1 Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes. -*- text -*-
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
7 Changes since Guile 1.4:
9 * Changes to the distribution
11 ** New modules (oop goops) etc
18 (oop goops active-slot)
19 (oop goops composite-slot)
21 plus some GOOPS utility modules have been added.
23 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
25 ** GOOPS has been merged into Guile
27 The Guile Object Oriented Programming System has been integrated into
32 (use-modules (oop goops))
34 access GOOPS bindings.
36 We're now ready to try some basic GOOPS functionality.
40 (define-method (+ (x <string>) (y <string>))
44 (+ "abc" "de") --> "abcde"
48 (define-class <2D-vector> ()
49 (x #:init-value 0 #:accessor x-component #:init-keyword #:x)
50 (y #:init-value 0 #:accessor y-component #:init-keyword #:y))
52 (define-method write ((obj <2D-vector>) port)
53 (display (format #f "<~S, ~S>" (x-component obj) (y-component obj))
56 (define v (make <2D-vector> #:x 3 #:y 4))
59 (define-method + ((x <2D-vector>) (y <2D-vector>))
61 #:x (+ (x-component x) (x-component y))
62 #:y (+ (y-component x) (y-component y))))
66 Asking for the type of an object
68 (class-of v) --> #<<class> <2D-vector> 40241ac0>
69 <2D-vector> --> #<<class> <2D-vector> 40241ac0>
70 (class-of 1) --> #<<class> <integer> 401b2a98>
71 <integer> --> #<<class> <integer> 401b2a98>
73 (is-a? v <2D-vector>) --> #t
75 See further in the GOOPS tutorial available in the guile-doc
76 distribution in info (goops.info) and texinfo formats.
78 ** It's now possible to create modules with controlled environments
82 (use-modules (ice-9 safe))
83 (define m (make-safe-module))
84 ;;; m will now be a module containing only a safe subset of R5RS
85 (eval-in-module '(+ 1 2) m) --> 3
86 (eval-in-module 'load m) --> ERROR: Unbound variable: load
88 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
90 ** New function `make-object-property'
92 This function returns a new `procedure with setter' P that can be used
93 to attach a property to objects. When calling P as
97 where `obj' is any kind of object, it attaches `val' to `obj' in such
98 a way that it can be retrieved by calling P as
102 This function will replace procedure properties, symbol properties and
103 source properties eventually.
105 ** Module (ice-9 optargs) now uses keywords instead of `#&'.
107 Instead of #&optional, #&key, etc you should now use #:optional,
108 #:key, etc. Since #:optional is a keyword, you can write it as just
109 :optional when (read-set! keywords 'prefix) is active.
111 The old reader syntax `#&' is still supported, but deprecated. It
112 will be removed in the next release.
114 ** Backward incompatible change: eval EXP ENVIRONMENT-SPECIFIER
116 `eval' is now R5RS, that is it takes two arguments.
117 The second argument is an environment specifier, i.e. either
119 (scheme-report-environment 5)
121 (interaction-environment)
127 ** New define-module option: pure
129 Tells the module system not to include any bindings from the root
134 (define-module (totally-empty-module)
137 ** New define-module option: export NAME1 ...
139 Export names NAME1 ...
141 This option is required if you want to be able to export bindings from
142 a module which doesn't import one of `define-public' or `export'.
148 :use-module (ice-9 r5rs)
151 ;;; Note that we're pure R5RS below this point!
156 ** Deprecated: scm_make_shared_substring
158 Explicit shared substrings will disappear from Guile.
160 Instead, "normal" strings will be implemented using sharing
161 internally, combined with a copy-on-write strategy.
163 ** Deprecated: scm_read_only_string_p
165 The concept of read-only strings will disappear in next release of
168 ** Deprecated: scm_sloppy_memq, scm_sloppy_memv, scm_sloppy_member
170 Instead, use scm_memq, scm_memv, scm_member.
172 * Changes to the gh_ interface
174 * Changes to the scm_ interface
176 ** New function: scm_init_guile ()
178 In contrast to scm_boot_guile, scm_init_guile will return normally
179 after initializing Guile. It is not available on all systems, tho.
181 ** New functions: scm_primitive_make_property
182 scm_primitive_property_ref
183 scm_primitive_property_set_x
184 scm_primitive_property_del_x
186 These functions implement a new way to deal with object properties.
187 See libguile/properties.c for their documentation.
189 ** New function: scm_done_free (long size)
191 This function is the inverse of scm_done_malloc. Use it to report the
192 amount of smob memory you free. The previous method, which involved
193 calling scm_done_malloc with negative argument, was somewhat
194 unintuitive (and is still available, of course).
196 ** New global variable scm_gc_running_p introduced.
198 Use this variable to find out if garbage collection is being executed. Up to
199 now applications have used scm_gc_heap_lock to test if garbage collection was
200 running, which also works because of the fact that up to know only the garbage
201 collector has set this variable. But, this is an implementation detail that
202 may change. Further, scm_gc_heap_lock is not set throughout gc, thus the use
203 of this variable is (and has been) not fully safe anyway.
205 ** New macros: SCM_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_CCLO_LENGTH, SCM_STACK_LENGTH,
206 SCM_STRING_LENGTH, SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
207 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH.
209 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH.
211 ** New macros: SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_CCLO_BASE,
212 SCM_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_COMPLEX_MEM,
215 Use these instead of SCM_CHARS or SCM_VELTS.
217 ** New macro: SCM_BITVECTOR_P
219 ** New macro: SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X
221 Use instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
223 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_OUTOFRANGE, SCM_NALLOC, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL,
224 SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL,
225 SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD,
226 SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS, SCM_SYMBOL_SLOTS, SCM_SLOTS, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
227 SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_FREEP, SCM_NFREEP, SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS,
228 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY,
229 SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_HUGE_LENGTH,
230 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR
232 Use SCM_ASSERT_RANGE or SCM_VALIDATE_XXX_RANGE instead of SCM_OUTOFRANGE.
233 Use scm_memory_error instead of SCM_NALLOC.
234 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP.
235 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR.
236 Use SCM_FREE_CELL_P instead of SCM_FREEP/SCM_NFREEP
237 Use a type specific accessor macro instead of SCM_CHARS/SCM_UCHARS.
238 Use a type specific accessor instead of SCM(_|_RO|_HUGE_)LENGTH.
239 Use SCM_VALIDATE_(SYMBOL|STRING) instead of SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING.
240 Use SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
242 ** Removed function: scm_struct_init
244 ** Deprecated function: scm_call_catching_errors
246 Use scm_catch or scm_lazy_catch from throw.[ch] instead.
248 ** Deprecated function: scm_strhash
250 Use scm_string_hash instead.
252 ** Deprecated function: scm_vector_set_length_x
254 Instead, create a fresh vector of the desired size and copy the contents.
256 ** scm_gensym has changed prototype
258 scm_gensym now only takes one argument.
260 ** New function: scm_gentemp (SCM prefix, SCM obarray)
262 The builtin `gentemp' has now become a primitive.
264 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc7_ssymbol, scm_tc7_msymbol, scm_tcs_symbols,
267 There is now only a single symbol type scm_tc7_symbol.
268 The tag scm_tc7_lvector was not used anyway.
271 Changes since Guile 1.3.4:
273 * Changes to the distribution
275 ** Trees from nightly snapshots and CVS now require you to run autogen.sh.
277 We've changed the way we handle generated files in the Guile source
278 repository. As a result, the procedure for building trees obtained
279 from the nightly FTP snapshots or via CVS has changed:
280 - You must have appropriate versions of autoconf, automake, and
281 libtool installed on your system. See README for info on how to
282 obtain these programs.
283 - Before configuring the tree, you must first run the script
284 `autogen.sh' at the top of the source tree.
286 The Guile repository used to contain not only source files, written by
287 humans, but also some generated files, like configure scripts and
288 Makefile.in files. Even though the contents of these files could be
289 derived mechanically from other files present, we thought it would
290 make the tree easier to build if we checked them into CVS.
292 However, this approach means that minor differences between
293 developer's installed tools and habits affected the whole team.
294 So we have removed the generated files from the repository, and
295 added the autogen.sh script, which will reconstruct them
299 ** configure now has experimental options to remove support for certain
302 --disable-arrays omit array and uniform array support
303 --disable-posix omit posix interfaces
304 --disable-networking omit networking interfaces
305 --disable-regex omit regular expression interfaces
307 These are likely to become separate modules some day.
309 ** New configure option --enable-debug-freelist
311 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
312 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
314 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
315 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
317 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
318 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
320 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
321 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can
322 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
323 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
325 ** New configure option --enable-debug-malloc
327 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
331 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
332 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
334 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
336 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
337 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
339 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
340 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
341 number of objects of that kind.
343 ** All includes are now referenced relative to the root directory
345 Since some users have had problems with mixups between Guile and
346 system headers, we have decided to always refer to Guile headers via
347 their parent directories. This essentially creates a "private name
348 space" for Guile headers. This means that the compiler only is given
349 -I options for the root build and root source directory.
351 ** Header files kw.h and genio.h have been removed.
353 ** The module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) has been removed.
355 ** New module (ice-9 documentation)
357 Implements the interface to documentation strings associated with
360 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
362 ** New command line option --debug
364 Start Guile with debugging evaluator and backtraces enabled.
366 This is useful when debugging your .guile init file or scripts.
370 Usage: (help NAME) gives documentation about objects named NAME (a symbol)
371 (help REGEXP) ditto for objects with names matching REGEXP (a string)
372 (help ,EXPR) gives documentation for object returned by EXPR
373 (help) gives this text
375 `help' searches among bindings exported from loaded modules, while
376 `apropos' searches among bindings visible from the "current" module.
378 Examples: (help help)
380 (help "output-string")
382 ** `help' and `apropos' now prints full module names
384 ** Dynamic linking now uses libltdl from the libtool package.
386 The old system dependent code for doing dynamic linking has been
387 replaced with calls to the libltdl functions which do all the hairy
390 The major improvement is that you can now directly pass libtool
391 library names like "libfoo.la" to `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-link'
392 will be able to do the best shared library job you can get, via
395 The way dynamic libraries are found has changed and is not really
396 portable across platforms, probably. It is therefore recommended to
397 use absolute filenames when possible.
399 If you pass a filename without an extension to `dynamic-link', it will
400 try a few appropriate ones. Thus, the most platform ignorant way is
401 to specify a name like "libfoo", without any directories and
404 ** Guile COOP threads are now compatible with LinuxThreads
406 Previously, COOP threading wasn't possible in applications linked with
407 Linux POSIX threads due to their use of the stack pointer to find the
408 thread context. This has now been fixed with a workaround which uses
409 the pthreads to allocate the stack.
411 ** New primitives: `pkgdata-dir', `site-dir', `library-dir'
413 ** Positions of erring expression in scripts
415 With version 1.3.4, the location of the erring expression in Guile
416 scipts is no longer automatically reported. (This should have been
417 documented before the 1.3.4 release.)
419 You can get this information by enabling recording of positions of
420 source expressions and running the debugging evaluator. Put this at
421 the top of your script (or in your "site" file):
423 (read-enable 'positions)
424 (debug-enable 'debug)
426 ** Backtraces in scripts
428 It is now possible to get backtraces in scripts.
432 (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
434 at the top of the script.
436 (The first options enables the debugging evaluator.
437 The second enables backtraces.)
439 ** Part of module system symbol lookup now implemented in C
441 The eval closure of most modules is now implemented in C. Since this
442 was one of the bottlenecks for loading speed, Guile now loads code
443 substantially faster than before.
445 ** Attempting to get the value of an unbound variable now produces
446 an exception with a key of 'unbound-variable instead of 'misc-error.
448 ** The initial default output port is now unbuffered if it's using a
449 tty device. Previously in this situation it was line-buffered.
451 ** gc-thunk is deprecated
453 gc-thunk will be removed in next release of Guile. It has been
454 replaced by after-gc-hook.
456 ** New hook: after-gc-hook
458 after-gc-hook takes over the role of gc-thunk. This hook is run at
459 the first SCM_TICK after a GC. (Thus, the code is run at the same
460 point during evaluation as signal handlers.)
462 Note that this hook should be used only for diagnostic and debugging
463 purposes. It is not certain that it will continue to be well-defined
464 when this hook is run in the future.
466 C programmers: Note the new C level hooks scm_before_gc_c_hook,
467 scm_before_sweep_c_hook, scm_after_gc_c_hook.
469 ** Improvements to garbage collector
471 Guile 1.4 has a new policy for triggering heap allocation and
472 determining the sizes of heap segments. It fixes a number of problems
475 1. The new policy can handle two separate pools of cells
476 (2-word/4-word) better. (The old policy would run wild, allocating
477 more and more memory for certain programs.)
479 2. The old code would sometimes allocate far too much heap so that the
480 Guile process became gigantic. The new code avoids this.
482 3. The old code would sometimes allocate too little so that few cells
483 were freed at GC so that, in turn, too much time was spent in GC.
485 4. The old code would often trigger heap allocation several times in a
486 row. (The new scheme predicts how large the segments needs to be
487 in order not to need further allocation.)
489 All in all, the new GC policy will make larger applications more
492 The new GC scheme also is prepared for POSIX threading. Threads can
493 allocate private pools of cells ("clusters") with just a single
494 function call. Allocation of single cells from such a cluster can
495 then proceed without any need of inter-thread synchronization.
497 ** New environment variables controlling GC parameters
499 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE Maximal segment size
502 Allocation of 2-word cell heaps:
504 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1 Size of initial heap segment in bytes
507 GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1 Minimum number of freed cells at each
508 GC in percent of total heap size
511 Allocation of 4-word cell heaps
512 (used for real numbers and misc other objects):
514 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2
516 (See entry "Way for application to customize GC parameters" under
517 section "Changes to the scm_ interface" below.)
519 ** Guile now implements reals using 4-word cells
521 This speeds up computation with reals. (They were earlier allocated
522 with `malloc'.) There is still some room for optimizations, however.
524 ** Some further steps toward POSIX thread support have been taken
526 *** Guile's critical sections (SCM_DEFER/ALLOW_INTS)
527 don't have much effect any longer, and many of them will be removed in
531 are only handled at the top of the evaluator loop, immediately after
532 I/O, and in scm_equalp.
534 *** The GC can allocate thread private pools of pairs.
536 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
538 ** close-input-port and close-output-port are now R5RS
540 These procedures have been turned into primitives and have R5RS behaviour.
542 ** New procedure: simple-format PORT MESSAGE ARG1 ...
544 (ice-9 boot) makes `format' an alias for `simple-format' until possibly
545 extended by the more sophisticated version in (ice-9 format)
547 (simple-format port message . args)
548 Write MESSAGE to DESTINATION, defaulting to `current-output-port'.
549 MESSAGE can contain ~A (was %s) and ~S (was %S) escapes. When printed,
550 the escapes are replaced with corresponding members of ARGS:
551 ~A formats using `display' and ~S formats using `write'.
552 If DESTINATION is #t, then use the `current-output-port',
553 if DESTINATION is #f, then return a string containing the formatted text.
554 Does not add a trailing newline."
556 ** string-ref: the second argument is no longer optional.
558 ** string, list->string: no longer accept strings in their arguments,
559 only characters, for compatibility with R5RS.
561 ** New procedure: port-closed? PORT
562 Returns #t if PORT is closed or #f if it is open.
566 The list* functionality is now provided by cons* (SRFI-1 compliant)
568 ** New procedure: cons* ARG1 ARG2 ... ARGn
570 Like `list', but the last arg provides the tail of the constructed list,
571 returning (cons ARG1 (cons ARG2 (cons ... ARGn))).
573 Requires at least one argument. If given one argument, that argument
574 is returned as result.
576 This function is called `list*' in some other Schemes and in Common LISP.
578 ** Removed deprecated: serial-map, serial-array-copy!, serial-array-map!
580 ** New procedure: object-documentation OBJECT
582 Returns the documentation string associated with OBJECT. The
583 procedure uses a caching mechanism so that subsequent lookups are
586 Exported by (ice-9 documentation).
588 ** module-name now returns full names of modules
590 Previously, only the last part of the name was returned (`session' for
591 `(ice-9 session)'). Ex: `(ice-9 session)'.
593 * Changes to the gh_ interface
595 ** Deprecated: gh_int2scmb
597 Use gh_bool2scm instead.
599 * Changes to the scm_ interface
601 ** Guile primitives now carry docstrings!
603 Thanks to Greg Badros!
605 ** Guile primitives are defined in a new way: SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
607 Now Guile primitives are defined using the SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
608 macros and must contain a docstring that is extracted into foo.doc using a new
609 guile-doc-snarf script (that uses guile-doc-snarf.awk).
611 However, a major overhaul of these macros is scheduled for the next release of
614 ** Guile primitives use a new technique for validation of arguments
616 SCM_VALIDATE_* macros are defined to ease the redundancy and improve
617 the readability of argument checking.
619 ** All (nearly?) K&R prototypes for functions replaced with ANSI C equivalents.
621 ** New macros: SCM_PACK, SCM_UNPACK
623 Compose/decompose an SCM value.
625 The SCM type is now treated as an abstract data type and may be defined as a
626 long, a void* or as a struct, depending on the architecture and compile time
627 options. This makes it easier to find several types of bugs, for example when
628 SCM values are treated as integers without conversion. Values of the SCM type
629 should be treated as "atomic" values. These macros are used when
630 composing/decomposing an SCM value, either because you want to access
631 individual bits, or because you want to treat it as an integer value.
633 E.g., in order to set bit 7 in an SCM value x, use the expression
635 SCM_PACK (SCM_UNPACK (x) | 0x80)
637 ** The name property of hooks is deprecated.
638 Thus, the use of SCM_HOOK_NAME and scm_make_hook_with_name is deprecated.
640 You can emulate this feature by using object properties.
642 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP, SCM_CRDY, SCM_ICHRP,
643 SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR, SCM_SETJMPBUF, SCM_NSTRINGP, SCM_NRWSTRINGP,
646 These macros will be removed in a future release of Guile.
648 ** The following types, functions and macros from numbers.h are deprecated:
649 scm_dblproc, SCM_UNEGFIXABLE, SCM_FLOBUFLEN, SCM_INEXP, SCM_CPLXP, SCM_REAL,
650 SCM_IMAG, SCM_REALPART, scm_makdbl, SCM_SINGP, SCM_NUM2DBL, SCM_NO_BIGDIG
652 Further, it is recommended not to rely on implementation details for guile's
653 current implementation of bignums. It is planned to replace this
654 implementation with gmp in the future.
656 ** Port internals: the rw_random variable in the scm_port structure
657 must be set to non-zero in any random access port. In recent Guile
658 releases it was only set for bidirectional random-access ports.
660 ** Port internals: the seek ptob procedure is now responsible for
661 resetting the buffers if required. The change was made so that in the
662 special case of reading the current position (i.e., seek p 0 SEEK_CUR)
663 the fport and strport ptobs can avoid resetting the buffers,
664 in particular to avoid discarding unread chars. An existing port
665 type can be fixed by adding something like the following to the
666 beginning of the ptob seek procedure:
668 if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_READ)
669 scm_end_input (object);
670 else if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_WRITE)
671 ptob->flush (object);
673 although to actually avoid resetting the buffers and discard unread
674 chars requires further hacking that depends on the characteristics
677 ** Deprecated functions: scm_fseek, scm_tag
679 These functions are no longer used and will be removed in a future version.
681 ** The scm_sysmissing procedure is no longer used in libguile.
682 Unless it turns out to be unexpectedly useful to somebody, it will be
683 removed in a future version.
685 ** The format of error message strings has changed
687 The two C procedures: scm_display_error and scm_error, as well as the
688 primitive `scm-error', now use scm_simple_format to do their work.
689 This means that the message strings of all code must be updated to use
690 ~A where %s was used before, and ~S where %S was used before.
692 During the period when there still are a lot of old Guiles out there,
693 you might want to support both old and new versions of Guile.
695 There are basically two methods to achieve this. Both methods use
698 AC_CHECK_FUNCS(scm_simple_format)
700 in your configure.in.
702 Method 1: Use the string concatenation features of ANSI C's
707 #ifdef HAVE_SCM_SIMPLE_FORMAT
713 Then represent each of your error messages using a preprocessor macro:
715 #define E_SPIDER_ERROR "There's a spider in your " ## FMT_S ## "!!!"
719 (define fmt-s (if (defined? 'simple-format) "~S" "%S"))
720 (define make-message string-append)
722 (define e-spider-error (make-message "There's a spider in your " fmt-s "!!!"))
724 Method 2: Use the oldfmt function found in doc/oldfmt.c.
728 scm_misc_error ("picnic", scm_c_oldfmt0 ("There's a spider in your ~S!!!"),
733 (scm-error 'misc-error "picnic" (oldfmt "There's a spider in your ~S!!!")
737 ** Deprecated: coop_mutex_init, coop_condition_variable_init
739 Don't use the functions coop_mutex_init and
740 coop_condition_variable_init. They will change.
742 Use scm_mutex_init and scm_cond_init instead.
744 ** New function: int scm_cond_timedwait (scm_cond_t *COND, scm_mutex_t *MUTEX, const struct timespec *ABSTIME)
745 `scm_cond_timedwait' atomically unlocks MUTEX and waits on
746 COND, as `scm_cond_wait' does, but it also bounds the duration
747 of the wait. If COND has not been signaled before time ABSTIME,
748 the mutex MUTEX is re-acquired and `scm_cond_timedwait'
749 returns the error code `ETIMEDOUT'.
751 The ABSTIME parameter specifies an absolute time, with the same
752 origin as `time' and `gettimeofday': an ABSTIME of 0 corresponds
753 to 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970.
755 ** New function: scm_cond_broadcast (scm_cond_t *COND)
756 `scm_cond_broadcast' restarts all the threads that are waiting
757 on the condition variable COND. Nothing happens if no threads are
760 ** New function: scm_key_create (scm_key_t *KEY, void (*destr_function) (void *))
761 `scm_key_create' allocates a new TSD key. The key is stored in
762 the location pointed to by KEY. There is no limit on the number
763 of keys allocated at a given time. The value initially associated
764 with the returned key is `NULL' in all currently executing threads.
766 The DESTR_FUNCTION argument, if not `NULL', specifies a destructor
767 function associated with the key. When a thread terminates,
768 DESTR_FUNCTION is called on the value associated with the key in
769 that thread. The DESTR_FUNCTION is not called if a key is deleted
770 with `scm_key_delete' or a value is changed with
771 `scm_setspecific'. The order in which destructor functions are
772 called at thread termination time is unspecified.
774 Destructors are not yet implemented.
776 ** New function: scm_setspecific (scm_key_t KEY, const void *POINTER)
777 `scm_setspecific' changes the value associated with KEY in the
778 calling thread, storing the given POINTER instead.
780 ** New function: scm_getspecific (scm_key_t KEY)
781 `scm_getspecific' returns the value currently associated with
782 KEY in the calling thread.
784 ** New function: scm_key_delete (scm_key_t KEY)
785 `scm_key_delete' deallocates a TSD key. It does not check
786 whether non-`NULL' values are associated with that key in the
787 currently executing threads, nor call the destructor function
788 associated with the key.
790 ** New function: scm_c_hook_init (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *HOOK_DATA, scm_c_hook_type_t TYPE)
792 Initialize a C level hook HOOK with associated HOOK_DATA and type
793 TYPE. (See scm_c_hook_run ().)
795 ** New function: scm_c_hook_add (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA, int APPENDP)
797 Add hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA to HOOK. If APPENDP
798 is true, add it last, otherwise first. The same FUNC can be added
799 multiple times if FUNC_DATA differ and vice versa.
801 ** New function: scm_c_hook_remove (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA)
803 Remove hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA from HOOK. A
804 function is only removed if both FUNC and FUNC_DATA matches.
806 ** New function: void *scm_c_hook_run (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *DATA)
808 Run hook HOOK passing DATA to the hook functions.
810 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_NORMAL, all hook functions are run. The value
811 returned is undefined.
813 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_OR, hook functions are run until a function
814 returns a non-NULL value. This value is returned as the result of
815 scm_c_hook_run. If all functions return NULL, NULL is returned.
817 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_AND, hook functions are run until a function
818 returns a NULL value, and NULL is returned. If all functions returns
819 a non-NULL value, the last value is returned.
821 ** New C level GC hooks
823 Five new C level hooks has been added to the garbage collector.
828 are run before locking and after unlocking the heap. The system is
829 thus in a mode where evaluation can take place. (Except that
830 scm_before_gc_c_hook must not allocate new cells.)
832 scm_before_mark_c_hook
833 scm_before_sweep_c_hook
834 scm_after_sweep_c_hook
836 are run when the heap is locked. These are intended for extension of
837 the GC in a modular fashion. Examples are the weaks and guardians
840 ** Way for application to customize GC parameters
842 The application can set up other default values for the GC heap
843 allocation parameters
845 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_1, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1,
846 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2,
847 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE,
851 scm_default_init_heap_size_1, scm_default_min_yield_1,
852 scm_default_init_heap_size_2, scm_default_min_yield_2,
853 scm_default_max_segment_size
855 respectively before callong scm_boot_guile.
857 (See entry "New environment variables ..." in section
858 "Changes to the stand-alone interpreter" above.)
860 ** scm_protect_object/scm_unprotect_object now nest
862 This means that you can call scm_protect_object multiple times on an
863 object and count on the object being protected until
864 scm_unprotect_object has been call the same number of times.
866 The functions also have better time complexity.
868 Still, it is usually possible to structure the application in a way
869 that you don't need to use these functions. For example, if you use a
870 protected standard Guile list to keep track of live objects rather
871 than some custom data type, objects will die a natural death when they
872 are no longer needed.
874 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc16_flo, scm_tc_flo, scm_tc_dblr, scm_tc_dblc
876 Guile does not provide the float representation for inexact real numbers any
877 more. Now, only doubles are used to represent inexact real numbers. Further,
878 the tag names scm_tc_dblr and scm_tc_dblc have been changed to scm_tc16_real
879 and scm_tc16_complex, respectively.
881 ** Removed deprecated type scm_smobfuns
883 ** Removed deprecated function scm_newsmob
885 ** Warning: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe might become deprecated in a future release
887 There is an ongoing discussion among the developers whether to
888 deprecate `scm_make_smob_type_mfpe' or not. Please use the current
889 standard interface (scm_make_smob_type, scm_set_smob_XXX) in new code
890 until this issue has been settled.
892 ** Removed deprecated type tag scm_tc16_kw
894 ** Added type tag scm_tc16_keyword
896 (This was introduced already in release 1.3.4 but was not documented
899 ** gdb_print now prints "*** Guile not initialized ***" until Guile initialized
901 * Changes to system call interfaces:
903 ** The "select" procedure now tests port buffers for the ability to
904 provide input or accept output. Previously only the underlying file
905 descriptors were checked.
907 ** New variable PIPE_BUF: the maximum number of bytes that can be
908 atomically written to a pipe.
910 ** If a facility is not available on the system when Guile is
911 compiled, the corresponding primitive procedure will not be defined.
912 Previously it would have been defined but would throw a system-error
913 exception if called. Exception handlers which catch this case may
914 need minor modification: an error will be thrown with key
915 'unbound-variable instead of 'system-error. Alternatively it's
916 now possible to use `defined?' to check whether the facility is
919 ** Procedures which depend on the timezone should now give the correct
920 result on systems which cache the TZ environment variable, even if TZ
921 is changed without calling tzset.
923 * Changes to the networking interfaces:
925 ** New functions: htons, ntohs, htonl, ntohl: for converting short and
926 long integers between network and host format. For now, it's not
927 particularly convenient to do this kind of thing, but consider:
929 (define write-network-long
931 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
932 (uniform-vector-set! v 0 (htonl value))
933 (uniform-vector-write v port))))
935 (define read-network-long
937 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
938 (uniform-vector-read! v port)
939 (ntohl (uniform-vector-ref v 0)))))
941 ** If inet-aton fails, it now throws an error with key 'misc-error
942 instead of 'system-error, since errno is not relevant.
944 ** Certain gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr failures now throw errors with
945 specific keys instead of 'system-error. The latter is inappropriate
946 since errno will not have been set. The keys are:
947 'host-not-found, 'try-again, 'no-recovery and 'no-data.
949 ** sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent: now take an
950 optional argument STAYOPEN, which specifies whether the database
951 remains open after a database entry is accessed randomly (e.g., using
952 gethostbyname for the hosts database.) The default is #f. Previously
956 Changes since Guile 1.3.2:
958 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
962 An initial version of the Guile debugger written by Chris Hanson has
963 been added. The debugger is still under development but is included
964 in the distribution anyway since it is already quite useful.
970 after an error to enter the debugger. Type `help' inside the debugger
971 for a description of available commands.
973 If you prefer to have stack frames numbered and printed in
974 anti-chronological order and prefer up in the stack to be down on the
975 screen as is the case in gdb, you can put
977 (debug-enable 'backwards)
979 in your .guile startup file. (However, this means that Guile can't
980 use indentation to indicate stack level.)
982 The debugger is autoloaded into Guile at the first use.
984 ** Further enhancements to backtraces
986 There is a new debug option `width' which controls the maximum width
987 on the screen of printed stack frames. Fancy printing parameters
988 ("level" and "length" as in Common LISP) are adaptively adjusted for
989 each stack frame to give maximum information while still fitting
990 within the bounds. If the stack frame can't be made to fit by
991 adjusting parameters, it is simply cut off at the end. This is marked
994 ** Some modules are now only loaded when the repl is started
996 The modules (ice-9 debug), (ice-9 session), (ice-9 threads) and (ice-9
997 regex) are now loaded into (guile-user) only if the repl has been
998 started. The effect is that the startup time for scripts has been
999 reduced to 30% of what it was previously.
1001 Correctly written scripts load the modules they require at the top of
1002 the file and should not be affected by this change.
1004 ** Hooks are now represented as smobs
1006 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
1008 ** Readline support has changed again.
1010 The old (readline-activator) module is gone. Use (ice-9 readline)
1011 instead, which now contains all readline functionality. So the code
1012 to activate readline is now
1014 (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
1017 This should work at any time, including from the guile prompt.
1019 To avoid confusion about the terms of Guile's license, please only
1020 enable readline for your personal use; please don't make it the
1021 default for others. Here is why we make this rather odd-sounding
1024 Guile is normally licensed under a weakened form of the GNU General
1025 Public License, which allows you to link code with Guile without
1026 placing that code under the GPL. This exception is important to some
1029 However, since readline is distributed under the GNU General Public
1030 License, when you link Guile with readline, either statically or
1031 dynamically, you effectively change Guile's license to the strict GPL.
1032 Whenever you link any strictly GPL'd code into Guile, uses of Guile
1033 which are normally permitted become forbidden. This is a rather
1034 non-obvious consequence of the licensing terms.
1036 So, to make sure things remain clear, please let people choose for
1037 themselves whether to link GPL'd libraries like readline with Guile.
1039 ** regexp-substitute/global has changed slightly, but incompatibly.
1041 If you include a function in the item list, the string of the match
1042 object it receives is the same string passed to
1043 regexp-substitute/global, not some suffix of that string.
1044 Correspondingly, the match's positions are relative to the entire
1045 string, not the suffix.
1047 If the regexp can match the empty string, the way matches are chosen
1048 from the string has changed. regexp-substitute/global recognizes the
1049 same set of matches that list-matches does; see below.
1051 ** New function: list-matches REGEXP STRING [FLAGS]
1053 Return a list of match objects, one for every non-overlapping, maximal
1054 match of REGEXP in STRING. The matches appear in left-to-right order.
1055 list-matches only reports matches of the empty string if there are no
1056 other matches which begin on, end at, or include the empty match's
1059 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
1061 ** New function: fold-matches REGEXP STRING INIT PROC [FLAGS]
1063 For each match of REGEXP in STRING, apply PROC to the match object,
1064 and the last value PROC returned, or INIT for the first call. Return
1065 the last value returned by PROC. We apply PROC to the matches as they
1066 appear from left to right.
1068 This function recognizes matches according to the same criteria as
1071 Thus, you could define list-matches like this:
1073 (define (list-matches regexp string . flags)
1074 (reverse! (apply fold-matches regexp string '() cons flags)))
1076 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
1080 *** New function: hook? OBJ
1082 Return #t if OBJ is a hook, otherwise #f.
1084 *** New function: make-hook-with-name NAME [ARITY]
1086 Return a hook with name NAME and arity ARITY. The default value for
1087 ARITY is 0. The only effect of NAME is that it will appear when the
1088 hook object is printed to ease debugging.
1090 *** New function: hook-empty? HOOK
1092 Return #t if HOOK doesn't contain any procedures, otherwise #f.
1094 *** New function: hook->list HOOK
1096 Return a list of the procedures that are called when run-hook is
1099 ** `map' signals an error if its argument lists are not all the same length.
1101 This is the behavior required by R5RS, so this change is really a bug
1102 fix. But it seems to affect a lot of people's code, so we're
1103 mentioning it here anyway.
1105 ** Print-state handling has been made more transparent
1107 Under certain circumstances, ports are represented as a port with an
1108 associated print state. Earlier, this pair was represented as a pair
1109 (see "Some magic has been added to the printer" below). It is now
1110 indistinguishable (almost; see `get-print-state') from a port on the
1113 *** New function: port-with-print-state OUTPUT-PORT PRINT-STATE
1115 Return a new port with the associated print state PRINT-STATE.
1117 *** New function: get-print-state OUTPUT-PORT
1119 Return the print state associated with this port if it exists,
1120 otherwise return #f.
1122 *** New function: directory-stream? OBJECT
1124 Returns true iff OBJECT is a directory stream --- the sort of object
1125 returned by `opendir'.
1127 ** New function: using-readline?
1129 Return #t if readline is in use in the current repl.
1131 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
1133 Structs will be replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into Guile
1134 and use GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
1136 * Changes to the scm_ interface
1138 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
1140 The entire current struct interface (struct.c, struct.h) will be
1141 replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into libguile and use
1142 GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
1144 ** The internal representation of subr's has changed
1146 Instead of giving a hint to the subr name, the CAR field of the subr
1147 now contains an index to a subr entry in scm_subr_table.
1149 *** New variable: scm_subr_table
1151 An array of subr entries. A subr entry contains the name, properties
1152 and documentation associated with the subr. The properties and
1153 documentation slots are not yet used.
1155 ** A new scheme for "forwarding" calls to a builtin to a generic function
1157 It is now possible to extend the functionality of some Guile
1158 primitives by letting them defer a call to a GOOPS generic function on
1159 argument mismatch. This means that there is no loss of efficiency in
1164 (use-modules (oop goops)) ; Must be GOOPS version 0.2.
1165 (define-method + ((x <string>) (y <string>))
1166 (string-append x y))
1168 + will still be as efficient as usual in numerical calculations, but
1169 can also be used for concatenating strings.
1171 Who will be the first one to extend Guile's numerical tower to
1172 rationals? :) [OK, there a few other things to fix before this can
1173 be made in a clean way.]
1175 *** New snarf macros for defining primitives: SCM_GPROC, SCM_GPROC1
1177 New macro: SCM_GPROC (CNAME, SNAME, REQ, OPT, VAR, CFUNC, GENERIC)
1179 New macro: SCM_GPROC1 (CNAME, SNAME, TYPE, CFUNC, GENERIC)
1181 These do the same job as SCM_PROC and SCM_PROC1, but they also define
1182 a variable GENERIC which can be used by the dispatch macros below.
1184 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
1186 *** New macros for forwarding control to a generic on arg type error
1188 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_1 (GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
1190 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
1192 These correspond to the scm_wta function call, and have the same
1193 behaviour until the user has called the GOOPS primitive
1194 `enable-primitive-generic!'. After that, these macros will apply the
1195 generic function GENERIC to the argument(s) instead of calling
1198 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
1200 *** New macros for argument testing with generic dispatch
1202 New macro: SCM_GASSERT1 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
1204 New macro: SCM_GASSERT2 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
1206 These correspond to the SCM_ASSERT macro, but will defer control to
1207 GENERIC on error after `enable-primitive-generic!' has been called.
1209 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
1211 ** New function: SCM scm_eval_body (SCM body, SCM env)
1213 Evaluates the body of a special form.
1215 ** The internal representation of struct's has changed
1217 Previously, four slots were allocated for the procedure(s) of entities
1218 and operators. The motivation for this representation had to do with
1219 the structure of the evaluator, the wish to support tail-recursive
1220 generic functions, and efficiency. Since the generic function
1221 dispatch mechanism has changed, there is no longer a need for such an
1222 expensive representation, and the representation has been simplified.
1224 This should not make any difference for most users.
1226 ** GOOPS support has been cleaned up.
1228 Some code has been moved from eval.c to objects.c and code in both of
1229 these compilation units has been cleaned up and better structured.
1231 *** New functions for applying generic functions
1233 New function: SCM scm_apply_generic (GENERIC, ARGS)
1234 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_0 (GENERIC)
1235 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_1 (GENERIC, ARG1)
1236 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2)
1237 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_3 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, ARG3)
1239 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_named_hook
1241 It is now replaced by:
1243 ** New function: SCM scm_create_hook (const char *name, int arity)
1245 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
1246 binds a variable named NAME to it.
1248 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
1250 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module.
1251 This might change when we get the new module system.
1253 [The behaviour is identical to scm_make_named_hook.]
1257 Changes since Guile 1.3:
1259 * Changes to mailing lists
1261 ** Some of the Guile mailing lists have moved to sourceware.cygnus.com.
1263 See the README file to find current addresses for all the Guile
1266 * Changes to the distribution
1268 ** Readline support is no longer included with Guile by default.
1270 Based on the different license terms of Guile and Readline, we
1271 concluded that Guile should not *by default* cause the linking of
1272 Readline into an application program. Readline support is now offered
1273 as a separate module, which is linked into an application only when
1274 you explicitly specify it.
1276 Although Guile is GNU software, its distribution terms add a special
1277 exception to the usual GNU General Public License (GPL). Guile's
1278 license includes a clause that allows you to link Guile with non-free
1279 programs. We add this exception so as not to put Guile at a
1280 disadvantage vis-a-vis other extensibility packages that support other
1283 In contrast, the GNU Readline library is distributed under the GNU
1284 General Public License pure and simple. This means that you may not
1285 link Readline, even dynamically, into an application unless it is
1286 distributed under a free software license that is compatible the GPL.
1288 Because of this difference in distribution terms, an application that
1289 can use Guile may not be able to use Readline. Now users will be
1290 explicitly offered two independent decisions about the use of these
1293 You can activate the readline support by issuing
1295 (use-modules (readline-activator))
1298 from your ".guile" file, for example.
1300 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
1302 ** All builtins now print as primitives.
1303 Previously builtin procedures not belonging to the fundamental subr
1304 types printed as #<compiled closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>.
1305 Now, they print as #<primitive-procedure NAME>.
1307 ** Backtraces slightly more intelligible.
1308 gsubr-apply and macro transformer application frames no longer appear
1311 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
1313 ** Guile now correctly handles internal defines by rewriting them into
1314 their equivalent letrec. Previously, internal defines would
1315 incrementally add to the innermost environment, without checking
1316 whether the restrictions specified in RnRS were met. This lead to the
1317 correct behaviour when these restriction actually were met, but didn't
1318 catch all illegal uses. Such an illegal use could lead to crashes of
1319 the Guile interpreter or or other unwanted results. An example of
1320 incorrect internal defines that made Guile behave erratically:
1332 The problem with this example is that the definition of `c' uses the
1333 value of `b' directly. This confuses the meoization machine of Guile
1334 so that the second call of `b' (this time in a larger environment that
1335 also contains bindings for `c' and `d') refers to the binding of `c'
1336 instead of `a'. You could also make Guile crash with a variation on
1341 (define (b flag) (if flag a 1))
1342 (define c (1+ (b flag)))
1350 From now on, Guile will issue an `Unbound variable: b' error message
1355 A hook contains a list of functions which should be called on
1356 particular occasions in an existing program. Hooks are used for
1359 A window manager might have a hook before-window-map-hook. The window
1360 manager uses the function run-hooks to call all functions stored in
1361 before-window-map-hook each time a window is mapped. The user can
1362 store functions in the hook using add-hook!.
1364 In Guile, hooks are first class objects.
1366 *** New function: make-hook [N_ARGS]
1368 Return a hook for hook functions which can take N_ARGS arguments.
1369 The default value for N_ARGS is 0.
1371 (See also scm_make_named_hook below.)
1373 *** New function: add-hook! HOOK PROC [APPEND_P]
1375 Put PROC at the beginning of the list of functions stored in HOOK.
1376 If APPEND_P is supplied, and non-false, put PROC at the end instead.
1378 PROC must be able to take the number of arguments specified when the
1381 If PROC already exists in HOOK, then remove it first.
1383 *** New function: remove-hook! HOOK PROC
1385 Remove PROC from the list of functions in HOOK.
1387 *** New function: reset-hook! HOOK
1389 Clear the list of hook functions stored in HOOK.
1391 *** New function: run-hook HOOK ARG1 ...
1393 Run all hook functions stored in HOOK with arguments ARG1 ... .
1394 The number of arguments supplied must correspond to the number given
1395 when the hook was created.
1397 ** The function `dynamic-link' now takes optional keyword arguments.
1398 The only keyword argument that is currently defined is `:global
1399 BOOL'. With it, you can control whether the shared library will be
1400 linked in global mode or not. In global mode, the symbols from the
1401 linked library can be used to resolve references from other
1402 dynamically linked libraries. In non-global mode, the linked
1403 library is essentially invisible and can only be accessed via
1404 `dynamic-func', etc. The default is now to link in global mode.
1405 Previously, the default has been non-global mode.
1407 The `#:global' keyword is only effective on platforms that support
1408 the dlopen family of functions.
1410 ** New function `provided?'
1412 - Function: provided? FEATURE
1413 Return true iff FEATURE is supported by this installation of
1414 Guile. FEATURE must be a symbol naming a feature; the global
1415 variable `*features*' is a list of available features.
1417 ** Changes to the module (ice-9 expect):
1419 *** The expect-strings macro now matches `$' in a regular expression
1420 only at a line-break or end-of-file by default. Previously it would
1421 match the end of the string accumulated so far. The old behaviour
1422 can be obtained by setting the variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
1425 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
1426 for the regexp-exec flags. If `regexp/noteol' is included, then `$'
1427 in a regular expression will still match before a line-break or
1428 end-of-file. The default is `regexp/noteol'.
1430 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable
1431 `expect-strings-compile-flags' for the flags to be supplied to
1432 `make-regexp'. The default is `regexp/newline', which was previously
1435 *** The expect macro now supplies two arguments to a match procedure:
1436 the current accumulated string and a flag to indicate whether
1437 end-of-file has been reached. Previously only the string was supplied.
1438 If end-of-file is reached, the match procedure will be called an
1439 additional time with the same accumulated string as the previous call
1440 but with the flag set.
1442 ** New module (ice-9 format), implementing the Common Lisp `format' function.
1444 This code, and the documentation for it that appears here, was
1445 borrowed from SLIB, with minor adaptations for Guile.
1447 - Function: format DESTINATION FORMAT-STRING . ARGUMENTS
1448 An almost complete implementation of Common LISP format description
1449 according to the CL reference book `Common LISP' from Guy L.
1450 Steele, Digital Press. Backward compatible to most of the
1451 available Scheme format implementations.
1453 Returns `#t', `#f' or a string; has side effect of printing
1454 according to FORMAT-STRING. If DESTINATION is `#t', the output is
1455 to the current output port and `#t' is returned. If DESTINATION
1456 is `#f', a formatted string is returned as the result of the call.
1457 NEW: If DESTINATION is a string, DESTINATION is regarded as the
1458 format string; FORMAT-STRING is then the first argument and the
1459 output is returned as a string. If DESTINATION is a number, the
1460 output is to the current error port if available by the
1461 implementation. Otherwise DESTINATION must be an output port and
1464 FORMAT-STRING must be a string. In case of a formatting error
1465 format returns `#f' and prints a message on the current output or
1466 error port. Characters are output as if the string were output by
1467 the `display' function with the exception of those prefixed by a
1468 tilde (~). For a detailed description of the FORMAT-STRING syntax
1469 please consult a Common LISP format reference manual. For a test
1470 suite to verify this format implementation load `formatst.scm'.
1471 Please send bug reports to `lutzeb@cs.tu-berlin.de'.
1473 Note: `format' is not reentrant, i.e. only one `format'-call may
1474 be executed at a time.
1477 *** Format Specification (Format version 3.0)
1479 Please consult a Common LISP format reference manual for a detailed
1480 description of the format string syntax. For a demonstration of the
1481 implemented directives see `formatst.scm'.
1483 This implementation supports directive parameters and modifiers (`:'
1484 and `@' characters). Multiple parameters must be separated by a comma
1485 (`,'). Parameters can be numerical parameters (positive or negative),
1486 character parameters (prefixed by a quote character (`''), variable
1487 parameters (`v'), number of rest arguments parameter (`#'), empty and
1488 default parameters. Directive characters are case independent. The
1489 general form of a directive is:
1491 DIRECTIVE ::= ~{DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER,}[:][@]DIRECTIVE-CHARACTER
1493 DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER ::= [ [-|+]{0-9}+ | 'CHARACTER | v | # ]
1495 *** Implemented CL Format Control Directives
1497 Documentation syntax: Uppercase characters represent the
1498 corresponding control directive characters. Lowercase characters
1499 represent control directive parameter descriptions.
1502 Any (print as `display' does).
1506 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARA'
1510 S-expression (print as `write' does).
1514 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARS'
1520 print number sign always.
1523 print comma separated.
1525 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARD'
1531 print number sign always.
1534 print comma separated.
1536 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARX'
1542 print number sign always.
1545 print comma separated.
1547 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARO'
1553 print number sign always.
1556 print comma separated.
1558 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARB'
1563 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARR'
1567 print a number as a Roman numeral.
1570 print a number as an "old fashioned" Roman numeral.
1573 print a number as an ordinal English number.
1576 print a number as a cardinal English number.
1581 prints `y' and `ies'.
1584 as `~P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
1587 as `~@P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
1592 prints a character as the reader can understand it (i.e. `#\'
1596 prints a character as emacs does (eg. `^C' for ASCII 03).
1599 Fixed-format floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN).
1600 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHARF'
1602 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
1605 Exponential floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN`E'EE).
1606 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARE'
1608 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
1611 General floating-point (prints a flonum either fixed or
1613 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARG'
1615 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
1618 Dollars floating-point (prints a flonum in fixed with signs
1620 `~DIGITS,SCALE,WIDTH,PADCHAR$'
1622 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
1625 A sign is always printed and appears before the padding.
1628 The sign appears before the padding.
1636 print newline if not at the beginning of the output line.
1638 prints `~&' and then N-1 newlines.
1643 print N page separators.
1653 newline is ignored, white space left.
1656 newline is left, white space ignored.
1661 relative tabulation.
1667 Indirection (expects indirect arguments as a list).
1669 extracts indirect arguments from format arguments.
1672 Case conversion (converts by `string-downcase').
1674 converts by `string-capitalize'.
1677 converts by `string-capitalize-first'.
1680 converts by `string-upcase'.
1683 Argument Jumping (jumps 1 argument forward).
1685 jumps N arguments forward.
1688 jumps 1 argument backward.
1691 jumps N arguments backward.
1694 jumps to the 0th argument.
1697 jumps to the Nth argument (beginning from 0)
1699 `~[STR0~;STR1~;...~;STRN~]'
1700 Conditional Expression (numerical clause conditional).
1702 take argument from N.
1705 true test conditional.
1708 if-else-then conditional.
1714 default clause follows.
1717 Iteration (args come from the next argument (a list)).
1719 at most N iterations.
1722 args from next arg (a list of lists).
1725 args from the rest of arguments.
1728 args from the rest args (lists).
1739 aborts if N <= M <= K
1741 *** Not Implemented CL Format Control Directives
1744 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
1747 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
1753 (sorry I don't understand its semantics completely)
1755 *** Extended, Replaced and Additional Control Directives
1757 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHD'
1758 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHX'
1759 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHO'
1760 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHB'
1761 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHR'
1762 COMMAWIDTH is the number of characters between two comma
1766 print a R4RS complex number as `~F~@Fi' with passed parameters for
1770 Pretty print formatting of an argument for scheme code lists.
1776 Flushes the output if format DESTINATION is a port.
1779 Print a `#\space' character
1781 print N `#\space' characters.
1784 Print a `#\tab' character
1786 print N `#\tab' characters.
1789 Takes N as an integer representation for a character. No arguments
1790 are consumed. N is converted to a character by `integer->char'. N
1791 must be a positive decimal number.
1794 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
1795 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
1796 be processed by `read'.
1799 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
1800 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
1801 be processed by `read'.
1804 Prints information and a copyright notice on the format
1807 prints format version.
1810 may also print number strings, i.e. passing a number as a string
1811 and format it accordingly.
1813 *** Configuration Variables
1815 The format module exports some configuration variables to suit the
1816 systems and users needs. There should be no modification necessary for
1817 the configuration that comes with Guile. Format detects automatically
1818 if the running scheme system implements floating point numbers and
1821 format:symbol-case-conv
1822 Symbols are converted by `symbol->string' so the case type of the
1823 printed symbols is implementation dependent.
1824 `format:symbol-case-conv' is a one arg closure which is either
1825 `#f' (no conversion), `string-upcase', `string-downcase' or
1826 `string-capitalize'. (default `#f')
1828 format:iobj-case-conv
1829 As FORMAT:SYMBOL-CASE-CONV but applies for the representation of
1830 implementation internal objects. (default `#f')
1833 The character prefixing the exponent value in `~E' printing.
1836 *** Compatibility With Other Format Implementations
1842 Downward compatible except for padding support and `~A', `~S',
1843 `~P', `~X' uppercase printing. SLIB format 1.4 uses C-style
1844 `printf' padding support which is completely replaced by the CL
1845 `format' padding style.
1848 Downward compatible except for `~', which is not documented
1849 (ignores all characters inside the format string up to a newline
1850 character). (7.1 implements `~a', `~s', ~NEWLINE, `~~', `~%',
1851 numerical and variable parameters and `:/@' modifiers in the CL
1855 Downward compatible except for `~A' and `~S' which print in
1856 uppercase. (Elk implements `~a', `~s', `~~', and `~%' (no
1857 directive parameters or modifiers)).
1860 Downward compatible except for an optional destination parameter:
1861 S2C accepts a format call without a destination which returns a
1862 formatted string. This is equivalent to a #f destination in S2C.
1863 (S2C implements `~a', `~s', `~c', `~%', and `~~' (no directive
1864 parameters or modifiers)).
1867 ** Changes to string-handling functions.
1869 These functions were added to support the (ice-9 format) module, above.
1871 *** New function: string-upcase STRING
1872 *** New function: string-downcase STRING
1874 These are non-destructive versions of the existing string-upcase! and
1875 string-downcase! functions.
1877 *** New function: string-capitalize! STRING
1878 *** New function: string-capitalize STRING
1880 These functions convert the first letter of each word in the string to
1883 (string-capitalize "howdy there")
1886 As with the other functions, string-capitalize! modifies the string in
1887 place, while string-capitalize returns a modified copy of its argument.
1889 *** New function: string-ci->symbol STRING
1891 Return a symbol whose name is STRING, but having the same case as if
1892 the symbol had be read by `read'.
1894 Guile can be configured to be sensitive or insensitive to case
1895 differences in Scheme identifiers. If Guile is case-insensitive, all
1896 symbols are converted to lower case on input. The `string-ci->symbol'
1897 function returns a symbol whose name in STRING, transformed as Guile
1898 would if STRING were input.
1900 *** New function: substring-move! STRING1 START END STRING2 START
1902 Copy the substring of STRING1 from START (inclusive) to END
1903 (exclusive) to STRING2 at START. STRING1 and STRING2 may be the same
1904 string, and the source and destination areas may overlap; in all
1905 cases, the function behaves as if all the characters were copied
1908 *** Extended functions: substring-move-left! substring-move-right!
1910 These functions now correctly copy arbitrarily overlapping substrings;
1911 they are both synonyms for substring-move!.
1914 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-long), with the function `getopt-long'.
1916 getopt-long is a function for parsing command-line arguments in a
1917 manner consistent with other GNU programs.
1919 (getopt-long ARGS GRAMMAR)
1920 Parse the arguments ARGS according to the argument list grammar GRAMMAR.
1922 ARGS should be a list of strings. Its first element should be the
1923 name of the program; subsequent elements should be the arguments
1924 that were passed to the program on the command line. The
1925 `program-arguments' procedure returns a list of this form.
1927 GRAMMAR is a list of the form:
1928 ((OPTION (PROPERTY VALUE) ...) ...)
1930 Each OPTION should be a symbol. `getopt-long' will accept a
1931 command-line option named `--OPTION'.
1932 Each option can have the following (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs:
1934 (single-char CHAR) --- Accept `-CHAR' as a single-character
1935 equivalent to `--OPTION'. This is how to specify traditional
1937 (required? BOOL) --- If BOOL is true, the option is required.
1938 getopt-long will raise an error if it is not found in ARGS.
1939 (value BOOL) --- If BOOL is #t, the option accepts a value; if
1940 it is #f, it does not; and if it is the symbol
1941 `optional', the option may appear in ARGS with or
1943 (predicate FUNC) --- If the option accepts a value (i.e. you
1944 specified `(value #t)' for this option), then getopt
1945 will apply FUNC to the value, and throw an exception
1946 if it returns #f. FUNC should be a procedure which
1947 accepts a string and returns a boolean value; you may
1948 need to use quasiquotes to get it into GRAMMAR.
1950 The (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs may occur in any order, but each
1951 property may occur only once. By default, options do not have
1952 single-character equivalents, are not required, and do not take
1955 In ARGS, single-character options may be combined, in the usual
1956 Unix fashion: ("-x" "-y") is equivalent to ("-xy"). If an option
1957 accepts values, then it must be the last option in the
1958 combination; the value is the next argument. So, for example, using
1959 the following grammar:
1960 ((apples (single-char #\a))
1961 (blimps (single-char #\b) (value #t))
1962 (catalexis (single-char #\c) (value #t)))
1963 the following argument lists would be acceptable:
1964 ("-a" "-b" "bang" "-c" "couth") ("bang" and "couth" are the values
1965 for "blimps" and "catalexis")
1966 ("-ab" "bang" "-c" "couth") (same)
1967 ("-ac" "couth" "-b" "bang") (same)
1968 ("-abc" "couth" "bang") (an error, since `-b' is not the
1969 last option in its combination)
1971 If an option's value is optional, then `getopt-long' decides
1972 whether it has a value by looking at what follows it in ARGS. If
1973 the next element is a string, and it does not appear to be an
1974 option itself, then that string is the option's value.
1976 The value of a long option can appear as the next element in ARGS,
1977 or it can follow the option name, separated by an `=' character.
1978 Thus, using the same grammar as above, the following argument lists
1980 ("--apples" "Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
1981 ("--apples=Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
1982 ("--blimps" "Goodyear" "--apples=Braeburn")
1984 If the option "--" appears in ARGS, argument parsing stops there;
1985 subsequent arguments are returned as ordinary arguments, even if
1986 they resemble options. So, in the argument list:
1987 ("--apples" "Granny Smith" "--" "--blimp" "Goodyear")
1988 `getopt-long' will recognize the `apples' option as having the
1989 value "Granny Smith", but it will not recognize the `blimp'
1990 option; it will return the strings "--blimp" and "Goodyear" as
1991 ordinary argument strings.
1993 The `getopt-long' function returns the parsed argument list as an
1994 assocation list, mapping option names --- the symbols from GRAMMAR
1995 --- onto their values, or #t if the option does not accept a value.
1996 Unused options do not appear in the alist.
1998 All arguments that are not the value of any option are returned
1999 as a list, associated with the empty list.
2001 `getopt-long' throws an exception if:
2002 - it finds an unrecognized option in ARGS
2003 - a required option is omitted
2004 - an option that requires an argument doesn't get one
2005 - an option that doesn't accept an argument does get one (this can
2006 only happen using the long option `--opt=value' syntax)
2007 - an option predicate fails
2012 `((lockfile-dir (required? #t)
2015 (predicate ,file-is-directory?))
2016 (verbose (required? #f)
2019 (x-includes (single-char #\x))
2020 (rnet-server (single-char #\y)
2021 (predicate ,string?))))
2023 (getopt-long '("my-prog" "-vk" "/tmp" "foo1" "--x-includes=/usr/include"
2024 "--rnet-server=lamprod" "--" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
2026 => ((() "foo1" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
2027 (rnet-server . "lamprod")
2028 (x-includes . "/usr/include")
2029 (lockfile-dir . "/tmp")
2032 ** The (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) module is obsolete; use (ice-9 getopt-long).
2034 It will be removed in a few releases.
2036 ** New syntax: lambda*
2037 ** New syntax: define*
2038 ** New syntax: define*-public
2039 ** New syntax: defmacro*
2040 ** New syntax: defmacro*-public
2041 Guile now supports optional arguments.
2043 `lambda*', `define*', `define*-public', `defmacro*' and
2044 `defmacro*-public' are identical to the non-* versions except that
2045 they use an extended type of parameter list that has the following BNF
2046 syntax (parentheses are literal, square brackets indicate grouping,
2047 and `*', `+' and `?' have the usual meaning):
2049 ext-param-list ::= ( [identifier]* [#&optional [ext-var-decl]+]?
2050 [#&key [ext-var-decl]+ [#&allow-other-keys]?]?
2051 [[#&rest identifier]|[. identifier]]? ) | [identifier]
2053 ext-var-decl ::= identifier | ( identifier expression )
2055 The semantics are best illustrated with the following documentation
2056 and examples for `lambda*':
2059 lambda extended for optional and keyword arguments
2061 lambda* creates a procedure that takes optional arguments. These
2062 are specified by putting them inside brackets at the end of the
2063 paramater list, but before any dotted rest argument. For example,
2064 (lambda* (a b #&optional c d . e) '())
2065 creates a procedure with fixed arguments a and b, optional arguments c
2066 and d, and rest argument e. If the optional arguments are omitted
2067 in a call, the variables for them are unbound in the procedure. This
2068 can be checked with the bound? macro.
2070 lambda* can also take keyword arguments. For example, a procedure
2072 (lambda* (#&key xyzzy larch) '())
2073 can be called with any of the argument lists (#:xyzzy 11)
2074 (#:larch 13) (#:larch 42 #:xyzzy 19) (). Whichever arguments
2075 are given as keywords are bound to values.
2077 Optional and keyword arguments can also be given default values
2078 which they take on when they are not present in a call, by giving a
2079 two-item list in place of an optional argument, for example in:
2080 (lambda* (foo #&optional (bar 42) #&key (baz 73)) (list foo bar baz))
2081 foo is a fixed argument, bar is an optional argument with default
2082 value 42, and baz is a keyword argument with default value 73.
2083 Default value expressions are not evaluated unless they are needed
2084 and until the procedure is called.
2086 lambda* now supports two more special parameter list keywords.
2088 lambda*-defined procedures now throw an error by default if a
2089 keyword other than one of those specified is found in the actual
2090 passed arguments. However, specifying #&allow-other-keys
2091 immediately after the kyword argument declarations restores the
2092 previous behavior of ignoring unknown keywords. lambda* also now
2093 guarantees that if the same keyword is passed more than once, the
2094 last one passed is the one that takes effect. For example,
2095 ((lambda* (#&key (heads 0) (tails 0)) (display (list heads tails)))
2096 #:heads 37 #:tails 42 #:heads 99)
2097 would result in (99 47) being displayed.
2099 #&rest is also now provided as a synonym for the dotted syntax rest
2100 argument. The argument lists (a . b) and (a #&rest b) are equivalent in
2101 all respects to lambda*. This is provided for more similarity to DSSSL,
2102 MIT-Scheme and Kawa among others, as well as for refugees from other
2105 Further documentation may be found in the optargs.scm file itself.
2107 The optional argument module also exports the macros `let-optional',
2108 `let-optional*', `let-keywords', `let-keywords*' and `bound?'. These
2109 are not documented here because they may be removed in the future, but
2110 full documentation is still available in optargs.scm.
2112 ** New syntax: and-let*
2113 Guile now supports the `and-let*' form, described in the draft SRFI-2.
2115 Syntax: (land* (<clause> ...) <body> ...)
2116 Each <clause> should have one of the following forms:
2117 (<variable> <expression>)
2120 Each <variable> or <bound-variable> should be an identifier. Each
2121 <expression> should be a valid expression. The <body> should be a
2122 possibly empty sequence of expressions, like the <body> of a
2125 Semantics: A LAND* expression is evaluated by evaluating the
2126 <expression> or <bound-variable> of each of the <clause>s from
2127 left to right. The value of the first <expression> or
2128 <bound-variable> that evaluates to a false value is returned; the
2129 remaining <expression>s and <bound-variable>s are not evaluated.
2130 The <body> forms are evaluated iff all the <expression>s and
2131 <bound-variable>s evaluate to true values.
2133 The <expression>s and the <body> are evaluated in an environment
2134 binding each <variable> of the preceding (<variable> <expression>)
2135 clauses to the value of the <expression>. Later bindings
2136 shadow earlier bindings.
2138 Guile's and-let* macro was contributed by Michael Livshin.
2140 ** New sorting functions
2142 *** New function: sorted? SEQUENCE LESS?
2143 Returns `#t' when the sequence argument is in non-decreasing order
2144 according to LESS? (that is, there is no adjacent pair `... x y
2145 ...' for which `(less? y x)').
2147 Returns `#f' when the sequence contains at least one out-of-order
2148 pair. It is an error if the sequence is neither a list nor a
2151 *** New function: merge LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
2152 LIST1 and LIST2 are sorted lists.
2153 Returns the sorted list of all elements in LIST1 and LIST2.
2155 Assume that the elements a and b1 in LIST1 and b2 in LIST2 are "equal"
2156 in the sense that (LESS? x y) --> #f for x, y in {a, b1, b2},
2157 and that a < b1 in LIST1. Then a < b1 < b2 in the result.
2158 (Here "<" should read "comes before".)
2160 *** New procedure: merge! LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
2161 Merges two lists, re-using the pairs of LIST1 and LIST2 to build
2162 the result. If the code is compiled, and LESS? constructs no new
2163 pairs, no pairs at all will be allocated. The first pair of the
2164 result will be either the first pair of LIST1 or the first pair of
2167 *** New function: sort SEQUENCE LESS?
2168 Accepts either a list or a vector, and returns a new sequence
2169 which is sorted. The new sequence is the same type as the input.
2170 Always `(sorted? (sort sequence less?) less?)'. The original
2171 sequence is not altered in any way. The new sequence shares its
2172 elements with the old one; no elements are copied.
2174 *** New procedure: sort! SEQUENCE LESS
2175 Returns its sorted result in the original boxes. No new storage is
2176 allocated at all. Proper usage: (set! slist (sort! slist <))
2178 *** New function: stable-sort SEQUENCE LESS?
2179 Similar to `sort' but stable. That is, if "equal" elements are
2180 ordered a < b in the original sequence, they will have the same order
2183 *** New function: stable-sort! SEQUENCE LESS?
2184 Similar to `sort!' but stable.
2185 Uses temporary storage when sorting vectors.
2187 *** New functions: sort-list, sort-list!
2188 Added for compatibility with scsh.
2190 ** New built-in random number support
2192 *** New function: random N [STATE]
2193 Accepts a positive integer or real N and returns a number of the
2194 same type between zero (inclusive) and N (exclusive). The values
2195 returned have a uniform distribution.
2197 The optional argument STATE must be of the type produced by
2198 `copy-random-state' or `seed->random-state'. It defaults to the value
2199 of the variable `*random-state*'. This object is used to maintain the
2200 state of the pseudo-random-number generator and is altered as a side
2201 effect of the `random' operation.
2203 *** New variable: *random-state*
2204 Holds a data structure that encodes the internal state of the
2205 random-number generator that `random' uses by default. The nature
2206 of this data structure is implementation-dependent. It may be
2207 printed out and successfully read back in, but may or may not
2208 function correctly as a random-number state object in another
2211 *** New function: copy-random-state [STATE]
2212 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
2213 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
2214 If argument STATE is given, a copy of it is returned. Otherwise a
2215 copy of `*random-state*' is returned.
2217 *** New function: seed->random-state SEED
2218 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
2219 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
2220 SEED is a string or a number. A new state is generated and
2221 initialized using SEED.
2223 *** New function: random:uniform [STATE]
2224 Returns an uniformly distributed inexact real random number in the
2225 range between 0 and 1.
2227 *** New procedure: random:solid-sphere! VECT [STATE]
2228 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose
2229 squares is less than 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in
2230 space of dimension N = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are
2231 uniformly distributed within the unit N-shere. The sum of the
2232 squares of the numbers is returned. VECT can be either a vector
2233 or a uniform vector of doubles.
2235 *** New procedure: random:hollow-sphere! VECT [STATE]
2236 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose squares
2237 is equal to 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in space of
2238 dimension n = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are uniformly
2239 distributed over the surface of the unit n-shere. VECT can be either
2240 a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
2242 *** New function: random:normal [STATE]
2243 Returns an inexact real in a normal distribution with mean 0 and
2244 standard deviation 1. For a normal distribution with mean M and
2245 standard deviation D use `(+ M (* D (random:normal)))'.
2247 *** New procedure: random:normal-vector! VECT [STATE]
2248 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers which are independent and
2249 standard normally distributed (i.e., with mean 0 and variance 1).
2250 VECT can be either a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
2252 *** New function: random:exp STATE
2253 Returns an inexact real in an exponential distribution with mean 1.
2254 For an exponential distribution with mean U use (* U (random:exp)).
2256 ** The range of logand, logior, logxor, logtest, and logbit? have changed.
2258 These functions now operate on numbers in the range of a C unsigned
2261 These functions used to operate on numbers in the range of a C signed
2262 long; however, this seems inappropriate, because Guile integers don't
2265 ** New function: make-guardian
2266 This is an implementation of guardians as described in
2267 R. Kent Dybvig, Carl Bruggeman, and David Eby (1993) "Guardians in a
2268 Generation-Based Garbage Collector" ACM SIGPLAN Conference on
2269 Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1993
2270 ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/guardians.ps.gz
2272 ** New functions: delq1!, delv1!, delete1!
2273 These procedures behave similar to delq! and friends but delete only
2274 one object if at all.
2276 ** New function: unread-string STRING PORT
2277 Unread STRING to PORT, that is, push it back onto the port so that
2278 next read operation will work on the pushed back characters.
2280 ** unread-char can now be called multiple times
2281 If unread-char is called multiple times, the unread characters will be
2282 read again in last-in first-out order.
2284 ** the procedures uniform-array-read! and uniform-array-write! now
2285 work on any kind of port, not just ports which are open on a file.
2287 ** Now 'l' in a port mode requests line buffering.
2289 ** The procedure truncate-file now works on string ports as well
2290 as file ports. If the size argument is omitted, the current
2291 file position is used.
2293 ** new procedure: seek PORT/FDES OFFSET WHENCE
2294 The arguments are the same as for the old fseek procedure, but it
2295 works on string ports as well as random-access file ports.
2297 ** the fseek procedure now works on string ports, since it has been
2298 redefined using seek.
2300 ** the setvbuf procedure now uses a default size if mode is _IOFBF and
2301 size is not supplied.
2303 ** the newline procedure no longer flushes the port if it's not
2304 line-buffered: previously it did if it was the current output port.
2306 ** open-pipe and close-pipe are no longer primitive procedures, but
2307 an emulation can be obtained using `(use-modules (ice-9 popen))'.
2309 ** the freopen procedure has been removed.
2311 ** new procedure: drain-input PORT
2312 Drains PORT's read buffers (including any pushed-back characters)
2313 and returns the contents as a single string.
2315 ** New function: map-in-order PROC LIST1 LIST2 ...
2316 Version of `map' which guarantees that the procedure is applied to the
2317 lists in serial order.
2319 ** Renamed `serial-array-copy!' and `serial-array-map!' to
2320 `array-copy-in-order!' and `array-map-in-order!'. The old names are
2321 now obsolete and will go away in release 1.5.
2323 ** New syntax: collect BODY1 ...
2324 Version of `begin' which returns a list of the results of the body
2325 forms instead of the result of the last body form. In contrast to
2326 `begin', `collect' allows an empty body.
2328 ** New functions: read-history FILENAME, write-history FILENAME
2329 Read/write command line history from/to file. Returns #t on success
2330 and #f if an error occured.
2332 ** `ls' and `lls' in module (ice-9 ls) now handle no arguments.
2334 These procedures return a list of definitions available in the specified
2335 argument, a relative module reference. In the case of no argument,
2336 `(current-module)' is now consulted for definitions to return, instead
2337 of simply returning #f, the former behavior.
2339 ** The #/ syntax for lists is no longer supported.
2341 Earlier versions of Scheme accepted this syntax, but printed a
2344 ** Guile no longer consults the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable.
2346 Instead, you should set GUILE_LOAD_PATH to tell Guile where to find
2349 * Changes to the gh_ interface
2353 Now takes a second argument which is the result array. If this
2354 pointer is NULL, a new array is malloced (the old behaviour).
2356 ** gh_chars2byvect, gh_shorts2svect, gh_floats2fvect, gh_scm2chars,
2357 gh_scm2shorts, gh_scm2longs, gh_scm2floats
2361 * Changes to the scm_ interface
2363 ** Function: scm_make_named_hook (char* name, int n_args)
2365 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
2366 binds a variable named NAME to it.
2368 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
2370 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module. This
2371 might change when we get the new module system.
2373 ** The smob interface
2375 The interface for creating smobs has changed. For documentation, see
2376 data-rep.info (made from guile-core/doc/data-rep.texi).
2378 *** Deprecated function: SCM scm_newsmob (scm_smobfuns *)
2380 >>> This function will be removed in 1.3.4. <<<
2384 *** Function: SCM scm_make_smob_type (const char *name, scm_sizet size)
2385 This function adds a new smob type, named NAME, with instance size
2386 SIZE to the system. The return value is a tag that is used in
2387 creating instances of the type. If SIZE is 0, then no memory will
2388 be allocated when instances of the smob are created, and nothing
2389 will be freed by the default free function.
2391 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_mark (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
2392 This function sets the smob marking procedure for the smob type
2393 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
2394 `scm_make_smob_type'.
2396 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_free (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
2397 This function sets the smob freeing procedure for the smob type
2398 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
2399 `scm_make_smob_type'.
2401 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_print (tc, print)
2403 - Function: void scm_set_smob_print (long tc,
2404 scm_sizet (*print) (SCM,
2408 This function sets the smob printing procedure for the smob type
2409 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
2410 `scm_make_smob_type'.
2412 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_equalp (long tc, SCM (*equalp) (SCM, SCM))
2413 This function sets the smob equality-testing predicate for the
2414 smob type specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
2415 `scm_make_smob_type'.
2417 *** Macro: void SCM_NEWSMOB (SCM var, long tc, void *data)
2418 Make VALUE contain a smob instance of the type with type code TC and
2419 smob data DATA. VALUE must be previously declared as C type `SCM'.
2421 *** Macro: fn_returns SCM_RETURN_NEWSMOB (long tc, void *data)
2422 This macro expands to a block of code that creates a smob instance
2423 of the type with type code TC and smob data DATA, and returns that
2424 `SCM' value. It should be the last piece of code in a block.
2426 ** The interfaces for using I/O ports and implementing port types
2427 (ptobs) have changed significantly. The new interface is based on
2428 shared access to buffers and a new set of ptob procedures.
2430 *** scm_newptob has been removed
2434 *** Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (type_name, fill_buffer, write_flush)
2436 - Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (char *type_name,
2437 int (*fill_buffer) (SCM port),
2438 void (*write_flush) (SCM port));
2440 Similarly to the new smob interface, there is a set of function
2441 setters by which the user can customize the behaviour of his port
2442 type. See ports.h (scm_set_port_XXX).
2444 ** scm_strport_to_string: New function: creates a new string from
2445 a string port's buffer.
2447 ** Plug in interface for random number generators
2448 The variable `scm_the_rng' in random.c contains a value and three
2449 function pointers which together define the current random number
2450 generator being used by the Scheme level interface and the random
2451 number library functions.
2453 The user is free to replace the default generator with the generator
2456 *** Variable: size_t scm_the_rng.rstate_size
2457 The size of the random state type used by the current RNG
2460 *** Function: unsigned long scm_the_rng.random_bits (scm_rstate *STATE)
2461 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
2463 *** Function: void scm_the_rng.init_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE, chars *S, int N)
2464 Seed random state STATE using string S of length N.
2466 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_the_rng.copy_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE)
2467 Given random state STATE, return a malloced copy.
2470 The default RNG is the MWC (Multiply With Carry) random number
2471 generator described by George Marsaglia at the Department of
2472 Statistics and Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The
2473 Florida State University (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo).
2475 It uses 64 bits, has a period of 4578426017172946943 (4.6e18), and
2476 passes all tests in the DIEHARD test suite
2477 (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo/diehard.html). The generation of 32 bits
2478 costs one multiply and one add on platforms which either supports long
2479 longs (gcc does this on most systems) or have 64 bit longs. The cost
2480 is four multiply on other systems but this can be optimized by writing
2481 scm_i_uniform32 in assembler.
2483 These functions are provided through the scm_the_rng interface for use
2484 by libguile and the application.
2486 *** Function: unsigned long scm_i_uniform32 (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
2487 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
2488 Don't use this function directly. Instead go through the plugin
2489 interface (see "Plug in interface" above).
2491 *** Function: void scm_i_init_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE, char *SEED, int N)
2492 Initialize STATE using SEED of length N.
2494 *** Function: scm_i_rstate *scm_i_copy_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
2495 Return a malloc:ed copy of STATE. This function can easily be re-used
2496 in the interfaces to other RNGs.
2498 ** Random number library functions
2499 These functions use the current RNG through the scm_the_rng interface.
2500 It might be a good idea to use these functions from your C code so
2501 that only one random generator is used by all code in your program.
2503 The default random state is stored in:
2505 *** Variable: SCM scm_var_random_state
2506 Contains the vcell of the Scheme variable "*random-state*" which is
2507 used as default state by all random number functions in the Scheme
2512 double x = scm_c_uniform01 (SCM_RSTATE (SCM_CDR (scm_var_random_state)));
2514 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_default_rstate (void)
2515 This is a convenience function which returns the value of
2516 scm_var_random_state. An error message is generated if this value
2517 isn't a random state.
2519 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_make_rstate (char *SEED, int LENGTH)
2520 Make a new random state from the string SEED of length LENGTH.
2522 It is generally not a good idea to use multiple random states in a
2523 program. While subsequent random numbers generated from one random
2524 state are guaranteed to be reasonably independent, there is no such
2525 guarantee for numbers generated from different random states.
2527 *** Macro: unsigned long scm_c_uniform32 (scm_rstate *STATE)
2528 Return 32 random bits.
2530 *** Function: double scm_c_uniform01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
2531 Return a sample from the uniform(0,1) distribution.
2533 *** Function: double scm_c_normal01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
2534 Return a sample from the normal(0,1) distribution.
2536 *** Function: double scm_c_exp1 (scm_rstate *STATE)
2537 Return a sample from the exp(1) distribution.
2539 *** Function: unsigned long scm_c_random (scm_rstate *STATE, unsigned long M)
2540 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
2542 *** Function: SCM scm_c_random_bignum (scm_rstate *STATE, SCM M)
2543 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
2544 M must be a bignum object. The returned value may be an INUM.
2548 Changes in Guile 1.3 (released Monday, October 19, 1998):
2550 * Changes to the distribution
2552 ** We renamed the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable to GUILE_LOAD_PATH.
2553 To avoid conflicts, programs should name environment variables after
2554 themselves, except when there's a common practice establishing some
2557 For now, Guile supports both GUILE_LOAD_PATH and SCHEME_LOAD_PATH,
2558 giving the former precedence, and printing a warning message if the
2559 latter is set. Guile 1.4 will not recognize SCHEME_LOAD_PATH at all.
2561 ** The header files related to multi-byte characters have been removed.
2562 They were: libguile/extchrs.h and libguile/mbstrings.h. Any C code
2563 which referred to these explicitly will probably need to be rewritten,
2564 since the support for the variant string types has been removed; see
2567 ** The header files append.h and sequences.h have been removed. These
2568 files implemented non-R4RS operations which would encourage
2569 non-portable programming style and less easy-to-read code.
2571 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2573 ** New procedures have been added to implement a "batch mode":
2575 *** Function: batch-mode?
2577 Returns a boolean indicating whether the interpreter is in batch
2580 *** Function: set-batch-mode?! ARG
2582 If ARG is true, switches the interpreter to batch mode. The `#f'
2583 case has not been implemented.
2585 ** Guile now provides full command-line editing, when run interactively.
2586 To use this feature, you must have the readline library installed.
2587 The Guile build process will notice it, and automatically include
2590 The readline library is available via anonymous FTP from any GNU
2591 mirror site; the canonical location is "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
2593 ** the-last-stack is now a fluid.
2595 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
2597 ** You can now use the `guile-config' utility to build programs that use Guile.
2599 Guile now includes a command-line utility called `guile-config', which
2600 can provide information about how to compile and link programs that
2603 *** `guile-config compile' prints any C compiler flags needed to use Guile.
2604 You should include this command's output on the command line you use
2605 to compile C or C++ code that #includes the Guile header files. It's
2606 usually just a `-I' flag to help the compiler find the Guile headers.
2609 *** `guile-config link' prints any linker flags necessary to link with Guile.
2611 This command writes to its standard output a list of flags which you
2612 must pass to the linker to link your code against the Guile library.
2613 The flags include '-lguile' itself, any other libraries the Guile
2614 library depends upon, and any `-L' flags needed to help the linker
2615 find those libraries.
2617 For example, here is a Makefile rule that builds a program named 'foo'
2618 from the object files ${FOO_OBJECTS}, and links them against Guile:
2621 ${CC} ${CFLAGS} ${FOO_OBJECTS} `guile-config link` -o foo
2623 Previous Guile releases recommended that you use autoconf to detect
2624 which of a predefined set of libraries were present on your system.
2625 It is more robust to use `guile-config', since it records exactly which
2626 libraries the installed Guile library requires.
2628 This was originally called `build-guile', but was renamed to
2629 `guile-config' before Guile 1.3 was released, to be consistent with
2630 the analogous script for the GTK+ GUI toolkit, which is called
2634 ** Use the GUILE_FLAGS macro in your configure.in file to find Guile.
2636 If you are using the GNU autoconf package to configure your program,
2637 you can use the GUILE_FLAGS autoconf macro to call `guile-config'
2638 (described above) and gather the necessary values for use in your
2641 The GUILE_FLAGS macro expands to configure script code which runs the
2642 `guile-config' script, to find out where Guile's header files and
2643 libraries are installed. It sets two variables, marked for
2644 substitution, as by AC_SUBST.
2646 GUILE_CFLAGS --- flags to pass to a C or C++ compiler to build
2647 code that uses Guile header files. This is almost always just a
2650 GUILE_LDFLAGS --- flags to pass to the linker to link a
2651 program against Guile. This includes `-lguile' for the Guile
2652 library itself, any libraries that Guile itself requires (like
2653 -lqthreads), and so on. It may also include a -L flag to tell the
2654 compiler where to find the libraries.
2656 GUILE_FLAGS is defined in the file guile.m4, in the top-level
2657 directory of the Guile distribution. You can copy it into your
2658 package's aclocal.m4 file, and then use it in your configure.in file.
2660 If you are using the `aclocal' program, distributed with GNU automake,
2661 to maintain your aclocal.m4 file, the Guile installation process
2662 installs guile.m4 where aclocal will find it. All you need to do is
2663 use GUILE_FLAGS in your configure.in file, and then run `aclocal';
2664 this will copy the definition of GUILE_FLAGS into your aclocal.m4
2668 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2670 ** Multi-byte strings have been removed, as have multi-byte and wide
2671 ports. We felt that these were the wrong approach to
2672 internationalization support.
2674 ** New function: readline [PROMPT]
2675 Read a line from the terminal, and allow the user to edit it,
2676 prompting with PROMPT. READLINE provides a large set of Emacs-like
2677 editing commands, lets the user recall previously typed lines, and
2678 works on almost every kind of terminal, including dumb terminals.
2680 READLINE assumes that the cursor is at the beginning of the line when
2681 it is invoked. Thus, you can't print a prompt yourself, and then call
2682 READLINE; you need to package up your prompt as a string, pass it to
2683 the function, and let READLINE print the prompt itself. This is
2684 because READLINE needs to know the prompt's screen width.
2686 For Guile to provide this function, you must have the readline
2687 library, version 2.1 or later, installed on your system. Readline is
2688 available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in pub/gnu, or from
2689 any GNU mirror site.
2691 See also ADD-HISTORY function.
2693 ** New function: add-history STRING
2694 Add STRING as the most recent line in the history used by the READLINE
2695 command. READLINE does not add lines to the history itself; you must
2696 call ADD-HISTORY to make previous input available to the user.
2698 ** The behavior of the read-line function has changed.
2700 This function now uses standard C library functions to read the line,
2701 for speed. This means that it doesn not respect the value of
2702 scm-line-incrementors; it assumes that lines are delimited with
2705 (Note that this is read-line, the function that reads a line of text
2706 from a port, not readline, the function that reads a line from a
2707 terminal, providing full editing capabilities.)
2709 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style): Parse command-line arguments.
2711 This module provides some simple argument parsing. It exports one
2714 Function: getopt-gnu-style ARG-LS
2715 Parse a list of program arguments into an alist of option
2718 Each item in the list of program arguments is examined to see if
2719 it meets the syntax of a GNU long-named option. An argument like
2720 `--MUMBLE' produces an element of the form (MUMBLE . #t) in the
2721 returned alist, where MUMBLE is a keyword object with the same
2722 name as the argument. An argument like `--MUMBLE=FROB' produces
2723 an element of the form (MUMBLE . FROB), where FROB is a string.
2725 As a special case, the returned alist also contains a pair whose
2726 car is the symbol `rest'. The cdr of this pair is a list
2727 containing all the items in the argument list that are not options
2728 of the form mentioned above.
2730 The argument `--' is treated specially: all items in the argument
2731 list appearing after such an argument are not examined, and are
2732 returned in the special `rest' list.
2734 This function does not parse normal single-character switches.
2735 You will need to parse them out of the `rest' list yourself.
2737 ** The read syntax for byte vectors and short vectors has changed.
2739 Instead of #bytes(...), write #y(...).
2741 Instead of #short(...), write #h(...).
2743 This may seem nutty, but, like the other uniform vectors, byte vectors
2744 and short vectors want to have the same print and read syntax (and,
2745 more basic, want to have read syntax!). Changing the read syntax to
2746 use multiple characters after the hash sign breaks with the
2747 conventions used in R5RS and the conventions used for the other
2748 uniform vectors. It also introduces complexity in the current reader,
2749 both on the C and Scheme levels. (The Right solution is probably to
2750 change the syntax and prototypes for uniform vectors entirely.)
2753 ** The new module (ice-9 session) provides useful interactive functions.
2755 *** New procedure: (apropos REGEXP OPTION ...)
2757 Display a list of top-level variables whose names match REGEXP, and
2758 the modules they are imported from. Each OPTION should be one of the
2761 value --- Show the value of each matching variable.
2762 shadow --- Show bindings shadowed by subsequently imported modules.
2763 full --- Same as both `shadow' and `value'.
2767 guile> (apropos "trace" 'full)
2768 debug: trace #<procedure trace args>
2769 debug: untrace #<procedure untrace args>
2770 the-scm-module: display-backtrace #<compiled-closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>
2771 the-scm-module: before-backtrace-hook ()
2772 the-scm-module: backtrace #<primitive-procedure backtrace>
2773 the-scm-module: after-backtrace-hook ()
2774 the-scm-module: has-shown-backtrace-hint? #f
2777 ** There are new functions and syntax for working with macros.
2779 Guile implements macros as a special object type. Any variable whose
2780 top-level binding is a macro object acts as a macro. The macro object
2781 specifies how the expression should be transformed before evaluation.
2783 *** Macro objects now print in a reasonable way, resembling procedures.
2785 *** New function: (macro? OBJ)
2786 True iff OBJ is a macro object.
2788 *** New function: (primitive-macro? OBJ)
2789 Like (macro? OBJ), but true only if OBJ is one of the Guile primitive
2790 macro transformers, implemented in eval.c rather than Scheme code.
2792 Why do we have this function?
2793 - For symmetry with procedure? and primitive-procedure?,
2794 - to allow custom print procedures to tell whether a macro is
2795 primitive, and display it differently, and
2796 - to allow compilers and user-written evaluators to distinguish
2797 builtin special forms from user-defined ones, which could be
2800 *** New function: (macro-type OBJ)
2801 Return a value indicating what kind of macro OBJ is. Possible return
2804 The symbol `syntax' --- a macro created by procedure->syntax.
2805 The symbol `macro' --- a macro created by procedure->macro.
2806 The symbol `macro!' --- a macro created by procedure->memoizing-macro.
2807 The boolean #f --- if OBJ is not a macro object.
2809 *** New function: (macro-name MACRO)
2810 Return the name of the macro object MACRO's procedure, as returned by
2813 *** New function: (macro-transformer MACRO)
2814 Return the transformer procedure for MACRO.
2816 *** New syntax: (use-syntax MODULE ... TRANSFORMER)
2818 Specify a new macro expander to use in the current module. Each
2819 MODULE is a module name, with the same meaning as in the `use-modules'
2820 form; each named module's exported bindings are added to the current
2821 top-level environment. TRANSFORMER is an expression evaluated in the
2822 resulting environment which must yield a procedure to use as the
2823 module's eval transformer: every expression evaluated in this module
2824 is passed to this function, and the result passed to the Guile
2827 *** macro-eval! is removed. Use local-eval instead.
2829 ** Some magic has been added to the printer to better handle user
2830 written printing routines (like record printers, closure printers).
2832 The problem is that these user written routines must have access to
2833 the current `print-state' to be able to handle fancy things like
2834 detection of circular references. These print-states have to be
2835 passed to the builtin printing routines (display, write, etc) to
2836 properly continue the print chain.
2838 We didn't want to change all existing print code so that it
2839 explicitly passes thru a print state in addition to a port. Instead,
2840 we extented the possible values that the builtin printing routines
2841 accept as a `port'. In addition to a normal port, they now also take
2842 a pair of a normal port and a print-state. Printing will go to the
2843 port and the print-state will be used to control the detection of
2844 circular references, etc. If the builtin function does not care for a
2845 print-state, it is simply ignored.
2847 User written callbacks are now called with such a pair as their
2848 `port', but because every function now accepts this pair as a PORT
2849 argument, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, it is probably
2850 safest to not check for these pairs.
2852 However, it is sometimes necessary to continue a print chain on a
2853 different port, for example to get a intermediate string
2854 representation of the printed value, mangle that string somehow, and
2855 then to finally print the mangled string. Use the new function
2857 inherit-print-state OLD-PORT NEW-PORT
2859 for this. It constructs a new `port' that prints to NEW-PORT but
2860 inherits the print-state of OLD-PORT.
2862 ** struct-vtable-offset renamed to vtable-offset-user
2864 ** New constants: vtable-index-layout, vtable-index-vtable, vtable-index-printer
2866 ** There is now a third optional argument to make-vtable-vtable
2867 (and fourth to make-struct) when constructing new types (vtables).
2868 This argument initializes field vtable-index-printer of the vtable.
2870 ** The detection of circular references has been extended to structs.
2871 That is, a structure that -- in the process of being printed -- prints
2872 itself does not lead to infinite recursion.
2874 ** There is now some basic support for fluids. Please read
2875 "libguile/fluid.h" to find out more. It is accessible from Scheme with
2876 the following functions and macros:
2878 Function: make-fluid
2880 Create a new fluid object. Fluids are not special variables or
2881 some other extension to the semantics of Scheme, but rather
2882 ordinary Scheme objects. You can store them into variables (that
2883 are still lexically scoped, of course) or into any other place you
2884 like. Every fluid has a initial value of `#f'.
2886 Function: fluid? OBJ
2888 Test whether OBJ is a fluid.
2890 Function: fluid-ref FLUID
2891 Function: fluid-set! FLUID VAL
2893 Access/modify the fluid FLUID. Modifications are only visible
2894 within the current dynamic root (that includes threads).
2896 Function: with-fluids* FLUIDS VALUES THUNK
2898 FLUIDS is a list of fluids and VALUES a corresponding list of
2899 values for these fluids. Before THUNK gets called the values are
2900 installed in the fluids and the old values of the fluids are
2901 saved in the VALUES list. When the flow of control leaves THUNK
2902 or reenters it, the values get swapped again. You might think of
2903 this as a `safe-fluid-excursion'. Note that the VALUES list is
2904 modified by `with-fluids*'.
2906 Macro: with-fluids ((FLUID VALUE) ...) FORM ...
2908 The same as `with-fluids*' but with a different syntax. It looks
2909 just like `let', but both FLUID and VALUE are evaluated. Remember,
2910 fluids are not special variables but ordinary objects. FLUID
2911 should evaluate to a fluid.
2913 ** Changes to system call interfaces:
2915 *** close-port, close-input-port and close-output-port now return a
2916 boolean instead of an `unspecified' object. #t means that the port
2917 was successfully closed, while #f means it was already closed. It is
2918 also now possible for these procedures to raise an exception if an
2919 error occurs (some errors from write can be delayed until close.)
2921 *** the first argument to chmod, fcntl, ftell and fseek can now be a
2924 *** the third argument to fcntl is now optional.
2926 *** the first argument to chown can now be a file descriptor or a port.
2928 *** the argument to stat can now be a port.
2930 *** The following new procedures have been added (most use scsh
2933 *** procedure: close PORT/FD
2934 Similar to close-port (*note close-port: Closing Ports.), but also
2935 works on file descriptors. A side effect of closing a file
2936 descriptor is that any ports using that file descriptor are moved
2937 to a different file descriptor and have their revealed counts set
2940 *** procedure: port->fdes PORT
2941 Returns the integer file descriptor underlying PORT. As a side
2942 effect the revealed count of PORT is incremented.
2944 *** procedure: fdes->ports FDES
2945 Returns a list of existing ports which have FDES as an underlying
2946 file descriptor, without changing their revealed counts.
2948 *** procedure: fdes->inport FDES
2949 Returns an existing input port which has FDES as its underlying
2950 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
2951 Otherwise, returns a new input port with a revealed count of 1.
2953 *** procedure: fdes->outport FDES
2954 Returns an existing output port which has FDES as its underlying
2955 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
2956 Otherwise, returns a new output port with a revealed count of 1.
2958 The next group of procedures perform a `dup2' system call, if NEWFD
2959 (an integer) is supplied, otherwise a `dup'. The file descriptor to be
2960 duplicated can be supplied as an integer or contained in a port. The
2961 type of value returned varies depending on which procedure is used.
2963 All procedures also have the side effect when performing `dup2' that
2964 any ports using NEWFD are moved to a different file descriptor and have
2965 their revealed counts set to zero.
2967 *** procedure: dup->fdes PORT/FD [NEWFD]
2968 Returns an integer file descriptor.
2970 *** procedure: dup->inport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
2971 Returns a new input port using the new file descriptor.
2973 *** procedure: dup->outport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
2974 Returns a new output port using the new file descriptor.
2976 *** procedure: dup PORT/FD [NEWFD]
2977 Returns a new port if PORT/FD is a port, with the same mode as the
2978 supplied port, otherwise returns an integer file descriptor.
2980 *** procedure: dup->port PORT/FD MODE [NEWFD]
2981 Returns a new port using the new file descriptor. MODE supplies a
2982 mode string for the port (*note open-file: File Ports.).
2984 *** procedure: setenv NAME VALUE
2985 Modifies the environment of the current process, which is also the
2986 default environment inherited by child processes.
2988 If VALUE is `#f', then NAME is removed from the environment.
2989 Otherwise, the string NAME=VALUE is added to the environment,
2990 replacing any existing string with name matching NAME.
2992 The return value is unspecified.
2994 *** procedure: truncate-file OBJ SIZE
2995 Truncates the file referred to by OBJ to at most SIZE bytes. OBJ
2996 can be a string containing a file name or an integer file
2997 descriptor or port open for output on the file. The underlying
2998 system calls are `truncate' and `ftruncate'.
3000 The return value is unspecified.
3002 *** procedure: setvbuf PORT MODE [SIZE]
3003 Set the buffering mode for PORT. MODE can be:
3011 block buffered, using a newly allocated buffer of SIZE bytes.
3012 However if SIZE is zero or unspecified, the port will be made
3015 This procedure should not be used after I/O has been performed with
3018 Ports are usually block buffered by default, with a default buffer
3019 size. Procedures e.g., *Note open-file: File Ports, which accept a
3020 mode string allow `0' to be added to request an unbuffered port.
3022 *** procedure: fsync PORT/FD
3023 Copies any unwritten data for the specified output file descriptor
3024 to disk. If PORT/FD is a port, its buffer is flushed before the
3025 underlying file descriptor is fsync'd. The return value is
3028 *** procedure: open-fdes PATH FLAGS [MODES]
3029 Similar to `open' but returns a file descriptor instead of a port.
3031 *** procedure: execle PATH ENV [ARG] ...
3032 Similar to `execl', but the environment of the new process is
3033 specified by ENV, which must be a list of strings as returned by
3034 the `environ' procedure.
3036 This procedure is currently implemented using the `execve' system
3037 call, but we call it `execle' because of its Scheme calling
3040 *** procedure: strerror ERRNO
3041 Returns the Unix error message corresponding to ERRNO, an integer.
3043 *** procedure: primitive-exit [STATUS]
3044 Terminate the current process without unwinding the Scheme stack.
3045 This is would typically be useful after a fork. The exit status
3046 is STATUS if supplied, otherwise zero.
3048 *** procedure: times
3049 Returns an object with information about real and processor time.
3050 The following procedures accept such an object as an argument and
3051 return a selected component:
3054 The current real time, expressed as time units relative to an
3058 The CPU time units used by the calling process.
3061 The CPU time units used by the system on behalf of the
3065 The CPU time units used by terminated child processes of the
3066 calling process, whose status has been collected (e.g., using
3070 Similarly, the CPU times units used by the system on behalf of
3071 terminated child processes.
3073 ** Removed: list-length
3074 ** Removed: list-append, list-append!
3075 ** Removed: list-reverse, list-reverse!
3077 ** array-map renamed to array-map!
3079 ** serial-array-map renamed to serial-array-map!
3081 ** catch doesn't take #f as first argument any longer
3083 Previously, it was possible to pass #f instead of a key to `catch'.
3084 That would cause `catch' to pass a jump buffer object to the procedure
3085 passed as second argument. The procedure could then use this jump
3086 buffer objekt as an argument to throw.
3088 This mechanism has been removed since its utility doesn't motivate the
3089 extra complexity it introduces.
3091 ** The `#/' notation for lists now provokes a warning message from Guile.
3092 This syntax will be removed from Guile in the near future.
3094 To disable the warning message, set the GUILE_HUSH environment
3095 variable to any non-empty value.
3097 ** The newline character now prints as `#\newline', following the
3098 normal Scheme notation, not `#\nl'.
3100 * Changes to the gh_ interface
3102 ** The gh_enter function now takes care of loading the Guile startup files.
3103 gh_enter works by calling scm_boot_guile; see the remarks below.
3105 ** Function: void gh_write (SCM x)
3107 Write the printed representation of the scheme object x to the current
3108 output port. Corresponds to the scheme level `write'.
3110 ** gh_list_length renamed to gh_length.
3112 ** vector handling routines
3114 Several major changes. In particular, gh_vector() now resembles
3115 (vector ...) (with a caveat -- see manual), and gh_make_vector() now
3116 exists and behaves like (make-vector ...). gh_vset() and gh_vref()
3117 have been renamed gh_vector_set_x() and gh_vector_ref(). Some missing
3118 vector-related gh_ functions have been implemented.
3120 ** pair and list routines
3122 Implemented several of the R4RS pair and list functions that were
3125 ** gh_scm2doubles, gh_doubles2scm, gh_doubles2dvect
3127 New function. Converts double arrays back and forth between Scheme
3130 * Changes to the scm_ interface
3132 ** The function scm_boot_guile now takes care of loading the startup files.
3134 Guile's primary initialization function, scm_boot_guile, now takes
3135 care of loading `boot-9.scm', in the `ice-9' module, to initialize
3136 Guile, define the module system, and put together some standard
3137 bindings. It also loads `init.scm', which is intended to hold
3138 site-specific initialization code.
3140 Since Guile cannot operate properly until boot-9.scm is loaded, there
3141 is no reason to separate loading boot-9.scm from Guile's other
3142 initialization processes.
3144 This job used to be done by scm_compile_shell_switches, which didn't
3145 make much sense; in particular, it meant that people using Guile for
3146 non-shell-like applications had to jump through hoops to get Guile
3147 initialized properly.
3149 ** The function scm_compile_shell_switches no longer loads the startup files.
3150 Now, Guile always loads the startup files, whenever it is initialized;
3151 see the notes above for scm_boot_guile and scm_load_startup_files.
3153 ** Function: scm_load_startup_files
3154 This new function takes care of loading Guile's initialization file
3155 (`boot-9.scm'), and the site initialization file, `init.scm'. Since
3156 this is always called by the Guile initialization process, it's
3157 probably not too useful to call this yourself, but it's there anyway.
3159 ** The semantics of smob marking have changed slightly.
3161 The smob marking function (the `mark' member of the scm_smobfuns
3162 structure) is no longer responsible for setting the mark bit on the
3163 smob. The generic smob handling code in the garbage collector will
3164 set this bit. The mark function need only ensure that any other
3165 objects the smob refers to get marked.
3167 Note that this change means that the smob's GC8MARK bit is typically
3168 already set upon entry to the mark function. Thus, marking functions
3169 which look like this:
3172 if (SCM_GC8MARKP (ptr))
3174 SCM_SETGC8MARK (ptr);
3175 ... mark objects to which the smob refers ...
3178 are now incorrect, since they will return early, and fail to mark any
3179 other objects the smob refers to. Some code in the Guile library used
3182 ** The semantics of the I/O port functions in scm_ptobfuns have changed.
3184 If you have implemented your own I/O port type, by writing the
3185 functions required by the scm_ptobfuns and then calling scm_newptob,
3186 you will need to change your functions slightly.
3188 The functions in a scm_ptobfuns structure now expect the port itself
3189 as their argument; they used to expect the `stream' member of the
3190 port's scm_port_table structure. This allows functions in an
3191 scm_ptobfuns structure to easily access the port's cell (and any flags
3192 it its CAR), and the port's scm_port_table structure.
3194 Guile now passes the I/O port itself as the `port' argument in the
3195 following scm_ptobfuns functions:
3197 int (*free) (SCM port);
3198 int (*fputc) (int, SCM port);
3199 int (*fputs) (char *, SCM port);
3200 scm_sizet (*fwrite) SCM_P ((char *ptr,
3204 int (*fflush) (SCM port);
3205 int (*fgetc) (SCM port);
3206 int (*fclose) (SCM port);
3208 The interfaces to the `mark', `print', `equalp', and `fgets' methods
3211 If you have existing code which defines its own port types, it is easy
3212 to convert your code to the new interface; simply apply SCM_STREAM to
3213 the port argument to yield the value you code used to expect.
3215 Note that since both the port and the stream have the same type in the
3216 C code --- they are both SCM values --- the C compiler will not remind
3217 you if you forget to update your scm_ptobfuns functions.
3220 ** Function: int scm_internal_select (int fds,
3224 struct timeval *timeout);
3226 This is a replacement for the `select' function provided by the OS.
3227 It enables I/O blocking and sleeping to happen for one cooperative
3228 thread without blocking other threads. It also avoids busy-loops in
3229 these situations. It is intended that all I/O blocking and sleeping
3230 will finally go through this function. Currently, this function is
3231 only available on systems providing `gettimeofday' and `select'.
3233 ** Function: SCM scm_internal_stack_catch (SCM tag,
3234 scm_catch_body_t body,
3236 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
3239 A new sibling to the other two C level `catch' functions
3240 scm_internal_catch and scm_internal_lazy_catch. Use it if you want
3241 the stack to be saved automatically into the variable `the-last-stack'
3242 (scm_the_last_stack_var) on error. This is necessary if you want to
3243 use advanced error reporting, such as calling scm_display_error and
3244 scm_display_backtrace. (They both take a stack object as argument.)
3246 ** Function: SCM scm_spawn_thread (scm_catch_body_t body,
3248 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
3251 Spawns a new thread. It does a job similar to
3252 scm_call_with_new_thread but takes arguments more suitable when
3253 spawning threads from application C code.
3255 ** The hook scm_error_callback has been removed. It was originally
3256 intended as a way for the user to install his own error handler. But
3257 that method works badly since it intervenes between throw and catch,
3258 thereby changing the semantics of expressions like (catch #t ...).
3259 The correct way to do it is to use one of the C level catch functions
3260 in throw.c: scm_internal_catch/lazy_catch/stack_catch.
3262 ** Removed functions:
3264 scm_obj_length, scm_list_length, scm_list_append, scm_list_append_x,
3265 scm_list_reverse, scm_list_reverse_x
3267 ** New macros: SCM_LISTn where n is one of the integers 0-9.
3269 These can be used for pretty list creation from C. The idea is taken
3270 from Erick Gallesio's STk.
3272 ** scm_array_map renamed to scm_array_map_x
3274 ** mbstrings are now removed
3276 This means that the type codes scm_tc7_mb_string and
3277 scm_tc7_mb_substring has been removed.
3279 ** scm_gen_putc, scm_gen_puts, scm_gen_write, and scm_gen_getc have changed.
3281 Since we no longer support multi-byte strings, these I/O functions
3282 have been simplified, and renamed. Here are their old names, and
3283 their new names and arguments:
3285 scm_gen_putc -> void scm_putc (int c, SCM port);
3286 scm_gen_puts -> void scm_puts (char *s, SCM port);
3287 scm_gen_write -> void scm_lfwrite (char *ptr, scm_sizet size, SCM port);
3288 scm_gen_getc -> void scm_getc (SCM port);
3291 ** The macros SCM_TYP7D and SCM_TYP7SD has been removed.
3293 ** The macro SCM_TYP7S has taken the role of the old SCM_TYP7D
3295 SCM_TYP7S now masks away the bit which distinguishes substrings from
3298 ** scm_catch_body_t: Backward incompatible change!
3300 Body functions to scm_internal_catch and friends do not any longer
3301 take a second argument. This is because it is no longer possible to
3302 pass a #f arg to catch.
3304 ** Calls to scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect now nest properly.
3306 The function scm_protect_object protects its argument from being freed
3307 by the garbage collector. scm_unprotect_object removes that
3310 These functions now nest properly. That is, for every object O, there
3311 is a counter which scm_protect_object(O) increments and
3312 scm_unprotect_object(O) decrements, if the counter is greater than
3313 zero. Every object's counter is zero when it is first created. If an
3314 object's counter is greater than zero, the garbage collector will not
3315 reclaim its storage.
3317 This allows you to use scm_protect_object in your code without
3318 worrying that some other function you call will call
3319 scm_unprotect_object, and allow it to be freed. Assuming that the
3320 functions you call are well-behaved, and unprotect only those objects
3321 they protect, you can follow the same rule and have confidence that
3322 objects will be freed only at appropriate times.
3325 Changes in Guile 1.2 (released Tuesday, June 24 1997):
3327 * Changes to the distribution
3329 ** Nightly snapshots are now available from ftp.red-bean.com.
3330 The old server, ftp.cyclic.com, has been relinquished to its rightful
3333 Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are now available via
3334 anonymous FTP from ftp.red-bean.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.
3336 Via the web, that's: ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
3337 For getit, that's: ftp.red-bean.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
3339 ** To run Guile without installing it, the procedure has changed a bit.
3341 If you used a separate build directory to compile Guile, you'll need
3342 to include the build directory in SCHEME_LOAD_PATH, as well as the
3343 source directory. See the `INSTALL' file for examples.
3345 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
3347 ** The standard Guile load path for Scheme code now includes
3348 $(datadir)/guile (usually /usr/local/share/guile). This means that
3349 you can install your own Scheme files there, and Guile will find them.
3350 (Previous versions of Guile only checked a directory whose name
3351 contained the Guile version number, so you had to re-install or move
3352 your Scheme sources each time you installed a fresh version of Guile.)
3354 The load path also includes $(datadir)/guile/site; we recommend
3355 putting individual Scheme files there. If you want to install a
3356 package with multiple source files, create a directory for them under
3359 ** Guile 1.2 will now use the Rx regular expression library, if it is
3360 installed on your system. When you are linking libguile into your own
3361 programs, this means you will have to link against -lguile, -lqt (if
3362 you configured Guile with thread support), and -lrx.
3364 If you are using autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your
3365 application, the following lines should suffice to add the appropriate
3366 libraries to your link command:
3368 ### Find Rx, quickthreads and libguile.
3369 AC_CHECK_LIB(rx, main)
3370 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
3371 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
3373 The Guile 1.2 distribution does not contain sources for the Rx
3374 library, as Guile 1.0 did. If you want to use Rx, you'll need to
3375 retrieve it from a GNU FTP site and install it separately.
3377 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3379 ** The dynamic linking features of Guile are now enabled by default.
3380 You can disable them by giving the `--disable-dynamic-linking' option
3383 (dynamic-link FILENAME)
3385 Find the object file denoted by FILENAME (a string) and link it
3386 into the running Guile application. When everything works out,
3387 return a Scheme object suitable for representing the linked object
3388 file. Otherwise an error is thrown. How object files are
3389 searched is system dependent.
3391 (dynamic-object? VAL)
3393 Determine whether VAL represents a dynamically linked object file.
3395 (dynamic-unlink DYNOBJ)
3397 Unlink the indicated object file from the application. DYNOBJ
3398 should be one of the values returned by `dynamic-link'.
3400 (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
3402 Search the C function indicated by FUNCTION (a string or symbol)
3403 in DYNOBJ and return some Scheme object that can later be used
3404 with `dynamic-call' to actually call this function. Right now,
3405 these Scheme objects are formed by casting the address of the
3406 function to `long' and converting this number to its Scheme
3409 (dynamic-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
3411 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ. The
3412 function is passed no arguments and its return value is ignored.
3413 When FUNCTION is something returned by `dynamic-func', call that
3414 function and ignore DYNOBJ. When FUNCTION is a string (or symbol,
3415 etc.), look it up in DYNOBJ; this is equivalent to
3417 (dynamic-call (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ) #f)
3419 Interrupts are deferred while the C function is executing (with
3420 SCM_DEFER_INTS/SCM_ALLOW_INTS).
3422 (dynamic-args-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ ARGS)
3424 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ, but pass it
3425 some arguments and return its return value. The C function is
3426 expected to take two arguments and return an `int', just like
3429 int c_func (int argc, char **argv);
3431 ARGS must be a list of strings and is converted into an array of
3432 `char *'. The array is passed in ARGV and its size in ARGC. The
3433 return value is converted to a Scheme number and returned from the
3434 call to `dynamic-args-call'.
3436 When dynamic linking is disabled or not supported on your system,
3437 the above functions throw errors, but they are still available.
3439 Here is a small example that works on GNU/Linux:
3441 (define libc-obj (dynamic-link "libc.so"))
3442 (dynamic-args-call 'rand libc-obj '())
3444 See the file `libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING' for additional comments.
3446 ** The #/ syntax for module names is depreciated, and will be removed
3447 in a future version of Guile. Instead of
3455 The latter syntax is more consistent with existing Lisp practice.
3457 ** Guile now does fancier printing of structures. Structures are the
3458 underlying implementation for records, which in turn are used to
3459 implement modules, so all of these object now print differently and in
3460 a more informative way.
3462 The Scheme printer will examine the builtin variable *struct-printer*
3463 whenever it needs to print a structure object. When this variable is
3464 not `#f' it is deemed to be a procedure and will be applied to the
3465 structure object and the output port. When *struct-printer* is `#f'
3466 or the procedure return `#f' the structure object will be printed in
3467 the boring #<struct 80458270> form.
3469 This hook is used by some routines in ice-9/boot-9.scm to implement
3470 type specific printing routines. Please read the comments there about
3473 One of the more specific uses of structs are records. The printing
3474 procedure that could be passed to MAKE-RECORD-TYPE is now actually
3475 called. It should behave like a *struct-printer* procedure (described
3478 ** Guile now supports a new R4RS-compliant syntax for keywords. A
3479 token of the form #:NAME, where NAME has the same syntax as a Scheme
3480 symbol, is the external representation of the keyword named NAME.
3481 Keyword objects print using this syntax as well, so values containing
3482 keyword objects can be read back into Guile. When used in an
3483 expression, keywords are self-quoting objects.
3485 Guile suports this read syntax, and uses this print syntax, regardless
3486 of the current setting of the `keyword' read option. The `keyword'
3487 read option only controls whether Guile recognizes the `:NAME' syntax,
3488 which is incompatible with R4RS. (R4RS says such token represent
3491 ** Guile has regular expression support again. Guile 1.0 included
3492 functions for matching regular expressions, based on the Rx library.
3493 In Guile 1.1, the Guile/Rx interface was removed to simplify the
3494 distribution, and thus Guile had no regular expression support. Guile
3495 1.2 again supports the most commonly used functions, and supports all
3496 of SCSH's regular expression functions.
3498 If your system does not include a POSIX regular expression library,
3499 and you have not linked Guile with a third-party regexp library such as
3500 Rx, these functions will not be available. You can tell whether your
3501 Guile installation includes regular expression support by checking
3502 whether the `*features*' list includes the `regex' symbol.
3504 *** regexp functions
3506 By default, Guile supports POSIX extended regular expressions. That
3507 means that the characters `(', `)', `+' and `?' are special, and must
3508 be escaped if you wish to match the literal characters.
3510 This regular expression interface was modeled after that implemented
3511 by SCSH, the Scheme Shell. It is intended to be upwardly compatible
3512 with SCSH regular expressions.
3514 **** Function: string-match PATTERN STR [START]
3515 Compile the string PATTERN into a regular expression and compare
3516 it with STR. The optional numeric argument START specifies the
3517 position of STR at which to begin matching.
3519 `string-match' returns a "match structure" which describes what,
3520 if anything, was matched by the regular expression. *Note Match
3521 Structures::. If STR does not match PATTERN at all,
3522 `string-match' returns `#f'.
3524 Each time `string-match' is called, it must compile its PATTERN
3525 argument into a regular expression structure. This operation is
3526 expensive, which makes `string-match' inefficient if the same regular
3527 expression is used several times (for example, in a loop). For better
3528 performance, you can compile a regular expression in advance and then
3529 match strings against the compiled regexp.
3531 **** Function: make-regexp STR [FLAGS]
3532 Compile the regular expression described by STR, and return the
3533 compiled regexp structure. If STR does not describe a legal
3534 regular expression, `make-regexp' throws a
3535 `regular-expression-syntax' error.
3537 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
3539 **** Constant: regexp/extended
3540 Use POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting
3541 STR. If not set, POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used.
3542 If the FLAGS argument is omitted, we assume regexp/extended.
3544 **** Constant: regexp/icase
3545 Do not differentiate case. Subsequent searches using the
3546 returned regular expression will be case insensitive.
3548 **** Constant: regexp/newline
3549 Match-any-character operators don't match a newline.
3551 A non-matching list ([^...]) not containing a newline matches a
3554 Match-beginning-of-line operator (^) matches the empty string
3555 immediately after a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
3556 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/notbol.
3558 Match-end-of-line operator ($) matches the empty string
3559 immediately before a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
3560 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/noteol.
3562 **** Function: regexp-exec REGEXP STR [START [FLAGS]]
3563 Match the compiled regular expression REGEXP against `str'. If
3564 the optional integer START argument is provided, begin matching
3565 from that position in the string. Return a match structure
3566 describing the results of the match, or `#f' if no match could be
3569 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
3571 **** Constant: regexp/notbol
3572 The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but
3573 see the compilation flag regexp/newline above) This flag may be
3574 used when different portions of a string are passed to
3575 regexp-exec and the beginning of the string should not be
3576 interpreted as the beginning of the line.
3578 **** Constant: regexp/noteol
3579 The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the
3580 compilation flag regexp/newline above)
3582 **** Function: regexp? OBJ
3583 Return `#t' if OBJ is a compiled regular expression, or `#f'
3586 Regular expressions are commonly used to find patterns in one string
3587 and replace them with the contents of another string.
3589 **** Function: regexp-substitute PORT MATCH [ITEM...]
3590 Write to the output port PORT selected contents of the match
3591 structure MATCH. Each ITEM specifies what should be written, and
3592 may be one of the following arguments:
3594 * A string. String arguments are written out verbatim.
3596 * An integer. The submatch with that number is written.
3598 * The symbol `pre'. The portion of the matched string preceding
3599 the regexp match is written.
3601 * The symbol `post'. The portion of the matched string
3602 following the regexp match is written.
3604 PORT may be `#f', in which case nothing is written; instead,
3605 `regexp-substitute' constructs a string from the specified ITEMs
3608 **** Function: regexp-substitute/global PORT REGEXP TARGET [ITEM...]
3609 Similar to `regexp-substitute', but can be used to perform global
3610 substitutions on STR. Instead of taking a match structure as an
3611 argument, `regexp-substitute/global' takes two string arguments: a
3612 REGEXP string describing a regular expression, and a TARGET string
3613 which should be matched against this regular expression.
3615 Each ITEM behaves as in REGEXP-SUBSTITUTE, with the following
3618 * A function may be supplied. When this function is called, it
3619 will be passed one argument: a match structure for a given
3620 regular expression match. It should return a string to be
3621 written out to PORT.
3623 * The `post' symbol causes `regexp-substitute/global' to recurse
3624 on the unmatched portion of STR. This *must* be supplied in
3625 order to perform global search-and-replace on STR; if it is
3626 not present among the ITEMs, then `regexp-substitute/global'
3627 will return after processing a single match.
3629 *** Match Structures
3631 A "match structure" is the object returned by `string-match' and
3632 `regexp-exec'. It describes which portion of a string, if any, matched
3633 the given regular expression. Match structures include: a reference to
3634 the string that was checked for matches; the starting and ending
3635 positions of the regexp match; and, if the regexp included any
3636 parenthesized subexpressions, the starting and ending positions of each
3639 In each of the regexp match functions described below, the `match'
3640 argument must be a match structure returned by a previous call to
3641 `string-match' or `regexp-exec'. Most of these functions return some
3642 information about the original target string that was matched against a
3643 regular expression; we will call that string TARGET for easy reference.
3645 **** Function: regexp-match? OBJ
3646 Return `#t' if OBJ is a match structure returned by a previous
3647 call to `regexp-exec', or `#f' otherwise.
3649 **** Function: match:substring MATCH [N]
3650 Return the portion of TARGET matched by subexpression number N.
3651 Submatch 0 (the default) represents the entire regexp match. If
3652 the regular expression as a whole matched, but the subexpression
3653 number N did not match, return `#f'.
3655 **** Function: match:start MATCH [N]
3656 Return the starting position of submatch number N.
3658 **** Function: match:end MATCH [N]
3659 Return the ending position of submatch number N.
3661 **** Function: match:prefix MATCH
3662 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET preceding the regexp match.
3664 **** Function: match:suffix MATCH
3665 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET following the regexp match.
3667 **** Function: match:count MATCH
3668 Return the number of parenthesized subexpressions from MATCH.
3669 Note that the entire regular expression match itself counts as a
3670 subexpression, and failed submatches are included in the count.
3672 **** Function: match:string MATCH
3673 Return the original TARGET string.
3675 *** Backslash Escapes
3677 Sometimes you will want a regexp to match characters like `*' or `$'
3678 exactly. For example, to check whether a particular string represents
3679 a menu entry from an Info node, it would be useful to match it against
3680 a regexp like `^* [^:]*::'. However, this won't work; because the
3681 asterisk is a metacharacter, it won't match the `*' at the beginning of
3682 the string. In this case, we want to make the first asterisk un-magic.
3684 You can do this by preceding the metacharacter with a backslash
3685 character `\'. (This is also called "quoting" the metacharacter, and
3686 is known as a "backslash escape".) When Guile sees a backslash in a
3687 regular expression, it considers the following glyph to be an ordinary
3688 character, no matter what special meaning it would ordinarily have.
3689 Therefore, we can make the above example work by changing the regexp to
3690 `^\* [^:]*::'. The `\*' sequence tells the regular expression engine
3691 to match only a single asterisk in the target string.
3693 Since the backslash is itself a metacharacter, you may force a
3694 regexp to match a backslash in the target string by preceding the
3695 backslash with itself. For example, to find variable references in a
3696 TeX program, you might want to find occurrences of the string `\let\'
3697 followed by any number of alphabetic characters. The regular expression
3698 `\\let\\[A-Za-z]*' would do this: the double backslashes in the regexp
3699 each match a single backslash in the target string.
3701 **** Function: regexp-quote STR
3702 Quote each special character found in STR with a backslash, and
3703 return the resulting string.
3705 *Very important:* Using backslash escapes in Guile source code (as
3706 in Emacs Lisp or C) can be tricky, because the backslash character has
3707 special meaning for the Guile reader. For example, if Guile encounters
3708 the character sequence `\n' in the middle of a string while processing
3709 Scheme code, it replaces those characters with a newline character.
3710 Similarly, the character sequence `\t' is replaced by a horizontal tab.
3711 Several of these "escape sequences" are processed by the Guile reader
3712 before your code is executed. Unrecognized escape sequences are
3713 ignored: if the characters `\*' appear in a string, they will be
3714 translated to the single character `*'.
3716 This translation is obviously undesirable for regular expressions,
3717 since we want to be able to include backslashes in a string in order to
3718 escape regexp metacharacters. Therefore, to make sure that a backslash
3719 is preserved in a string in your Guile program, you must use *two*
3720 consecutive backslashes:
3722 (define Info-menu-entry-pattern (make-regexp "^\\* [^:]*"))
3724 The string in this example is preprocessed by the Guile reader before
3725 any code is executed. The resulting argument to `make-regexp' is the
3726 string `^\* [^:]*', which is what we really want.
3728 This also means that in order to write a regular expression that
3729 matches a single backslash character, the regular expression string in
3730 the source code must include *four* backslashes. Each consecutive pair
3731 of backslashes gets translated by the Guile reader to a single
3732 backslash, and the resulting double-backslash is interpreted by the
3733 regexp engine as matching a single backslash character. Hence:
3735 (define tex-variable-pattern (make-regexp "\\\\let\\\\=[A-Za-z]*"))
3737 The reason for the unwieldiness of this syntax is historical. Both
3738 regular expression pattern matchers and Unix string processing systems
3739 have traditionally used backslashes with the special meanings described
3740 above. The POSIX regular expression specification and ANSI C standard
3741 both require these semantics. Attempting to abandon either convention
3742 would cause other kinds of compatibility problems, possibly more severe
3743 ones. Therefore, without extending the Scheme reader to support
3744 strings with different quoting conventions (an ungainly and confusing
3745 extension when implemented in other languages), we must adhere to this
3746 cumbersome escape syntax.
3748 * Changes to the gh_ interface
3750 * Changes to the scm_ interface
3752 * Changes to system call interfaces:
3754 ** The value returned by `raise' is now unspecified. It throws an exception
3757 *** A new procedure `sigaction' can be used to install signal handlers
3759 (sigaction signum [action] [flags])
3761 signum is the signal number, which can be specified using the value
3764 If action is omitted, sigaction returns a pair: the CAR is the current
3765 signal hander, which will be either an integer with the value SIG_DFL
3766 (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or the Scheme procedure which
3767 handles the signal, or #f if a non-Scheme procedure handles the
3768 signal. The CDR contains the current sigaction flags for the handler.
3770 If action is provided, it is installed as the new handler for signum.
3771 action can be a Scheme procedure taking one argument, or the value of
3772 SIG_DFL (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or #f to restore
3773 whatever signal handler was installed before sigaction was first used.
3774 Flags can optionally be specified for the new handler (SA_RESTART is
3775 always used if the system provides it, so need not be specified.) The
3776 return value is a pair with information about the old handler as
3779 This interface does not provide access to the "signal blocking"
3780 facility. Maybe this is not needed, since the thread support may
3781 provide solutions to the problem of consistent access to data
3784 *** A new procedure `flush-all-ports' is equivalent to running
3785 `force-output' on every port open for output.
3787 ** Guile now provides information on how it was built, via the new
3788 global variable, %guile-build-info. This variable records the values
3789 of the standard GNU makefile directory variables as an assocation
3790 list, mapping variable names (symbols) onto directory paths (strings).
3791 For example, to find out where the Guile link libraries were
3792 installed, you can say:
3794 guile -c "(display (assq-ref %guile-build-info 'libdir)) (newline)"
3797 * Changes to the scm_ interface
3799 ** The new function scm_handle_by_message_noexit is just like the
3800 existing scm_handle_by_message function, except that it doesn't call
3801 exit to terminate the process. Instead, it prints a message and just
3802 returns #f. This might be a more appropriate catch-all handler for
3803 new dynamic roots and threads.
3806 Changes in Guile 1.1 (released Friday, May 16 1997):
3808 * Changes to the distribution.
3810 The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
3812 guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
3813 guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
3814 Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
3815 is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
3816 guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
3817 expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
3818 programming language. These are packaged together because the
3819 Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
3821 This NEWS file describes the changes made to guile-core since the 1.0
3824 We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
3825 date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
3830 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3832 ** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
3833 Shivers' Scheme Shell.
3835 In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
3836 exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
3837 stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
3838 the (command-line) function.
3839 -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
3840 -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
3841 -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
3843 The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
3844 -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
3845 -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
3846 command line arguments
3847 -ds do -s script at this point
3848 --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
3849 -h, --help display this help and exit
3850 -v, --version display version information and exit
3851 \ read arguments from following script lines
3853 So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
3854 which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
3856 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
3859 (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
3863 (main (command-line))
3865 Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
3867 ekko a speckled gecko
3869 Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
3870 token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
3871 following list of command-line arguments:
3873 ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
3875 Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
3876 the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
3877 with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
3878 defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
3879 remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
3881 In Unix, the first line of a script file must take the following form:
3883 #!INTERPRETER ARGUMENT
3885 where INTERPRETER is the absolute filename of the interpreter
3886 executable, and ARGUMENT is a single command-line argument to pass to
3889 You may only pass one argument to the interpreter, and its length is
3890 limited. These restrictions can be annoying to work around, so Guile
3891 provides a general mechanism (borrowed from, and compatible with,
3892 SCSH) for circumventing them.
3894 If the ARGUMENT in a Guile script is a single backslash character,
3895 `\', Guile will open the script file, parse arguments from its second
3896 and subsequent lines, and replace the `\' with them. So, for example,
3897 here is another implementation of the `ekko' script:
3899 #!/usr/local/bin/guile \
3903 (for-each (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
3907 If the user invokes this script as follows:
3909 ekko a speckled gecko
3911 Unix expands this into
3913 /usr/local/bin/guile \ ekko a speckled gecko
3915 When Guile sees the `\' argument, it replaces it with the arguments
3916 read from the second line of the script, producing:
3918 /usr/local/bin/guile -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
3920 This tells Guile to load the `ekko' script, and apply the function
3921 `main' to the argument list ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
3923 Here is how Guile parses the command-line arguments:
3924 - Each space character terminates an argument. This means that two
3925 spaces in a row introduce an empty-string argument.
3926 - The tab character is not permitted (unless you quote it with the
3927 backslash character, as described below), to avoid confusion.
3928 - The newline character terminates the sequence of arguments, and will
3929 also terminate a final non-empty argument. (However, a newline
3930 following a space will not introduce a final empty-string argument;
3931 it only terminates the argument list.)
3932 - The backslash character is the escape character. It escapes
3933 backslash, space, tab, and newline. The ANSI C escape sequences
3934 like \n and \t are also supported. These produce argument
3935 constituents; the two-character combination \n doesn't act like a
3936 terminating newline. The escape sequence \NNN for exactly three
3937 octal digits reads as the character whose ASCII code is NNN. As
3938 above, characters produced this way are argument constituents.
3939 Backslash followed by other characters is not allowed.
3941 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
3943 ** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
3944 system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
3945 all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
3946 supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
3947 libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
3949 Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
3950 it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
3951 independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
3953 ** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
3955 To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
3956 -lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
3957 autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
3958 following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
3961 ### Find quickthreads and libguile.
3962 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
3963 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
3965 * Changes to Scheme functions
3967 ** Guile Scheme's special syntax for keyword objects is now optional,
3968 and disabled by default.
3970 The syntax variation from R4RS made it difficult to port some
3971 interesting packages to Guile. The routines which accepted keyword
3972 arguments (mostly in the module system) have been modified to also
3973 accept symbols whose names begin with `:'.
3975 To change the keyword syntax, you must first import the (ice-9 debug)
3977 (use-modules (ice-9 debug))
3979 Then you can enable the keyword syntax as follows:
3980 (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
3982 To disable keyword syntax, do this:
3983 (read-set! keywords #f)
3985 ** Many more primitive functions accept shared substrings as
3986 arguments. In the past, these functions required normal, mutable
3987 strings as arguments, although they never made use of this
3990 ** The uniform array functions now operate on byte vectors. These
3991 functions are `array-fill!', `serial-array-copy!', `array-copy!',
3992 `serial-array-map', `array-map', `array-for-each', and
3995 ** The new functions `trace' and `untrace' implement simple debugging
3996 support for Scheme functions.
3998 The `trace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
3999 and tells the Guile interpreter to display each procedure's name and
4000 arguments each time the procedure is invoked. When invoked with no
4001 arguments, `trace' returns the list of procedures currently being
4004 The `untrace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
4005 and tells the Guile interpreter not to trace them any more. When
4006 invoked with no arguments, `untrace' untraces all curretly traced
4009 The tracing in Guile has an advantage over most other systems: we
4010 don't create new procedure objects, but mark the procedure objects
4011 themselves. This means that anonymous and internal procedures can be
4014 ** The function `assert-repl-prompt' has been renamed to
4015 `set-repl-prompt!'. It takes one argument, PROMPT.
4016 - If PROMPT is #f, the Guile read-eval-print loop will not prompt.
4017 - If PROMPT is a string, we use it as a prompt.
4018 - If PROMPT is a procedure accepting no arguments, we call it, and
4019 display the result as a prompt.
4020 - Otherwise, we display "> ".
4022 ** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
4023 string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
4024 in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
4027 ** The new function `thunk?' returns true iff its argument is a
4028 procedure of zero arguments.
4030 ** `defined?' is now a builtin function, instead of syntax. This
4031 means that its argument should be quoted. It returns #t iff its
4032 argument is bound in the current module.
4034 ** The new syntax `use-modules' allows you to add new modules to your
4035 environment without re-typing a complete `define-module' form. It
4036 accepts any number of module names as arguments, and imports their
4037 public bindings into the current module.
4039 ** The new function (module-defined? NAME MODULE) returns true iff
4040 NAME, a symbol, is defined in MODULE, a module object.
4042 ** The new function `builtin-bindings' creates and returns a hash
4043 table containing copies of all the root module's bindings.
4045 ** The new function `builtin-weak-bindings' does the same as
4046 `builtin-bindings', but creates a doubly-weak hash table.
4048 ** The `equal?' function now considers variable objects to be
4049 equivalent if they have the same name and the same value.
4051 ** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
4052 given to Guile, as a list of strings.
4054 When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
4055 script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
4056 `-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
4057 behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
4058 command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
4060 ** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
4061 in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
4062 mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
4063 but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
4065 ** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
4068 ** Changes to I/O functions
4070 *** The functions `read', `primitive-load', `read-and-eval!', and
4071 `primitive-load-path' no longer take optional arguments controlling
4072 case insensitivity and a `#' parser.
4074 Case sensitivity is now controlled by a read option called
4075 `case-insensitive'. The user can add new `#' syntaxes with the
4076 `read-hash-extend' function (see below).
4078 *** The new function `read-hash-extend' allows the user to change the
4079 syntax of Guile Scheme in a somewhat controlled way.
4081 (read-hash-extend CHAR PROC)
4082 When parsing S-expressions, if we read a `#' character followed by
4083 the character CHAR, use PROC to parse an object from the stream.
4084 If PROC is #f, remove any parsing procedure registered for CHAR.
4086 The reader applies PROC to two arguments: CHAR and an input port.
4088 *** The new functions read-delimited and read-delimited! provide a
4089 general mechanism for doing delimited input on streams.
4091 (read-delimited DELIMS [PORT HANDLE-DELIM])
4092 Read until we encounter one of the characters in DELIMS (a string),
4093 or end-of-file. PORT is the input port to read from; it defaults to
4094 the current input port. The HANDLE-DELIM parameter determines how
4095 the terminating character is handled; it should be one of the
4098 'trim omit delimiter from result
4099 'peek leave delimiter character in input stream
4100 'concat append delimiter character to returned value
4101 'split return a pair: (RESULT . TERMINATOR)
4103 HANDLE-DELIM defaults to 'peek.
4105 (read-delimited! DELIMS BUF [PORT HANDLE-DELIM START END])
4106 A side-effecting variant of `read-delimited'.
4108 The data is written into the string BUF at the indices in the
4109 half-open interval [START, END); the default interval is the whole
4110 string: START = 0 and END = (string-length BUF). The values of
4111 START and END must specify a well-defined interval in BUF, i.e.
4112 0 <= START <= END <= (string-length BUF).
4114 It returns NBYTES, the number of bytes read. If the buffer filled
4115 up without a delimiter character being found, it returns #f. If the
4116 port is at EOF when the read starts, it returns the EOF object.
4118 If an integer is returned (i.e., the read is successfully terminated
4119 by reading a delimiter character), then the HANDLE-DELIM parameter
4120 determines how to handle the terminating character. It is described
4121 above, and defaults to 'peek.
4123 (The descriptions of these functions were borrowed from the SCSH
4124 manual, by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
4126 *** The `%read-delimited!' function is the primitive used to implement
4127 `read-delimited' and `read-delimited!'.
4129 (%read-delimited! DELIMS BUF GOBBLE? [PORT START END])
4131 This returns a pair of values: (TERMINATOR . NUM-READ).
4132 - TERMINATOR describes why the read was terminated. If it is a
4133 character or the eof object, then that is the value that terminated
4134 the read. If it is #f, the function filled the buffer without finding
4135 a delimiting character.
4136 - NUM-READ is the number of characters read into BUF.
4138 If the read is successfully terminated by reading a delimiter
4139 character, then the gobble? parameter determines what to do with the
4140 terminating character. If true, the character is removed from the
4141 input stream; if false, the character is left in the input stream
4142 where a subsequent read operation will retrieve it. In either case,
4143 the character is also the first value returned by the procedure call.
4145 (The descriptions of this function was borrowed from the SCSH manual,
4146 by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
4148 *** The `read-line' and `read-line!' functions have changed; they now
4149 trim the terminator by default; previously they appended it to the
4150 returned string. For the old behavior, use (read-line PORT 'concat).
4152 *** The functions `uniform-array-read!' and `uniform-array-write!' now
4153 take new optional START and END arguments, specifying the region of
4154 the array to read and write.
4156 *** The `ungetc-char-ready?' function has been removed. We feel it's
4157 inappropriate for an interface to expose implementation details this
4160 ** Changes to the Unix library and system call interface
4162 *** The new fcntl function provides access to the Unix `fcntl' system
4165 (fcntl PORT COMMAND VALUE)
4166 Apply COMMAND to PORT's file descriptor, with VALUE as an argument.
4167 Values for COMMAND are:
4169 F_DUPFD duplicate a file descriptor
4170 F_GETFD read the descriptor's close-on-exec flag
4171 F_SETFD set the descriptor's close-on-exec flag to VALUE
4172 F_GETFL read the descriptor's flags, as set on open
4173 F_SETFL set the descriptor's flags, as set on open to VALUE
4174 F_GETOWN return the process ID of a socket's owner, for SIGIO
4175 F_SETOWN set the process that owns a socket to VALUE, for SIGIO
4176 FD_CLOEXEC not sure what this is
4178 For details, see the documentation for the fcntl system call.
4180 *** The arguments to `select' have changed, for compatibility with
4181 SCSH. The TIMEOUT parameter may now be non-integral, yielding the
4182 expected behavior. The MILLISECONDS parameter has been changed to
4183 MICROSECONDS, to more closely resemble the underlying system call.
4184 The RVEC, WVEC, and EVEC arguments can now be vectors; the type of the
4185 corresponding return set will be the same.
4187 *** The arguments to the `mknod' system call have changed. They are
4190 (mknod PATH TYPE PERMS DEV)
4191 Create a new file (`node') in the file system. PATH is the name of
4192 the file to create. TYPE is the kind of file to create; it should
4193 be 'fifo, 'block-special, or 'char-special. PERMS specifies the
4194 permission bits to give the newly created file. If TYPE is
4195 'block-special or 'char-special, DEV specifies which device the
4196 special file refers to; its interpretation depends on the kind of
4197 special file being created.
4199 *** The `fork' function has been renamed to `primitive-fork', to avoid
4200 clashing with various SCSH forks.
4202 *** The `recv' and `recvfrom' functions have been renamed to `recv!'
4203 and `recvfrom!'. They no longer accept a size for a second argument;
4204 you must pass a string to hold the received value. They no longer
4205 return the buffer. Instead, `recv' returns the length of the message
4206 received, and `recvfrom' returns a pair containing the packet's length
4207 and originating address.
4209 *** The file descriptor datatype has been removed, as have the
4210 `read-fd', `write-fd', `close', `lseek', and `dup' functions.
4211 We plan to replace these functions with a SCSH-compatible interface.
4213 *** The `create' function has been removed; it's just a special case
4216 *** There are new functions to break down process termination status
4217 values. In the descriptions below, STATUS is a value returned by
4220 (status:exit-val STATUS)
4221 If the child process exited normally, this function returns the exit
4222 code for the child process (i.e., the value passed to exit, or
4223 returned from main). If the child process did not exit normally,
4224 this function returns #f.
4226 (status:stop-sig STATUS)
4227 If the child process was suspended by a signal, this function
4228 returns the signal that suspended the child. Otherwise, it returns
4231 (status:term-sig STATUS)
4232 If the child process terminated abnormally, this function returns
4233 the signal that terminated the child. Otherwise, this function
4236 POSIX promises that exactly one of these functions will return true on
4237 a valid STATUS value.
4239 These functions are compatible with SCSH.
4241 *** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
4242 returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
4244 Component Accessor Setter
4245 ========================= ============ ============
4246 seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
4247 minutes tm:min set-tm:min
4248 hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
4249 day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
4250 month tm:mon set-tm:mon
4251 year tm:year set-tm:year
4252 day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
4253 day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
4254 daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
4255 GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
4256 name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
4258 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname',
4259 describing the host system:
4262 ============================================== ================
4263 name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
4264 network name of this machine utsname:nodename
4265 release level of the operating system utsname:release
4266 version level of the operating system utsname:version
4267 machine hardware platform utsname:machine
4269 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getpw',
4270 `getpwnam', `getpwuid', and `getpwent', describing entries from the
4271 system's user database:
4274 ====================== =================
4275 user name passwd:name
4276 user password passwd:passwd
4279 real name passwd:gecos
4280 home directory passwd:dir
4281 shell program passwd:shell
4283 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getgr',
4284 `getgrnam', `getgrgid', and `getgrent', describing entries from the
4285 system's group database:
4288 ======================= ============
4289 group name group:name
4290 group password group:passwd
4292 group members group:mem
4294 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `gethost',
4295 `gethostbyaddr', `gethostbyname', and `gethostent', describing
4299 ========================= ===============
4300 official name of host hostent:name
4301 alias list hostent:aliases
4302 host address type hostent:addrtype
4303 length of address hostent:length
4304 list of addresses hostent:addr-list
4306 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getnet',
4307 `getnetbyaddr', `getnetbyname', and `getnetent', describing internet
4311 ========================= ===============
4312 official name of net netent:name
4313 alias list netent:aliases
4314 net number type netent:addrtype
4315 net number netent:net
4317 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getproto',
4318 `getprotobyname', `getprotobynumber', and `getprotoent', describing
4322 ========================= ===============
4323 official protocol name protoent:name
4324 alias list protoent:aliases
4325 protocol number protoent:proto
4327 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getserv',
4328 `getservbyname', `getservbyport', and `getservent', describing
4332 ========================= ===============
4333 official service name servent:name
4334 alias list servent:aliases
4335 port number servent:port
4336 protocol to use servent:proto
4338 *** There are new accessors for the sockaddr structures returned by
4339 `accept', `getsockname', `getpeername', `recvfrom!':
4342 ======================================== ===============
4343 address format (`family') sockaddr:fam
4344 path, for file domain addresses sockaddr:path
4345 address, for internet domain addresses sockaddr:addr
4346 TCP or UDP port, for internet sockaddr:port
4348 *** The `getpwent', `getgrent', `gethostent', `getnetent',
4349 `getprotoent', and `getservent' functions now return #f at the end of
4350 the user database. (They used to throw an exception.)
4352 Note that calling MUMBLEent function is equivalent to calling the
4353 corresponding MUMBLE function with no arguments.
4355 *** The `setpwent', `setgrent', `sethostent', `setnetent',
4356 `setprotoent', and `setservent' routines now take no arguments.
4358 *** The `gethost', `getproto', `getnet', and `getserv' functions now
4359 provide more useful information when they throw an exception.
4361 *** The `lnaof' function has been renamed to `inet-lnaof'.
4363 *** Guile now claims to have the `current-time' feature.
4365 *** The `mktime' function now takes an optional second argument ZONE,
4366 giving the time zone to use for the conversion. ZONE should be a
4367 string, in the same format as expected for the "TZ" environment variable.
4369 *** The `strptime' function now returns a pair (TIME . COUNT), where
4370 TIME is the parsed time as a vector, and COUNT is the number of
4371 characters from the string left unparsed. This function used to
4372 return the remaining characters as a string.
4374 *** The `gettimeofday' function has replaced the old `time+ticks' function.
4375 The return value is now (SECONDS . MICROSECONDS); the fractional
4376 component is no longer expressed in "ticks".
4378 *** The `ticks/sec' constant has been removed, in light of the above change.
4380 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4382 ** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
4385 ** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
4388 ** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
4389 and returns the array
4391 ** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
4392 null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
4393 the user to interpret the data both ways.
4395 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4397 ** The new function scm_symbol_value0 provides an easy way to get a
4398 symbol's value from C code:
4400 SCM scm_symbol_value0 (char *NAME)
4401 Return the value of the symbol named by the null-terminated string
4402 NAME in the current module. If the symbol named NAME is unbound in
4403 the current module, return SCM_UNDEFINED.
4405 ** The new function scm_sysintern0 creates new top-level variables,
4406 without assigning them a value.
4408 SCM scm_sysintern0 (char *NAME)
4409 Create a new Scheme top-level variable named NAME. NAME is a
4410 null-terminated string. Return the variable's value cell.
4412 ** The function scm_internal_catch is the guts of catch. It handles
4413 all the mechanics of setting up a catch target, invoking the catch
4414 body, and perhaps invoking the handler if the body does a throw.
4416 The function is designed to be usable from C code, but is general
4417 enough to implement all the semantics Guile Scheme expects from throw.
4419 TAG is the catch tag. Typically, this is a symbol, but this function
4420 doesn't actually care about that.
4422 BODY is a pointer to a C function which runs the body of the catch;
4423 this is the code you can throw from. We call it like this:
4424 BODY (BODY_DATA, JMPBUF)
4426 BODY_DATA is just the BODY_DATA argument we received; we pass it
4427 through to BODY as its first argument. The caller can make
4428 BODY_DATA point to anything useful that BODY might need.
4429 JMPBUF is the Scheme jmpbuf object corresponding to this catch,
4430 which we have just created and initialized.
4432 HANDLER is a pointer to a C function to deal with a throw to TAG,
4433 should one occur. We call it like this:
4434 HANDLER (HANDLER_DATA, THROWN_TAG, THROW_ARGS)
4436 HANDLER_DATA is the HANDLER_DATA argument we recevied; it's the
4437 same idea as BODY_DATA above.
4438 THROWN_TAG is the tag that the user threw to; usually this is
4439 TAG, but it could be something else if TAG was #t (i.e., a
4440 catch-all), or the user threw to a jmpbuf.
4441 THROW_ARGS is the list of arguments the user passed to the THROW
4444 BODY_DATA is just a pointer we pass through to BODY. HANDLER_DATA
4445 is just a pointer we pass through to HANDLER. We don't actually
4446 use either of those pointers otherwise ourselves. The idea is
4447 that, if our caller wants to communicate something to BODY or
4448 HANDLER, it can pass a pointer to it as MUMBLE_DATA, which BODY and
4449 HANDLER can then use. Think of it as a way to make BODY and
4450 HANDLER closures, not just functions; MUMBLE_DATA points to the
4453 Of course, it's up to the caller to make sure that any data a
4454 MUMBLE_DATA needs is protected from GC. A common way to do this is
4455 to make MUMBLE_DATA a pointer to data stored in an automatic
4456 structure variable; since the collector must scan the stack for
4457 references anyway, this assures that any references in MUMBLE_DATA
4460 ** The new function scm_internal_lazy_catch is exactly like
4461 scm_internal_catch, except:
4463 - It does not unwind the stack (this is the major difference).
4464 - If handler returns, its value is returned from the throw.
4465 - BODY always receives #f as its JMPBUF argument (since there's no
4466 jmpbuf associated with a lazy catch, because we don't unwind the
4469 ** scm_body_thunk is a new body function you can pass to
4470 scm_internal_catch if you want the body to be like Scheme's `catch'
4471 --- a thunk, or a function of one argument if the tag is #f.
4473 BODY_DATA is a pointer to a scm_body_thunk_data structure, which
4474 contains the Scheme procedure to invoke as the body, and the tag
4475 we're catching. If the tag is #f, then we pass JMPBUF (created by
4476 scm_internal_catch) to the body procedure; otherwise, the body gets
4479 ** scm_handle_by_proc is a new handler function you can pass to
4480 scm_internal_catch if you want the handler to act like Scheme's catch
4481 --- call a procedure with the tag and the throw arguments.
4483 If the user does a throw to this catch, this function runs a handler
4484 procedure written in Scheme. HANDLER_DATA is a pointer to an SCM
4485 variable holding the Scheme procedure object to invoke. It ought to
4486 be a pointer to an automatic variable (i.e., one living on the stack),
4487 or the procedure object should be otherwise protected from GC.
4489 ** scm_handle_by_message is a new handler function to use with
4490 `scm_internal_catch' if you want Guile to print a message and die.
4491 It's useful for dealing with throws to uncaught keys at the top level.
4493 HANDLER_DATA, if non-zero, is assumed to be a char * pointing to a
4494 message header to print; if zero, we use "guile" instead. That
4495 text is followed by a colon, then the message described by ARGS.
4497 ** The return type of scm_boot_guile is now void; the function does
4498 not return a value, and indeed, never returns at all.
4500 ** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
4501 process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
4502 stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
4505 To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
4506 linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
4507 of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will add
4508 any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
4509 argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
4510 generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
4511 command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
4514 ** The new functions scm_get_meta_args and scm_count_argv help you
4515 implement the SCSH-style meta-argument, `\'.
4517 char **scm_get_meta_args (int ARGC, char **ARGV)
4518 If the second element of ARGV is a string consisting of a single
4519 backslash character (i.e. "\\" in Scheme notation), open the file
4520 named by the following argument, parse arguments from it, and return
4521 the spliced command line. The returned array is terminated by a
4524 For details of argument parsing, see above, under "guile now accepts
4525 command-line arguments compatible with SCSH..."
4527 int scm_count_argv (char **ARGV)
4528 Count the arguments in ARGV, assuming it is terminated by a null
4531 For an example of how these functions might be used, see the source
4532 code for the function scm_shell in libguile/script.c.
4534 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
4537 ** The new function scm_compile_shell_switches turns an array of
4538 command-line arguments into Scheme code to carry out the actions they
4539 describe. Given ARGC and ARGV, it returns a Scheme expression to
4540 evaluate, and calls scm_set_program_arguments to make any remaining
4541 command-line arguments available to the Scheme code. For example,
4542 given the following arguments:
4544 -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
4546 scm_set_program_arguments will return the following expression:
4548 (begin (load "ekko") (main (command-line)) (quit))
4550 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
4553 ** The function scm_shell_usage prints a usage message appropriate for
4554 an interpreter that uses scm_compile_shell_switches to handle its
4555 command-line arguments.
4557 void scm_shell_usage (int FATAL, char *MESSAGE)
4558 Print a usage message to the standard error output. If MESSAGE is
4559 non-zero, write it before the usage message, followed by a newline.
4560 If FATAL is non-zero, exit the process, using FATAL as the
4561 termination status. (If you want to be compatible with Guile,
4562 always use 1 as the exit status when terminating due to command-line
4565 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
4568 ** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
4569 expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL. Earth-shattering.
4571 ** The macros for declaring scheme objects in C code have been
4572 rearranged slightly. They are now:
4574 SCM_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
4575 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
4576 point to the Scheme symbol whose name is SCHEME_NAME. C_NAME should
4577 be a C identifier, and SCHEME_NAME should be a C string.
4579 SCM_GLOBAL_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
4580 Just like SCM_SYMBOL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
4582 SCM_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
4583 Create a global variable at the Scheme level named SCHEME_NAME.
4584 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
4585 point to the Scheme variable's value cell.
4587 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
4588 Just like SCM_VCELL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
4590 The `guile-snarf' script writes initialization code for these macros
4591 to its standard output, given C source code as input.
4593 The SCM_GLOBAL macro is gone.
4595 ** The scm_read_line and scm_read_line_x functions have been replaced
4596 by Scheme code based on the %read-delimited! procedure (known to C
4597 code as scm_read_delimited_x). See its description above for more
4600 ** The function scm_sys_open has been renamed to scm_open. It now
4601 returns a port instead of an FD object.
4603 * The dynamic linking support has changed. For more information, see
4604 libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING.
4609 User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
4612 * Changes to the 'guile' program:
4614 ** Guile now loads some new files when it starts up. Guile first
4615 searches the load path for init.scm, and loads it if found. Then, if
4616 Guile is not being used to execute a script, and the user's home
4617 directory contains a file named `.guile', Guile loads that.
4619 ** You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
4621 To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
4623 When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
4624 characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
4625 be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
4626 to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
4627 specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
4628 the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
4629 and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
4630 filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
4631 following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
4632 for more information.
4634 Now you can use Guile as an interpreter, using a mechanism which is a
4635 compatible subset of that provided by SCSH.
4637 Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
4638 name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
4639 characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
4640 to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
4641 following two lines at the top of the file:
4643 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
4646 Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
4647 of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
4648 start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
4650 For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
4652 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
4654 (let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
4657 (display (car args))
4658 (if (pair? (cdr args))
4660 (loop (cdr args)))))
4663 Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
4664 end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
4665 don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
4666 we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
4667 scripts once we do. Furthermore, if the path to Guile on your system
4668 is too long for your kernel, you can start the script with this
4672 exec /really/long/path/to/guile -s "$0" ${1+"$@"}
4675 Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
4678 ** You can now run Guile without installing it.
4680 Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
4681 couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
4682 they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
4683 later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
4684 itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
4687 To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
4688 then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
4689 colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
4690 of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
4691 full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
4694 export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
4697 ** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
4698 results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
4699 expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
4702 ** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
4703 however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
4704 request that they be displayed by default. After an error, evaluate
4706 to see a backtrace, and
4707 (debug-enable 'backtrace)
4708 to see them by default.
4712 * Changes to Guile Scheme:
4714 ** Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
4716 This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
4717 upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
4720 Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
4721 type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
4722 caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
4723 way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
4726 ** Guile's delq, delv, delete functions, and their destructive
4727 counterparts, delq!, delv!, and delete!, now remove all matching
4728 elements from the list, not just the first. This matches the behavior
4729 of the corresponding Emacs Lisp functions, and (I believe) the Maclisp
4730 functions which inspired them.
4732 I recognize that this change may break code in subtle ways, but it
4733 seems best to make the change before the FSF's first Guile release,
4737 ** The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
4739 ** The facilities for loading Scheme source files have changed.
4741 *** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
4742 for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
4745 *** The variable %load-extensions now tells Guile which extensions to
4746 try appending to a filename when searching the load path. Its value
4747 is a list of strings. Its default value is ("" ".scm").
4749 *** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
4750 value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME,
4751 with all the extensions listed in %load-extensions. If it finds a
4752 match, then it returns its full filename. If FILENAME is absolute, it
4753 returns it unchanged. Otherwise, it returns #f.
4755 %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to directories.
4757 *** (primitive-load FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
4758 uses %seach-load-path to find a file named FILENAME, and loads it if
4759 it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for any reason, it throws an
4762 The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
4765 *** load uses the same searching semantics as primitive-load.
4767 *** The functions %try-load, try-load-with-path, %load, load-with-path,
4768 basic-try-load-with-path, basic-load-with-path, try-load-module-with-
4769 path, and load-module-with-path have been deleted. The functions
4770 above should serve their purposes.
4772 *** If the value of the variable %load-hook is a procedure,
4773 `primitive-load' applies its value to the name of the file being
4774 loaded (without the load path directory name prepended). If its value
4775 is #f, it is ignored. Otherwise, an error occurs.
4777 This is mostly useful for printing load notification messages.
4780 ** The function `eval!' is no longer accessible from the scheme level.
4781 We can't allow operations which introduce glocs into the scheme level,
4782 because Guile's type system can't handle these as data. Use `eval' or
4783 `read-and-eval!' (see below) as replacement.
4785 ** The new function read-and-eval! reads an expression from PORT,
4786 evaluates it, and returns the result. This is more efficient than
4787 simply calling `read' and `eval', since it is not necessary to make a
4788 copy of the expression for the evaluator to munge.
4790 Its optional arguments CASE_INSENSITIVE_P and SHARP are interpreted as
4791 for the `read' function.
4794 ** The function `int?' has been removed; its definition was identical
4795 to that of `integer?'.
4797 ** The functions `<?', `<?', `<=?', `=?', `>?', and `>=?'. Code should
4798 use the R4RS names for these functions.
4800 ** The function object-properties no longer returns the hash handle;
4801 it simply returns the object's property list.
4803 ** Many functions have been changed to throw errors, instead of
4804 returning #f on failure. The point of providing exception handling in
4805 the language is to simplify the logic of user code, but this is less
4806 useful if Guile's primitives don't throw exceptions.
4808 ** The function `fileno' has been renamed from `%fileno'.
4810 ** The function primitive-mode->fdes returns #t or #f now, not 1 or 0.
4813 * Changes to Guile's C interface:
4815 ** The library's initialization procedure has been simplified.
4816 scm_boot_guile now has the prototype:
4818 void scm_boot_guile (int ARGC,
4820 void (*main_func) (),
4823 scm_boot_guile calls MAIN_FUNC, passing it CLOSURE, ARGC, and ARGV.
4824 MAIN_FUNC should do all the work of the program (initializing other
4825 packages, reading user input, etc.) before returning. When MAIN_FUNC
4826 returns, call exit (0); this function never returns. If you want some
4827 other exit value, MAIN_FUNC may call exit itself.
4829 scm_boot_guile arranges for program-arguments to return the strings
4830 given by ARGC and ARGV. If MAIN_FUNC modifies ARGC/ARGV, should call
4831 scm_set_program_arguments with the final list, so Scheme code will
4832 know which arguments have been processed.
4834 scm_boot_guile establishes a catch-all catch handler which prints an
4835 error message and exits the process. This means that Guile exits in a
4836 coherent way when system errors occur and the user isn't prepared to
4837 handle it. If the user doesn't like this behavior, they can establish
4838 their own universal catcher in MAIN_FUNC to shadow this one.
4840 Why must the caller do all the real work from MAIN_FUNC? The garbage
4841 collector assumes that all local variables of type SCM will be above
4842 scm_boot_guile's stack frame on the stack. If you try to manipulate
4843 SCM values after this function returns, it's the luck of the draw
4844 whether the GC will be able to find the objects you allocate. So,
4845 scm_boot_guile function exits, rather than returning, to discourage
4846 people from making that mistake.
4848 The IN, OUT, and ERR arguments were removed; there are other
4849 convenient ways to override these when desired.
4851 The RESULT argument was deleted; this function should never return.
4853 The BOOT_CMD argument was deleted; the MAIN_FUNC argument is more
4857 ** Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
4860 In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
4861 versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
4862 Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
4863 Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
4866 Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
4867 refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
4868 Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
4869 the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
4872 ** Two new C functions, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object,
4873 have been added to the Guile library.
4875 scm_protect_object (OBJ) protects OBJ from the garbage collector.
4876 OBJ will not be freed, even if all other references are dropped,
4877 until someone does scm_unprotect_object (OBJ). Both functions
4880 Note that calls to scm_protect_object do not nest. You can call
4881 scm_protect_object any number of times on a given object, and the
4882 next call to scm_unprotect_object will unprotect it completely.
4884 Basically, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object just
4885 maintain a list of references to things. Since the GC knows about
4886 this list, all objects it mentions stay alive. scm_protect_object
4887 adds its argument to the list; scm_unprotect_object remove its
4888 argument from the list.
4891 ** scm_eval_0str now returns the value of the last expression
4894 ** The new function scm_read_0str reads an s-expression from a
4895 null-terminated string, and returns it.
4897 ** The new function `scm_stdio_to_port' converts a STDIO file pointer
4898 to a Scheme port object.
4900 ** The new function `scm_set_program_arguments' allows C code to set
4901 the value returned by the Scheme `program-arguments' function.
4906 * Guile no longer includes sophisticated Tcl/Tk support.
4908 The old Tcl/Tk support was unsatisfying to us, because it required the
4909 user to link against the Tcl library, as well as Tk and Guile. The
4910 interface was also un-lispy, in that it preserved Tcl/Tk's practice of
4911 referring to widgets by names, rather than exporting widgets to Scheme
4912 code as a special datatype.
4914 In the Usenix Tk Developer's Workshop held in July 1996, the Tcl/Tk
4915 maintainers described some very interesting changes in progress to the
4916 Tcl/Tk internals, which would facilitate clean interfaces between lone
4917 Tk and other interpreters --- even for garbage-collected languages
4918 like Scheme. They expected the new Tk to be publicly available in the
4921 Since it seems that Guile might soon have a new, cleaner interface to
4922 lone Tk, and that the old Guile/Tk glue code would probably need to be
4923 completely rewritten, we (Jim Blandy and Richard Stallman) have
4924 decided not to support the old code. We'll spend the time instead on
4925 a good interface to the newer Tk, as soon as it is available.
4927 Until then, gtcltk-lib provides trivial, low-maintenance functionality.
4930 Copyright information:
4932 Copyright (C) 1996,1997 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
4934 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
4935 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
4936 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
4937 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
4939 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
4940 of this document, or of portions of it,
4941 under the above conditions, provided also that they
4942 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
4947 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"