is. Possible return
5043 The symbol `syntax' --- a macro created by procedure->syntax.
5044 The symbol `macro' --- a macro created by procedure->macro.
5045 The symbol `macro!' --- a macro created by procedure->memoizing-macro.
5046 The boolean #f --- if OBJ is not a macro object.
5048 *** New function: (macro-name MACRO)
5049 Return the name of the macro object MACRO's procedure, as returned by
5052 *** New function: (macro-transformer MACRO)
5053 Return the transformer procedure for MACRO.
5055 *** New syntax: (use-syntax MODULE ... TRANSFORMER)
5057 Specify a new macro expander to use in the current module. Each
5058 MODULE is a module name, with the same meaning as in the `use-modules'
5059 form; each named module's exported bindings are added to the current
5060 top-level environment. TRANSFORMER is an expression evaluated in the
5061 resulting environment which must yield a procedure to use as the
5062 module's eval transformer: every expression evaluated in this module
5063 is passed to this function, and the result passed to the Guile
5066 *** macro-eval! is removed. Use local-eval instead.
5068 ** Some magic has been added to the printer to better handle user
5069 written printing routines (like record printers, closure printers).
5071 The problem is that these user written routines must have access to
5072 the current `print-state' to be able to handle fancy things like
5073 detection of circular references. These print-states have to be
5074 passed to the builtin printing routines (display, write, etc) to
5075 properly continue the print chain.
5077 We didn't want to change all existing print code so that it
5078 explicitly passes thru a print state in addition to a port. Instead,
5079 we extented the possible values that the builtin printing routines
5080 accept as a `port'. In addition to a normal port, they now also take
5081 a pair of a normal port and a print-state. Printing will go to the
5082 port and the print-state will be used to control the detection of
5083 circular references, etc. If the builtin function does not care for a
5084 print-state, it is simply ignored.
5086 User written callbacks are now called with such a pair as their
5087 `port', but because every function now accepts this pair as a PORT
5088 argument, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, it is probably
5089 safest to not check for these pairs.
5091 However, it is sometimes necessary to continue a print chain on a
5092 different port, for example to get a intermediate string
5093 representation of the printed value, mangle that string somehow, and
5094 then to finally print the mangled string. Use the new function
5096 inherit-print-state OLD-PORT NEW-PORT
5098 for this. It constructs a new `port' that prints to NEW-PORT but
5099 inherits the print-state of OLD-PORT.
5101 ** struct-vtable-offset renamed to vtable-offset-user
5103 ** New constants: vtable-index-layout, vtable-index-vtable, vtable-index-printer
5105 ** There is now a third optional argument to make-vtable-vtable
5106 (and fourth to make-struct) when constructing new types (vtables).
5107 This argument initializes field vtable-index-printer of the vtable.
5109 ** The detection of circular references has been extended to structs.
5110 That is, a structure that -- in the process of being printed -- prints
5111 itself does not lead to infinite recursion.
5113 ** There is now some basic support for fluids. Please read
5114 "libguile/fluid.h" to find out more. It is accessible from Scheme with
5115 the following functions and macros:
5117 Function: make-fluid
5119 Create a new fluid object. Fluids are not special variables or
5120 some other extension to the semantics of Scheme, but rather
5121 ordinary Scheme objects. You can store them into variables (that
5122 are still lexically scoped, of course) or into any other place you
5123 like. Every fluid has a initial value of `#f'.
5125 Function: fluid? OBJ
5127 Test whether OBJ is a fluid.
5129 Function: fluid-ref FLUID
5130 Function: fluid-set! FLUID VAL
5132 Access/modify the fluid FLUID. Modifications are only visible
5133 within the current dynamic root (that includes threads).
5135 Function: with-fluids* FLUIDS VALUES THUNK
5137 FLUIDS is a list of fluids and VALUES a corresponding list of
5138 values for these fluids. Before THUNK gets called the values are
5139 installed in the fluids and the old values of the fluids are
5140 saved in the VALUES list. When the flow of control leaves THUNK
5141 or reenters it, the values get swapped again. You might think of
5142 this as a `safe-fluid-excursion'. Note that the VALUES list is
5143 modified by `with-fluids*'.
5145 Macro: with-fluids ((FLUID VALUE) ...) FORM ...
5147 The same as `with-fluids*' but with a different syntax. It looks
5148 just like `let', but both FLUID and VALUE are evaluated. Remember,
5149 fluids are not special variables but ordinary objects. FLUID
5150 should evaluate to a fluid.
5152 ** Changes to system call interfaces:
5154 *** close-port, close-input-port and close-output-port now return a
5155 boolean instead of an `unspecified' object. #t means that the port
5156 was successfully closed, while #f means it was already closed. It is
5157 also now possible for these procedures to raise an exception if an
5158 error occurs (some errors from write can be delayed until close.)
5160 *** the first argument to chmod, fcntl, ftell and fseek can now be a
5163 *** the third argument to fcntl is now optional.
5165 *** the first argument to chown can now be a file descriptor or a port.
5167 *** the argument to stat can now be a port.
5169 *** The following new procedures have been added (most use scsh
5172 *** procedure: close PORT/FD
5173 Similar to close-port (*note close-port: Closing Ports.), but also
5174 works on file descriptors. A side effect of closing a file
5175 descriptor is that any ports using that file descriptor are moved
5176 to a different file descriptor and have their revealed counts set
5179 *** procedure: port->fdes PORT
5180 Returns the integer file descriptor underlying PORT. As a side
5181 effect the revealed count of PORT is incremented.
5183 *** procedure: fdes->ports FDES
5184 Returns a list of existing ports which have FDES as an underlying
5185 file descriptor, without changing their revealed counts.
5187 *** procedure: fdes->inport FDES
5188 Returns an existing input port which has FDES as its underlying
5189 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
5190 Otherwise, returns a new input port with a revealed count of 1.
5192 *** procedure: fdes->outport FDES
5193 Returns an existing output port which has FDES as its underlying
5194 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
5195 Otherwise, returns a new output port with a revealed count of 1.
5197 The next group of procedures perform a `dup2' system call, if NEWFD
5198 (an integer) is supplied, otherwise a `dup'. The file descriptor to be
5199 duplicated can be supplied as an integer or contained in a port. The
5200 type of value returned varies depending on which procedure is used.
5202 All procedures also have the side effect when performing `dup2' that
5203 any ports using NEWFD are moved to a different file descriptor and have
5204 their revealed counts set to zero.
5206 *** procedure: dup->fdes PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5207 Returns an integer file descriptor.
5209 *** procedure: dup->inport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5210 Returns a new input port using the new file descriptor.
5212 *** procedure: dup->outport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5213 Returns a new output port using the new file descriptor.
5215 *** procedure: dup PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5216 Returns a new port if PORT/FD is a port, with the same mode as the
5217 supplied port, otherwise returns an integer file descriptor.
5219 *** procedure: dup->port PORT/FD MODE [NEWFD]
5220 Returns a new port using the new file descriptor. MODE supplies a
5221 mode string for the port (*note open-file: File Ports.).
5223 *** procedure: setenv NAME VALUE
5224 Modifies the environment of the current process, which is also the
5225 default environment inherited by child processes.
5227 If VALUE is `#f', then NAME is removed from the environment.
5228 Otherwise, the string NAME=VALUE is added to the environment,
5229 replacing any existing string with name matching NAME.
5231 The return value is unspecified.
5233 *** procedure: truncate-file OBJ SIZE
5234 Truncates the file referred to by OBJ to at most SIZE bytes. OBJ
5235 can be a string containing a file name or an integer file
5236 descriptor or port open for output on the file. The underlying
5237 system calls are `truncate' and `ftruncate'.
5239 The return value is unspecified.
5241 *** procedure: setvbuf PORT MODE [SIZE]
5242 Set the buffering mode for PORT. MODE can be:
5250 block buffered, using a newly allocated buffer of SIZE bytes.
5251 However if SIZE is zero or unspecified, the port will be made
5254 This procedure should not be used after I/O has been performed with
5257 Ports are usually block buffered by default, with a default buffer
5258 size. Procedures e.g., *Note open-file: File Ports, which accept a
5259 mode string allow `0' to be added to request an unbuffered port.
5261 *** procedure: fsync PORT/FD
5262 Copies any unwritten data for the specified output file descriptor
5263 to disk. If PORT/FD is a port, its buffer is flushed before the
5264 underlying file descriptor is fsync'd. The return value is
5267 *** procedure: open-fdes PATH FLAGS [MODES]
5268 Similar to `open' but returns a file descriptor instead of a port.
5270 *** procedure: execle PATH ENV [ARG] ...
5271 Similar to `execl', but the environment of the new process is
5272 specified by ENV, which must be a list of strings as returned by
5273 the `environ' procedure.
5275 This procedure is currently implemented using the `execve' system
5276 call, but we call it `execle' because of its Scheme calling
5279 *** procedure: strerror ERRNO
5280 Returns the Unix error message corresponding to ERRNO, an integer.
5282 *** procedure: primitive-exit [STATUS]
5283 Terminate the current process without unwinding the Scheme stack.
5284 This is would typically be useful after a fork. The exit status
5285 is STATUS if supplied, otherwise zero.
5287 *** procedure: times
5288 Returns an object with information about real and processor time.
5289 The following procedures accept such an object as an argument and
5290 return a selected component:
5293 The current real time, expressed as time units relative to an
5297 The CPU time units used by the calling process.
5300 The CPU time units used by the system on behalf of the
5304 The CPU time units used by terminated child processes of the
5305 calling process, whose status has been collected (e.g., using
5309 Similarly, the CPU times units used by the system on behalf of
5310 terminated child processes.
5312 ** Removed: list-length
5313 ** Removed: list-append, list-append!
5314 ** Removed: list-reverse, list-reverse!
5316 ** array-map renamed to array-map!
5318 ** serial-array-map renamed to serial-array-map!
5320 ** catch doesn't take #f as first argument any longer
5322 Previously, it was possible to pass #f instead of a key to `catch'.
5323 That would cause `catch' to pass a jump buffer object to the procedure
5324 passed as second argument. The procedure could then use this jump
5325 buffer objekt as an argument to throw.
5327 This mechanism has been removed since its utility doesn't motivate the
5328 extra complexity it introduces.
5330 ** The `#/' notation for lists now provokes a warning message from Guile.
5331 This syntax will be removed from Guile in the near future.
5333 To disable the warning message, set the GUILE_HUSH environment
5334 variable to any non-empty value.
5336 ** The newline character now prints as `#\newline', following the
5337 normal Scheme notation, not `#\nl'.
5339 * Changes to the gh_ interface
5341 ** The gh_enter function now takes care of loading the Guile startup files.
5342 gh_enter works by calling scm_boot_guile; see the remarks below.
5344 ** Function: void gh_write (SCM x)
5346 Write the printed representation of the scheme object x to the current
5347 output port. Corresponds to the scheme level `write'.
5349 ** gh_list_length renamed to gh_length.
5351 ** vector handling routines
5353 Several major changes. In particular, gh_vector() now resembles
5354 (vector ...) (with a caveat -- see manual), and gh_make_vector() now
5355 exists and behaves like (make-vector ...). gh_vset() and gh_vref()
5356 have been renamed gh_vector_set_x() and gh_vector_ref(). Some missing
5357 vector-related gh_ functions have been implemented.
5359 ** pair and list routines
5361 Implemented several of the R4RS pair and list functions that were
5364 ** gh_scm2doubles, gh_doubles2scm, gh_doubles2dvect
5366 New function. Converts double arrays back and forth between Scheme
5369 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5371 ** The function scm_boot_guile now takes care of loading the startup files.
5373 Guile's primary initialization function, scm_boot_guile, now takes
5374 care of loading `boot-9.scm', in the `ice-9' module, to initialize
5375 Guile, define the module system, and put together some standard
5376 bindings. It also loads `init.scm', which is intended to hold
5377 site-specific initialization code.
5379 Since Guile cannot operate properly until boot-9.scm is loaded, there
5380 is no reason to separate loading boot-9.scm from Guile's other
5381 initialization processes.
5383 This job used to be done by scm_compile_shell_switches, which didn't
5384 make much sense; in particular, it meant that people using Guile for
5385 non-shell-like applications had to jump through hoops to get Guile
5386 initialized properly.
5388 ** The function scm_compile_shell_switches no longer loads the startup files.
5389 Now, Guile always loads the startup files, whenever it is initialized;
5390 see the notes above for scm_boot_guile and scm_load_startup_files.
5392 ** Function: scm_load_startup_files
5393 This new function takes care of loading Guile's initialization file
5394 (`boot-9.scm'), and the site initialization file, `init.scm'. Since
5395 this is always called by the Guile initialization process, it's
5396 probably not too useful to call this yourself, but it's there anyway.
5398 ** The semantics of smob marking have changed slightly.
5400 The smob marking function (the `mark' member of the scm_smobfuns
5401 structure) is no longer responsible for setting the mark bit on the
5402 smob. The generic smob handling code in the garbage collector will
5403 set this bit. The mark function need only ensure that any other
5404 objects the smob refers to get marked.
5406 Note that this change means that the smob's GC8MARK bit is typically
5407 already set upon entry to the mark function. Thus, marking functions
5408 which look like this:
5411 if (SCM_GC8MARKP (ptr))
5413 SCM_SETGC8MARK (ptr);
5414 ... mark objects to which the smob refers ...
5417 are now incorrect, since they will return early, and fail to mark any
5418 other objects the smob refers to. Some code in the Guile library used
5421 ** The semantics of the I/O port functions in scm_ptobfuns have changed.
5423 If you have implemented your own I/O port type, by writing the
5424 functions required by the scm_ptobfuns and then calling scm_newptob,
5425 you will need to change your functions slightly.
5427 The functions in a scm_ptobfuns structure now expect the port itself
5428 as their argument; they used to expect the `stream' member of the
5429 port's scm_port_table structure. This allows functions in an
5430 scm_ptobfuns structure to easily access the port's cell (and any flags
5431 it its CAR), and the port's scm_port_table structure.
5433 Guile now passes the I/O port itself as the `port' argument in the
5434 following scm_ptobfuns functions:
5436 int (*free) (SCM port);
5437 int (*fputc) (int, SCM port);
5438 int (*fputs) (char *, SCM port);
5439 scm_sizet (*fwrite) SCM_P ((char *ptr,
5443 int (*fflush) (SCM port);
5444 int (*fgetc) (SCM port);
5445 int (*fclose) (SCM port);
5447 The interfaces to the `mark', `print', `equalp', and `fgets' methods
5450 If you have existing code which defines its own port types, it is easy
5451 to convert your code to the new interface; simply apply SCM_STREAM to
5452 the port argument to yield the value you code used to expect.
5454 Note that since both the port and the stream have the same type in the
5455 C code --- they are both SCM values --- the C compiler will not remind
5456 you if you forget to update your scm_ptobfuns functions.
5459 ** Function: int scm_internal_select (int fds,
5463 struct timeval *timeout);
5465 This is a replacement for the `select' function provided by the OS.
5466 It enables I/O blocking and sleeping to happen for one cooperative
5467 thread without blocking other threads. It also avoids busy-loops in
5468 these situations. It is intended that all I/O blocking and sleeping
5469 will finally go through this function. Currently, this function is
5470 only available on systems providing `gettimeofday' and `select'.
5472 ** Function: SCM scm_internal_stack_catch (SCM tag,
5473 scm_catch_body_t body,
5475 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
5478 A new sibling to the other two C level `catch' functions
5479 scm_internal_catch and scm_internal_lazy_catch. Use it if you want
5480 the stack to be saved automatically into the variable `the-last-stack'
5481 (scm_the_last_stack_var) on error. This is necessary if you want to
5482 use advanced error reporting, such as calling scm_display_error and
5483 scm_display_backtrace. (They both take a stack object as argument.)
5485 ** Function: SCM scm_spawn_thread (scm_catch_body_t body,
5487 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
5490 Spawns a new thread. It does a job similar to
5491 scm_call_with_new_thread but takes arguments more suitable when
5492 spawning threads from application C code.
5494 ** The hook scm_error_callback has been removed. It was originally
5495 intended as a way for the user to install his own error handler. But
5496 that method works badly since it intervenes between throw and catch,
5497 thereby changing the semantics of expressions like (catch #t ...).
5498 The correct way to do it is to use one of the C level catch functions
5499 in throw.c: scm_internal_catch/lazy_catch/stack_catch.
5501 ** Removed functions:
5503 scm_obj_length, scm_list_length, scm_list_append, scm_list_append_x,
5504 scm_list_reverse, scm_list_reverse_x
5506 ** New macros: SCM_LISTn where n is one of the integers 0-9.
5508 These can be used for pretty list creation from C. The idea is taken
5509 from Erick Gallesio's STk.
5511 ** scm_array_map renamed to scm_array_map_x
5513 ** mbstrings are now removed
5515 This means that the type codes scm_tc7_mb_string and
5516 scm_tc7_mb_substring has been removed.
5518 ** scm_gen_putc, scm_gen_puts, scm_gen_write, and scm_gen_getc have changed.
5520 Since we no longer support multi-byte strings, these I/O functions
5521 have been simplified, and renamed. Here are their old names, and
5522 their new names and arguments:
5524 scm_gen_putc -> void scm_putc (int c, SCM port);
5525 scm_gen_puts -> void scm_puts (char *s, SCM port);
5526 scm_gen_write -> void scm_lfwrite (char *ptr, scm_sizet size, SCM port);
5527 scm_gen_getc -> void scm_getc (SCM port);
5530 ** The macros SCM_TYP7D and SCM_TYP7SD has been removed.
5532 ** The macro SCM_TYP7S has taken the role of the old SCM_TYP7D
5534 SCM_TYP7S now masks away the bit which distinguishes substrings from
5537 ** scm_catch_body_t: Backward incompatible change!
5539 Body functions to scm_internal_catch and friends do not any longer
5540 take a second argument. This is because it is no longer possible to
5541 pass a #f arg to catch.
5543 ** Calls to scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect now nest properly.
5545 The function scm_protect_object protects its argument from being freed
5546 by the garbage collector. scm_unprotect_object removes that
5549 These functions now nest properly. That is, for every object O, there
5550 is a counter which scm_protect_object(O) increments and
5551 scm_unprotect_object(O) decrements, if the counter is greater than
5552 zero. Every object's counter is zero when it is first created. If an
5553 object's counter is greater than zero, the garbage collector will not
5554 reclaim its storage.
5556 This allows you to use scm_protect_object in your code without
5557 worrying that some other function you call will call
5558 scm_unprotect_object, and allow it to be freed. Assuming that the
5559 functions you call are well-behaved, and unprotect only those objects
5560 they protect, you can follow the same rule and have confidence that
5561 objects will be freed only at appropriate times.
5564 Changes in Guile 1.2 (released Tuesday, June 24 1997):
5566 * Changes to the distribution
5568 ** Nightly snapshots are now available from ftp.red-bean.com.
5569 The old server, ftp.cyclic.com, has been relinquished to its rightful
5572 Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are now available via
5573 anonymous FTP from ftp.red-bean.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.
5575 Via the web, that's: ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
5576 For getit, that's: ftp.red-bean.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
5578 ** To run Guile without installing it, the procedure has changed a bit.
5580 If you used a separate build directory to compile Guile, you'll need
5581 to include the build directory in SCHEME_LOAD_PATH, as well as the
5582 source directory. See the `INSTALL' file for examples.
5584 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
5586 ** The standard Guile load path for Scheme code now includes
5587 $(datadir)/guile (usually /usr/local/share/guile). This means that
5588 you can install your own Scheme files there, and Guile will find them.
5589 (Previous versions of Guile only checked a directory whose name
5590 contained the Guile version number, so you had to re-install or move
5591 your Scheme sources each time you installed a fresh version of Guile.)
5593 The load path also includes $(datadir)/guile/site; we recommend
5594 putting individual Scheme files there. If you want to install a
5595 package with multiple source files, create a directory for them under
5598 ** Guile 1.2 will now use the Rx regular expression library, if it is
5599 installed on your system. When you are linking libguile into your own
5600 programs, this means you will have to link against -lguile, -lqt (if
5601 you configured Guile with thread support), and -lrx.
5603 If you are using autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your
5604 application, the following lines should suffice to add the appropriate
5605 libraries to your link command:
5607 ### Find Rx, quickthreads and libguile.
5608 AC_CHECK_LIB(rx, main)
5609 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
5610 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
5612 The Guile 1.2 distribution does not contain sources for the Rx
5613 library, as Guile 1.0 did. If you want to use Rx, you'll need to
5614 retrieve it from a GNU FTP site and install it separately.
5616 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
5618 ** The dynamic linking features of Guile are now enabled by default.
5619 You can disable them by giving the `--disable-dynamic-linking' option
5622 (dynamic-link FILENAME)
5624 Find the object file denoted by FILENAME (a string) and link it
5625 into the running Guile application. When everything works out,
5626 return a Scheme object suitable for representing the linked object
5627 file. Otherwise an error is thrown. How object files are
5628 searched is system dependent.
5630 (dynamic-object? VAL)
5632 Determine whether VAL represents a dynamically linked object file.
5634 (dynamic-unlink DYNOBJ)
5636 Unlink the indicated object file from the application. DYNOBJ
5637 should be one of the values returned by `dynamic-link'.
5639 (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
5641 Search the C function indicated by FUNCTION (a string or symbol)
5642 in DYNOBJ and return some Scheme object that can later be used
5643 with `dynamic-call' to actually call this function. Right now,
5644 these Scheme objects are formed by casting the address of the
5645 function to `long' and converting this number to its Scheme
5648 (dynamic-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
5650 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ. The
5651 function is passed no arguments and its return value is ignored.
5652 When FUNCTION is something returned by `dynamic-func', call that
5653 function and ignore DYNOBJ. When FUNCTION is a string (or symbol,
5654 etc.), look it up in DYNOBJ; this is equivalent to
5656 (dynamic-call (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ) #f)
5658 Interrupts are deferred while the C function is executing (with
5659 SCM_DEFER_INTS/SCM_ALLOW_INTS).
5661 (dynamic-args-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ ARGS)
5663 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ, but pass it
5664 some arguments and return its return value. The C function is
5665 expected to take two arguments and return an `int', just like
5668 int c_func (int argc, char **argv);
5670 ARGS must be a list of strings and is converted into an array of
5671 `char *'. The array is passed in ARGV and its size in ARGC. The
5672 return value is converted to a Scheme number and returned from the
5673 call to `dynamic-args-call'.
5675 When dynamic linking is disabled or not supported on your system,
5676 the above functions throw errors, but they are still available.
5678 Here is a small example that works on GNU/Linux:
5680 (define libc-obj (dynamic-link "libc.so"))
5681 (dynamic-args-call 'rand libc-obj '())
5683 See the file `libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING' for additional comments.
5685 ** The #/ syntax for module names is depreciated, and will be removed
5686 in a future version of Guile. Instead of
5694 The latter syntax is more consistent with existing Lisp practice.
5696 ** Guile now does fancier printing of structures. Structures are the
5697 underlying implementation for records, which in turn are used to
5698 implement modules, so all of these object now print differently and in
5699 a more informative way.
5701 The Scheme printer will examine the builtin variable *struct-printer*
5702 whenever it needs to print a structure object. When this variable is
5703 not `#f' it is deemed to be a procedure and will be applied to the
5704 structure object and the output port. When *struct-printer* is `#f'
5705 or the procedure return `#f' the structure object will be printed in
5706 the boring #<struct 80458270> form.
5708 This hook is used by some routines in ice-9/boot-9.scm to implement
5709 type specific printing routines. Please read the comments there about
5712 One of the more specific uses of structs are records. The printing
5713 procedure that could be passed to MAKE-RECORD-TYPE is now actually
5714 called. It should behave like a *struct-printer* procedure (described
5717 ** Guile now supports a new R4RS-compliant syntax for keywords. A
5718 token of the form #:NAME, where NAME has the same syntax as a Scheme
5719 symbol, is the external representation of the keyword named NAME.
5720 Keyword objects print using this syntax as well, so values containing
5721 keyword objects can be read back into Guile. When used in an
5722 expression, keywords are self-quoting objects.
5724 Guile suports this read syntax, and uses this print syntax, regardless
5725 of the current setting of the `keyword' read option. The `keyword'
5726 read option only controls whether Guile recognizes the `:NAME' syntax,
5727 which is incompatible with R4RS. (R4RS says such token represent
5730 ** Guile has regular expression support again. Guile 1.0 included
5731 functions for matching regular expressions, based on the Rx library.
5732 In Guile 1.1, the Guile/Rx interface was removed to simplify the
5733 distribution, and thus Guile had no regular expression support. Guile
5734 1.2 again supports the most commonly used functions, and supports all
5735 of SCSH's regular expression functions.
5737 If your system does not include a POSIX regular expression library,
5738 and you have not linked Guile with a third-party regexp library such as
5739 Rx, these functions will not be available. You can tell whether your
5740 Guile installation includes regular expression support by checking
5741 whether the `*features*' list includes the `regex' symbol.
5743 *** regexp functions
5745 By default, Guile supports POSIX extended regular expressions. That
5746 means that the characters `(', `)', `+' and `?' are special, and must
5747 be escaped if you wish to match the literal characters.
5749 This regular expression interface was modeled after that implemented
5750 by SCSH, the Scheme Shell. It is intended to be upwardly compatible
5751 with SCSH regular expressions.
5753 **** Function: string-match PATTERN STR [START]
5754 Compile the string PATTERN into a regular expression and compare
5755 it with STR. The optional numeric argument START specifies the
5756 position of STR at which to begin matching.
5758 `string-match' returns a "match structure" which describes what,
5759 if anything, was matched by the regular expression. *Note Match
5760 Structures::. If STR does not match PATTERN at all,
5761 `string-match' returns `#f'.
5763 Each time `string-match' is called, it must compile its PATTERN
5764 argument into a regular expression structure. This operation is
5765 expensive, which makes `string-match' inefficient if the same regular
5766 expression is used several times (for example, in a loop). For better
5767 performance, you can compile a regular expression in advance and then
5768 match strings against the compiled regexp.
5770 **** Function: make-regexp STR [FLAGS]
5771 Compile the regular expression described by STR, and return the
5772 compiled regexp structure. If STR does not describe a legal
5773 regular expression, `make-regexp' throws a
5774 `regular-expression-syntax' error.
5776 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
5778 **** Constant: regexp/extended
5779 Use POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting
5780 STR. If not set, POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used.
5781 If the FLAGS argument is omitted, we assume regexp/extended.
5783 **** Constant: regexp/icase
5784 Do not differentiate case. Subsequent searches using the
5785 returned regular expression will be case insensitive.
5787 **** Constant: regexp/newline
5788 Match-any-character operators don't match a newline.
5790 A non-matching list ([^...]) not containing a newline matches a
5793 Match-beginning-of-line operator (^) matches the empty string
5794 immediately after a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
5795 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/notbol.
5797 Match-end-of-line operator ($) matches the empty string
5798 immediately before a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
5799 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/noteol.
5801 **** Function: regexp-exec REGEXP STR [START [FLAGS]]
5802 Match the compiled regular expression REGEXP against `str'. If
5803 the optional integer START argument is provided, begin matching
5804 from that position in the string. Return a match structure
5805 describing the results of the match, or `#f' if no match could be
5808 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
5810 **** Constant: regexp/notbol
5811 The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but
5812 see the compilation flag regexp/newline above) This flag may be
5813 used when different portions of a string are passed to
5814 regexp-exec and the beginning of the string should not be
5815 interpreted as the beginning of the line.
5817 **** Constant: regexp/noteol
5818 The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the
5819 compilation flag regexp/newline above)
5821 **** Function: regexp? OBJ
5822 Return `#t' if OBJ is a compiled regular expression, or `#f'
5825 Regular expressions are commonly used to find patterns in one string
5826 and replace them with the contents of another string.
5828 **** Function: regexp-substitute PORT MATCH [ITEM...]
5829 Write to the output port PORT selected contents of the match
5830 structure MATCH. Each ITEM specifies what should be written, and
5831 may be one of the following arguments:
5833 * A string. String arguments are written out verbatim.
5835 * An integer. The submatch with that number is written.
5837 * The symbol `pre'. The portion of the matched string preceding
5838 the regexp match is written.
5840 * The symbol `post'. The portion of the matched string
5841 following the regexp match is written.
5843 PORT may be `#f', in which case nothing is written; instead,
5844 `regexp-substitute' constructs a string from the specified ITEMs
5847 **** Function: regexp-substitute/global PORT REGEXP TARGET [ITEM...]
5848 Similar to `regexp-substitute', but can be used to perform global
5849 substitutions on STR. Instead of taking a match structure as an
5850 argument, `regexp-substitute/global' takes two string arguments: a
5851 REGEXP string describing a regular expression, and a TARGET string
5852 which should be matched against this regular expression.
5854 Each ITEM behaves as in REGEXP-SUBSTITUTE, with the following
5857 * A function may be supplied. When this function is called, it
5858 will be passed one argument: a match structure for a given
5859 regular expression match. It should return a string to be
5860 written out to PORT.
5862 * The `post' symbol causes `regexp-substitute/global' to recurse
5863 on the unmatched portion of STR. This *must* be supplied in
5864 order to perform global search-and-replace on STR; if it is
5865 not present among the ITEMs, then `regexp-substitute/global'
5866 will return after processing a single match.
5868 *** Match Structures
5870 A "match structure" is the object returned by `string-match' and
5871 `regexp-exec'. It describes which portion of a string, if any, matched
5872 the given regular expression. Match structures include: a reference to
5873 the string that was checked for matches; the starting and ending
5874 positions of the regexp match; and, if the regexp included any
5875 parenthesized subexpressions, the starting and ending positions of each
5878 In each of the regexp match functions described below, the `match'
5879 argument must be a match structure returned by a previous call to
5880 `string-match' or `regexp-exec'. Most of these functions return some
5881 information about the original target string that was matched against a
5882 regular expression; we will call that string TARGET for easy reference.
5884 **** Function: regexp-match? OBJ
5885 Return `#t' if OBJ is a match structure returned by a previous
5886 call to `regexp-exec', or `#f' otherwise.
5888 **** Function: match:substring MATCH [N]
5889 Return the portion of TARGET matched by subexpression number N.
5890 Submatch 0 (the default) represents the entire regexp match. If
5891 the regular expression as a whole matched, but the subexpression
5892 number N did not match, return `#f'.
5894 **** Function: match:start MATCH [N]
5895 Return the starting position of submatch number N.
5897 **** Function: match:end MATCH [N]
5898 Return the ending position of submatch number N.
5900 **** Function: match:prefix MATCH
5901 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET preceding the regexp match.
5903 **** Function: match:suffix MATCH
5904 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET following the regexp match.
5906 **** Function: match:count MATCH
5907 Return the number of parenthesized subexpressions from MATCH.
5908 Note that the entire regular expression match itself counts as a
5909 subexpression, and failed submatches are included in the count.
5911 **** Function: match:string MATCH
5912 Return the original TARGET string.
5914 *** Backslash Escapes
5916 Sometimes you will want a regexp to match characters like `*' or `$'
5917 exactly. For example, to check whether a particular string represents
5918 a menu entry from an Info node, it would be useful to match it against
5919 a regexp like `^* [^:]*::'. However, this won't work; because the
5920 asterisk is a metacharacter, it won't match the `*' at the beginning of
5921 the string. In this case, we want to make the first asterisk un-magic.
5923 You can do this by preceding the metacharacter with a backslash
5924 character `\'. (This is also called "quoting" the metacharacter, and
5925 is known as a "backslash escape".) When Guile sees a backslash in a
5926 regular expression, it considers the following glyph to be an ordinary
5927 character, no matter what special meaning it would ordinarily have.
5928 Therefore, we can make the above example work by changing the regexp to
5929 `^\* [^:]*::'. The `\*' sequence tells the regular expression engine
5930 to match only a single asterisk in the target string.
5932 Since the backslash is itself a metacharacter, you may force a
5933 regexp to match a backslash in the target string by preceding the
5934 backslash with itself. For example, to find variable references in a
5935 TeX program, you might want to find occurrences of the string `\let\'
5936 followed by any number of alphabetic characters. The regular expression
5937 `\\let\\[A-Za-z]*' would do this: the double backslashes in the regexp
5938 each match a single backslash in the target string.
5940 **** Function: regexp-quote STR
5941 Quote each special character found in STR with a backslash, and
5942 return the resulting string.
5944 *Very important:* Using backslash escapes in Guile source code (as
5945 in Emacs Lisp or C) can be tricky, because the backslash character has
5946 special meaning for the Guile reader. For example, if Guile encounters
5947 the character sequence `\n' in the middle of a string while processing
5948 Scheme code, it replaces those characters with a newline character.
5949 Similarly, the character sequence `\t' is replaced by a horizontal tab.
5950 Several of these "escape sequences" are processed by the Guile reader
5951 before your code is executed. Unrecognized escape sequences are
5952 ignored: if the characters `\*' appear in a string, they will be
5953 translated to the single character `*'.
5955 This translation is obviously undesirable for regular expressions,
5956 since we want to be able to include backslashes in a string in order to
5957 escape regexp metacharacters. Therefore, to make sure that a backslash
5958 is preserved in a string in your Guile program, you must use *two*
5959 consecutive backslashes:
5961 (define Info-menu-entry-pattern (make-regexp "^\\* [^:]*"))
5963 The string in this example is preprocessed by the Guile reader before
5964 any code is executed. The resulting argument to `make-regexp' is the
5965 string `^\* [^:]*', which is what we really want.
5967 This also means that in order to write a regular expression that
5968 matches a single backslash character, the regular expression string in
5969 the source code must include *four* backslashes. Each consecutive pair
5970 of backslashes gets translated by the Guile reader to a single
5971 backslash, and the resulting double-backslash is interpreted by the
5972 regexp engine as matching a single backslash character. Hence:
5974 (define tex-variable-pattern (make-regexp "\\\\let\\\\=[A-Za-z]*"))
5976 The reason for the unwieldiness of this syntax is historical. Both
5977 regular expression pattern matchers and Unix string processing systems
5978 have traditionally used backslashes with the special meanings described
5979 above. The POSIX regular expression specification and ANSI C standard
5980 both require these semantics. Attempting to abandon either convention
5981 would cause other kinds of compatibility problems, possibly more severe
5982 ones. Therefore, without extending the Scheme reader to support
5983 strings with different quoting conventions (an ungainly and confusing
5984 extension when implemented in other languages), we must adhere to this
5985 cumbersome escape syntax.
5987 * Changes to the gh_ interface
5989 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5991 * Changes to system call interfaces:
5993 ** The value returned by `raise' is now unspecified. It throws an exception
5996 *** A new procedure `sigaction' can be used to install signal handlers
5998 (sigaction signum [action] [flags])
6000 signum is the signal number, which can be specified using the value
6003 If action is omitted, sigaction returns a pair: the CAR is the current
6004 signal hander, which will be either an integer with the value SIG_DFL
6005 (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or the Scheme procedure which
6006 handles the signal, or #f if a non-Scheme procedure handles the
6007 signal. The CDR contains the current sigaction flags for the handler.
6009 If action is provided, it is installed as the new handler for signum.
6010 action can be a Scheme procedure taking one argument, or the value of
6011 SIG_DFL (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or #f to restore
6012 whatever signal handler was installed before sigaction was first used.
6013 Flags can optionally be specified for the new handler (SA_RESTART is
6014 always used if the system provides it, so need not be specified.) The
6015 return value is a pair with information about the old handler as
6018 This interface does not provide access to the "signal blocking"
6019 facility. Maybe this is not needed, since the thread support may
6020 provide solutions to the problem of consistent access to data
6023 *** A new procedure `flush-all-ports' is equivalent to running
6024 `force-output' on every port open for output.
6026 ** Guile now provides information on how it was built, via the new
6027 global variable, %guile-build-info. This variable records the values
6028 of the standard GNU makefile directory variables as an assocation
6029 list, mapping variable names (symbols) onto directory paths (strings).
6030 For example, to find out where the Guile link libraries were
6031 installed, you can say:
6033 guile -c "(display (assq-ref %guile-build-info 'libdir)) (newline)"
6036 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6038 ** The new function scm_handle_by_message_noexit is just like the
6039 existing scm_handle_by_message function, except that it doesn't call
6040 exit to terminate the process. Instead, it prints a message and just
6041 returns #f. This might be a more appropriate catch-all handler for
6042 new dynamic roots and threads.
6045 Changes in Guile 1.1 (released Friday, May 16 1997):
6047 * Changes to the distribution.
6049 The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
6051 guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
6052 guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
6053 Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
6054 is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
6055 guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
6056 expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
6057 programming language. These are packaged together because the
6058 Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
6060 This NEWS file describes the changes made to guile-core since the 1.0
6063 We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
6064 date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
6069 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
6071 ** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
6072 Shivers' Scheme Shell.
6074 In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
6075 exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
6076 stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
6077 the (command-line) function.
6078 -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
6079 -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
6080 -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
6082 The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
6083 -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
6084 -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
6085 command line arguments
6086 -ds do -s script at this point
6087 --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
6088 -h, --help display this help and exit
6089 -v, --version display version information and exit
6090 \ read arguments from following script lines
6092 So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
6093 which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
6095 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6098 (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
6102 (main (command-line))
6104 Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
6106 ekko a speckled gecko
6108 Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
6109 token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
6110 following list of command-line arguments:
6112 ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
6114 Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
6115 the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
6116 with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
6117 defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
6118 remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
6120 In Unix, the first line of a script file must take the following form:
6122 #!INTERPRETER ARGUMENT
6124 where INTERPRETER is the absolute filename of the interpreter
6125 executable, and ARGUMENT is a single command-line argument to pass to
6128 You may only pass one argument to the interpreter, and its length is
6129 limited. These restrictions can be annoying to work around, so Guile
6130 provides a general mechanism (borrowed from, and compatible with,
6131 SCSH) for circumventing them.
6133 If the ARGUMENT in a Guile script is a single backslash character,
6134 `\', Guile will open the script file, parse arguments from its second
6135 and subsequent lines, and replace the `\' with them. So, for example,
6136 here is another implementation of the `ekko' script:
6138 #!/usr/local/bin/guile \
6142 (for-each (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
6146 If the user invokes this script as follows:
6148 ekko a speckled gecko
6150 Unix expands this into
6152 /usr/local/bin/guile \ ekko a speckled gecko
6154 When Guile sees the `\' argument, it replaces it with the arguments
6155 read from the second line of the script, producing:
6157 /usr/local/bin/guile -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
6159 This tells Guile to load the `ekko' script, and apply the function
6160 `main' to the argument list ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
6162 Here is how Guile parses the command-line arguments:
6163 - Each space character terminates an argument. This means that two
6164 spaces in a row introduce an empty-string argument.
6165 - The tab character is not permitted (unless you quote it with the
6166 backslash character, as described below), to avoid confusion.
6167 - The newline character terminates the sequence of arguments, and will
6168 also terminate a final non-empty argument. (However, a newline
6169 following a space will not introduce a final empty-string argument;
6170 it only terminates the argument list.)
6171 - The backslash character is the escape character. It escapes
6172 backslash, space, tab, and newline. The ANSI C escape sequences
6173 like \n and \t are also supported. These produce argument
6174 constituents; the two-character combination \n doesn't act like a
6175 terminating newline. The escape sequence \NNN for exactly three
6176 octal digits reads as the character whose ASCII code is NNN. As
6177 above, characters produced this way are argument constituents.
6178 Backslash followed by other characters is not allowed.
6180 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
6182 ** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
6183 system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
6184 all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
6185 supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
6186 libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
6188 Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
6189 it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
6190 independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
6192 ** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
6194 To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
6195 -lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
6196 autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
6197 following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
6200 ### Find quickthreads and libguile.
6201 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
6202 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
6204 * Changes to Scheme functions
6206 ** Guile Scheme's special syntax for keyword objects is now optional,
6207 and disabled by default.
6209 The syntax variation from R4RS made it difficult to port some
6210 interesting packages to Guile. The routines which accepted keyword
6211 arguments (mostly in the module system) have been modified to also
6212 accept symbols whose names begin with `:'.
6214 To change the keyword syntax, you must first import the (ice-9 debug)
6216 (use-modules (ice-9 debug))
6218 Then you can enable the keyword syntax as follows:
6219 (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
6221 To disable keyword syntax, do this:
6222 (read-set! keywords #f)
6224 ** Many more primitive functions accept shared substrings as
6225 arguments. In the past, these functions required normal, mutable
6226 strings as arguments, although they never made use of this
6229 ** The uniform array functions now operate on byte vectors. These
6230 functions are `array-fill!', `serial-array-copy!', `array-copy!',
6231 `serial-array-map', `array-map', `array-for-each', and
6234 ** The new functions `trace' and `untrace' implement simple debugging
6235 support for Scheme functions.
6237 The `trace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
6238 and tells the Guile interpreter to display each procedure's name and
6239 arguments each time the procedure is invoked. When invoked with no
6240 arguments, `trace' returns the list of procedures currently being
6243 The `untrace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
6244 and tells the Guile interpreter not to trace them any more. When
6245 invoked with no arguments, `untrace' untraces all curretly traced
6248 The tracing in Guile has an advantage over most other systems: we
6249 don't create new procedure objects, but mark the procedure objects
6250 themselves. This means that anonymous and internal procedures can be
6253 ** The function `assert-repl-prompt' has been renamed to
6254 `set-repl-prompt!'. It takes one argument, PROMPT.
6255 - If PROMPT is #f, the Guile read-eval-print loop will not prompt.
6256 - If PROMPT is a string, we use it as a prompt.
6257 - If PROMPT is a procedure accepting no arguments, we call it, and
6258 display the result as a prompt.
6259 - Otherwise, we display "> ".
6261 ** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
6262 string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
6263 in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
6266 ** The new function `thunk?' returns true iff its argument is a
6267 procedure of zero arguments.
6269 ** `defined?' is now a builtin function, instead of syntax. This
6270 means that its argument should be quoted. It returns #t iff its
6271 argument is bound in the current module.
6273 ** The new syntax `use-modules' allows you to add new modules to your
6274 environment without re-typing a complete `define-module' form. It
6275 accepts any number of module names as arguments, and imports their
6276 public bindings into the current module.
6278 ** The new function (module-defined? NAME MODULE) returns true iff
6279 NAME, a symbol, is defined in MODULE, a module object.
6281 ** The new function `builtin-bindings' creates and returns a hash
6282 table containing copies of all the root module's bindings.
6284 ** The new function `builtin-weak-bindings' does the same as
6285 `builtin-bindings', but creates a doubly-weak hash table.
6287 ** The `equal?' function now considers variable objects to be
6288 equivalent if they have the same name and the same value.
6290 ** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
6291 given to Guile, as a list of strings.
6293 When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
6294 script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
6295 `-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
6296 behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
6297 command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
6299 ** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
6300 in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
6301 mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
6302 but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
6304 ** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
6307 ** Changes to I/O functions
6309 *** The functions `read', `primitive-load', `read-and-eval!', and
6310 `primitive-load-path' no longer take optional arguments controlling
6311 case insensitivity and a `#' parser.
6313 Case sensitivity is now controlled by a read option called
6314 `case-insensitive'. The user can add new `#' syntaxes with the
6315 `read-hash-extend' function (see below).
6317 *** The new function `read-hash-extend' allows the user to change the
6318 syntax of Guile Scheme in a somewhat controlled way.
6320 (read-hash-extend CHAR PROC)
6321 When parsing S-expressions, if we read a `#' character followed by
6322 the character CHAR, use PROC to parse an object from the stream.
6323 If PROC is #f, remove any parsing procedure registered for CHAR.
6325 The reader applies PROC to two arguments: CHAR and an input port.
6327 *** The new functions read-delimited and read-delimited! provide a
6328 general mechanism for doing delimited input on streams.
6330 (read-delimited DELIMS [PORT HANDLE-DELIM])
6331 Read until we encounter one of the characters in DELIMS (a string),
6332 or end-of-file. PORT is the input port to read from; it defaults to
6333 the current input port. The HANDLE-DELIM parameter determines how
6334 the terminating character is handled; it should be one of the
6337 'trim omit delimiter from result
6338 'peek leave delimiter character in input stream
6339 'concat append delimiter character to returned value
6340 'split return a pair: (RESULT . TERMINATOR)
6342 HANDLE-DELIM defaults to 'peek.
6344 (read-delimited! DELIMS BUF [PORT HANDLE-DELIM START END])
6345 A side-effecting variant of `read-delimited'.
6347 The data is written into the string BUF at the indices in the
6348 half-open interval [START, END); the default interval is the whole
6349 string: START = 0 and END = (string-length BUF). The values of
6350 START and END must specify a well-defined interval in BUF, i.e.
6351 0 <= START <= END <= (string-length BUF).
6353 It returns NBYTES, the number of bytes read. If the buffer filled
6354 up without a delimiter character being found, it returns #f. If the
6355 port is at EOF when the read starts, it returns the EOF object.
6357 If an integer is returned (i.e., the read is successfully terminated
6358 by reading a delimiter character), then the HANDLE-DELIM parameter
6359 determines how to handle the terminating character. It is described
6360 above, and defaults to 'peek.
6362 (The descriptions of these functions were borrowed from the SCSH
6363 manual, by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
6365 *** The `%read-delimited!' function is the primitive used to implement
6366 `read-delimited' and `read-delimited!'.
6368 (%read-delimited! DELIMS BUF GOBBLE? [PORT START END])
6370 This returns a pair of values: (TERMINATOR . NUM-READ).
6371 - TERMINATOR describes why the read was terminated. If it is a
6372 character or the eof object, then that is the value that terminated
6373 the read. If it is #f, the function filled the buffer without finding
6374 a delimiting character.
6375 - NUM-READ is the number of characters read into BUF.
6377 If the read is successfully terminated by reading a delimiter
6378 character, then the gobble? parameter determines what to do with the
6379 terminating character. If true, the character is removed from the
6380 input stream; if false, the character is left in the input stream
6381 where a subsequent read operation will retrieve it. In either case,
6382 the character is also the first value returned by the procedure call.
6384 (The descriptions of this function was borrowed from the SCSH manual,
6385 by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
6387 *** The `read-line' and `read-line!' functions have changed; they now
6388 trim the terminator by default; previously they appended it to the
6389 returned string. For the old behavior, use (read-line PORT 'concat).
6391 *** The functions `uniform-array-read!' and `uniform-array-write!' now
6392 take new optional START and END arguments, specifying the region of
6393 the array to read and write.
6395 *** The `ungetc-char-ready?' function has been removed. We feel it's
6396 inappropriate for an interface to expose implementation details this
6399 ** Changes to the Unix library and system call interface
6401 *** The new fcntl function provides access to the Unix `fcntl' system
6404 (fcntl PORT COMMAND VALUE)
6405 Apply COMMAND to PORT's file descriptor, with VALUE as an argument.
6406 Values for COMMAND are:
6408 F_DUPFD duplicate a file descriptor
6409 F_GETFD read the descriptor's close-on-exec flag
6410 F_SETFD set the descriptor's close-on-exec flag to VALUE
6411 F_GETFL read the descriptor's flags, as set on open
6412 F_SETFL set the descriptor's flags, as set on open to VALUE
6413 F_GETOWN return the process ID of a socket's owner, for SIGIO
6414 F_SETOWN set the process that owns a socket to VALUE, for SIGIO
6415 FD_CLOEXEC not sure what this is
6417 For details, see the documentation for the fcntl system call.
6419 *** The arguments to `select' have changed, for compatibility with
6420 SCSH. The TIMEOUT parameter may now be non-integral, yielding the
6421 expected behavior. The MILLISECONDS parameter has been changed to
6422 MICROSECONDS, to more closely resemble the underlying system call.
6423 The RVEC, WVEC, and EVEC arguments can now be vectors; the type of the
6424 corresponding return set will be the same.
6426 *** The arguments to the `mknod' system call have changed. They are
6429 (mknod PATH TYPE PERMS DEV)
6430 Create a new file (`node') in the file system. PATH is the name of
6431 the file to create. TYPE is the kind of file to create; it should
6432 be 'fifo, 'block-special, or 'char-special. PERMS specifies the
6433 permission bits to give the newly created file. If TYPE is
6434 'block-special or 'char-special, DEV specifies which device the
6435 special file refers to; its interpretation depends on the kind of
6436 special file being created.
6438 *** The `fork' function has been renamed to `primitive-fork', to avoid
6439 clashing with various SCSH forks.
6441 *** The `recv' and `recvfrom' functions have been renamed to `recv!'
6442 and `recvfrom!'. They no longer accept a size for a second argument;
6443 you must pass a string to hold the received value. They no longer
6444 return the buffer. Instead, `recv' returns the length of the message
6445 received, and `recvfrom' returns a pair containing the packet's length
6446 and originating address.
6448 *** The file descriptor datatype has been removed, as have the
6449 `read-fd', `write-fd', `close', `lseek', and `dup' functions.
6450 We plan to replace these functions with a SCSH-compatible interface.
6452 *** The `create' function has been removed; it's just a special case
6455 *** There are new functions to break down process termination status
6456 values. In the descriptions below, STATUS is a value returned by
6459 (status:exit-val STATUS)
6460 If the child process exited normally, this function returns the exit
6461 code for the child process (i.e., the value passed to exit, or
6462 returned from main). If the child process did not exit normally,
6463 this function returns #f.
6465 (status:stop-sig STATUS)
6466 If the child process was suspended by a signal, this function
6467 returns the signal that suspended the child. Otherwise, it returns
6470 (status:term-sig STATUS)
6471 If the child process terminated abnormally, this function returns
6472 the signal that terminated the child. Otherwise, this function
6475 POSIX promises that exactly one of these functions will return true on
6476 a valid STATUS value.
6478 These functions are compatible with SCSH.
6480 *** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
6481 returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
6483 Component Accessor Setter
6484 ========================= ============ ============
6485 seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
6486 minutes tm:min set-tm:min
6487 hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
6488 day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
6489 month tm:mon set-tm:mon
6490 year tm:year set-tm:year
6491 day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
6492 day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
6493 daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
6494 GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
6495 name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
6497 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname',
6498 describing the host system:
6501 ============================================== ================
6502 name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
6503 network name of this machine utsname:nodename
6504 release level of the operating system utsname:release
6505 version level of the operating system utsname:version
6506 machine hardware platform utsname:machine
6508 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getpw',
6509 `getpwnam', `getpwuid', and `getpwent', describing entries from the
6510 system's user database:
6513 ====================== =================
6514 user name passwd:name
6515 user password passwd:passwd
6518 real name passwd:gecos
6519 home directory passwd:dir
6520 shell program passwd:shell
6522 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getgr',
6523 `getgrnam', `getgrgid', and `getgrent', describing entries from the
6524 system's group database:
6527 ======================= ============
6528 group name group:name
6529 group password group:passwd
6531 group members group:mem
6533 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `gethost',
6534 `gethostbyaddr', `gethostbyname', and `gethostent', describing
6538 ========================= ===============
6539 official name of host hostent:name
6540 alias list hostent:aliases
6541 host address type hostent:addrtype
6542 length of address hostent:length
6543 list of addresses hostent:addr-list
6545 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getnet',
6546 `getnetbyaddr', `getnetbyname', and `getnetent', describing internet
6550 ========================= ===============
6551 official name of net netent:name
6552 alias list netent:aliases
6553 net number type netent:addrtype
6554 net number netent:net
6556 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getproto',
6557 `getprotobyname', `getprotobynumber', and `getprotoent', describing
6561 ========================= ===============
6562 official protocol name protoent:name
6563 alias list protoent:aliases
6564 protocol number protoent:proto
6566 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getserv',
6567 `getservbyname', `getservbyport', and `getservent', describing
6571 ========================= ===============
6572 official service name servent:name
6573 alias list servent:aliases
6574 port number servent:port
6575 protocol to use servent:proto
6577 *** There are new accessors for the sockaddr structures returned by
6578 `accept', `getsockname', `getpeername', `recvfrom!':
6581 ======================================== ===============
6582 address format (`family') sockaddr:fam
6583 path, for file domain addresses sockaddr:path
6584 address, for internet domain addresses sockaddr:addr
6585 TCP or UDP port, for internet sockaddr:port
6587 *** The `getpwent', `getgrent', `gethostent', `getnetent',
6588 `getprotoent', and `getservent' functions now return #f at the end of
6589 the user database. (They used to throw an exception.)
6591 Note that calling MUMBLEent function is equivalent to calling the
6592 corresponding MUMBLE function with no arguments.
6594 *** The `setpwent', `setgrent', `sethostent', `setnetent',
6595 `setprotoent', and `setservent' routines now take no arguments.
6597 *** The `gethost', `getproto', `getnet', and `getserv' functions now
6598 provide more useful information when they throw an exception.
6600 *** The `lnaof' function has been renamed to `inet-lnaof'.
6602 *** Guile now claims to have the `current-time' feature.
6604 *** The `mktime' function now takes an optional second argument ZONE,
6605 giving the time zone to use for the conversion. ZONE should be a
6606 string, in the same format as expected for the "TZ" environment variable.
6608 *** The `strptime' function now returns a pair (TIME . COUNT), where
6609 TIME is the parsed time as a vector, and COUNT is the number of
6610 characters from the string left unparsed. This function used to
6611 return the remaining characters as a string.
6613 *** The `gettimeofday' function has replaced the old `time+ticks' function.
6614 The return value is now (SECONDS . MICROSECONDS); the fractional
6615 component is no longer expressed in "ticks".
6617 *** The `ticks/sec' constant has been removed, in light of the above change.
6619 * Changes to the gh_ interface
6621 ** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
6624 ** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
6627 ** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
6628 and returns the array
6630 ** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
6631 null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
6632 the user to interpret the data both ways.
6634 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6636 ** The new function scm_symbol_value0 provides an easy way to get a
6637 symbol's value from C code:
6639 SCM scm_symbol_value0 (char *NAME)
6640 Return the value of the symbol named by the null-terminated string
6641 NAME in the current module. If the symbol named NAME is unbound in
6642 the current module, return SCM_UNDEFINED.
6644 ** The new function scm_sysintern0 creates new top-level variables,
6645 without assigning them a value.
6647 SCM scm_sysintern0 (char *NAME)
6648 Create a new Scheme top-level variable named NAME. NAME is a
6649 null-terminated string. Return the variable's value cell.
6651 ** The function scm_internal_catch is the guts of catch. It handles
6652 all the mechanics of setting up a catch target, invoking the catch
6653 body, and perhaps invoking the handler if the body does a throw.
6655 The function is designed to be usable from C code, but is general
6656 enough to implement all the semantics Guile Scheme expects from throw.
6658 TAG is the catch tag. Typically, this is a symbol, but this function
6659 doesn't actually care about that.
6661 BODY is a pointer to a C function which runs the body of the catch;
6662 this is the code you can throw from. We call it like this:
6663 BODY (BODY_DATA, JMPBUF)
6665 BODY_DATA is just the BODY_DATA argument we received; we pass it
6666 through to BODY as its first argument. The caller can make
6667 BODY_DATA point to anything useful that BODY might need.
6668 JMPBUF is the Scheme jmpbuf object corresponding to this catch,
6669 which we have just created and initialized.
6671 HANDLER is a pointer to a C function to deal with a throw to TAG,
6672 should one occur. We call it like this:
6673 HANDLER (HANDLER_DATA, THROWN_TAG, THROW_ARGS)
6675 HANDLER_DATA is the HANDLER_DATA argument we recevied; it's the
6676 same idea as BODY_DATA above.
6677 THROWN_TAG is the tag that the user threw to; usually this is
6678 TAG, but it could be something else if TAG was #t (i.e., a
6679 catch-all), or the user threw to a jmpbuf.
6680 THROW_ARGS is the list of arguments the user passed to the THROW
6683 BODY_DATA is just a pointer we pass through to BODY. HANDLER_DATA
6684 is just a pointer we pass through to HANDLER. We don't actually
6685 use either of those pointers otherwise ourselves. The idea is
6686 that, if our caller wants to communicate something to BODY or
6687 HANDLER, it can pass a pointer to it as MUMBLE_DATA, which BODY and
6688 HANDLER can then use. Think of it as a way to make BODY and
6689 HANDLER closures, not just functions; MUMBLE_DATA points to the
6692 Of course, it's up to the caller to make sure that any data a
6693 MUMBLE_DATA needs is protected from GC. A common way to do this is
6694 to make MUMBLE_DATA a pointer to data stored in an automatic
6695 structure variable; since the collector must scan the stack for
6696 references anyway, this assures that any references in MUMBLE_DATA
6699 ** The new function scm_internal_lazy_catch is exactly like
6700 scm_internal_catch, except:
6702 - It does not unwind the stack (this is the major difference).
6703 - If handler returns, its value is returned from the throw.
6704 - BODY always receives #f as its JMPBUF argument (since there's no
6705 jmpbuf associated with a lazy catch, because we don't unwind the
6708 ** scm_body_thunk is a new body function you can pass to
6709 scm_internal_catch if you want the body to be like Scheme's `catch'
6710 --- a thunk, or a function of one argument if the tag is #f.
6712 BODY_DATA is a pointer to a scm_body_thunk_data structure, which
6713 contains the Scheme procedure to invoke as the body, and the tag
6714 we're catching. If the tag is #f, then we pass JMPBUF (created by
6715 scm_internal_catch) to the body procedure; otherwise, the body gets
6718 ** scm_handle_by_proc is a new handler function you can pass to
6719 scm_internal_catch if you want the handler to act like Scheme's catch
6720 --- call a procedure with the tag and the throw arguments.
6722 If the user does a throw to this catch, this function runs a handler
6723 procedure written in Scheme. HANDLER_DATA is a pointer to an SCM
6724 variable holding the Scheme procedure object to invoke. It ought to
6725 be a pointer to an automatic variable (i.e., one living on the stack),
6726 or the procedure object should be otherwise protected from GC.
6728 ** scm_handle_by_message is a new handler function to use with
6729 `scm_internal_catch' if you want Guile to print a message and die.
6730 It's useful for dealing with throws to uncaught keys at the top level.
6732 HANDLER_DATA, if non-zero, is assumed to be a char * pointing to a
6733 message header to print; if zero, we use "guile" instead. That
6734 text is followed by a colon, then the message described by ARGS.
6736 ** The return type of scm_boot_guile is now void; the function does
6737 not return a value, and indeed, never returns at all.
6739 ** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
6740 process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
6741 stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
6744 To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
6745 linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
6746 of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will add
6747 any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
6748 argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
6749 generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
6750 command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
6753 ** The new functions scm_get_meta_args and scm_count_argv help you
6754 implement the SCSH-style meta-argument, `\'.
6756 char **scm_get_meta_args (int ARGC, char **ARGV)
6757 If the second element of ARGV is a string consisting of a single
6758 backslash character (i.e. "\\" in Scheme notation), open the file
6759 named by the following argument, parse arguments from it, and return
6760 the spliced command line. The returned array is terminated by a
6763 For details of argument parsing, see above, under "guile now accepts
6764 command-line arguments compatible with SCSH..."
6766 int scm_count_argv (char **ARGV)
6767 Count the arguments in ARGV, assuming it is terminated by a null
6770 For an example of how these functions might be used, see the source
6771 code for the function scm_shell in libguile/script.c.
6773 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6776 ** The new function scm_compile_shell_switches turns an array of
6777 command-line arguments into Scheme code to carry out the actions they
6778 describe. Given ARGC and ARGV, it returns a Scheme expression to
6779 evaluate, and calls scm_set_program_arguments to make any remaining
6780 command-line arguments available to the Scheme code. For example,
6781 given the following arguments:
6783 -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
6785 scm_set_program_arguments will return the following expression:
6787 (begin (load "ekko") (main (command-line)) (quit))
6789 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6792 ** The function scm_shell_usage prints a usage message appropriate for
6793 an interpreter that uses scm_compile_shell_switches to handle its
6794 command-line arguments.
6796 void scm_shell_usage (int FATAL, char *MESSAGE)
6797 Print a usage message to the standard error output. If MESSAGE is
6798 non-zero, write it before the usage message, followed by a newline.
6799 If FATAL is non-zero, exit the process, using FATAL as the
6800 termination status. (If you want to be compatible with Guile,
6801 always use 1 as the exit status when terminating due to command-line
6804 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6807 ** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
6808 expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL. Earth-shattering.
6810 ** The macros for declaring scheme objects in C code have been
6811 rearranged slightly. They are now:
6813 SCM_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6814 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
6815 point to the Scheme symbol whose name is SCHEME_NAME. C_NAME should
6816 be a C identifier, and SCHEME_NAME should be a C string.
6818 SCM_GLOBAL_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6819 Just like SCM_SYMBOL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
6821 SCM_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6822 Create a global variable at the Scheme level named SCHEME_NAME.
6823 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
6824 point to the Scheme variable's value cell.
6826 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6827 Just like SCM_VCELL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
6829 The `guile-snarf' script writes initialization code for these macros
6830 to its standard output, given C source code as input.
6832 The SCM_GLOBAL macro is gone.
6834 ** The scm_read_line and scm_read_line_x functions have been replaced
6835 by Scheme code based on the %read-delimited! procedure (known to C
6836 code as scm_read_delimited_x). See its description above for more
6839 ** The function scm_sys_open has been renamed to scm_open. It now
6840 returns a port instead of an FD object.
6842 * The dynamic linking support has changed. For more information, see
6843 libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING.
6848 User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
6851 * Changes to the 'guile' program:
6853 ** Guile now loads some new files when it starts up. Guile first
6854 searches the load path for init.scm, and loads it if found. Then, if
6855 Guile is not being used to execute a script, and the user's home
6856 directory contains a file named `.guile', Guile loads that.
6858 ** You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
6860 To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
6862 When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
6863 characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
6864 be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
6865 to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
6866 specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
6867 the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
6868 and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
6869 filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
6870 following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
6871 for more information.
6873 Now you can use Guile as an interpreter, using a mechanism which is a
6874 compatible subset of that provided by SCSH.
6876 Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
6877 name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
6878 characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
6879 to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
6880 following two lines at the top of the file:
6882 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6885 Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
6886 of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
6887 start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
6889 For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
6891 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6893 (let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
6896 (display (car args))
6897 (if (pair? (cdr args))
6899 (loop (cdr args)))))
6902 Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
6903 end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
6904 don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
6905 we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
6906 scripts once we do. Furthermore, if the path to Guile on your system
6907 is too long for your kernel, you can start the script with this
6911 exec /really/long/path/to/guile -s "$0" ${1+"$@"}
6914 Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
6917 ** You can now run Guile without installing it.
6919 Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
6920 couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
6921 they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
6922 later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
6923 itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
6926 To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
6927 then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
6928 colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
6929 of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
6930 full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
6933 export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
6936 ** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
6937 results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
6938 expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
6941 ** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
6942 however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
6943 request that they be displayed by default. After an error, evaluate
6945 to see a backtrace, and
6946 (debug-enable 'backtrace)
6947 to see them by default.
6951 * Changes to Guile Scheme:
6953 ** Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
6955 This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
6956 upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
6959 Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
6960 type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
6961 caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
6962 way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
6965 ** Guile's delq, delv, delete functions, and their destructive
6966 counterparts, delq!, delv!, and delete!, now remove all matching
6967 elements from the list, not just the first. This matches the behavior
6968 of the corresponding Emacs Lisp functions, and (I believe) the Maclisp
6969 functions which inspired them.
6971 I recognize that this change may break code in subtle ways, but it
6972 seems best to make the change before the FSF's first Guile release,
6976 ** The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
6978 ** The facilities for loading Scheme source files have changed.
6980 *** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
6981 for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
6984 *** The variable %load-extensions now tells Guile which extensions to
6985 try appending to a filename when searching the load path. Its value
6986 is a list of strings. Its default value is ("" ".scm").
6988 *** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
6989 value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME,
6990 with all the extensions listed in %load-extensions. If it finds a
6991 match, then it returns its full filename. If FILENAME is absolute, it
6992 returns it unchanged. Otherwise, it returns #f.
6994 %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to directories.
6996 *** (primitive-load FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
6997 uses %seach-load-path to find a file named FILENAME, and loads it if
6998 it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for any reason, it throws an
7001 The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
7004 *** load uses the same searching semantics as primitive-load.
7006 *** The functions %try-load, try-load-with-path, %load, load-with-path,
7007 basic-try-load-with-path, basic-load-with-path, try-load-module-with-
7008 path, and load-module-with-path have been deleted. The functions
7009 above should serve their purposes.
7011 *** If the value of the variable %load-hook is a procedure,
7012 `primitive-load' applies its value to the name of the file being
7013 loaded (without the load path directory name prepended). If its value
7014 is #f, it is ignored. Otherwise, an error occurs.
7016 This is mostly useful for printing load notification messages.
7019 ** The function `eval!' is no longer accessible from the scheme level.
7020 We can't allow operations which introduce glocs into the scheme level,
7021 because Guile's type system can't handle these as data. Use `eval' or
7022 `read-and-eval!' (see below) as replacement.
7024 ** The new function read-and-eval! reads an expression from PORT,
7025 evaluates it, and returns the result. This is more efficient than
7026 simply calling `read' and `eval', since it is not necessary to make a
7027 copy of the expression for the evaluator to munge.
7029 Its optional arguments CASE_INSENSITIVE_P and SHARP are interpreted as
7030 for the `read' function.
7033 ** The function `int?' has been removed; its definition was identical
7034 to that of `integer?'.
7036 ** The functions `<?', `<?', `<=?', `=?', `>?', and `>=?'. Code should
7037 use the R4RS names for these functions.
7039 ** The function object-properties no longer returns the hash handle;
7040 it simply returns the object's property list.
7042 ** Many functions have been changed to throw errors, instead of
7043 returning #f on failure. The point of providing exception handling in
7044 the language is to simplify the logic of user code, but this is less
7045 useful if Guile's primitives don't throw exceptions.
7047 ** The function `fileno' has been renamed from `%fileno'.
7049 ** The function primitive-mode->fdes returns #t or #f now, not 1 or 0.
7052 * Changes to Guile's C interface:
7054 ** The library's initialization procedure has been simplified.
7055 scm_boot_guile now has the prototype:
7057 void scm_boot_guile (int ARGC,
7059 void (*main_func) (),
7062 scm_boot_guile calls MAIN_FUNC, passing it CLOSURE, ARGC, and ARGV.
7063 MAIN_FUNC should do all the work of the program (initializing other
7064 packages, reading user input, etc.) before returning. When MAIN_FUNC
7065 returns, call exit (0); this function never returns. If you want some
7066 other exit value, MAIN_FUNC may call exit itself.
7068 scm_boot_guile arranges for program-arguments to return the strings
7069 given by ARGC and ARGV. If MAIN_FUNC modifies ARGC/ARGV, should call
7070 scm_set_program_arguments with the final list, so Scheme code will
7071 know which arguments have been processed.
7073 scm_boot_guile establishes a catch-all catch handler which prints an
7074 error message and exits the process. This means that Guile exits in a
7075 coherent way when system errors occur and the user isn't prepared to
7076 handle it. If the user doesn't like this behavior, they can establish
7077 their own universal catcher in MAIN_FUNC to shadow this one.
7079 Why must the caller do all the real work from MAIN_FUNC? The garbage
7080 collector assumes that all local variables of type SCM will be above
7081 scm_boot_guile's stack frame on the stack. If you try to manipulate
7082 SCM values after this function returns, it's the luck of the draw
7083 whether the GC will be able to find the objects you allocate. So,
7084 scm_boot_guile function exits, rather than returning, to discourage
7085 people from making that mistake.
7087 The IN, OUT, and ERR arguments were removed; there are other
7088 convenient ways to override these when desired.
7090 The RESULT argument was deleted; this function should never return.
7092 The BOOT_CMD argument was deleted; the MAIN_FUNC argument is more
7096 ** Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
7099 In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
7100 versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
7101 Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
7102 Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
7105 Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
7106 refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
7107 Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
7108 the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
7111 ** Two new C functions, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object,
7112 have been added to the Guile library.
7114 scm_protect_object (OBJ) protects OBJ from the garbage collector.
7115 OBJ will not be freed, even if all other references are dropped,
7116 until someone does scm_unprotect_object (OBJ). Both functions
7119 Note that calls to scm_protect_object do not nest. You can call
7120 scm_protect_object any number of times on a given object, and the
7121 next call to scm_unprotect_object will unprotect it completely.
7123 Basically, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object just
7124 maintain a list of references to things. Since the GC knows about
7125 this list, all objects it mentions stay alive. scm_protect_object
7126 adds its argument to the list; scm_unprotect_object remove its
7127 argument from the list.
7130 ** scm_eval_0str now returns the value of the last expression
7133 ** The new function scm_read_0str reads an s-expression from a
7134 null-terminated string, and returns it.
7136 ** The new function `scm_stdio_to_port' converts a STDIO file pointer
7137 to a Scheme port object.
7139 ** The new function `scm_set_program_arguments' allows C code to set
7140 the value returned by the Scheme `program-arguments' function.
7145 * Guile no longer includes sophisticated Tcl/Tk support.
7147 The old Tcl/Tk support was unsatisfying to us, because it required the
7148 user to link against the Tcl library, as well as Tk and Guile. The
7149 interface was also un-lispy, in that it preserved Tcl/Tk's practice of
7150 referring to widgets by names, rather than exporting widgets to Scheme
7151 code as a special datatype.
7153 In the Usenix Tk Developer's Workshop held in July 1996, the Tcl/Tk
7154 maintainers described some very interesting changes in progress to the
7155 Tcl/Tk internals, which would facilitate clean interfaces between lone
7156 Tk and other interpreters --- even for garbage-collected languages
7157 like Scheme. They expected the new Tk to be publicly available in the
7160 Since it seems that Guile might soon have a new, cleaner interface to
7161 lone Tk, and that the old Guile/Tk glue code would probably need to be
7162 completely rewritten, we (Jim Blandy and Richard Stallman) have
7163 decided not to support the old code. We'll spend the time instead on
7164 a good interface to the newer Tk, as soon as it is available.
7166 Until then, gtcltk-lib provides trivial, low-maintenance functionality.
7169 Copyright information:
7171 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
7173 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
7174 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
7175 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
7176 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
7178 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
7179 of this document, or of portions of it,
7180 under the above conditions, provided also that they
7181 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
7186 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"