1 Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes.
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
7 Each release reports the NEWS in the following sections:
9 * Changes to the distribution
10 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
11 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
12 * Changes to the C interface
15 Changes since the stable branch:
17 * Changes to the distribution
19 ** Guile is now licensed with the GNU Lesser General Public License.
21 ** Guile now requires GNU MP (http://swox.com/gmp).
23 Guile now uses the GNU MP library for arbitrary precision arithmetic.
24 At the moment it is being used to handle Guile's bignums.
26 ** Guile now has separate private and public configuration headers.
28 Guile now has config.h and libguile/scmconfig.h. The former is not
29 installed and is private. The latter is installed and used by Guile's
30 public headers. config.h is generated by configure and autoheader,
31 and scmconfig.h is generated by a small C program, gen-scmconfig at
32 build time based in part on the contents of config.h.
34 Seen libguile/__scm.h and gen-scmconfig.c for more information.
36 Note too that nearly all public defines are now set to either 1 or 0
37 rather than being set to 1 or left undefined. See gen-scmconfig.c and
38 the GNU Coding Guidelines for the rationale. However, pre-existing
39 defines that were not renamed were not changed. i.e. GUILE_DEBUG is
40 still either 1 or undefined.
42 ** The INSTALL file is now the generic automake installed one.
44 Guile specific instructions can be found in the README.
46 ** Guile now provides and uses an "effective" version number.
48 Guile now provides scm_effective_version and effective-version
49 functions which return the "effective" version number. This is just
50 the normal full version string without the final micro-version number,
51 so the current effective-version is "1.6". The effective version
52 should remain unchanged during a stable series, and should be used for
53 items like the versioned share directory name
54 i.e. /usr/share/guile/1.6.
56 Providing an unchanging version number during a stable release for
57 things like the versioned share directory can be particularly
58 important for Guile "add-on" packages, since it provides a directory
59 that they can install to that won't be changed out from under them
60 with each micro release during a stable series.
62 ** Thread implementation has changed.
64 When you configure "--with-threads=null", you will get the usual
65 threading API (call-with-new-thread, make-mutex, etc), but you can't
66 actually create new threads. Also, "--with-threads=no" is now
67 equivalent to "--with-threads=null". This means that the thread API
68 is always present, although you might not be able to create new
71 When you configure "--with-threads=pthreads" or "--with-threads=yes",
72 you will get threads that are implemented with the portable POSIX
73 threads. These threads can run concurrently (unlike the previous
74 "coop" thread implementation), but need to cooperate for things like
75 the GC. See the manual for details. [XXX - write this.]
77 The default is "pthreads", unless your platform doesn't have pthreads,
78 in which case "null" threads are used.
80 ** New module (ice-9 serialize):
82 (serialize FORM1 ...) and (parallelize FORM1 ...) are useful when
83 you don't trust the thread safety of most of your program, but
84 where you have some section(s) of code which you consider can run
85 in parallel to other sections.
87 They "flag" (with dynamic extent) sections of code to be of
88 "serial" or "parallel" nature and have the single effect of
89 preventing a serial section from being run in parallel with any
90 serial section (including itself).
92 Both serialize and parallelize can be nested. If so, the
93 inner-most construct is in effect.
95 NOTE 1: A serial section can run in parallel with a parallel
98 NOTE 2: If a serial section S is "interrupted" by a parallel
99 section P in the following manner: S = S1 P S2, S2 is not
100 guaranteed to be resumed by the same thread that previously
103 WARNING: Spawning new threads within a serial section have
104 undefined effects. It is OK, though, to spawn threads in unflagged
105 sections of code where neither serialize or parallelize is in
108 A typical usage is when Guile is used as scripting language in some
109 application doing heavy computations. If each thread is
110 encapsulated with a serialize form, you can then put a parallelize
111 form around the code performing the heavy computations (typically a
112 C code primitive), enabling the computations to run in parallel
113 while the scripting code runs single-threadedly.
115 ** Guile now includes its own version of libltdl.
117 We now use a modified version of libltdl that allows us to make
118 improvements to it without having to rely on libtool releases.
120 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
122 ** New command line option `--no-debug'.
124 Specifying `--no-debug' on the command line will keep the debugging
125 evaluator turned off, even for interactive sessions.
127 ** User-init file ~/.guile is now loaded with the debugging evaluator.
129 Previously, the normal evaluator would have been used. Using the
130 debugging evaluator gives better error messages.
132 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
134 ** 'while' now provides 'break' and 'continue'
136 break and continue were previously bound in a while loop, but not
137 documented, and continue didn't quite work properly. The undocumented
138 parameter to break which gave a return value for the while has been
141 ** 'call-with-current-continuation' is now also available under the name
144 ** Checking for duplicate bindings in module system
146 The module system now can check for name conflicts among imported
149 The behavior can be controlled by specifying one or more duplicates
150 handlers. For example, to make Guile return an error for every name
158 The new default behavior of the module system when a name collision
159 has been detected is to
161 1. Give priority to bindings marked as a replacement.
162 2. Issue a warning (different warning if overriding core binding).
163 3. Give priority to the last encountered binding (this corresponds to
166 If you want the old behavior back without replacements or warnings you
169 (default-duplicate-binding-handler 'last)
171 to your .guile init file.
173 The syntax for the :duplicates option is:
175 :duplicates HANDLER-NAME | (HANDLER1-NAME HANDLER2-NAME ...)
177 Specifying multiple handlers is useful since some handlers (such as
178 replace) can defer conflict resolution to others. Each handler is
179 tried until a binding is selected.
181 Currently available duplicates handlers are:
183 check report an error for bindings with a common name
184 warn issue a warning for bindings with a common name
185 replace replace bindings which have an imported replacement
186 warn-override-core issue a warning for imports which override core bindings
187 and accept the override
188 first select the first encountered binding (override)
189 last select the last encountered binding (override)
191 These two are provided by the (oop goops) module:
193 merge-generics merge generic functions with a common name
194 into an <extended-generic>
195 merge-accessors merge accessors with a common name
197 The default duplicates handler is:
199 (replace warn-override-core warn last)
201 A recommended handler (which is likely to correspond to future Guile
202 behavior) can be installed with:
204 (default-duplicate-binding-handler '(replace warn-override-core check))
206 ** New define-module option: :replace
208 :replace works as :export, but, in addition, marks the binding as a
211 A typical example is `format' in (ice-9 format) which is a replacement
212 for the core binding `format'.
214 ** Adding prefixes to imported bindings in the module system
216 There is now a new :use-module option :prefix. It can be used to add
217 a prefix to all imported bindings.
220 :use-module ((bar) :prefix bar:))
222 will import all bindings exported from bar, but rename them by adding
225 ** Merging generic functions
227 It is sometimes tempting to use GOOPS accessors with short names.
228 For example, it is tempting to use the name `x' for the x-coordinate
231 Assume that we work with a graphical package which needs to use two
232 independent vector packages for 2D and 3D vectors respectively. If
233 both packages export `x' we will encounter a name collision.
235 This can now be resolved automagically with the duplicates handler
236 `merge-generics' which gives the module system license to merge all
237 generic functions sharing a common name:
239 (define-module (math 2D-vectors)
240 :use-module (oop goops)
243 (define-module (math 3D-vectors)
244 :use-module (oop goops)
247 (define-module (my-module)
248 :use-module (math 2D-vectors)
249 :use-module (math 3D-vectors)
250 :duplicates merge-generics)
252 x in (my-module) will now share methods with x in both imported
255 There will, in fact, now be three distinct generic functions named
256 `x': x in (2D-vectors), x in (3D-vectors), and x in (my-module). The
257 last function will be an <extended-generic>, extending the previous
260 Let's call the imported generic functions the "ancestor functions". x
261 in (my-module) is, in turn, a "descendant function" of the imported
262 functions, extending its ancestors.
264 For any generic function G, the applicable methods are selected from
265 the union of the methods of the descendant functions, the methods of G
266 itself and the methods of the ancestor functions.
268 This, ancestor functions share methods with their descendants and vice
269 versa. This implies that x in (math 2D-vectors) can will share the
270 methods of x in (my-module) and vice versa, while x in (math 2D-vectors)
271 doesn't share the methods of x in (math 3D-vectors), thus preserving
274 Sharing is dynamic, so that adding new methods to a descendant implies
275 adding it to the ancestor.
277 If duplicates checking is desired in the above example, the following
278 form of the :duplicates option can be used instead:
280 :duplicates (merge-generics check)
282 ** New function: effective-version
284 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
285 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
286 to the distribution" above.
288 ** Futures: future, make-future, future-ref
290 Futures are like promises, but begun immediately in a new thread. See
291 the "Futures" section in the reference manual.
293 ** New threading functions: parallel, letpar, par-map, and friends
295 These are convenient ways to run calculations in parallel in new
296 threads. See "Parallel forms" in the manual for details.
298 ** Fair mutexes and condition variables
300 Fair mutexes and condition variables have been added. The fairness
301 means that scheduling is arranged to give as equal time shares as
302 possible and that threads are awakened in a first-in-first-out
303 manner. This is not guaranteed with standard mutexes and condition
306 In addition, fair mutexes are recursive. Locking a fair mutex that
307 you have already locked will succeed. Every call to lock-mutex must
308 be matched with a call to unlock-mutex. Only the last call to
309 unlock-mutex will actually unlock the mutex.
311 A fair condition variable must be used together with a fair mutex,
312 just as a standard condition variable must be used together with a
315 ** New functions: make-fair-mutex, make-fair-condition-variable'
317 Make a new fair mutex and a new fair condition variable respectively.
319 ** New function 'try-mutex'.
321 This function will attempt to lock a mutex but will return immediately
322 instead if blocking and indicate failure.
324 ** Waiting on a condition variable can have a timeout.
326 The funtion 'wait-condition-variable' now takes a third, optional
327 argument that specifies the point in time where the waiting should be
330 ** New function 'broadcast-condition-variable'.
332 ** New functions 'all-threads' and 'current-thread'.
334 ** Signals and system asyncs work better with threads.
336 The function 'sigaction' now takes a fourth, optional, argument that
337 specifies the thread that the handler should run in. When the
338 argument is omitted, the handler will run in the thread that called
341 Likewise, 'system-async-mark' takes a second, optional, argument that
342 specifies the thread that the async should run in. When it is
343 omitted, the async will run in the thread that called
346 C code can use the new functions scm_sigaction_for_thread and
347 scm_system_async_mark_for_thread to pass the new thread argument.
349 ** The function 'system-async' is deprecated.
351 You can now pass any zero-argument procedure to 'system-async-mark'.
352 The function 'system-async' will just return its argument unchanged
355 ** New functions 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' and
356 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
358 The expression (call-with-blocked-asyncs PROC) will call PROC and will
359 block execution of system asyncs for the current thread by one level
360 while PROC runs. Likewise, call-with-unblocked-asyncs will call a
361 procedure and will unblock the execution of system asyncs by one
362 level for the current thread.
364 Only system asyncs are affected by these functions.
366 ** The functions 'mask-signals' and 'unmask-signals' are deprecated.
368 Use 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' or 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
369 instead. Those functions are easier to use correctly and can be
372 ** New function 'unsetenv'.
374 ** New macro 'define-syntax-public'.
376 It works like 'define-syntax' and also exports the defined macro (but
379 ** There is support for Infinity and NaNs.
381 Following PLT Scheme, Guile can now work with infinite numbers, and
384 There is new syntax for numbers: "+inf.0" (infinity), "-inf.0"
385 (negative infinity), "+nan.0" (not-a-number), and "-nan.0" (same as
386 "+nan.0"). These numbers are inexact and have no exact counterpart.
388 Dividing by an inexact zero returns +inf.0 or -inf.0, depending on the
389 sign of the dividend. The infinities are integers, and they answer #t
390 for both 'even?' and 'odd?'. The +nan.0 value is not an integer and is
391 not '=' to itself, but '+nan.0' is 'eqv?' to itself.
402 ERROR: Numerical overflow
404 Two new predicates 'inf?' and 'nan?' can be used to test for the
407 ** Inexact zero can have a sign.
409 Guile can now distinguish between plus and minus inexact zero, if your
410 platform supports this, too. The two zeros are equal according to
411 '=', but not according to 'eqv?'. For example
422 ** We now have uninterned symbols.
424 The new function 'make-symbol' will return a uninterned symbol. This
425 is a symbol that is unique and is guaranteed to remain unique.
426 However, uninterned symbols can not yet be read back in.
428 Use the new function 'symbol-interned?' to check whether a symbol is
431 ** pretty-print has more options.
433 The function pretty-print from the (ice-9 pretty-print) module can now
434 also be invoked with keyword arguments that control things like
435 maximum output width. See its online documentation.
437 ** Variables have no longer a special behavior for `equal?'.
439 Previously, comparing two variables with `equal?' would recursivly
440 compare their values. This is no longer done. Variables are now only
441 `equal?' if they are `eq?'.
443 ** `(begin)' is now valid.
445 You can now use an empty `begin' form. It will yield #<unspecified>
446 when evaluated and simply be ignored in a definition context.
448 ** Deprecated: procedure->macro
450 Change your code to use either procedure->memoizing-macro or, probably better,
451 to use r5rs macros. Also, be aware that macro expansion will not be done
452 during evaluation, but prior to evaluation.
454 ** Soft ports now allow a `char-ready?' procedure
456 The vector argument to `make-soft-port' can now have a length of
457 either 5 or 6. (Previously the length had to be 5.) The optional 6th
458 element is interpreted as an `input-waiting' thunk -- i.e. a thunk
459 that returns the number of characters that can be read immediately
460 without the soft port blocking.
462 ** New debugging feature: breakpoints.
464 Guile now has breakpoints. For details see the `Debugging Features'
465 chapter in the reference manual.
467 ** Deprecated: undefine
469 There is no replacement for undefine.
471 ** call-with-output-string doesn't segv on closed port
473 Previously call-with-output-string would give a segmentation fault if
474 the string port was closed by the called function. An exception is
477 ** (ice-9 popen) duplicate pipe fd fix
479 open-pipe, open-input-pipe and open-output-pipe left an extra copy of
480 their pipe file descriptor in the child, which was normally harmless,
481 but it can prevent the parent seeing eof or a broken pipe immediately
482 and has now been fixed.
484 ** source-properties and set-source-properties! fix
486 Properties set with set-source-properties! can now be read back
487 correctly with source-properties.
491 delete and delete! now call the "=" procedure with arguments in the
492 order described by the SRFI-1 specification
494 list-copy now accepts improper lists, per the specification.
498 date-week-number now correctly respects the requested day of week
501 * Changes to the C interface
503 ** Many public #defines with generic names have been made private.
505 #defines with generic names like HAVE_FOO or SIZEOF_FOO have been made
506 private or renamed with a more suitable public name. See below for
507 the ones which have been renamed.
509 ** HAVE_STDINT_H and HAVE_INTTYPES_H have been removed from public use.
511 HAVE_STDINT_H and HAVE_INTTYPES_H removed from public use. These are
512 no longer needed since the older uses of stdint.h and inttypes.h are
513 now handled by configure.in and gen-scmconfig.c.
515 ** USE_DLL_IMPORT is no longer defined publically.
517 gen-scmconfig now uses it to decide what contents to place in the
518 public scmconfig.h header without adding the USE_DLL_IMPORT itself.
520 ** HAVE_LIMITS_H has been removed from public use.
522 gen-scmconfig now just uses HAVE_LIMITS_H to decide whether or not to
523 add a limits.h include in scmconfig.h.
525 ** time.h, sys/time.h, etc. #ifdefery has been removed from public headers.
527 gen-scmconfig now just uses the same logic to decide what time related
528 #includes to add to scmconfig.h.
530 ** HAVE_STRUCT_TIMESPEC has been removed from public use.
532 scmconfig.h now just defines scm_t_timespec.
534 ** HAVE_PTRDIFF has been removed from public use and Guile doesn't
537 Guile now publically defines scm_t_ptrdiff and
538 SCM_SIZEOF_SCM_T_PTRDIFF in scmconfig.h, and all occurrences of
539 ptrdiff_t have been replaced with scm_t_ptrdiff.
541 Guile defines its own type this rather than just relying on ptrdiff_t
542 and SCM_SIZEOF_PTRDIFF_T because Guile actually typedefs long to
543 scm_t_ptrdiff when ptrdiff_t isn't available. A public "typedef long
544 ptrdiff_t" could conflict with other headers.
546 ** HAVE_UINTPTR_T and HAVE_UINTPTR_T have been removed from public use.
548 They are replaced by public definitions of SCM_SIZEOF_UINTPTR_T and
549 SCM_SIZEOF_INTPTR_T. These are defined to 0 if the corresponding type
552 ** The public #define STDC_HEADERS has been renamed to SCM_HAVE_STDC_HEADERS.
554 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
556 ** The public #define HAVE_SYS_SELECT has been renamed to
557 SCM_HAVE_SYS_SELECT_H.
559 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
561 ** The public #define HAVE_FLOATINGPOINT_H has been renamed to
562 SCM_HAVE_FLOATINGPOINT_H.
564 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
566 ** The public #define HAVE_IEEEFP_H has been renamed to SCM_HAVE_IEEEFP_H.
568 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
570 ** The public #define HAVE_NAN_H has been renamed to SCM_HAVE_NAN_H.
572 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
574 ** The public #define HAVE_WINSOCK2_H has been renamed to SCM_HAVE_WINSOCK2_H.
576 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
578 ** The public #define HAVE_ARRAYS has been renamed to SCM_HAVE_ARRAYS.
580 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
582 ** The public #define STACK_GROWS_UP has been renamed to SCM_STACK_GROWS_UP.
584 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
586 ** The public #define USE_PTHREAD_THREADS has been renamed to
587 SCM_USE_PTHREAD_THREADS.
589 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
591 ** The public #define USE_NULL_THREADS has been renamed to
592 SCM_USE_NULL_THREADS.
594 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
596 ** The public #define USE_COOP_THREADS has been renamed to
597 SCM_USE_COOP_THREADS.
599 The previous name was too generic for the global public namespace.
601 ** SCM_C_INLINE is publically defined if possible.
603 If the platform has a way to define inline functions, SCM_C_INLINE
604 will be defined to that text. Otherwise it will be undefined. This
605 is a little bit different than autoconf's normal handling of the
606 inline define via AC_C_INLINE.
608 ** Guile now publically defines some basic type infrastructure.
613 SCM_SIZEOF_UNSIGNED_CHAR
615 SCM_SIZEOF_UNSIGNED_SHORT
617 SCM_SIZEOF_UNSIGNED_LONG
619 SCM_SIZEOF_UNSIGNED_INT
620 SCM_SIZEOF_LONG_LONG /* defined to 0 if type not available */
621 SCM_SIZEOF_UNSIGNED_LONG_LONG /* defined to 0 if type not available */
635 and when either of these are defined to 1, optionally defines
646 ** The macro SCM_IFLAGP now only returns true for flags
648 User code should never have used this macro anyway. And, you should not use
649 it in the future either. Thus, the following explanation is just for the
650 impropable case that your code actually made use of this macro, and that you
651 are willing to depend on internals which will probably change in the near
654 Formerly, SCM_IFLAGP also returned true for evaluator bytecodes created with
655 SCM_MAKSPCSYM (short instructions) and evaluator bytecodes created with
656 SCM_MAKISYM (short instructions). Now, SCM_IFLAG only returns true for
657 Guile's special constants created with SCM_MAKIFLAG. To achieve the old
658 behaviour, instead of
662 you would have to write
664 (SCM_ISYMP(x) || SCM_IFLAGP(x))
666 ** The macro SCM_TYP16S has been deprecated.
668 This macro is not intended for public use. However, if you allocated types
669 with tc16 type codes in a way that you would have needed this macro, you are
670 expected to have a deep knowledge of Guile's type system. Thus, you should
671 know how to replace this macro.
673 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_INEXACTP has been deprecated.
675 Use SCM_INEXACTP instead.
677 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_REALP has been deprecated.
679 Use SCM_REALP instead.
681 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_COMPLEXP has been deprecated.
683 Use SCM_COMPLEXP instead.
685 ** The preprocessor define USE_THREADS has been deprecated.
687 Going forward, assume that the thread API is always present.
689 ** The preprocessor define GUILE_ISELECT has been deprecated.
691 Going forward, assume that scm_internal_select is always present.
693 ** The preprocessor define READER_EXTENSIONS has been deprecated.
695 Going forward, assume that the features represented by
696 READER_EXTENSIONS are always present.
698 ** The preprocessor define DEBUG_EXTENSIONS has been deprecated.
700 Going forward, assume that the features represented by
701 DEBUG_EXTENSIONS are always present.
703 ** The preprocessor define DYNAMIC_LINKING has been deprecated.
705 Going forward, assume that the features represented by
706 DYNAMIC_LINKING are always present.
708 ** The preprocessor define STACK_DIRECTION has been deprecated.
710 There should be no need to know about the stack direction for ordinary
711 programs. (Do not use.)
713 ** New function: scm_effective_version
715 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
716 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
717 to the distribution" above.
719 ** The function scm_call_with_new_thread has a new prototype.
721 Instead of taking a list with the thunk and handler, these two
722 arguments are now passed directly:
724 SCM scm_call_with_new_thread (SCM thunk, SCM handler);
726 This is an incompatible change.
728 ** The value 'scm_mask_ints' is no longer writable.
730 Previously, you could set scm_mask_ints directly. This is no longer
731 possible. Use scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
732 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs instead.
734 ** New functions scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
735 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs
737 Like scm_call_with_blocked_asyncs etc. but for C functions.
739 ** New snarfer macro SCM_DEFINE_PUBLIC.
741 This is like SCM_DEFINE, but also calls scm_c_export for the defined
742 function in the init section.
744 ** The snarfer macro SCM_SNARF_INIT is now officially supported.
746 ** New macros SCM_VECTOR_REF and SCM_VECTOR_SET.
748 Use these in preference to SCM_VELTS.
750 ** The SCM_VELTS macros now returns a read-only vector. For writing,
751 use the new macros SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS or SCM_VECTOR_SET. The use of
752 SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS is discouraged, though.
754 ** Garbage collector rewrite.
756 The garbage collector is cleaned up a lot, and now uses lazy
757 sweeping. This is reflected in the output of (gc-stats); since cells
758 are being freed when they are allocated, the cells-allocated field
759 stays roughly constant.
761 For malloc related triggers, the behavior is changed. It uses the same
762 heuristic as the cell-triggered collections. It may be tuned with the
763 environment variables GUILE_MIN_YIELD_MALLOC. This is the percentage
764 for minimum yield of malloc related triggers. The default is 40.
765 GUILE_INIT_MALLOC_LIMIT sets the initial trigger for doing a GC. The
768 Debugging operations for the freelist have been deprecated, along with
769 the C variables that control garbage collection. The environment
770 variables GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE, GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2,
771 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1, and GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2 should be used.
773 ** The function scm_definedp has been renamed to scm_defined_p
775 The name scm_definedp is deprecated.
777 ** The struct scm_cell has been renamed to scm_t_cell
779 This is in accordance to Guile's naming scheme for types. Note that
780 the name scm_cell is now used for a function that allocates and
781 initializes a new cell (see below).
783 ** New functions for memory management
785 A new set of functions for memory management has been added since the
786 old way (scm_must_malloc, scm_must_free, etc) was error prone and
787 indeed, Guile itself contained some long standing bugs that could
788 cause aborts in long running programs.
790 The new functions are more symmetrical and do not need cooperation
791 from smob free routines, among other improvements.
793 The new functions are scm_malloc, scm_realloc, scm_calloc, scm_strdup,
794 scm_strndup, scm_gc_malloc, scm_gc_calloc, scm_gc_realloc,
795 scm_gc_free, scm_gc_register_collectable_memory, and
796 scm_gc_unregister_collectable_memory. Refer to the manual for more
797 details and for upgrading instructions.
799 The old functions for memory management have been deprecated. They
800 are: scm_must_malloc, scm_must_realloc, scm_must_free,
801 scm_must_strdup, scm_must_strndup, scm_done_malloc, scm_done_free.
803 ** New function: scm_str2string
805 This function creates a scheme string from a 0-terminated C string. The input
808 ** Declarations of exported features are marked with SCM_API.
810 Every declaration of a feature that belongs to the exported Guile API
811 has been marked by adding the macro "SCM_API" to the start of the
812 declaration. This macro can expand into different things, the most
813 common of which is just "extern" for Unix platforms. On Win32, it can
814 be used to control which symbols are exported from a DLL.
816 If you `#define SCM_IMPORT' before including <libguile.h>, SCM_API
817 will expand into "__declspec (dllimport) extern", which is needed for
818 linking to the Guile DLL in Windows.
820 There are also SCM_RL_IMPORT, QT_IMPORT, SCM_SRFI1314_IMPORT, and
821 SCM_SRFI4_IMPORT, for the corresponding libraries.
823 ** SCM_NEWCELL and SCM_NEWCELL2 have been deprecated.
825 Use the new functions scm_cell and scm_double_cell instead. The old macros
826 had problems because with them allocation and initialization was separated and
827 the GC could sometimes observe half initialized cells. Only careful coding by
828 the user of SCM_NEWCELL and SCM_NEWCELL2 could make this safe and efficient.
830 ** CHECK_ENTRY, CHECK_APPLY and CHECK_EXIT have been deprecated.
832 Use the variables scm_check_entry_p, scm_check_apply_p and scm_check_exit_p
835 ** SRCBRKP has been deprecated.
837 Use scm_c_source_property_breakpoint_p instead.
839 ** Deprecated: scm_makmacro
841 Change your code to use either scm_makmmacro or, probably better, to use r5rs
842 macros. Also, be aware that macro expansion will not be done during
843 evaluation, but prior to evaluation.
845 ** Removed from scm_root_state: def_inp, def_outp, def_errp, together
846 with corresponding macros scm_def_inp, scm_def_outp and scm_def_errp.
847 These were undocumented and unused copies of the standard ports at the
848 time that Guile was initialised. Normally the current ports should be
849 used instead, obtained from scm_current_input_port () etc. If an
850 application needs to retain earlier ports, it should save them in a
851 gc-protected location.
853 ** Removed compile time option MEMOIZE_LOCALS
855 Now, caching of local variable positions during memoization is mandatory.
856 However, the option to disable the caching has most probably not been used
859 ** Removed compile time option SCM_RECKLESS
861 Full number of arguments checking of closures is mandatory now. However, the
862 option to disable the checking has most probably not been used anyway.
864 ** Removed compile time option SCM_CAUTIOUS
866 Full number of arguments checking of closures is mandatory now. However, the
867 option to disable the checking has most probably not been used anyway.
869 ** Deprecated configure flags USE_THREADS and GUILE_ISELECT
871 Previously, when the C preprocessor macro USE_THREADS was defined,
872 libguile included a thread API. This API is now always included, even
873 when threads are not really supported. Thus, you don't need to test
876 Analogously, GUILE_ISELECT was defined when the function
877 scm_internal_select was provided by Guile. This function is now
878 always defined, and GUILE_ISELECT with it.
880 ** New function scm_c_port_for_each.
882 This function is like scm_port_for_each but takes a pointer to a C
883 function as the callback instead of a SCM value.
885 ** Deprecated definitions of error strings: scm_s_expression, scm_s_test,
886 scm_s_body, scm_s_bindings, scm_s_variable, scm_s_clauses, scm_s_formals
888 These error message strings were used to issue syntax error messages by
889 guile's evaluator. It's unlikely that they have been used by user code.
891 ** Deprecated helper macros for evaluation and application: SCM_EVALIM2,
892 SCM_EVALIM, SCM_XEVAL, SCM_XEVALCAR
894 These macros were used in the implementation of the evaluator. It's unlikely
895 that they have been used by user code.
897 ** Deprecated helper functions for evaluation and application:
898 scm_m_expand_body, scm_macroexp
900 These functions were used in the implementation of the evaluator. It's
901 unlikely that they have been used by user code.
903 ** Deprecated functions for unmemoization: scm_unmemocar
905 ** Deprecated macros for iloc handling: SCM_ILOC00, SCM_IDINC, SCM_IDSTMSK
907 These macros were used in the implementation of the evaluator. It's unlikely
908 that they have been used by user code.
910 ** Removed definitions: scm_lisp_nil, scm_lisp_t, s_nil_ify,
911 scm_m_nil_ify, s_t_ify, scm_m_t_ify, s_0_cond, scm_m_0_cond, s_0_ify,
912 scm_m_0_ify, s_1_ify, scm_m_1_ify, scm_debug_newcell,
913 scm_debug_newcell2, scm_tc16_allocated, SCM_SET_SYMBOL_HASH,
914 SCM_IM_NIL_IFY, SCM_IM_T_IFY, SCM_IM_0_COND, SCM_IM_0_IFY,
915 SCM_IM_1_IFY, SCM_GC_SET_ALLOCATED, scm_debug_newcell,
916 scm_debug_newcell2, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL, SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL,
917 SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL, SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL,
918 SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD, SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS,
919 scm_top_level_lookup_closure_var, *top-level-lookup-closure*,
920 scm_system_transformer, scm_eval_3, scm_eval2,
921 root_module_lookup_closure, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP, SCM_RWSTRINGP,
922 scm_read_only_string_p, scm_make_shared_substring, scm_tc7_substring,
923 sym_huh, SCM_VARVCELL, SCM_UDVARIABLEP, SCM_DEFVARIABLEP, scm_mkbig,
924 scm_big2inum, scm_adjbig, scm_normbig, scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big,
925 scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl, SCM_FIXNUM_BIT, SCM_SETCHARS,
926 SCM_SLOPPY_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_LENGTH_MAX,
927 SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS,
928 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR, scm_sym2vcell, scm_intern,
929 scm_intern0, scm_sysintern, scm_sysintern0,
930 scm_sysintern0_no_module_lookup, scm_init_symbols_deprecated,
931 scm_vector_set_length_x, scm_contregs, scm_debug_info,
932 scm_debug_frame, SCM_DSIDEVAL, SCM_CONST_LONG, SCM_VCELL,
933 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL, SCM_VCELL_INIT, SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL_INIT,
934 SCM_HUGE_LENGTH, SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING,
935 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY, SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY,
936 SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, DIGITS, scm_small_istr2int, scm_istr2int,
937 scm_istr2flo, scm_istring2number, scm_istr2int, scm_istr2flo,
938 scm_istring2number, scm_vtable_index_vcell, scm_si_vcell, SCM_ECONSP,
939 SCM_NECONSP, SCM_GLOC_VAR, SCM_GLOC_VAL, SCM_GLOC_SET_VAL,
940 SCM_GLOC_VAL_LOC, scm_make_gloc, scm_gloc_p, scm_tc16_variable
943 Changes since Guile 1.4:
945 * Changes to the distribution
947 ** A top-level TODO file is included.
949 ** Guile now uses a versioning scheme similar to that of the Linux kernel.
951 Guile now always uses three numbers to represent the version,
952 i.e. "1.6.5". The first number, 1, is the major version number, the
953 second number, 6, is the minor version number, and the third number,
954 5, is the micro version number. Changes in major version number
955 indicate major changes in Guile.
957 Minor version numbers that are even denote stable releases, and odd
958 minor version numbers denote development versions (which may be
959 unstable). The micro version number indicates a minor sub-revision of
960 a given MAJOR.MINOR release.
962 In keeping with the new scheme, (minor-version) and scm_minor_version
963 no longer return everything but the major version number. They now
964 just return the minor version number. Two new functions
965 (micro-version) and scm_micro_version have been added to report the
966 micro version number.
968 In addition, ./GUILE-VERSION now defines GUILE_MICRO_VERSION.
970 ** New preprocessor definitions are available for checking versions.
972 version.h now #defines SCM_MAJOR_VERSION, SCM_MINOR_VERSION, and
973 SCM_MICRO_VERSION to the appropriate integer values.
975 ** Guile now actively warns about deprecated features.
977 The new configure option `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' and the
978 environment variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED control this mechanism.
979 See INSTALL and README for more information.
981 ** Guile is much more likely to work on 64-bit architectures.
983 Guile now compiles and passes "make check" with only two UNRESOLVED GC
984 cases on Alpha and ia64 based machines now. Thanks to John Goerzen
985 for the use of a test machine, and thanks to Stefan Jahn for ia64
988 ** New functions: setitimer and getitimer.
990 These implement a fairly direct interface to the libc functions of the
993 ** The #. reader extension is now disabled by default.
995 For safety reasons, #. evaluation is disabled by default. To
996 re-enable it, set the fluid read-eval? to #t. For example:
998 (fluid-set! read-eval? #t)
1000 but make sure you realize the potential security risks involved. With
1001 read-eval? enabled, reading a data file from an untrusted source can
1004 ** New SRFI modules have been added:
1006 SRFI-0 `cond-expand' is now supported in Guile, without requiring
1009 (srfi srfi-1) is a library containing many useful pair- and list-processing
1012 (srfi srfi-2) exports and-let*.
1014 (srfi srfi-4) implements homogeneous numeric vector datatypes.
1016 (srfi srfi-6) is a dummy module for now, since guile already provides
1017 all of the srfi-6 procedures by default: open-input-string,
1018 open-output-string, get-output-string.
1020 (srfi srfi-8) exports receive.
1022 (srfi srfi-9) exports define-record-type.
1024 (srfi srfi-10) exports define-reader-ctor and implements the reader
1027 (srfi srfi-11) exports let-values and let*-values.
1029 (srfi srfi-13) implements the SRFI String Library.
1031 (srfi srfi-14) implements the SRFI Character-Set Library.
1033 (srfi srfi-17) implements setter and getter-with-setter and redefines
1034 some accessor procedures as procedures with getters. (such as car,
1035 cdr, vector-ref etc.)
1037 (srfi srfi-19) implements the SRFI Time/Date Library.
1039 ** New scripts / "executable modules"
1041 Subdirectory "scripts" contains Scheme modules that are packaged to
1042 also be executable as scripts. At this time, these scripts are available:
1051 See README there for more info.
1053 These scripts can be invoked from the shell with the new program
1054 "guile-tools", which keeps track of installation directory for you.
1057 $ guile-tools display-commentary srfi/*.scm
1059 guile-tools is copied to the standard $bindir on "make install".
1061 ** New module (ice-9 stack-catch):
1063 stack-catch is like catch, but saves the current state of the stack in
1064 the fluid the-last-stack. This fluid can be useful when using the
1065 debugger and when re-throwing an error.
1067 ** The module (ice-9 and-let*) has been renamed to (ice-9 and-let-star)
1069 This has been done to prevent problems on lesser operating systems
1070 that can't tolerate `*'s in file names. The exported macro continues
1071 to be named `and-let*', of course.
1073 On systems that support it, there is also a compatibility module named
1074 (ice-9 and-let*). It will go away in the next release.
1076 ** New modules (oop goops) etc.:
1079 (oop goops describe)
1081 (oop goops active-slot)
1082 (oop goops composite-slot)
1084 The Guile Object Oriented Programming System (GOOPS) has been
1085 integrated into Guile. For further information, consult the GOOPS
1086 manual and tutorial in the `doc' directory.
1088 ** New module (ice-9 rdelim).
1090 This exports the following procedures which were previously defined
1091 in the default environment:
1093 read-line read-line! read-delimited read-delimited! %read-delimited!
1094 %read-line write-line
1096 For backwards compatibility the definitions are still imported into the
1097 default environment in this version of Guile. However you should add:
1099 (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim))
1101 to any program which uses the definitions, since this may change in
1104 Alternatively, if guile-scsh is installed, the (scsh rdelim) module
1105 can be used for similar functionality.
1107 ** New module (ice-9 rw)
1109 This is a subset of the (scsh rw) module from guile-scsh. Currently
1110 it defines two procedures:
1112 *** New function: read-string!/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
1114 Read characters from a port or file descriptor into a string STR.
1115 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
1116 fport. This procedure is scsh-compatible and can efficiently read
1119 *** New function: write-string/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
1121 Write characters from a string STR to a port or file descriptor.
1122 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
1123 fport. This procedure is mostly compatible and can efficiently
1124 write large strings.
1126 ** New module (ice-9 match)
1128 This module includes Andrew K. Wright's pattern matcher. See
1129 ice-9/match.scm for brief description or
1131 http://www.star-lab.com/wright/code.html
1133 for complete documentation.
1135 ** New module (ice-9 buffered-input)
1137 This module provides procedures to construct an input port from an
1138 underlying source of input that reads and returns its input in chunks.
1139 The underlying input source is a Scheme procedure, specified by the
1140 caller, which the port invokes whenever it needs more input.
1142 This is useful when building an input port whose back end is Readline
1143 or a UI element such as the GtkEntry widget.
1147 The reference and tutorial documentation that was previously
1148 distributed separately, as `guile-doc', is now included in the core
1149 Guile distribution. The documentation consists of the following
1152 - The Guile Tutorial (guile-tut.texi) contains a tutorial introduction
1155 - The Guile Reference Manual (guile.texi) contains (or is intended to
1156 contain) reference documentation on all aspects of Guile.
1158 - The GOOPS Manual (goops.texi) contains both tutorial-style and
1159 reference documentation for using GOOPS, Guile's Object Oriented
1162 - The Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
1165 See the README file in the `doc' directory for more details.
1167 ** There are a couple of examples in the examples/ directory now.
1169 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
1171 ** New command line option `--use-srfi'
1173 Using this option, SRFI modules can be loaded on startup and be
1174 available right from the beginning. This makes programming portable
1175 Scheme programs easier.
1177 The option `--use-srfi' expects a comma-separated list of numbers,
1178 each representing a SRFI number to be loaded into the interpreter
1179 before starting evaluating a script file or the REPL. Additionally,
1180 the feature identifier for the loaded SRFIs is recognized by
1181 `cond-expand' when using this option.
1184 $ guile --use-srfi=8,13
1185 guile> (receive (x z) (values 1 2) (+ 1 2))
1187 guile> (string-pad "bla" 20)
1190 ** Guile now always starts up in the `(guile-user)' module.
1192 Previously, scripts executed via the `-s' option would run in the
1193 `(guile)' module and the repl would run in the `(guile-user)' module.
1194 Now every user action takes place in the `(guile-user)' module by
1197 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
1199 ** Character classifiers work for non-ASCII characters.
1201 The predicates `char-alphabetic?', `char-numeric?',
1202 `char-whitespace?', `char-lower?', `char-upper?' and `char-is-both?'
1203 no longer check whether their arguments are ASCII characters.
1204 Previously, a character would only be considered alphabetic when it
1205 was also ASCII, for example.
1207 ** Previously deprecated Scheme functions have been removed:
1209 tag - no replacement.
1210 fseek - replaced by seek.
1211 list* - replaced by cons*.
1213 ** It's now possible to create modules with controlled environments
1217 (use-modules (ice-9 safe))
1218 (define m (make-safe-module))
1219 ;;; m will now be a module containing only a safe subset of R5RS
1220 (eval '(+ 1 2) m) --> 3
1221 (eval 'load m) --> ERROR: Unbound variable: load
1223 ** Evaluation of "()", the empty list, is now an error.
1225 Previously, the expression "()" evaluated to the empty list. This has
1226 been changed to signal a "missing expression" error. The correct way
1227 to write the empty list as a literal constant is to use quote: "'()".
1229 ** New concept of `Guile Extensions'.
1231 A Guile Extension is just a ordinary shared library that can be linked
1232 at run-time. We found it advantageous to give this simple concept a
1233 dedicated name to distinguish the issues related to shared libraries
1234 from the issues related to the module system.
1236 *** New function: load-extension
1238 Executing (load-extension lib init) is mostly equivalent to
1240 (dynamic-call init (dynamic-link lib))
1242 except when scm_register_extension has been called previously.
1243 Whenever appropriate, you should use `load-extension' instead of
1244 dynamic-link and dynamic-call.
1246 *** New C function: scm_c_register_extension
1248 This function registers a initialization function for use by
1249 `load-extension'. Use it when you don't want specific extensions to
1250 be loaded as shared libraries (for example on platforms that don't
1251 support dynamic linking).
1253 ** Auto-loading of compiled-code modules is deprecated.
1255 Guile used to be able to automatically find and link a shared
1256 library to satisfy requests for a module. For example, the module
1257 `(foo bar)' could be implemented by placing a shared library named
1258 "foo/libbar.so" (or with a different extension) in a directory on the
1261 This has been found to be too tricky, and is no longer supported. The
1262 shared libraries are now called "extensions". You should now write a
1263 small Scheme file that calls `load-extension' to load the shared
1264 library and initialize it explicitely.
1266 The shared libraries themselves should be installed in the usual
1267 places for shared libraries, with names like "libguile-foo-bar".
1269 For example, place this into a file "foo/bar.scm"
1271 (define-module (foo bar))
1273 (load-extension "libguile-foo-bar" "foobar_init")
1275 ** Backward incompatible change: eval EXP ENVIRONMENT-SPECIFIER
1277 `eval' is now R5RS, that is it takes two arguments.
1278 The second argument is an environment specifier, i.e. either
1280 (scheme-report-environment 5)
1281 (null-environment 5)
1282 (interaction-environment)
1288 ** The module system has been made more disciplined.
1290 The function `eval' will save and restore the current module around
1291 the evaluation of the specified expression. While this expression is
1292 evaluated, `(current-module)' will now return the right module, which
1293 is the module specified as the second argument to `eval'.
1295 A consequence of this change is that `eval' is not particularly
1296 useful when you want allow the evaluated code to change what module is
1297 designated as the current module and have this change persist from one
1298 call to `eval' to the next. The read-eval-print-loop is an example
1299 where `eval' is now inadequate. To compensate, there is a new
1300 function `primitive-eval' that does not take a module specifier and
1301 that does not save/restore the current module. You should use this
1302 function together with `set-current-module', `current-module', etc
1303 when you want to have more control over the state that is carried from
1304 one eval to the next.
1306 Additionally, it has been made sure that forms that are evaluated at
1307 the top level are always evaluated with respect to the current module.
1308 Previously, subforms of top-level forms such as `begin', `case',
1309 etc. did not respect changes to the current module although these
1310 subforms are at the top-level as well.
1312 To prevent strange behavior, the forms `define-module',
1313 `use-modules', `use-syntax', and `export' have been restricted to only
1314 work on the top level. The forms `define-public' and
1315 `defmacro-public' only export the new binding on the top level. They
1316 behave just like `define' and `defmacro', respectively, when they are
1317 used in a lexical environment.
1319 Also, `export' will no longer silently re-export bindings imported
1320 from a used module. It will emit a `deprecation' warning and will
1321 cease to perform any re-export in the next version. If you actually
1322 want to re-export bindings, use the new `re-export' in place of
1323 `export'. The new `re-export' will not make copies of variables when
1324 rexporting them, as `export' did wrongly.
1326 ** Module system now allows selection and renaming of imported bindings
1328 Previously, when using `use-modules' or the `#:use-module' clause in
1329 the `define-module' form, all the bindings (association of symbols to
1330 values) for imported modules were added to the "current module" on an
1331 as-is basis. This has been changed to allow finer control through two
1332 new facilities: selection and renaming.
1334 You can now select which of the imported module's bindings are to be
1335 visible in the current module by using the `:select' clause. This
1336 clause also can be used to rename individual bindings. For example:
1338 ;; import all bindings no questions asked
1339 (use-modules (ice-9 common-list))
1341 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them;
1342 ;; the current module sees: every some zonk-y zonk-n
1343 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1345 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1346 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))))
1348 You can also programmatically rename all selected bindings using the
1349 `:renamer' clause, which specifies a proc that takes a symbol and
1350 returns another symbol. Because it is common practice to use a prefix,
1351 we now provide the convenience procedure `symbol-prefix-proc'. For
1354 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
1355 ;; and all four w/ prefix "CL:";
1356 ;; the current module sees: CL:every CL:some CL:zonk-y CL:zonk-n
1357 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1359 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1360 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
1361 :renamer (symbol-prefix-proc 'CL:)))
1363 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
1364 ;; and all four by upcasing.
1365 ;; the current module sees: EVERY SOME ZONK-Y ZONK-N
1366 (define (upcase-symbol sym)
1367 (string->symbol (string-upcase (symbol->string sym))))
1369 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1371 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1372 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
1373 :renamer upcase-symbol))
1375 Note that programmatic renaming is done *after* individual renaming.
1376 Also, the above examples show `use-modules', but the same facilities are
1377 available for the `#:use-module' clause of `define-module'.
1379 See manual for more info.
1381 ** The semantics of guardians have changed.
1383 The changes are for the most part compatible. An important criterion
1384 was to keep the typical usage of guardians as simple as before, but to
1385 make the semantics safer and (as a result) more useful.
1387 *** All objects returned from guardians are now properly alive.
1389 It is now guaranteed that any object referenced by an object returned
1390 from a guardian is alive. It's now impossible for a guardian to
1391 return a "contained" object before its "containing" object.
1393 One incompatible (but probably not very important) change resulting
1394 from this is that it is no longer possible to guard objects that
1395 indirectly reference themselves (i.e. are parts of cycles). If you do
1396 so accidentally, you'll get a warning.
1398 *** There are now two types of guardians: greedy and sharing.
1400 If you call (make-guardian #t) or just (make-guardian), you'll get a
1401 greedy guardian, and for (make-guardian #f) a sharing guardian.
1403 Greedy guardians are the default because they are more "defensive".
1404 You can only greedily guard an object once. If you guard an object
1405 more than once, once in a greedy guardian and the rest of times in
1406 sharing guardians, then it is guaranteed that the object won't be
1407 returned from sharing guardians as long as it is greedily guarded
1410 Guardians returned by calls to `make-guardian' can now take one more
1411 optional parameter, which says whether to throw an error in case an
1412 attempt is made to greedily guard an object that is already greedily
1413 guarded. The default is true, i.e. throw an error. If the parameter
1414 is false, the guardian invocation returns #t if guarding was
1415 successful and #f if it wasn't.
1417 Also, since greedy guarding is, in effect, a side-effecting operation
1418 on objects, a new function is introduced: `destroy-guardian!'.
1419 Invoking this function on a guardian renders it unoperative and, if
1420 the guardian is greedy, clears the "greedily guarded" property of the
1421 objects that were guarded by it, thus undoing the side effect.
1423 Note that all this hair is hardly very important, since guardian
1424 objects are usually permanent.
1426 ** Continuations created by call-with-current-continuation now accept
1427 any number of arguments, as required by R5RS.
1429 ** New function `issue-deprecation-warning'
1431 This function is used to display the deprecation messages that are
1432 controlled by GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION as explained in the README.
1435 (issue-deprecation-warning "`id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.")
1439 ;; `id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.
1444 ** New syntax `begin-deprecated'
1446 When deprecated features are included (as determined by the configure
1447 option --enable-deprecated), `begin-deprecated' is identical to
1448 `begin'. When deprecated features are excluded, it always evaluates
1449 to `#f', ignoring the body forms.
1451 ** New function `make-object-property'
1453 This function returns a new `procedure with setter' P that can be used
1454 to attach a property to objects. When calling P as
1458 where `obj' is any kind of object, it attaches `val' to `obj' in such
1459 a way that it can be retrieved by calling P as
1463 This function will replace procedure properties, symbol properties and
1464 source properties eventually.
1466 ** Module (ice-9 optargs) now uses keywords instead of `#&'.
1468 Instead of #&optional, #&key, etc you should now use #:optional,
1469 #:key, etc. Since #:optional is a keyword, you can write it as just
1470 :optional when (read-set! keywords 'prefix) is active.
1472 The old reader syntax `#&' is still supported, but deprecated. It
1473 will be removed in the next release.
1475 ** New define-module option: pure
1477 Tells the module system not to include any bindings from the root
1482 (define-module (totally-empty-module)
1485 ** New define-module option: export NAME1 ...
1487 Export names NAME1 ...
1489 This option is required if you want to be able to export bindings from
1490 a module which doesn't import one of `define-public' or `export'.
1494 (define-module (foo)
1496 :use-module (ice-9 r5rs)
1499 ;;; Note that we're pure R5RS below this point!
1504 ** New function: object->string OBJ
1506 Return a Scheme string obtained by printing a given object.
1508 ** New function: port? X
1510 Returns a boolean indicating whether X is a port. Equivalent to
1511 `(or (input-port? X) (output-port? X))'.
1513 ** New function: file-port?
1515 Determines whether a given object is a port that is related to a file.
1517 ** New function: port-for-each proc
1519 Apply PROC to each port in the Guile port table in turn. The return
1520 value is unspecified. More specifically, PROC is applied exactly once
1521 to every port that exists in the system at the time PORT-FOR-EACH is
1522 invoked. Changes to the port table while PORT-FOR-EACH is running
1523 have no effect as far as PORT-FOR-EACH is concerned.
1525 ** New function: dup2 oldfd newfd
1527 A simple wrapper for the `dup2' system call. Copies the file
1528 descriptor OLDFD to descriptor number NEWFD, replacing the
1529 previous meaning of NEWFD. Both OLDFD and NEWFD must be integers.
1530 Unlike for dup->fdes or primitive-move->fdes, no attempt is made
1531 to move away ports which are using NEWFD. The return value is
1534 ** New function: close-fdes fd
1536 A simple wrapper for the `close' system call. Close file
1537 descriptor FD, which must be an integer. Unlike close (*note
1538 close: Ports and File Descriptors.), the file descriptor will be
1539 closed even if a port is using it. The return value is
1542 ** New function: crypt password salt
1544 Encrypts `password' using the standard unix password encryption
1547 ** New function: chroot path
1549 Change the root directory of the running process to `path'.
1551 ** New functions: getlogin, cuserid
1553 Return the login name or the user name of the current effective user
1556 ** New functions: getpriority which who, setpriority which who prio
1558 Get or set the priority of the running process.
1560 ** New function: getpass prompt
1562 Read a password from the terminal, first displaying `prompt' and
1565 ** New function: flock file operation
1567 Set/remove an advisory shared or exclusive lock on `file'.
1569 ** New functions: sethostname name, gethostname
1571 Set or get the hostname of the machine the current process is running
1574 ** New function: mkstemp! tmpl
1576 mkstemp creates a new unique file in the file system and returns a
1577 new buffered port open for reading and writing to the file. TMPL
1578 is a string specifying where the file should be created: it must
1579 end with `XXXXXX' and will be changed in place to return the name
1580 of the temporary file.
1582 ** New function: open-input-string string
1584 Return an input string port which delivers the characters from
1585 `string'. This procedure, together with `open-output-string' and
1586 `get-output-string' implements SRFI-6.
1588 ** New function: open-output-string
1590 Return an output string port which collects all data written to it.
1591 The data can then be retrieved by `get-output-string'.
1593 ** New function: get-output-string
1595 Return the contents of an output string port.
1597 ** New function: identity
1599 Return the argument.
1601 ** socket, connect, accept etc., now have support for IPv6. IPv6 addresses
1602 are represented in Scheme as integers with normal host byte ordering.
1604 ** New function: inet-pton family address
1606 Convert a printable string network address into an integer. Note that
1607 unlike the C version of this function, the result is an integer with
1608 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
1611 (inet-pton AF_INET "127.0.0.1") => 2130706433
1612 (inet-pton AF_INET6 "::1") => 1
1614 ** New function: inet-ntop family address
1616 Convert an integer network address into a printable string. Note that
1617 unlike the C version of this function, the input is an integer with
1618 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
1621 (inet-ntop AF_INET 2130706433) => "127.0.0.1"
1622 (inet-ntop AF_INET6 (- (expt 2 128) 1)) =>
1623 ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
1627 Use `identity' instead.
1633 ** Deprecated: return-it
1637 ** Deprecated: string-character-length
1639 Use `string-length' instead.
1641 ** Deprecated: flags
1643 Use `logior' instead.
1645 ** Deprecated: close-all-ports-except.
1647 This was intended for closing ports in a child process after a fork,
1648 but it has the undesirable side effect of flushing buffers.
1649 port-for-each is more flexible.
1651 ** The (ice-9 popen) module now attempts to set up file descriptors in
1652 the child process from the current Scheme ports, instead of using the
1653 current values of file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 in the parent process.
1655 ** Removed function: builtin-weak-bindings
1657 There is no such concept as a weak binding any more.
1659 ** Removed constants: bignum-radix, scm-line-incrementors
1661 ** define-method: New syntax mandatory.
1663 The new method syntax is now mandatory:
1665 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ...) BODY ...)
1666 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ... . REST-ARG) BODY ...)
1668 ARG-SPEC ::= ARG-NAME | (ARG-NAME TYPE)
1669 REST-ARG ::= ARG-NAME
1671 If you have old code using the old syntax, import
1672 (oop goops old-define-method) before (oop goops) as in:
1674 (use-modules (oop goops old-define-method) (oop goops))
1676 ** Deprecated function: builtin-variable
1677 Removed function: builtin-bindings
1679 There is no longer a distinction between builtin or other variables.
1680 Use module system operations for all variables.
1682 ** Lazy-catch handlers are no longer allowed to return.
1684 That is, a call to `throw', `error', etc is now guaranteed to not
1687 ** Bugfixes for (ice-9 getopt-long)
1689 This module is now tested using test-suite/tests/getopt-long.test.
1690 The following bugs have been fixed:
1692 *** Parsing for options that are specified to have `optional' args now checks
1693 if the next element is an option instead of unconditionally taking it as the
1696 *** An error is now thrown for `--opt=val' when the option description
1697 does not specify `(value #t)' or `(value optional)'. This condition used to
1698 be accepted w/o error, contrary to the documentation.
1700 *** The error message for unrecognized options is now more informative.
1701 It used to be "not a record", an artifact of the implementation.
1703 *** The error message for `--opt' terminating the arg list (no value), when
1704 `(value #t)' is specified, is now more informative. It used to be "not enough
1707 *** "Clumped" single-char args now preserve trailing string, use it as arg.
1708 The expansion used to be like so:
1710 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "--xyz")
1712 Note that the "5d" is dropped. Now it is like so:
1714 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "5d" "--xyz")
1716 This enables single-char options to have adjoining arguments as long as their
1717 constituent characters are not potential single-char options.
1719 ** (ice-9 session) procedure `arity' now works with (ice-9 optargs) `lambda*'
1721 The `lambda*' and derivative forms in (ice-9 optargs) now set a procedure
1722 property `arglist', which can be retrieved by `arity'. The result is that
1723 `arity' can give more detailed information than before:
1727 guile> (use-modules (ice-9 optargs))
1728 guile> (define* (foo #:optional a b c) a)
1730 0 or more arguments in `lambda*:G0'.
1735 3 optional arguments: `a', `b' and `c'.
1736 guile> (define* (bar a b #:key c d #:allow-other-keys) a)
1738 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 2 keyword arguments: `c'
1739 and `d', other keywords allowed.
1740 guile> (define* (baz a b #:optional c #:rest r) a)
1742 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 1 optional argument: `c',
1745 * Changes to the C interface
1747 ** Types have been renamed from scm_*_t to scm_t_*.
1749 This has been done for POSIX sake. It reserves identifiers ending
1750 with "_t". What a concept.
1752 The old names are still available with status `deprecated'.
1754 ** scm_t_bits (former scm_bits_t) is now a unsigned type.
1756 ** Deprecated features have been removed.
1760 SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP SCM_ICHRP, SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR
1761 SCM_SETJMPBUF SCM_NSTRINGP SCM_NRWSTRINGP SCM_NVECTORP SCM_DOUBLE_CELLP
1763 *** C Functions removed
1765 scm_sysmissing scm_tag scm_tc16_flo scm_tc_flo
1766 scm_fseek - replaced by scm_seek.
1767 gc-thunk - replaced by after-gc-hook.
1768 gh_int2scmb - replaced by gh_bool2scm.
1769 scm_tc_dblr - replaced by scm_tc16_real.
1770 scm_tc_dblc - replaced by scm_tc16_complex.
1771 scm_list_star - replaced by scm_cons_star.
1773 ** Deprecated: scm_makfromstr
1775 Use scm_mem2string instead.
1777 ** Deprecated: scm_make_shared_substring
1779 Explicit shared substrings will disappear from Guile.
1781 Instead, "normal" strings will be implemented using sharing
1782 internally, combined with a copy-on-write strategy.
1784 ** Deprecated: scm_read_only_string_p
1786 The concept of read-only strings will disappear in next release of
1789 ** Deprecated: scm_sloppy_memq, scm_sloppy_memv, scm_sloppy_member
1791 Instead, use scm_c_memq or scm_memq, scm_memv, scm_member.
1793 ** New functions: scm_call_0, scm_call_1, scm_call_2, scm_call_3
1795 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments. See "Fly
1796 Evaluation" in the manual.
1798 ** New functions: scm_apply_0, scm_apply_1, scm_apply_2, scm_apply_3
1800 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments and a list of
1801 further arguments. See "Fly Evaluation" in the manual.
1803 ** New functions: scm_list_1, scm_list_2, scm_list_3, scm_list_4, scm_list_5
1805 Create a list of the given number of elements. See "List
1806 Constructors" in the manual.
1808 ** Renamed function: scm_listify has been replaced by scm_list_n.
1810 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_LIST0, SCM_LIST1, SCM_LIST2, SCM_LIST3, SCM_LIST4,
1811 SCM_LIST5, SCM_LIST6, SCM_LIST7, SCM_LIST8, SCM_LIST9.
1813 Use functions scm_list_N instead.
1815 ** New function: scm_c_read (SCM port, void *buffer, scm_sizet size)
1817 Used by an application to read arbitrary number of bytes from a port.
1818 Same semantics as libc read, except that scm_c_read only returns less
1819 than SIZE bytes if at end-of-file.
1821 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
1823 ** New function: scm_c_write (SCM port, const void *ptr, scm_sizet size)
1825 Used by an application to write arbitrary number of bytes to an SCM
1826 port. Similar semantics as libc write. However, unlike libc
1827 write, scm_c_write writes the requested number of bytes and has no
1830 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
1832 ** New function: scm_init_guile ()
1834 In contrast to scm_boot_guile, scm_init_guile will return normally
1835 after initializing Guile. It is not available on all systems, tho.
1837 ** New functions: scm_str2symbol, scm_mem2symbol
1839 The function scm_str2symbol takes a const char* pointing to a zero-terminated
1840 field of characters and creates a scheme symbol object from that C string.
1841 The function scm_mem2symbol takes a const char* and a number of characters and
1842 creates a symbol from the characters in that memory area.
1844 ** New functions: scm_primitive_make_property
1845 scm_primitive_property_ref
1846 scm_primitive_property_set_x
1847 scm_primitive_property_del_x
1849 These functions implement a new way to deal with object properties.
1850 See libguile/properties.c for their documentation.
1852 ** New function: scm_done_free (long size)
1854 This function is the inverse of scm_done_malloc. Use it to report the
1855 amount of smob memory you free. The previous method, which involved
1856 calling scm_done_malloc with negative argument, was somewhat
1857 unintuitive (and is still available, of course).
1859 ** New function: scm_c_memq (SCM obj, SCM list)
1861 This function provides a fast C level alternative for scm_memq for the case
1862 that the list parameter is known to be a proper list. The function is a
1863 replacement for scm_sloppy_memq, but is stricter in its requirements on its
1864 list input parameter, since for anything else but a proper list the function's
1865 behaviour is undefined - it may even crash or loop endlessly. Further, for
1866 the case that the object is not found in the list, scm_c_memq returns #f which
1867 is similar to scm_memq, but different from scm_sloppy_memq's behaviour.
1869 ** New functions: scm_remember_upto_here_1, scm_remember_upto_here_2,
1870 scm_remember_upto_here
1872 These functions replace the function scm_remember.
1874 ** Deprecated function: scm_remember
1876 Use one of the new functions scm_remember_upto_here_1,
1877 scm_remember_upto_here_2 or scm_remember_upto_here instead.
1879 ** New function: scm_allocate_string
1881 This function replaces the function scm_makstr.
1883 ** Deprecated function: scm_makstr
1885 Use the new function scm_allocate_string instead.
1887 ** New global variable scm_gc_running_p introduced.
1889 Use this variable to find out if garbage collection is being executed. Up to
1890 now applications have used scm_gc_heap_lock to test if garbage collection was
1891 running, which also works because of the fact that up to know only the garbage
1892 collector has set this variable. But, this is an implementation detail that
1893 may change. Further, scm_gc_heap_lock is not set throughout gc, thus the use
1894 of this variable is (and has been) not fully safe anyway.
1896 ** New macros: SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH
1898 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
1900 ** New macros: SCM_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_CCLO_LENGTH, SCM_STACK_LENGTH,
1901 SCM_STRING_LENGTH, SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
1902 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH.
1904 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH.
1906 ** New macros: SCM_SET_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH,
1907 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
1908 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH
1910 Use these instead of SCM_SETLENGTH
1912 ** New macros: SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_CCLO_BASE,
1913 SCM_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_COMPLEX_MEM,
1916 Use these instead of SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS, SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS or
1919 ** New macros: SCM_SET_BIGNUM_BASE, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS,
1920 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE,
1923 Use these instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
1925 ** New macro: SCM_BITVECTOR_P
1927 ** New macro: SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X
1929 Use instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
1931 ** New macros: SCM_DIR_OPEN_P, SCM_DIR_FLAG_OPEN
1933 For directory objects, use these instead of SCM_OPDIRP and SCM_OPN.
1935 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_OUTOFRANGE, SCM_NALLOC, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL,
1936 SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL,
1937 SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD,
1938 SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS, SCM_SYMBOL_SLOTS, SCM_SLOTS, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
1939 SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_FREEP, SCM_NFREEP, SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS,
1940 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY,
1941 SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_HUGE_LENGTH,
1942 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
1943 SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_RWSTRINGP, SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, SCM_ROCHARS,
1944 SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_GC8MARKP,
1945 SCM_SETGC8MARK, SCM_CLRGC8MARK, SCM_GCTYP16, SCM_GCCDR, SCM_SUBR_DOC,
1946 SCM_OPDIRP, SCM_VALIDATE_OPDIR, SCM_WTA, RETURN_SCM_WTA, SCM_CONST_LONG,
1947 SCM_WNA, SCM_FUNC_NAME, SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_COPY,
1948 SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_DEF_COPY, SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP, SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP,
1949 SCM_SETAND_CDR, SCM_SETOR_CDR, SCM_SETAND_CAR, SCM_SETOR_CAR
1951 Use SCM_ASSERT_RANGE or SCM_VALIDATE_XXX_RANGE instead of SCM_OUTOFRANGE.
1952 Use scm_memory_error instead of SCM_NALLOC.
1953 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP.
1954 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR.
1955 Use SCM_FREE_CELL_P instead of SCM_FREEP/SCM_NFREEP
1956 Use a type specific accessor macro instead of SCM_CHARS/SCM_UCHARS.
1957 Use a type specific accessor instead of SCM(_|_RO|_HUGE_)LENGTH.
1958 Use SCM_VALIDATE_(SYMBOL|STRING) instead of SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING.
1959 Use SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
1960 Use SCM_STRINGP or SCM_SYMBOLP instead of SCM_ROSTRINGP.
1961 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_RWSTRINGP.
1962 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING.
1963 Use SCM_STRING_CHARS instead of SCM_ROCHARS.
1964 Use SCM_STRING_UCHARS instead of SCM_ROUCHARS.
1965 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETLENGTH.
1966 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
1967 Use a type specific length macro instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
1968 Use SCM_GCMARKP instead of SCM_GC8MARKP.
1969 Use SCM_SETGCMARK instead of SCM_SETGC8MARK.
1970 Use SCM_CLRGCMARK instead of SCM_CLRGC8MARK.
1971 Use SCM_TYP16 instead of SCM_GCTYP16.
1972 Use SCM_CDR instead of SCM_GCCDR.
1973 Use SCM_DIR_OPEN_P instead of SCM_OPDIRP.
1974 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of SCM_WTA.
1975 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of RETURN_SCM_WTA.
1976 Use SCM_VCELL_INIT instead of SCM_CONST_LONG.
1977 Use SCM_WRONG_NUM_ARGS instead of SCM_WNA.
1978 Use SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP.
1979 Use !SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP.
1981 ** Removed function: scm_struct_init
1983 ** Removed variable: scm_symhash_dim
1985 ** Renamed function: scm_make_cont has been replaced by
1986 scm_make_continuation, which has a different interface.
1988 ** Deprecated function: scm_call_catching_errors
1990 Use scm_catch or scm_lazy_catch from throw.[ch] instead.
1992 ** Deprecated function: scm_strhash
1994 Use scm_string_hash instead.
1996 ** Deprecated function: scm_vector_set_length_x
1998 Instead, create a fresh vector of the desired size and copy the contents.
2000 ** scm_gensym has changed prototype
2002 scm_gensym now only takes one argument.
2004 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc7_ssymbol, scm_tc7_msymbol, scm_tcs_symbols,
2007 There is now only a single symbol type scm_tc7_symbol.
2008 The tag scm_tc7_lvector was not used anyway.
2010 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe, scm_set_smob_mfpe.
2012 Use scm_make_smob_type and scm_set_smob_XXX instead.
2014 ** New function scm_set_smob_apply.
2016 This can be used to set an apply function to a smob type.
2018 ** Deprecated function: scm_strprint_obj
2020 Use scm_object_to_string instead.
2022 ** Deprecated function: scm_wta
2024 Use scm_wrong_type_arg, or another appropriate error signalling function
2027 ** Explicit support for obarrays has been deprecated.
2029 Use `scm_str2symbol' and the generic hashtable functions instead.
2031 ** The concept of `vcells' has been deprecated.
2033 The data type `variable' is now used exclusively. `Vcells' have been
2034 a low-level concept so you are likely not affected by this change.
2036 *** Deprecated functions: scm_sym2vcell, scm_sysintern,
2037 scm_sysintern0, scm_symbol_value0, scm_intern, scm_intern0.
2039 Use scm_c_define or scm_c_lookup instead, as appropriate.
2041 *** New functions: scm_c_module_lookup, scm_c_lookup,
2042 scm_c_module_define, scm_c_define, scm_module_lookup, scm_lookup,
2043 scm_module_define, scm_define.
2045 These functions work with variables instead of with vcells.
2047 ** New functions for creating and defining `subr's and `gsubr's.
2049 The new functions more clearly distinguish between creating a subr (or
2050 gsubr) object and adding it to the current module.
2052 These new functions are available: scm_c_make_subr, scm_c_define_subr,
2053 scm_c_make_subr_with_generic, scm_c_define_subr_with_generic,
2054 scm_c_make_gsubr, scm_c_define_gsubr, scm_c_make_gsubr_with_generic,
2055 scm_c_define_gsubr_with_generic.
2057 ** Deprecated functions: scm_make_subr, scm_make_subr_opt,
2058 scm_make_subr_with_generic, scm_make_gsubr,
2059 scm_make_gsubr_with_generic.
2061 Use the new ones from above instead.
2063 ** C interface to the module system has changed.
2065 While we suggest that you avoid as many explicit module system
2066 operations from C as possible for the time being, the C interface has
2067 been made more similar to the high-level Scheme module system.
2069 *** New functions: scm_c_define_module, scm_c_use_module,
2070 scm_c_export, scm_c_resolve_module.
2072 They mostly work like their Scheme namesakes. scm_c_define_module
2073 takes a function that is called a context where the new module is
2076 *** Deprecated functions: scm_the_root_module, scm_make_module,
2077 scm_ensure_user_module, scm_load_scheme_module.
2079 Use the new functions instead.
2081 ** Renamed function: scm_internal_with_fluids becomes
2084 scm_internal_with_fluids is available as a deprecated function.
2086 ** New function: scm_c_with_fluid.
2088 Just like scm_c_with_fluids, but takes one fluid and one value instead
2091 ** Deprecated typedefs: long_long, ulong_long.
2093 They are of questionable utility and they pollute the global
2096 ** Deprecated typedef: scm_sizet
2098 It is of questionable utility now that Guile requires ANSI C, and is
2101 ** Deprecated typedefs: scm_port_rw_active, scm_port,
2102 scm_ptob_descriptor, scm_debug_info, scm_debug_frame, scm_fport,
2103 scm_option, scm_rstate, scm_rng, scm_array, scm_array_dim.
2105 Made more compliant with the naming policy by adding a _t at the end.
2107 ** Deprecated functions: scm_mkbig, scm_big2num, scm_adjbig,
2108 scm_normbig, scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl
2110 With the exception of the mysterious scm_2ulong2big, they are still
2111 available under new names (scm_i_mkbig etc). These functions are not
2112 intended to be used in user code. You should avoid dealing with
2113 bignums directly, and should deal with numbers in general (which can
2116 ** Change in behavior: scm_num2long, scm_num2ulong
2118 The scm_num2[u]long functions don't any longer accept an inexact
2119 argument. This change in behavior is motivated by concordance with
2120 R5RS: It is more common that a primitive doesn't want to accept an
2121 inexact for an exact.
2123 ** New functions: scm_short2num, scm_ushort2num, scm_int2num,
2124 scm_uint2num, scm_size2num, scm_ptrdiff2num, scm_num2short,
2125 scm_num2ushort, scm_num2int, scm_num2uint, scm_num2ptrdiff,
2128 These are conversion functions between the various ANSI C integral
2129 types and Scheme numbers. NOTE: The scm_num2xxx functions don't
2130 accept an inexact argument.
2132 ** New functions: scm_float2num, scm_double2num,
2133 scm_num2float, scm_num2double.
2135 These are conversion functions between the two ANSI C float types and
2138 ** New number validation macros:
2139 SCM_NUM2{SIZE,PTRDIFF,SHORT,USHORT,INT,UINT}[_DEF]
2143 ** New functions: scm_gc_protect_object, scm_gc_unprotect_object
2145 These are just nicer-named old scm_protect_object and
2146 scm_unprotect_object.
2148 ** Deprecated functions: scm_protect_object, scm_unprotect_object
2150 ** New functions: scm_gc_[un]register_root, scm_gc_[un]register_roots
2152 These functions can be used to register pointers to locations that
2155 ** Deprecated function: scm_create_hook.
2157 Its sins are: misleading name, non-modularity and lack of general
2161 Changes since Guile 1.3.4:
2163 * Changes to the distribution
2165 ** Trees from nightly snapshots and CVS now require you to run autogen.sh.
2167 We've changed the way we handle generated files in the Guile source
2168 repository. As a result, the procedure for building trees obtained
2169 from the nightly FTP snapshots or via CVS has changed:
2170 - You must have appropriate versions of autoconf, automake, and
2171 libtool installed on your system. See README for info on how to
2172 obtain these programs.
2173 - Before configuring the tree, you must first run the script
2174 `autogen.sh' at the top of the source tree.
2176 The Guile repository used to contain not only source files, written by
2177 humans, but also some generated files, like configure scripts and
2178 Makefile.in files. Even though the contents of these files could be
2179 derived mechanically from other files present, we thought it would
2180 make the tree easier to build if we checked them into CVS.
2182 However, this approach means that minor differences between
2183 developer's installed tools and habits affected the whole team.
2184 So we have removed the generated files from the repository, and
2185 added the autogen.sh script, which will reconstruct them
2189 ** configure now has experimental options to remove support for certain
2192 --disable-arrays omit array and uniform array support
2193 --disable-posix omit posix interfaces
2194 --disable-networking omit networking interfaces
2195 --disable-regex omit regular expression interfaces
2197 These are likely to become separate modules some day.
2199 ** New configure option --enable-debug-freelist
2201 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
2202 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
2204 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
2205 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
2207 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
2208 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
2210 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
2211 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can
2212 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
2213 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
2215 ** New configure option --enable-debug-malloc
2217 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
2221 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
2222 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
2224 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
2226 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
2227 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
2229 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
2230 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
2231 number of objects of that kind.
2233 ** All includes are now referenced relative to the root directory
2235 Since some users have had problems with mixups between Guile and
2236 system headers, we have decided to always refer to Guile headers via
2237 their parent directories. This essentially creates a "private name
2238 space" for Guile headers. This means that the compiler only is given
2239 -I options for the root build and root source directory.
2241 ** Header files kw.h and genio.h have been removed.
2243 ** The module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) has been removed.
2245 ** New module (ice-9 documentation)
2247 Implements the interface to documentation strings associated with
2250 ** New module (ice-9 time)
2252 Provides a macro `time', which displays execution time of a given form.
2254 ** New module (ice-9 history)
2256 Loading this module enables value history in the repl.
2258 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2260 ** New command line option --debug
2262 Start Guile with debugging evaluator and backtraces enabled.
2264 This is useful when debugging your .guile init file or scripts.
2266 ** New help facility
2268 Usage: (help NAME) gives documentation about objects named NAME (a symbol)
2269 (help REGEXP) ditto for objects with names matching REGEXP (a string)
2270 (help 'NAME) gives documentation for NAME, even if it is not an object
2271 (help ,EXPR) gives documentation for object returned by EXPR
2272 (help (my module)) gives module commentary for `(my module)'
2273 (help) gives this text
2275 `help' searches among bindings exported from loaded modules, while
2276 `apropos' searches among bindings visible from the "current" module.
2278 Examples: (help help)
2280 (help "output-string")
2282 ** `help' and `apropos' now prints full module names
2284 ** Dynamic linking now uses libltdl from the libtool package.
2286 The old system dependent code for doing dynamic linking has been
2287 replaced with calls to the libltdl functions which do all the hairy
2290 The major improvement is that you can now directly pass libtool
2291 library names like "libfoo.la" to `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-link'
2292 will be able to do the best shared library job you can get, via
2295 The way dynamic libraries are found has changed and is not really
2296 portable across platforms, probably. It is therefore recommended to
2297 use absolute filenames when possible.
2299 If you pass a filename without an extension to `dynamic-link', it will
2300 try a few appropriate ones. Thus, the most platform ignorant way is
2301 to specify a name like "libfoo", without any directories and
2304 ** Guile COOP threads are now compatible with LinuxThreads
2306 Previously, COOP threading wasn't possible in applications linked with
2307 Linux POSIX threads due to their use of the stack pointer to find the
2308 thread context. This has now been fixed with a workaround which uses
2309 the pthreads to allocate the stack.
2311 ** New primitives: `pkgdata-dir', `site-dir', `library-dir'
2313 ** Positions of erring expression in scripts
2315 With version 1.3.4, the location of the erring expression in Guile
2316 scipts is no longer automatically reported. (This should have been
2317 documented before the 1.3.4 release.)
2319 You can get this information by enabling recording of positions of
2320 source expressions and running the debugging evaluator. Put this at
2321 the top of your script (or in your "site" file):
2323 (read-enable 'positions)
2324 (debug-enable 'debug)
2326 ** Backtraces in scripts
2328 It is now possible to get backtraces in scripts.
2332 (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
2334 at the top of the script.
2336 (The first options enables the debugging evaluator.
2337 The second enables backtraces.)
2339 ** Part of module system symbol lookup now implemented in C
2341 The eval closure of most modules is now implemented in C. Since this
2342 was one of the bottlenecks for loading speed, Guile now loads code
2343 substantially faster than before.
2345 ** Attempting to get the value of an unbound variable now produces
2346 an exception with a key of 'unbound-variable instead of 'misc-error.
2348 ** The initial default output port is now unbuffered if it's using a
2349 tty device. Previously in this situation it was line-buffered.
2351 ** New hook: after-gc-hook
2353 after-gc-hook takes over the role of gc-thunk. This hook is run at
2354 the first SCM_TICK after a GC. (Thus, the code is run at the same
2355 point during evaluation as signal handlers.)
2357 Note that this hook should be used only for diagnostic and debugging
2358 purposes. It is not certain that it will continue to be well-defined
2359 when this hook is run in the future.
2361 C programmers: Note the new C level hooks scm_before_gc_c_hook,
2362 scm_before_sweep_c_hook, scm_after_gc_c_hook.
2364 ** Improvements to garbage collector
2366 Guile 1.4 has a new policy for triggering heap allocation and
2367 determining the sizes of heap segments. It fixes a number of problems
2370 1. The new policy can handle two separate pools of cells
2371 (2-word/4-word) better. (The old policy would run wild, allocating
2372 more and more memory for certain programs.)
2374 2. The old code would sometimes allocate far too much heap so that the
2375 Guile process became gigantic. The new code avoids this.
2377 3. The old code would sometimes allocate too little so that few cells
2378 were freed at GC so that, in turn, too much time was spent in GC.
2380 4. The old code would often trigger heap allocation several times in a
2381 row. (The new scheme predicts how large the segments needs to be
2382 in order not to need further allocation.)
2384 All in all, the new GC policy will make larger applications more
2387 The new GC scheme also is prepared for POSIX threading. Threads can
2388 allocate private pools of cells ("clusters") with just a single
2389 function call. Allocation of single cells from such a cluster can
2390 then proceed without any need of inter-thread synchronization.
2392 ** New environment variables controlling GC parameters
2394 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE Maximal segment size
2397 Allocation of 2-word cell heaps:
2399 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1 Size of initial heap segment in bytes
2402 GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1 Minimum number of freed cells at each
2403 GC in percent of total heap size
2406 Allocation of 4-word cell heaps
2407 (used for real numbers and misc other objects):
2409 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2
2411 (See entry "Way for application to customize GC parameters" under
2412 section "Changes to the scm_ interface" below.)
2414 ** Guile now implements reals using 4-word cells
2416 This speeds up computation with reals. (They were earlier allocated
2417 with `malloc'.) There is still some room for optimizations, however.
2419 ** Some further steps toward POSIX thread support have been taken
2421 *** Guile's critical sections (SCM_DEFER/ALLOW_INTS)
2422 don't have much effect any longer, and many of them will be removed in
2426 are only handled at the top of the evaluator loop, immediately after
2427 I/O, and in scm_equalp.
2429 *** The GC can allocate thread private pools of pairs.
2431 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2433 ** close-input-port and close-output-port are now R5RS
2435 These procedures have been turned into primitives and have R5RS behaviour.
2437 ** New procedure: simple-format PORT MESSAGE ARG1 ...
2439 (ice-9 boot) makes `format' an alias for `simple-format' until possibly
2440 extended by the more sophisticated version in (ice-9 format)
2442 (simple-format port message . args)
2443 Write MESSAGE to DESTINATION, defaulting to `current-output-port'.
2444 MESSAGE can contain ~A (was %s) and ~S (was %S) escapes. When printed,
2445 the escapes are replaced with corresponding members of ARGS:
2446 ~A formats using `display' and ~S formats using `write'.
2447 If DESTINATION is #t, then use the `current-output-port',
2448 if DESTINATION is #f, then return a string containing the formatted text.
2449 Does not add a trailing newline."
2451 ** string-ref: the second argument is no longer optional.
2453 ** string, list->string: no longer accept strings in their arguments,
2454 only characters, for compatibility with R5RS.
2456 ** New procedure: port-closed? PORT
2457 Returns #t if PORT is closed or #f if it is open.
2459 ** Deprecated: list*
2461 The list* functionality is now provided by cons* (SRFI-1 compliant)
2463 ** New procedure: cons* ARG1 ARG2 ... ARGn
2465 Like `list', but the last arg provides the tail of the constructed list,
2466 returning (cons ARG1 (cons ARG2 (cons ... ARGn))).
2468 Requires at least one argument. If given one argument, that argument
2469 is returned as result.
2471 This function is called `list*' in some other Schemes and in Common LISP.
2473 ** Removed deprecated: serial-map, serial-array-copy!, serial-array-map!
2475 ** New procedure: object-documentation OBJECT
2477 Returns the documentation string associated with OBJECT. The
2478 procedure uses a caching mechanism so that subsequent lookups are
2481 Exported by (ice-9 documentation).
2483 ** module-name now returns full names of modules
2485 Previously, only the last part of the name was returned (`session' for
2486 `(ice-9 session)'). Ex: `(ice-9 session)'.
2488 * Changes to the gh_ interface
2490 ** Deprecated: gh_int2scmb
2492 Use gh_bool2scm instead.
2494 * Changes to the scm_ interface
2496 ** Guile primitives now carry docstrings!
2498 Thanks to Greg Badros!
2500 ** Guile primitives are defined in a new way: SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
2502 Now Guile primitives are defined using the SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
2503 macros and must contain a docstring that is extracted into foo.doc using a new
2504 guile-doc-snarf script (that uses guile-doc-snarf.awk).
2506 However, a major overhaul of these macros is scheduled for the next release of
2509 ** Guile primitives use a new technique for validation of arguments
2511 SCM_VALIDATE_* macros are defined to ease the redundancy and improve
2512 the readability of argument checking.
2514 ** All (nearly?) K&R prototypes for functions replaced with ANSI C equivalents.
2516 ** New macros: SCM_PACK, SCM_UNPACK
2518 Compose/decompose an SCM value.
2520 The SCM type is now treated as an abstract data type and may be defined as a
2521 long, a void* or as a struct, depending on the architecture and compile time
2522 options. This makes it easier to find several types of bugs, for example when
2523 SCM values are treated as integers without conversion. Values of the SCM type
2524 should be treated as "atomic" values. These macros are used when
2525 composing/decomposing an SCM value, either because you want to access
2526 individual bits, or because you want to treat it as an integer value.
2528 E.g., in order to set bit 7 in an SCM value x, use the expression
2530 SCM_PACK (SCM_UNPACK (x) | 0x80)
2532 ** The name property of hooks is deprecated.
2533 Thus, the use of SCM_HOOK_NAME and scm_make_hook_with_name is deprecated.
2535 You can emulate this feature by using object properties.
2537 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP, SCM_CRDY, SCM_ICHRP,
2538 SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR, SCM_SETJMPBUF, SCM_NSTRINGP, SCM_NRWSTRINGP,
2541 These macros will be removed in a future release of Guile.
2543 ** The following types, functions and macros from numbers.h are deprecated:
2544 scm_dblproc, SCM_UNEGFIXABLE, SCM_FLOBUFLEN, SCM_INEXP, SCM_CPLXP, SCM_REAL,
2545 SCM_IMAG, SCM_REALPART, scm_makdbl, SCM_SINGP, SCM_NUM2DBL, SCM_NO_BIGDIG
2547 ** Port internals: the rw_random variable in the scm_port structure
2548 must be set to non-zero in any random access port. In recent Guile
2549 releases it was only set for bidirectional random-access ports.
2551 ** Port internals: the seek ptob procedure is now responsible for
2552 resetting the buffers if required. The change was made so that in the
2553 special case of reading the current position (i.e., seek p 0 SEEK_CUR)
2554 the fport and strport ptobs can avoid resetting the buffers,
2555 in particular to avoid discarding unread chars. An existing port
2556 type can be fixed by adding something like the following to the
2557 beginning of the ptob seek procedure:
2559 if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_READ)
2560 scm_end_input (object);
2561 else if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_WRITE)
2562 ptob->flush (object);
2564 although to actually avoid resetting the buffers and discard unread
2565 chars requires further hacking that depends on the characteristics
2568 ** Deprecated functions: scm_fseek, scm_tag
2570 These functions are no longer used and will be removed in a future version.
2572 ** The scm_sysmissing procedure is no longer used in libguile.
2573 Unless it turns out to be unexpectedly useful to somebody, it will be
2574 removed in a future version.
2576 ** The format of error message strings has changed
2578 The two C procedures: scm_display_error and scm_error, as well as the
2579 primitive `scm-error', now use scm_simple_format to do their work.
2580 This means that the message strings of all code must be updated to use
2581 ~A where %s was used before, and ~S where %S was used before.
2583 During the period when there still are a lot of old Guiles out there,
2584 you might want to support both old and new versions of Guile.
2586 There are basically two methods to achieve this. Both methods use
2589 AC_CHECK_FUNCS(scm_simple_format)
2591 in your configure.in.
2593 Method 1: Use the string concatenation features of ANSI C's
2598 #ifdef HAVE_SCM_SIMPLE_FORMAT
2604 Then represent each of your error messages using a preprocessor macro:
2606 #define E_SPIDER_ERROR "There's a spider in your " ## FMT_S ## "!!!"
2610 (define fmt-s (if (defined? 'simple-format) "~S" "%S"))
2611 (define make-message string-append)
2613 (define e-spider-error (make-message "There's a spider in your " fmt-s "!!!"))
2615 Method 2: Use the oldfmt function found in doc/oldfmt.c.
2619 scm_misc_error ("picnic", scm_c_oldfmt0 ("There's a spider in your ~S!!!"),
2624 (scm-error 'misc-error "picnic" (oldfmt "There's a spider in your ~S!!!")
2628 ** Deprecated: coop_mutex_init, coop_condition_variable_init
2630 Don't use the functions coop_mutex_init and
2631 coop_condition_variable_init. They will change.
2633 Use scm_mutex_init and scm_cond_init instead.
2635 ** New function: int scm_cond_timedwait (scm_cond_t *COND, scm_mutex_t *MUTEX, const struct timespec *ABSTIME)
2636 `scm_cond_timedwait' atomically unlocks MUTEX and waits on
2637 COND, as `scm_cond_wait' does, but it also bounds the duration
2638 of the wait. If COND has not been signaled before time ABSTIME,
2639 the mutex MUTEX is re-acquired and `scm_cond_timedwait'
2640 returns the error code `ETIMEDOUT'.
2642 The ABSTIME parameter specifies an absolute time, with the same
2643 origin as `time' and `gettimeofday': an ABSTIME of 0 corresponds
2644 to 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970.
2646 ** New function: scm_cond_broadcast (scm_cond_t *COND)
2647 `scm_cond_broadcast' restarts all the threads that are waiting
2648 on the condition variable COND. Nothing happens if no threads are
2651 ** New function: scm_key_create (scm_key_t *KEY, void (*destr_function) (void *))
2652 `scm_key_create' allocates a new TSD key. The key is stored in
2653 the location pointed to by KEY. There is no limit on the number
2654 of keys allocated at a given time. The value initially associated
2655 with the returned key is `NULL' in all currently executing threads.
2657 The DESTR_FUNCTION argument, if not `NULL', specifies a destructor
2658 function associated with the key. When a thread terminates,
2659 DESTR_FUNCTION is called on the value associated with the key in
2660 that thread. The DESTR_FUNCTION is not called if a key is deleted
2661 with `scm_key_delete' or a value is changed with
2662 `scm_setspecific'. The order in which destructor functions are
2663 called at thread termination time is unspecified.
2665 Destructors are not yet implemented.
2667 ** New function: scm_setspecific (scm_key_t KEY, const void *POINTER)
2668 `scm_setspecific' changes the value associated with KEY in the
2669 calling thread, storing the given POINTER instead.
2671 ** New function: scm_getspecific (scm_key_t KEY)
2672 `scm_getspecific' returns the value currently associated with
2673 KEY in the calling thread.
2675 ** New function: scm_key_delete (scm_key_t KEY)
2676 `scm_key_delete' deallocates a TSD key. It does not check
2677 whether non-`NULL' values are associated with that key in the
2678 currently executing threads, nor call the destructor function
2679 associated with the key.
2681 ** New function: scm_c_hook_init (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *HOOK_DATA, scm_c_hook_type_t TYPE)
2683 Initialize a C level hook HOOK with associated HOOK_DATA and type
2684 TYPE. (See scm_c_hook_run ().)
2686 ** New function: scm_c_hook_add (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA, int APPENDP)
2688 Add hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA to HOOK. If APPENDP
2689 is true, add it last, otherwise first. The same FUNC can be added
2690 multiple times if FUNC_DATA differ and vice versa.
2692 ** New function: scm_c_hook_remove (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA)
2694 Remove hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA from HOOK. A
2695 function is only removed if both FUNC and FUNC_DATA matches.
2697 ** New function: void *scm_c_hook_run (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *DATA)
2699 Run hook HOOK passing DATA to the hook functions.
2701 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_NORMAL, all hook functions are run. The value
2702 returned is undefined.
2704 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_OR, hook functions are run until a function
2705 returns a non-NULL value. This value is returned as the result of
2706 scm_c_hook_run. If all functions return NULL, NULL is returned.
2708 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_AND, hook functions are run until a function
2709 returns a NULL value, and NULL is returned. If all functions returns
2710 a non-NULL value, the last value is returned.
2712 ** New C level GC hooks
2714 Five new C level hooks has been added to the garbage collector.
2716 scm_before_gc_c_hook
2719 are run before locking and after unlocking the heap. The system is
2720 thus in a mode where evaluation can take place. (Except that
2721 scm_before_gc_c_hook must not allocate new cells.)
2723 scm_before_mark_c_hook
2724 scm_before_sweep_c_hook
2725 scm_after_sweep_c_hook
2727 are run when the heap is locked. These are intended for extension of
2728 the GC in a modular fashion. Examples are the weaks and guardians
2731 ** Way for application to customize GC parameters
2733 The application can set up other default values for the GC heap
2734 allocation parameters
2736 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_1, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1,
2737 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2,
2738 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE,
2742 scm_default_init_heap_size_1, scm_default_min_yield_1,
2743 scm_default_init_heap_size_2, scm_default_min_yield_2,
2744 scm_default_max_segment_size
2746 respectively before callong scm_boot_guile.
2748 (See entry "New environment variables ..." in section
2749 "Changes to the stand-alone interpreter" above.)
2751 ** scm_protect_object/scm_unprotect_object now nest
2753 This means that you can call scm_protect_object multiple times on an
2754 object and count on the object being protected until
2755 scm_unprotect_object has been call the same number of times.
2757 The functions also have better time complexity.
2759 Still, it is usually possible to structure the application in a way
2760 that you don't need to use these functions. For example, if you use a
2761 protected standard Guile list to keep track of live objects rather
2762 than some custom data type, objects will die a natural death when they
2763 are no longer needed.
2765 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc16_flo, scm_tc_flo, scm_tc_dblr, scm_tc_dblc
2767 Guile does not provide the float representation for inexact real numbers any
2768 more. Now, only doubles are used to represent inexact real numbers. Further,
2769 the tag names scm_tc_dblr and scm_tc_dblc have been changed to scm_tc16_real
2770 and scm_tc16_complex, respectively.
2772 ** Removed deprecated type scm_smobfuns
2774 ** Removed deprecated function scm_newsmob
2776 ** Warning: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe might become deprecated in a future release
2778 There is an ongoing discussion among the developers whether to
2779 deprecate `scm_make_smob_type_mfpe' or not. Please use the current
2780 standard interface (scm_make_smob_type, scm_set_smob_XXX) in new code
2781 until this issue has been settled.
2783 ** Removed deprecated type tag scm_tc16_kw
2785 ** Added type tag scm_tc16_keyword
2787 (This was introduced already in release 1.3.4 but was not documented
2790 ** gdb_print now prints "*** Guile not initialized ***" until Guile initialized
2792 * Changes to system call interfaces:
2794 ** The "select" procedure now tests port buffers for the ability to
2795 provide input or accept output. Previously only the underlying file
2796 descriptors were checked.
2798 ** New variable PIPE_BUF: the maximum number of bytes that can be
2799 atomically written to a pipe.
2801 ** If a facility is not available on the system when Guile is
2802 compiled, the corresponding primitive procedure will not be defined.
2803 Previously it would have been defined but would throw a system-error
2804 exception if called. Exception handlers which catch this case may
2805 need minor modification: an error will be thrown with key
2806 'unbound-variable instead of 'system-error. Alternatively it's
2807 now possible to use `defined?' to check whether the facility is
2810 ** Procedures which depend on the timezone should now give the correct
2811 result on systems which cache the TZ environment variable, even if TZ
2812 is changed without calling tzset.
2814 * Changes to the networking interfaces:
2816 ** New functions: htons, ntohs, htonl, ntohl: for converting short and
2817 long integers between network and host format. For now, it's not
2818 particularly convenient to do this kind of thing, but consider:
2820 (define write-network-long
2821 (lambda (value port)
2822 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
2823 (uniform-vector-set! v 0 (htonl value))
2824 (uniform-vector-write v port))))
2826 (define read-network-long
2828 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
2829 (uniform-vector-read! v port)
2830 (ntohl (uniform-vector-ref v 0)))))
2832 ** If inet-aton fails, it now throws an error with key 'misc-error
2833 instead of 'system-error, since errno is not relevant.
2835 ** Certain gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr failures now throw errors with
2836 specific keys instead of 'system-error. The latter is inappropriate
2837 since errno will not have been set. The keys are:
2838 'host-not-found, 'try-again, 'no-recovery and 'no-data.
2840 ** sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent: now take an
2841 optional argument STAYOPEN, which specifies whether the database
2842 remains open after a database entry is accessed randomly (e.g., using
2843 gethostbyname for the hosts database.) The default is #f. Previously
2847 Changes since Guile 1.3.2:
2849 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2853 An initial version of the Guile debugger written by Chris Hanson has
2854 been added. The debugger is still under development but is included
2855 in the distribution anyway since it is already quite useful.
2861 after an error to enter the debugger. Type `help' inside the debugger
2862 for a description of available commands.
2864 If you prefer to have stack frames numbered and printed in
2865 anti-chronological order and prefer up in the stack to be down on the
2866 screen as is the case in gdb, you can put
2868 (debug-enable 'backwards)
2870 in your .guile startup file. (However, this means that Guile can't
2871 use indentation to indicate stack level.)
2873 The debugger is autoloaded into Guile at the first use.
2875 ** Further enhancements to backtraces
2877 There is a new debug option `width' which controls the maximum width
2878 on the screen of printed stack frames. Fancy printing parameters
2879 ("level" and "length" as in Common LISP) are adaptively adjusted for
2880 each stack frame to give maximum information while still fitting
2881 within the bounds. If the stack frame can't be made to fit by
2882 adjusting parameters, it is simply cut off at the end. This is marked
2885 ** Some modules are now only loaded when the repl is started
2887 The modules (ice-9 debug), (ice-9 session), (ice-9 threads) and (ice-9
2888 regex) are now loaded into (guile-user) only if the repl has been
2889 started. The effect is that the startup time for scripts has been
2890 reduced to 30% of what it was previously.
2892 Correctly written scripts load the modules they require at the top of
2893 the file and should not be affected by this change.
2895 ** Hooks are now represented as smobs
2897 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2899 ** Readline support has changed again.
2901 The old (readline-activator) module is gone. Use (ice-9 readline)
2902 instead, which now contains all readline functionality. So the code
2903 to activate readline is now
2905 (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
2908 This should work at any time, including from the guile prompt.
2910 To avoid confusion about the terms of Guile's license, please only
2911 enable readline for your personal use; please don't make it the
2912 default for others. Here is why we make this rather odd-sounding
2915 Guile is normally licensed under a weakened form of the GNU General
2916 Public License, which allows you to link code with Guile without
2917 placing that code under the GPL. This exception is important to some
2920 However, since readline is distributed under the GNU General Public
2921 License, when you link Guile with readline, either statically or
2922 dynamically, you effectively change Guile's license to the strict GPL.
2923 Whenever you link any strictly GPL'd code into Guile, uses of Guile
2924 which are normally permitted become forbidden. This is a rather
2925 non-obvious consequence of the licensing terms.
2927 So, to make sure things remain clear, please let people choose for
2928 themselves whether to link GPL'd libraries like readline with Guile.
2930 ** regexp-substitute/global has changed slightly, but incompatibly.
2932 If you include a function in the item list, the string of the match
2933 object it receives is the same string passed to
2934 regexp-substitute/global, not some suffix of that string.
2935 Correspondingly, the match's positions are relative to the entire
2936 string, not the suffix.
2938 If the regexp can match the empty string, the way matches are chosen
2939 from the string has changed. regexp-substitute/global recognizes the
2940 same set of matches that list-matches does; see below.
2942 ** New function: list-matches REGEXP STRING [FLAGS]
2944 Return a list of match objects, one for every non-overlapping, maximal
2945 match of REGEXP in STRING. The matches appear in left-to-right order.
2946 list-matches only reports matches of the empty string if there are no
2947 other matches which begin on, end at, or include the empty match's
2950 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
2952 ** New function: fold-matches REGEXP STRING INIT PROC [FLAGS]
2954 For each match of REGEXP in STRING, apply PROC to the match object,
2955 and the last value PROC returned, or INIT for the first call. Return
2956 the last value returned by PROC. We apply PROC to the matches as they
2957 appear from left to right.
2959 This function recognizes matches according to the same criteria as
2962 Thus, you could define list-matches like this:
2964 (define (list-matches regexp string . flags)
2965 (reverse! (apply fold-matches regexp string '() cons flags)))
2967 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
2971 *** New function: hook? OBJ
2973 Return #t if OBJ is a hook, otherwise #f.
2975 *** New function: make-hook-with-name NAME [ARITY]
2977 Return a hook with name NAME and arity ARITY. The default value for
2978 ARITY is 0. The only effect of NAME is that it will appear when the
2979 hook object is printed to ease debugging.
2981 *** New function: hook-empty? HOOK
2983 Return #t if HOOK doesn't contain any procedures, otherwise #f.
2985 *** New function: hook->list HOOK
2987 Return a list of the procedures that are called when run-hook is
2990 ** `map' signals an error if its argument lists are not all the same length.
2992 This is the behavior required by R5RS, so this change is really a bug
2993 fix. But it seems to affect a lot of people's code, so we're
2994 mentioning it here anyway.
2996 ** Print-state handling has been made more transparent
2998 Under certain circumstances, ports are represented as a port with an
2999 associated print state. Earlier, this pair was represented as a pair
3000 (see "Some magic has been added to the printer" below). It is now
3001 indistinguishable (almost; see `get-print-state') from a port on the
3004 *** New function: port-with-print-state OUTPUT-PORT PRINT-STATE
3006 Return a new port with the associated print state PRINT-STATE.
3008 *** New function: get-print-state OUTPUT-PORT
3010 Return the print state associated with this port if it exists,
3011 otherwise return #f.
3013 *** New function: directory-stream? OBJECT
3015 Returns true iff OBJECT is a directory stream --- the sort of object
3016 returned by `opendir'.
3018 ** New function: using-readline?
3020 Return #t if readline is in use in the current repl.
3022 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
3024 Structs will be replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into Guile
3025 and use GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
3027 * Changes to the scm_ interface
3029 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
3031 The entire current struct interface (struct.c, struct.h) will be
3032 replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into libguile and use
3033 GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
3035 ** The internal representation of subr's has changed
3037 Instead of giving a hint to the subr name, the CAR field of the subr
3038 now contains an index to a subr entry in scm_subr_table.
3040 *** New variable: scm_subr_table
3042 An array of subr entries. A subr entry contains the name, properties
3043 and documentation associated with the subr. The properties and
3044 documentation slots are not yet used.
3046 ** A new scheme for "forwarding" calls to a builtin to a generic function
3048 It is now possible to extend the functionality of some Guile
3049 primitives by letting them defer a call to a GOOPS generic function on
3050 argument mismatch. This means that there is no loss of efficiency in
3055 (use-modules (oop goops)) ; Must be GOOPS version 0.2.
3056 (define-method + ((x <string>) (y <string>))
3057 (string-append x y))
3059 + will still be as efficient as usual in numerical calculations, but
3060 can also be used for concatenating strings.
3062 Who will be the first one to extend Guile's numerical tower to
3063 rationals? :) [OK, there a few other things to fix before this can
3064 be made in a clean way.]
3066 *** New snarf macros for defining primitives: SCM_GPROC, SCM_GPROC1
3068 New macro: SCM_GPROC (CNAME, SNAME, REQ, OPT, VAR, CFUNC, GENERIC)
3070 New macro: SCM_GPROC1 (CNAME, SNAME, TYPE, CFUNC, GENERIC)
3072 These do the same job as SCM_PROC and SCM_PROC1, but they also define
3073 a variable GENERIC which can be used by the dispatch macros below.
3075 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3077 *** New macros for forwarding control to a generic on arg type error
3079 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_1 (GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
3081 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
3083 These correspond to the scm_wta function call, and have the same
3084 behaviour until the user has called the GOOPS primitive
3085 `enable-primitive-generic!'. After that, these macros will apply the
3086 generic function GENERIC to the argument(s) instead of calling
3089 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3091 *** New macros for argument testing with generic dispatch
3093 New macro: SCM_GASSERT1 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
3095 New macro: SCM_GASSERT2 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
3097 These correspond to the SCM_ASSERT macro, but will defer control to
3098 GENERIC on error after `enable-primitive-generic!' has been called.
3100 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3102 ** New function: SCM scm_eval_body (SCM body, SCM env)
3104 Evaluates the body of a special form.
3106 ** The internal representation of struct's has changed
3108 Previously, four slots were allocated for the procedure(s) of entities
3109 and operators. The motivation for this representation had to do with
3110 the structure of the evaluator, the wish to support tail-recursive
3111 generic functions, and efficiency. Since the generic function
3112 dispatch mechanism has changed, there is no longer a need for such an
3113 expensive representation, and the representation has been simplified.
3115 This should not make any difference for most users.
3117 ** GOOPS support has been cleaned up.
3119 Some code has been moved from eval.c to objects.c and code in both of
3120 these compilation units has been cleaned up and better structured.
3122 *** New functions for applying generic functions
3124 New function: SCM scm_apply_generic (GENERIC, ARGS)
3125 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_0 (GENERIC)
3126 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_1 (GENERIC, ARG1)
3127 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2)
3128 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_3 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, ARG3)
3130 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_named_hook
3132 It is now replaced by:
3134 ** New function: SCM scm_create_hook (const char *name, int arity)
3136 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
3137 binds a variable named NAME to it.
3139 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
3141 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module.
3142 This might change when we get the new module system.
3144 [The behaviour is identical to scm_make_named_hook.]
3148 Changes since Guile 1.3:
3150 * Changes to mailing lists
3152 ** Some of the Guile mailing lists have moved to sourceware.cygnus.com.
3154 See the README file to find current addresses for all the Guile
3157 * Changes to the distribution
3159 ** Readline support is no longer included with Guile by default.
3161 Based on the different license terms of Guile and Readline, we
3162 concluded that Guile should not *by default* cause the linking of
3163 Readline into an application program. Readline support is now offered
3164 as a separate module, which is linked into an application only when
3165 you explicitly specify it.
3167 Although Guile is GNU software, its distribution terms add a special
3168 exception to the usual GNU General Public License (GPL). Guile's
3169 license includes a clause that allows you to link Guile with non-free
3170 programs. We add this exception so as not to put Guile at a
3171 disadvantage vis-a-vis other extensibility packages that support other
3174 In contrast, the GNU Readline library is distributed under the GNU
3175 General Public License pure and simple. This means that you may not
3176 link Readline, even dynamically, into an application unless it is
3177 distributed under a free software license that is compatible the GPL.
3179 Because of this difference in distribution terms, an application that
3180 can use Guile may not be able to use Readline. Now users will be
3181 explicitly offered two independent decisions about the use of these
3184 You can activate the readline support by issuing
3186 (use-modules (readline-activator))
3189 from your ".guile" file, for example.
3191 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3193 ** All builtins now print as primitives.
3194 Previously builtin procedures not belonging to the fundamental subr
3195 types printed as #<compiled closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>.
3196 Now, they print as #<primitive-procedure NAME>.
3198 ** Backtraces slightly more intelligible.
3199 gsubr-apply and macro transformer application frames no longer appear
3202 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3204 ** Guile now correctly handles internal defines by rewriting them into
3205 their equivalent letrec. Previously, internal defines would
3206 incrementally add to the innermost environment, without checking
3207 whether the restrictions specified in RnRS were met. This lead to the
3208 correct behaviour when these restriction actually were met, but didn't
3209 catch all illegal uses. Such an illegal use could lead to crashes of
3210 the Guile interpreter or or other unwanted results. An example of
3211 incorrect internal defines that made Guile behave erratically:
3223 The problem with this example is that the definition of `c' uses the
3224 value of `b' directly. This confuses the meoization machine of Guile
3225 so that the second call of `b' (this time in a larger environment that
3226 also contains bindings for `c' and `d') refers to the binding of `c'
3227 instead of `a'. You could also make Guile crash with a variation on
3232 (define (b flag) (if flag a 1))
3233 (define c (1+ (b flag)))
3241 From now on, Guile will issue an `Unbound variable: b' error message
3246 A hook contains a list of functions which should be called on
3247 particular occasions in an existing program. Hooks are used for
3250 A window manager might have a hook before-window-map-hook. The window
3251 manager uses the function run-hooks to call all functions stored in
3252 before-window-map-hook each time a window is mapped. The user can
3253 store functions in the hook using add-hook!.
3255 In Guile, hooks are first class objects.
3257 *** New function: make-hook [N_ARGS]
3259 Return a hook for hook functions which can take N_ARGS arguments.
3260 The default value for N_ARGS is 0.
3262 (See also scm_make_named_hook below.)
3264 *** New function: add-hook! HOOK PROC [APPEND_P]
3266 Put PROC at the beginning of the list of functions stored in HOOK.
3267 If APPEND_P is supplied, and non-false, put PROC at the end instead.
3269 PROC must be able to take the number of arguments specified when the
3272 If PROC already exists in HOOK, then remove it first.
3274 *** New function: remove-hook! HOOK PROC
3276 Remove PROC from the list of functions in HOOK.
3278 *** New function: reset-hook! HOOK
3280 Clear the list of hook functions stored in HOOK.
3282 *** New function: run-hook HOOK ARG1 ...
3284 Run all hook functions stored in HOOK with arguments ARG1 ... .
3285 The number of arguments supplied must correspond to the number given
3286 when the hook was created.
3288 ** The function `dynamic-link' now takes optional keyword arguments.
3289 The only keyword argument that is currently defined is `:global
3290 BOOL'. With it, you can control whether the shared library will be
3291 linked in global mode or not. In global mode, the symbols from the
3292 linked library can be used to resolve references from other
3293 dynamically linked libraries. In non-global mode, the linked
3294 library is essentially invisible and can only be accessed via
3295 `dynamic-func', etc. The default is now to link in global mode.
3296 Previously, the default has been non-global mode.
3298 The `#:global' keyword is only effective on platforms that support
3299 the dlopen family of functions.
3301 ** New function `provided?'
3303 - Function: provided? FEATURE
3304 Return true iff FEATURE is supported by this installation of
3305 Guile. FEATURE must be a symbol naming a feature; the global
3306 variable `*features*' is a list of available features.
3308 ** Changes to the module (ice-9 expect):
3310 *** The expect-strings macro now matches `$' in a regular expression
3311 only at a line-break or end-of-file by default. Previously it would
3312 match the end of the string accumulated so far. The old behaviour
3313 can be obtained by setting the variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
3316 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
3317 for the regexp-exec flags. If `regexp/noteol' is included, then `$'
3318 in a regular expression will still match before a line-break or
3319 end-of-file. The default is `regexp/noteol'.
3321 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable
3322 `expect-strings-compile-flags' for the flags to be supplied to
3323 `make-regexp'. The default is `regexp/newline', which was previously
3326 *** The expect macro now supplies two arguments to a match procedure:
3327 the current accumulated string and a flag to indicate whether
3328 end-of-file has been reached. Previously only the string was supplied.
3329 If end-of-file is reached, the match procedure will be called an
3330 additional time with the same accumulated string as the previous call
3331 but with the flag set.
3333 ** New module (ice-9 format), implementing the Common Lisp `format' function.
3335 This code, and the documentation for it that appears here, was
3336 borrowed from SLIB, with minor adaptations for Guile.
3338 - Function: format DESTINATION FORMAT-STRING . ARGUMENTS
3339 An almost complete implementation of Common LISP format description
3340 according to the CL reference book `Common LISP' from Guy L.
3341 Steele, Digital Press. Backward compatible to most of the
3342 available Scheme format implementations.
3344 Returns `#t', `#f' or a string; has side effect of printing
3345 according to FORMAT-STRING. If DESTINATION is `#t', the output is
3346 to the current output port and `#t' is returned. If DESTINATION
3347 is `#f', a formatted string is returned as the result of the call.
3348 NEW: If DESTINATION is a string, DESTINATION is regarded as the
3349 format string; FORMAT-STRING is then the first argument and the
3350 output is returned as a string. If DESTINATION is a number, the
3351 output is to the current error port if available by the
3352 implementation. Otherwise DESTINATION must be an output port and
3355 FORMAT-STRING must be a string. In case of a formatting error
3356 format returns `#f' and prints a message on the current output or
3357 error port. Characters are output as if the string were output by
3358 the `display' function with the exception of those prefixed by a
3359 tilde (~). For a detailed description of the FORMAT-STRING syntax
3360 please consult a Common LISP format reference manual. For a test
3361 suite to verify this format implementation load `formatst.scm'.
3362 Please send bug reports to `lutzeb@cs.tu-berlin.de'.
3364 Note: `format' is not reentrant, i.e. only one `format'-call may
3365 be executed at a time.
3368 *** Format Specification (Format version 3.0)
3370 Please consult a Common LISP format reference manual for a detailed
3371 description of the format string syntax. For a demonstration of the
3372 implemented directives see `formatst.scm'.
3374 This implementation supports directive parameters and modifiers (`:'
3375 and `@' characters). Multiple parameters must be separated by a comma
3376 (`,'). Parameters can be numerical parameters (positive or negative),
3377 character parameters (prefixed by a quote character (`''), variable
3378 parameters (`v'), number of rest arguments parameter (`#'), empty and
3379 default parameters. Directive characters are case independent. The
3380 general form of a directive is:
3382 DIRECTIVE ::= ~{DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER,}[:][@]DIRECTIVE-CHARACTER
3384 DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER ::= [ [-|+]{0-9}+ | 'CHARACTER | v | # ]
3386 *** Implemented CL Format Control Directives
3388 Documentation syntax: Uppercase characters represent the
3389 corresponding control directive characters. Lowercase characters
3390 represent control directive parameter descriptions.
3393 Any (print as `display' does).
3397 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARA'
3401 S-expression (print as `write' does).
3405 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARS'
3411 print number sign always.
3414 print comma separated.
3416 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARD'
3422 print number sign always.
3425 print comma separated.
3427 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARX'
3433 print number sign always.
3436 print comma separated.
3438 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARO'
3444 print number sign always.
3447 print comma separated.
3449 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARB'
3454 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARR'
3458 print a number as a Roman numeral.
3461 print a number as an "old fashioned" Roman numeral.
3464 print a number as an ordinal English number.
3467 print a number as a cardinal English number.
3472 prints `y' and `ies'.
3475 as `~P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
3478 as `~@P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
3483 prints a character as the reader can understand it (i.e. `#\'
3487 prints a character as emacs does (eg. `^C' for ASCII 03).
3490 Fixed-format floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN).
3491 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHARF'
3493 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3496 Exponential floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN`E'EE).
3497 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARE'
3499 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3502 General floating-point (prints a flonum either fixed or
3504 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARG'
3506 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3509 Dollars floating-point (prints a flonum in fixed with signs
3511 `~DIGITS,SCALE,WIDTH,PADCHAR$'
3513 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3516 A sign is always printed and appears before the padding.
3519 The sign appears before the padding.
3527 print newline if not at the beginning of the output line.
3529 prints `~&' and then N-1 newlines.
3534 print N page separators.
3544 newline is ignored, white space left.
3547 newline is left, white space ignored.
3552 relative tabulation.
3558 Indirection (expects indirect arguments as a list).
3560 extracts indirect arguments from format arguments.
3563 Case conversion (converts by `string-downcase').
3565 converts by `string-capitalize'.
3568 converts by `string-capitalize-first'.
3571 converts by `string-upcase'.
3574 Argument Jumping (jumps 1 argument forward).
3576 jumps N arguments forward.
3579 jumps 1 argument backward.
3582 jumps N arguments backward.
3585 jumps to the 0th argument.
3588 jumps to the Nth argument (beginning from 0)
3590 `~[STR0~;STR1~;...~;STRN~]'
3591 Conditional Expression (numerical clause conditional).
3593 take argument from N.
3596 true test conditional.
3599 if-else-then conditional.
3605 default clause follows.
3608 Iteration (args come from the next argument (a list)).
3610 at most N iterations.
3613 args from next arg (a list of lists).
3616 args from the rest of arguments.
3619 args from the rest args (lists).
3630 aborts if N <= M <= K
3632 *** Not Implemented CL Format Control Directives
3635 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
3638 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
3644 (sorry I don't understand its semantics completely)
3646 *** Extended, Replaced and Additional Control Directives
3648 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHD'
3649 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHX'
3650 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHO'
3651 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHB'
3652 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHR'
3653 COMMAWIDTH is the number of characters between two comma
3657 print a R4RS complex number as `~F~@Fi' with passed parameters for
3661 Pretty print formatting of an argument for scheme code lists.
3667 Flushes the output if format DESTINATION is a port.
3670 Print a `#\space' character
3672 print N `#\space' characters.
3675 Print a `#\tab' character
3677 print N `#\tab' characters.
3680 Takes N as an integer representation for a character. No arguments
3681 are consumed. N is converted to a character by `integer->char'. N
3682 must be a positive decimal number.
3685 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
3686 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
3687 be processed by `read'.
3690 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
3691 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
3692 be processed by `read'.
3695 Prints information and a copyright notice on the format
3698 prints format version.
3701 may also print number strings, i.e. passing a number as a string
3702 and format it accordingly.
3704 *** Configuration Variables
3706 The format module exports some configuration variables to suit the
3707 systems and users needs. There should be no modification necessary for
3708 the configuration that comes with Guile. Format detects automatically
3709 if the running scheme system implements floating point numbers and
3712 format:symbol-case-conv
3713 Symbols are converted by `symbol->string' so the case type of the
3714 printed symbols is implementation dependent.
3715 `format:symbol-case-conv' is a one arg closure which is either
3716 `#f' (no conversion), `string-upcase', `string-downcase' or
3717 `string-capitalize'. (default `#f')
3719 format:iobj-case-conv
3720 As FORMAT:SYMBOL-CASE-CONV but applies for the representation of
3721 implementation internal objects. (default `#f')
3724 The character prefixing the exponent value in `~E' printing.
3727 *** Compatibility With Other Format Implementations
3733 Downward compatible except for padding support and `~A', `~S',
3734 `~P', `~X' uppercase printing. SLIB format 1.4 uses C-style
3735 `printf' padding support which is completely replaced by the CL
3736 `format' padding style.
3739 Downward compatible except for `~', which is not documented
3740 (ignores all characters inside the format string up to a newline
3741 character). (7.1 implements `~a', `~s', ~NEWLINE, `~~', `~%',
3742 numerical and variable parameters and `:/@' modifiers in the CL
3746 Downward compatible except for `~A' and `~S' which print in
3747 uppercase. (Elk implements `~a', `~s', `~~', and `~%' (no
3748 directive parameters or modifiers)).
3751 Downward compatible except for an optional destination parameter:
3752 S2C accepts a format call without a destination which returns a
3753 formatted string. This is equivalent to a #f destination in S2C.
3754 (S2C implements `~a', `~s', `~c', `~%', and `~~' (no directive
3755 parameters or modifiers)).
3758 ** Changes to string-handling functions.
3760 These functions were added to support the (ice-9 format) module, above.
3762 *** New function: string-upcase STRING
3763 *** New function: string-downcase STRING
3765 These are non-destructive versions of the existing string-upcase! and
3766 string-downcase! functions.
3768 *** New function: string-capitalize! STRING
3769 *** New function: string-capitalize STRING
3771 These functions convert the first letter of each word in the string to
3774 (string-capitalize "howdy there")
3777 As with the other functions, string-capitalize! modifies the string in
3778 place, while string-capitalize returns a modified copy of its argument.
3780 *** New function: string-ci->symbol STRING
3782 Return a symbol whose name is STRING, but having the same case as if
3783 the symbol had be read by `read'.
3785 Guile can be configured to be sensitive or insensitive to case
3786 differences in Scheme identifiers. If Guile is case-insensitive, all
3787 symbols are converted to lower case on input. The `string-ci->symbol'
3788 function returns a symbol whose name in STRING, transformed as Guile
3789 would if STRING were input.
3791 *** New function: substring-move! STRING1 START END STRING2 START
3793 Copy the substring of STRING1 from START (inclusive) to END
3794 (exclusive) to STRING2 at START. STRING1 and STRING2 may be the same
3795 string, and the source and destination areas may overlap; in all
3796 cases, the function behaves as if all the characters were copied
3799 *** Extended functions: substring-move-left! substring-move-right!
3801 These functions now correctly copy arbitrarily overlapping substrings;
3802 they are both synonyms for substring-move!.
3805 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-long), with the function `getopt-long'.
3807 getopt-long is a function for parsing command-line arguments in a
3808 manner consistent with other GNU programs.
3810 (getopt-long ARGS GRAMMAR)
3811 Parse the arguments ARGS according to the argument list grammar GRAMMAR.
3813 ARGS should be a list of strings. Its first element should be the
3814 name of the program; subsequent elements should be the arguments
3815 that were passed to the program on the command line. The
3816 `program-arguments' procedure returns a list of this form.
3818 GRAMMAR is a list of the form:
3819 ((OPTION (PROPERTY VALUE) ...) ...)
3821 Each OPTION should be a symbol. `getopt-long' will accept a
3822 command-line option named `--OPTION'.
3823 Each option can have the following (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs:
3825 (single-char CHAR) --- Accept `-CHAR' as a single-character
3826 equivalent to `--OPTION'. This is how to specify traditional
3828 (required? BOOL) --- If BOOL is true, the option is required.
3829 getopt-long will raise an error if it is not found in ARGS.
3830 (value BOOL) --- If BOOL is #t, the option accepts a value; if
3831 it is #f, it does not; and if it is the symbol
3832 `optional', the option may appear in ARGS with or
3834 (predicate FUNC) --- If the option accepts a value (i.e. you
3835 specified `(value #t)' for this option), then getopt
3836 will apply FUNC to the value, and throw an exception
3837 if it returns #f. FUNC should be a procedure which
3838 accepts a string and returns a boolean value; you may
3839 need to use quasiquotes to get it into GRAMMAR.
3841 The (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs may occur in any order, but each
3842 property may occur only once. By default, options do not have
3843 single-character equivalents, are not required, and do not take
3846 In ARGS, single-character options may be combined, in the usual
3847 Unix fashion: ("-x" "-y") is equivalent to ("-xy"). If an option
3848 accepts values, then it must be the last option in the
3849 combination; the value is the next argument. So, for example, using
3850 the following grammar:
3851 ((apples (single-char #\a))
3852 (blimps (single-char #\b) (value #t))
3853 (catalexis (single-char #\c) (value #t)))
3854 the following argument lists would be acceptable:
3855 ("-a" "-b" "bang" "-c" "couth") ("bang" and "couth" are the values
3856 for "blimps" and "catalexis")
3857 ("-ab" "bang" "-c" "couth") (same)
3858 ("-ac" "couth" "-b" "bang") (same)
3859 ("-abc" "couth" "bang") (an error, since `-b' is not the
3860 last option in its combination)
3862 If an option's value is optional, then `getopt-long' decides
3863 whether it has a value by looking at what follows it in ARGS. If
3864 the next element is a string, and it does not appear to be an
3865 option itself, then that string is the option's value.
3867 The value of a long option can appear as the next element in ARGS,
3868 or it can follow the option name, separated by an `=' character.
3869 Thus, using the same grammar as above, the following argument lists
3871 ("--apples" "Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
3872 ("--apples=Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
3873 ("--blimps" "Goodyear" "--apples=Braeburn")
3875 If the option "--" appears in ARGS, argument parsing stops there;
3876 subsequent arguments are returned as ordinary arguments, even if
3877 they resemble options. So, in the argument list:
3878 ("--apples" "Granny Smith" "--" "--blimp" "Goodyear")
3879 `getopt-long' will recognize the `apples' option as having the
3880 value "Granny Smith", but it will not recognize the `blimp'
3881 option; it will return the strings "--blimp" and "Goodyear" as
3882 ordinary argument strings.
3884 The `getopt-long' function returns the parsed argument list as an
3885 assocation list, mapping option names --- the symbols from GRAMMAR
3886 --- onto their values, or #t if the option does not accept a value.
3887 Unused options do not appear in the alist.
3889 All arguments that are not the value of any option are returned
3890 as a list, associated with the empty list.
3892 `getopt-long' throws an exception if:
3893 - it finds an unrecognized option in ARGS
3894 - a required option is omitted
3895 - an option that requires an argument doesn't get one
3896 - an option that doesn't accept an argument does get one (this can
3897 only happen using the long option `--opt=value' syntax)
3898 - an option predicate fails
3903 `((lockfile-dir (required? #t)
3906 (predicate ,file-is-directory?))
3907 (verbose (required? #f)
3910 (x-includes (single-char #\x))
3911 (rnet-server (single-char #\y)
3912 (predicate ,string?))))
3914 (getopt-long '("my-prog" "-vk" "/tmp" "foo1" "--x-includes=/usr/include"
3915 "--rnet-server=lamprod" "--" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
3917 => ((() "foo1" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
3918 (rnet-server . "lamprod")
3919 (x-includes . "/usr/include")
3920 (lockfile-dir . "/tmp")
3923 ** The (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) module is obsolete; use (ice-9 getopt-long).
3925 It will be removed in a few releases.
3927 ** New syntax: lambda*
3928 ** New syntax: define*
3929 ** New syntax: define*-public
3930 ** New syntax: defmacro*
3931 ** New syntax: defmacro*-public
3932 Guile now supports optional arguments.
3934 `lambda*', `define*', `define*-public', `defmacro*' and
3935 `defmacro*-public' are identical to the non-* versions except that
3936 they use an extended type of parameter list that has the following BNF
3937 syntax (parentheses are literal, square brackets indicate grouping,
3938 and `*', `+' and `?' have the usual meaning):
3940 ext-param-list ::= ( [identifier]* [#&optional [ext-var-decl]+]?
3941 [#&key [ext-var-decl]+ [#&allow-other-keys]?]?
3942 [[#&rest identifier]|[. identifier]]? ) | [identifier]
3944 ext-var-decl ::= identifier | ( identifier expression )
3946 The semantics are best illustrated with the following documentation
3947 and examples for `lambda*':
3950 lambda extended for optional and keyword arguments
3952 lambda* creates a procedure that takes optional arguments. These
3953 are specified by putting them inside brackets at the end of the
3954 paramater list, but before any dotted rest argument. For example,
3955 (lambda* (a b #&optional c d . e) '())
3956 creates a procedure with fixed arguments a and b, optional arguments c
3957 and d, and rest argument e. If the optional arguments are omitted
3958 in a call, the variables for them are unbound in the procedure. This
3959 can be checked with the bound? macro.
3961 lambda* can also take keyword arguments. For example, a procedure
3963 (lambda* (#&key xyzzy larch) '())
3964 can be called with any of the argument lists (#:xyzzy 11)
3965 (#:larch 13) (#:larch 42 #:xyzzy 19) (). Whichever arguments
3966 are given as keywords are bound to values.
3968 Optional and keyword arguments can also be given default values
3969 which they take on when they are not present in a call, by giving a
3970 two-item list in place of an optional argument, for example in:
3971 (lambda* (foo #&optional (bar 42) #&key (baz 73)) (list foo bar baz))
3972 foo is a fixed argument, bar is an optional argument with default
3973 value 42, and baz is a keyword argument with default value 73.
3974 Default value expressions are not evaluated unless they are needed
3975 and until the procedure is called.
3977 lambda* now supports two more special parameter list keywords.
3979 lambda*-defined procedures now throw an error by default if a
3980 keyword other than one of those specified is found in the actual
3981 passed arguments. However, specifying #&allow-other-keys
3982 immediately after the kyword argument declarations restores the
3983 previous behavior of ignoring unknown keywords. lambda* also now
3984 guarantees that if the same keyword is passed more than once, the
3985 last one passed is the one that takes effect. For example,
3986 ((lambda* (#&key (heads 0) (tails 0)) (display (list heads tails)))
3987 #:heads 37 #:tails 42 #:heads 99)
3988 would result in (99 47) being displayed.
3990 #&rest is also now provided as a synonym for the dotted syntax rest
3991 argument. The argument lists (a . b) and (a #&rest b) are equivalent in
3992 all respects to lambda*. This is provided for more similarity to DSSSL,
3993 MIT-Scheme and Kawa among others, as well as for refugees from other
3996 Further documentation may be found in the optargs.scm file itself.
3998 The optional argument module also exports the macros `let-optional',
3999 `let-optional*', `let-keywords', `let-keywords*' and `bound?'. These
4000 are not documented here because they may be removed in the future, but
4001 full documentation is still available in optargs.scm.
4003 ** New syntax: and-let*
4004 Guile now supports the `and-let*' form, described in the draft SRFI-2.
4006 Syntax: (land* (<clause> ...) <body> ...)
4007 Each <clause> should have one of the following forms:
4008 (<variable> <expression>)
4011 Each <variable> or <bound-variable> should be an identifier. Each
4012 <expression> should be a valid expression. The <body> should be a
4013 possibly empty sequence of expressions, like the <body> of a
4016 Semantics: A LAND* expression is evaluated by evaluating the
4017 <expression> or <bound-variable> of each of the <clause>s from
4018 left to right. The value of the first <expression> or
4019 <bound-variable> that evaluates to a false value is returned; the
4020 remaining <expression>s and <bound-variable>s are not evaluated.
4021 The <body> forms are evaluated iff all the <expression>s and
4022 <bound-variable>s evaluate to true values.
4024 The <expression>s and the <body> are evaluated in an environment
4025 binding each <variable> of the preceding (<variable> <expression>)
4026 clauses to the value of the <expression>. Later bindings
4027 shadow earlier bindings.
4029 Guile's and-let* macro was contributed by Michael Livshin.
4031 ** New sorting functions
4033 *** New function: sorted? SEQUENCE LESS?
4034 Returns `#t' when the sequence argument is in non-decreasing order
4035 according to LESS? (that is, there is no adjacent pair `... x y
4036 ...' for which `(less? y x)').
4038 Returns `#f' when the sequence contains at least one out-of-order
4039 pair. It is an error if the sequence is neither a list nor a
4042 *** New function: merge LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
4043 LIST1 and LIST2 are sorted lists.
4044 Returns the sorted list of all elements in LIST1 and LIST2.
4046 Assume that the elements a and b1 in LIST1 and b2 in LIST2 are "equal"
4047 in the sense that (LESS? x y) --> #f for x, y in {a, b1, b2},
4048 and that a < b1 in LIST1. Then a < b1 < b2 in the result.
4049 (Here "<" should read "comes before".)
4051 *** New procedure: merge! LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
4052 Merges two lists, re-using the pairs of LIST1 and LIST2 to build
4053 the result. If the code is compiled, and LESS? constructs no new
4054 pairs, no pairs at all will be allocated. The first pair of the
4055 result will be either the first pair of LIST1 or the first pair of
4058 *** New function: sort SEQUENCE LESS?
4059 Accepts either a list or a vector, and returns a new sequence
4060 which is sorted. The new sequence is the same type as the input.
4061 Always `(sorted? (sort sequence less?) less?)'. The original
4062 sequence is not altered in any way. The new sequence shares its
4063 elements with the old one; no elements are copied.
4065 *** New procedure: sort! SEQUENCE LESS
4066 Returns its sorted result in the original boxes. No new storage is
4067 allocated at all. Proper usage: (set! slist (sort! slist <))
4069 *** New function: stable-sort SEQUENCE LESS?
4070 Similar to `sort' but stable. That is, if "equal" elements are
4071 ordered a < b in the original sequence, they will have the same order
4074 *** New function: stable-sort! SEQUENCE LESS?
4075 Similar to `sort!' but stable.
4076 Uses temporary storage when sorting vectors.
4078 *** New functions: sort-list, sort-list!
4079 Added for compatibility with scsh.
4081 ** New built-in random number support
4083 *** New function: random N [STATE]
4084 Accepts a positive integer or real N and returns a number of the
4085 same type between zero (inclusive) and N (exclusive). The values
4086 returned have a uniform distribution.
4088 The optional argument STATE must be of the type produced by
4089 `copy-random-state' or `seed->random-state'. It defaults to the value
4090 of the variable `*random-state*'. This object is used to maintain the
4091 state of the pseudo-random-number generator and is altered as a side
4092 effect of the `random' operation.
4094 *** New variable: *random-state*
4095 Holds a data structure that encodes the internal state of the
4096 random-number generator that `random' uses by default. The nature
4097 of this data structure is implementation-dependent. It may be
4098 printed out and successfully read back in, but may or may not
4099 function correctly as a random-number state object in another
4102 *** New function: copy-random-state [STATE]
4103 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
4104 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
4105 If argument STATE is given, a copy of it is returned. Otherwise a
4106 copy of `*random-state*' is returned.
4108 *** New function: seed->random-state SEED
4109 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
4110 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
4111 SEED is a string or a number. A new state is generated and
4112 initialized using SEED.
4114 *** New function: random:uniform [STATE]
4115 Returns an uniformly distributed inexact real random number in the
4116 range between 0 and 1.
4118 *** New procedure: random:solid-sphere! VECT [STATE]
4119 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose
4120 squares is less than 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in
4121 space of dimension N = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are
4122 uniformly distributed within the unit N-shere. The sum of the
4123 squares of the numbers is returned. VECT can be either a vector
4124 or a uniform vector of doubles.
4126 *** New procedure: random:hollow-sphere! VECT [STATE]
4127 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose squares
4128 is equal to 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in space of
4129 dimension n = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are uniformly
4130 distributed over the surface of the unit n-shere. VECT can be either
4131 a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
4133 *** New function: random:normal [STATE]
4134 Returns an inexact real in a normal distribution with mean 0 and
4135 standard deviation 1. For a normal distribution with mean M and
4136 standard deviation D use `(+ M (* D (random:normal)))'.
4138 *** New procedure: random:normal-vector! VECT [STATE]
4139 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers which are independent and
4140 standard normally distributed (i.e., with mean 0 and variance 1).
4141 VECT can be either a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
4143 *** New function: random:exp STATE
4144 Returns an inexact real in an exponential distribution with mean 1.
4145 For an exponential distribution with mean U use (* U (random:exp)).
4147 ** The range of logand, logior, logxor, logtest, and logbit? have changed.
4149 These functions now operate on numbers in the range of a C unsigned
4152 These functions used to operate on numbers in the range of a C signed
4153 long; however, this seems inappropriate, because Guile integers don't
4156 ** New function: make-guardian
4157 This is an implementation of guardians as described in
4158 R. Kent Dybvig, Carl Bruggeman, and David Eby (1993) "Guardians in a
4159 Generation-Based Garbage Collector" ACM SIGPLAN Conference on
4160 Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1993
4161 ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/guardians.ps.gz
4163 ** New functions: delq1!, delv1!, delete1!
4164 These procedures behave similar to delq! and friends but delete only
4165 one object if at all.
4167 ** New function: unread-string STRING PORT
4168 Unread STRING to PORT, that is, push it back onto the port so that
4169 next read operation will work on the pushed back characters.
4171 ** unread-char can now be called multiple times
4172 If unread-char is called multiple times, the unread characters will be
4173 read again in last-in first-out order.
4175 ** the procedures uniform-array-read! and uniform-array-write! now
4176 work on any kind of port, not just ports which are open on a file.
4178 ** Now 'l' in a port mode requests line buffering.
4180 ** The procedure truncate-file now works on string ports as well
4181 as file ports. If the size argument is omitted, the current
4182 file position is used.
4184 ** new procedure: seek PORT/FDES OFFSET WHENCE
4185 The arguments are the same as for the old fseek procedure, but it
4186 works on string ports as well as random-access file ports.
4188 ** the fseek procedure now works on string ports, since it has been
4189 redefined using seek.
4191 ** the setvbuf procedure now uses a default size if mode is _IOFBF and
4192 size is not supplied.
4194 ** the newline procedure no longer flushes the port if it's not
4195 line-buffered: previously it did if it was the current output port.
4197 ** open-pipe and close-pipe are no longer primitive procedures, but
4198 an emulation can be obtained using `(use-modules (ice-9 popen))'.
4200 ** the freopen procedure has been removed.
4202 ** new procedure: drain-input PORT
4203 Drains PORT's read buffers (including any pushed-back characters)
4204 and returns the contents as a single string.
4206 ** New function: map-in-order PROC LIST1 LIST2 ...
4207 Version of `map' which guarantees that the procedure is applied to the
4208 lists in serial order.
4210 ** Renamed `serial-array-copy!' and `serial-array-map!' to
4211 `array-copy-in-order!' and `array-map-in-order!'. The old names are
4212 now obsolete and will go away in release 1.5.
4214 ** New syntax: collect BODY1 ...
4215 Version of `begin' which returns a list of the results of the body
4216 forms instead of the result of the last body form. In contrast to
4217 `begin', `collect' allows an empty body.
4219 ** New functions: read-history FILENAME, write-history FILENAME
4220 Read/write command line history from/to file. Returns #t on success
4221 and #f if an error occured.
4223 ** `ls' and `lls' in module (ice-9 ls) now handle no arguments.
4225 These procedures return a list of definitions available in the specified
4226 argument, a relative module reference. In the case of no argument,
4227 `(current-module)' is now consulted for definitions to return, instead
4228 of simply returning #f, the former behavior.
4230 ** The #/ syntax for lists is no longer supported.
4232 Earlier versions of Scheme accepted this syntax, but printed a
4235 ** Guile no longer consults the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable.
4237 Instead, you should set GUILE_LOAD_PATH to tell Guile where to find
4240 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4244 Now takes a second argument which is the result array. If this
4245 pointer is NULL, a new array is malloced (the old behaviour).
4247 ** gh_chars2byvect, gh_shorts2svect, gh_floats2fvect, gh_scm2chars,
4248 gh_scm2shorts, gh_scm2longs, gh_scm2floats
4252 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4254 ** Function: scm_make_named_hook (char* name, int n_args)
4256 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
4257 binds a variable named NAME to it.
4259 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
4261 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module. This
4262 might change when we get the new module system.
4264 ** The smob interface
4266 The interface for creating smobs has changed. For documentation, see
4267 data-rep.info (made from guile-core/doc/data-rep.texi).
4269 *** Deprecated function: SCM scm_newsmob (scm_smobfuns *)
4271 >>> This function will be removed in 1.3.4. <<<
4275 *** Function: SCM scm_make_smob_type (const char *name, scm_sizet size)
4276 This function adds a new smob type, named NAME, with instance size
4277 SIZE to the system. The return value is a tag that is used in
4278 creating instances of the type. If SIZE is 0, then no memory will
4279 be allocated when instances of the smob are created, and nothing
4280 will be freed by the default free function.
4282 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_mark (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
4283 This function sets the smob marking procedure for the smob type
4284 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4285 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4287 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_free (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
4288 This function sets the smob freeing procedure for the smob type
4289 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4290 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4292 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_print (tc, print)
4294 - Function: void scm_set_smob_print (long tc,
4295 scm_sizet (*print) (SCM,
4299 This function sets the smob printing procedure for the smob type
4300 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4301 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4303 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_equalp (long tc, SCM (*equalp) (SCM, SCM))
4304 This function sets the smob equality-testing predicate for the
4305 smob type specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4306 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4308 *** Macro: void SCM_NEWSMOB (SCM var, long tc, void *data)
4309 Make VALUE contain a smob instance of the type with type code TC and
4310 smob data DATA. VALUE must be previously declared as C type `SCM'.
4312 *** Macro: fn_returns SCM_RETURN_NEWSMOB (long tc, void *data)
4313 This macro expands to a block of code that creates a smob instance
4314 of the type with type code TC and smob data DATA, and returns that
4315 `SCM' value. It should be the last piece of code in a block.
4317 ** The interfaces for using I/O ports and implementing port types
4318 (ptobs) have changed significantly. The new interface is based on
4319 shared access to buffers and a new set of ptob procedures.
4321 *** scm_newptob has been removed
4325 *** Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (type_name, fill_buffer, write_flush)
4327 - Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (char *type_name,
4328 int (*fill_buffer) (SCM port),
4329 void (*write_flush) (SCM port));
4331 Similarly to the new smob interface, there is a set of function
4332 setters by which the user can customize the behaviour of his port
4333 type. See ports.h (scm_set_port_XXX).
4335 ** scm_strport_to_string: New function: creates a new string from
4336 a string port's buffer.
4338 ** Plug in interface for random number generators
4339 The variable `scm_the_rng' in random.c contains a value and three
4340 function pointers which together define the current random number
4341 generator being used by the Scheme level interface and the random
4342 number library functions.
4344 The user is free to replace the default generator with the generator
4347 *** Variable: size_t scm_the_rng.rstate_size
4348 The size of the random state type used by the current RNG
4351 *** Function: unsigned long scm_the_rng.random_bits (scm_rstate *STATE)
4352 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
4354 *** Function: void scm_the_rng.init_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE, chars *S, int N)
4355 Seed random state STATE using string S of length N.
4357 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_the_rng.copy_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE)
4358 Given random state STATE, return a malloced copy.
4361 The default RNG is the MWC (Multiply With Carry) random number
4362 generator described by George Marsaglia at the Department of
4363 Statistics and Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The
4364 Florida State University (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo).
4366 It uses 64 bits, has a period of 4578426017172946943 (4.6e18), and
4367 passes all tests in the DIEHARD test suite
4368 (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo/diehard.html). The generation of 32 bits
4369 costs one multiply and one add on platforms which either supports long
4370 longs (gcc does this on most systems) or have 64 bit longs. The cost
4371 is four multiply on other systems but this can be optimized by writing
4372 scm_i_uniform32 in assembler.
4374 These functions are provided through the scm_the_rng interface for use
4375 by libguile and the application.
4377 *** Function: unsigned long scm_i_uniform32 (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
4378 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
4379 Don't use this function directly. Instead go through the plugin
4380 interface (see "Plug in interface" above).
4382 *** Function: void scm_i_init_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE, char *SEED, int N)
4383 Initialize STATE using SEED of length N.
4385 *** Function: scm_i_rstate *scm_i_copy_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
4386 Return a malloc:ed copy of STATE. This function can easily be re-used
4387 in the interfaces to other RNGs.
4389 ** Random number library functions
4390 These functions use the current RNG through the scm_the_rng interface.
4391 It might be a good idea to use these functions from your C code so
4392 that only one random generator is used by all code in your program.
4394 The default random state is stored in:
4396 *** Variable: SCM scm_var_random_state
4397 Contains the vcell of the Scheme variable "*random-state*" which is
4398 used as default state by all random number functions in the Scheme
4403 double x = scm_c_uniform01 (SCM_RSTATE (SCM_CDR (scm_var_random_state)));
4405 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_default_rstate (void)
4406 This is a convenience function which returns the value of
4407 scm_var_random_state. An error message is generated if this value
4408 isn't a random state.
4410 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_make_rstate (char *SEED, int LENGTH)
4411 Make a new random state from the string SEED of length LENGTH.
4413 It is generally not a good idea to use multiple random states in a
4414 program. While subsequent random numbers generated from one random
4415 state are guaranteed to be reasonably independent, there is no such
4416 guarantee for numbers generated from different random states.
4418 *** Macro: unsigned long scm_c_uniform32 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4419 Return 32 random bits.
4421 *** Function: double scm_c_uniform01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4422 Return a sample from the uniform(0,1) distribution.
4424 *** Function: double scm_c_normal01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4425 Return a sample from the normal(0,1) distribution.
4427 *** Function: double scm_c_exp1 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4428 Return a sample from the exp(1) distribution.
4430 *** Function: unsigned long scm_c_random (scm_rstate *STATE, unsigned long M)
4431 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
4433 *** Function: SCM scm_c_random_bignum (scm_rstate *STATE, SCM M)
4434 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
4435 M must be a bignum object. The returned value may be an INUM.
4439 Changes in Guile 1.3 (released Monday, October 19, 1998):
4441 * Changes to the distribution
4443 ** We renamed the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable to GUILE_LOAD_PATH.
4444 To avoid conflicts, programs should name environment variables after
4445 themselves, except when there's a common practice establishing some
4448 For now, Guile supports both GUILE_LOAD_PATH and SCHEME_LOAD_PATH,
4449 giving the former precedence, and printing a warning message if the
4450 latter is set. Guile 1.4 will not recognize SCHEME_LOAD_PATH at all.
4452 ** The header files related to multi-byte characters have been removed.
4453 They were: libguile/extchrs.h and libguile/mbstrings.h. Any C code
4454 which referred to these explicitly will probably need to be rewritten,
4455 since the support for the variant string types has been removed; see
4458 ** The header files append.h and sequences.h have been removed. These
4459 files implemented non-R4RS operations which would encourage
4460 non-portable programming style and less easy-to-read code.
4462 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
4464 ** New procedures have been added to implement a "batch mode":
4466 *** Function: batch-mode?
4468 Returns a boolean indicating whether the interpreter is in batch
4471 *** Function: set-batch-mode?! ARG
4473 If ARG is true, switches the interpreter to batch mode. The `#f'
4474 case has not been implemented.
4476 ** Guile now provides full command-line editing, when run interactively.
4477 To use this feature, you must have the readline library installed.
4478 The Guile build process will notice it, and automatically include
4481 The readline library is available via anonymous FTP from any GNU
4482 mirror site; the canonical location is "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
4484 ** the-last-stack is now a fluid.
4486 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
4488 ** You can now use the `guile-config' utility to build programs that use Guile.
4490 Guile now includes a command-line utility called `guile-config', which
4491 can provide information about how to compile and link programs that
4494 *** `guile-config compile' prints any C compiler flags needed to use Guile.
4495 You should include this command's output on the command line you use
4496 to compile C or C++ code that #includes the Guile header files. It's
4497 usually just a `-I' flag to help the compiler find the Guile headers.
4500 *** `guile-config link' prints any linker flags necessary to link with Guile.
4502 This command writes to its standard output a list of flags which you
4503 must pass to the linker to link your code against the Guile library.
4504 The flags include '-lguile' itself, any other libraries the Guile
4505 library depends upon, and any `-L' flags needed to help the linker
4506 find those libraries.
4508 For example, here is a Makefile rule that builds a program named 'foo'
4509 from the object files ${FOO_OBJECTS}, and links them against Guile:
4512 ${CC} ${CFLAGS} ${FOO_OBJECTS} `guile-config link` -o foo
4514 Previous Guile releases recommended that you use autoconf to detect
4515 which of a predefined set of libraries were present on your system.
4516 It is more robust to use `guile-config', since it records exactly which
4517 libraries the installed Guile library requires.
4519 This was originally called `build-guile', but was renamed to
4520 `guile-config' before Guile 1.3 was released, to be consistent with
4521 the analogous script for the GTK+ GUI toolkit, which is called
4525 ** Use the GUILE_FLAGS macro in your configure.in file to find Guile.
4527 If you are using the GNU autoconf package to configure your program,
4528 you can use the GUILE_FLAGS autoconf macro to call `guile-config'
4529 (described above) and gather the necessary values for use in your
4532 The GUILE_FLAGS macro expands to configure script code which runs the
4533 `guile-config' script, to find out where Guile's header files and
4534 libraries are installed. It sets two variables, marked for
4535 substitution, as by AC_SUBST.
4537 GUILE_CFLAGS --- flags to pass to a C or C++ compiler to build
4538 code that uses Guile header files. This is almost always just a
4541 GUILE_LDFLAGS --- flags to pass to the linker to link a
4542 program against Guile. This includes `-lguile' for the Guile
4543 library itself, any libraries that Guile itself requires (like
4544 -lqthreads), and so on. It may also include a -L flag to tell the
4545 compiler where to find the libraries.
4547 GUILE_FLAGS is defined in the file guile.m4, in the top-level
4548 directory of the Guile distribution. You can copy it into your
4549 package's aclocal.m4 file, and then use it in your configure.in file.
4551 If you are using the `aclocal' program, distributed with GNU automake,
4552 to maintain your aclocal.m4 file, the Guile installation process
4553 installs guile.m4 where aclocal will find it. All you need to do is
4554 use GUILE_FLAGS in your configure.in file, and then run `aclocal';
4555 this will copy the definition of GUILE_FLAGS into your aclocal.m4
4559 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
4561 ** Multi-byte strings have been removed, as have multi-byte and wide
4562 ports. We felt that these were the wrong approach to
4563 internationalization support.
4565 ** New function: readline [PROMPT]
4566 Read a line from the terminal, and allow the user to edit it,
4567 prompting with PROMPT. READLINE provides a large set of Emacs-like
4568 editing commands, lets the user recall previously typed lines, and
4569 works on almost every kind of terminal, including dumb terminals.
4571 READLINE assumes that the cursor is at the beginning of the line when
4572 it is invoked. Thus, you can't print a prompt yourself, and then call
4573 READLINE; you need to package up your prompt as a string, pass it to
4574 the function, and let READLINE print the prompt itself. This is
4575 because READLINE needs to know the prompt's screen width.
4577 For Guile to provide this function, you must have the readline
4578 library, version 2.1 or later, installed on your system. Readline is
4579 available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in pub/gnu, or from
4580 any GNU mirror site.
4582 See also ADD-HISTORY function.
4584 ** New function: add-history STRING
4585 Add STRING as the most recent line in the history used by the READLINE
4586 command. READLINE does not add lines to the history itself; you must
4587 call ADD-HISTORY to make previous input available to the user.
4589 ** The behavior of the read-line function has changed.
4591 This function now uses standard C library functions to read the line,
4592 for speed. This means that it doesn not respect the value of
4593 scm-line-incrementors; it assumes that lines are delimited with
4596 (Note that this is read-line, the function that reads a line of text
4597 from a port, not readline, the function that reads a line from a
4598 terminal, providing full editing capabilities.)
4600 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style): Parse command-line arguments.
4602 This module provides some simple argument parsing. It exports one
4605 Function: getopt-gnu-style ARG-LS
4606 Parse a list of program arguments into an alist of option
4609 Each item in the list of program arguments is examined to see if
4610 it meets the syntax of a GNU long-named option. An argument like
4611 `--MUMBLE' produces an element of the form (MUMBLE . #t) in the
4612 returned alist, where MUMBLE is a keyword object with the same
4613 name as the argument. An argument like `--MUMBLE=FROB' produces
4614 an element of the form (MUMBLE . FROB), where FROB is a string.
4616 As a special case, the returned alist also contains a pair whose
4617 car is the symbol `rest'. The cdr of this pair is a list
4618 containing all the items in the argument list that are not options
4619 of the form mentioned above.
4621 The argument `--' is treated specially: all items in the argument
4622 list appearing after such an argument are not examined, and are
4623 returned in the special `rest' list.
4625 This function does not parse normal single-character switches.
4626 You will need to parse them out of the `rest' list yourself.
4628 ** The read syntax for byte vectors and short vectors has changed.
4630 Instead of #bytes(...), write #y(...).
4632 Instead of #short(...), write #h(...).
4634 This may seem nutty, but, like the other uniform vectors, byte vectors
4635 and short vectors want to have the same print and read syntax (and,
4636 more basic, want to have read syntax!). Changing the read syntax to
4637 use multiple characters after the hash sign breaks with the
4638 conventions used in R5RS and the conventions used for the other
4639 uniform vectors. It also introduces complexity in the current reader,
4640 both on the C and Scheme levels. (The Right solution is probably to
4641 change the syntax and prototypes for uniform vectors entirely.)
4644 ** The new module (ice-9 session) provides useful interactive functions.
4646 *** New procedure: (apropos REGEXP OPTION ...)
4648 Display a list of top-level variables whose names match REGEXP, and
4649 the modules they are imported from. Each OPTION should be one of the
4652 value --- Show the value of each matching variable.
4653 shadow --- Show bindings shadowed by subsequently imported modules.
4654 full --- Same as both `shadow' and `value'.
4658 guile> (apropos "trace" 'full)
4659 debug: trace #<procedure trace args>
4660 debug: untrace #<procedure untrace args>
4661 the-scm-module: display-backtrace #<compiled-closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>
4662 the-scm-module: before-backtrace-hook ()
4663 the-scm-module: backtrace #<primitive-procedure backtrace>
4664 the-scm-module: after-backtrace-hook ()
4665 the-scm-module: has-shown-backtrace-hint? #f
4668 ** There are new functions and syntax for working with macros.
4670 Guile implements macros as a special object type. Any variable whose
4671 top-level binding is a macro object acts as a macro. The macro object
4672 specifies how the expression should be transformed before evaluation.
4674 *** Macro objects now print in a reasonable way, resembling procedures.
4676 *** New function: (macro? OBJ)
4677 True iff OBJ is a macro object.
4679 *** New function: (primitive-macro? OBJ)
4680 Like (macro? OBJ), but true only if OBJ is one of the Guile primitive
4681 macro transformers, implemented in eval.c rather than Scheme code.
4683 Why do we have this function?
4684 - For symmetry with procedure? and primitive-procedure?,
4685 - to allow custom print procedures to tell whether a macro is
4686 primitive, and display it differently, and
4687 - to allow compilers and user-written evaluators to distinguish
4688 builtin special forms from user-defined ones, which could be
4691 *** New function: (macro-type OBJ)
4692 Return a value indicating what kind of macro OBJ is. Possible return
4695 The symbol `syntax' --- a macro created by procedure->syntax.
4696 The symbol `macro' --- a macro created by procedure->macro.
4697 The symbol `macro!' --- a macro created by procedure->memoizing-macro.
4698 The boolean #f --- if OBJ is not a macro object.
4700 *** New function: (macro-name MACRO)
4701 Return the name of the macro object MACRO's procedure, as returned by
4704 *** New function: (macro-transformer MACRO)
4705 Return the transformer procedure for MACRO.
4707 *** New syntax: (use-syntax MODULE ... TRANSFORMER)
4709 Specify a new macro expander to use in the current module. Each
4710 MODULE is a module name, with the same meaning as in the `use-modules'
4711 form; each named module's exported bindings are added to the current
4712 top-level environment. TRANSFORMER is an expression evaluated in the
4713 resulting environment which must yield a procedure to use as the
4714 module's eval transformer: every expression evaluated in this module
4715 is passed to this function, and the result passed to the Guile
4718 *** macro-eval! is removed. Use local-eval instead.
4720 ** Some magic has been added to the printer to better handle user
4721 written printing routines (like record printers, closure printers).
4723 The problem is that these user written routines must have access to
4724 the current `print-state' to be able to handle fancy things like
4725 detection of circular references. These print-states have to be
4726 passed to the builtin printing routines (display, write, etc) to
4727 properly continue the print chain.
4729 We didn't want to change all existing print code so that it
4730 explicitly passes thru a print state in addition to a port. Instead,
4731 we extented the possible values that the builtin printing routines
4732 accept as a `port'. In addition to a normal port, they now also take
4733 a pair of a normal port and a print-state. Printing will go to the
4734 port and the print-state will be used to control the detection of
4735 circular references, etc. If the builtin function does not care for a
4736 print-state, it is simply ignored.
4738 User written callbacks are now called with such a pair as their
4739 `port', but because every function now accepts this pair as a PORT
4740 argument, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, it is probably
4741 safest to not check for these pairs.
4743 However, it is sometimes necessary to continue a print chain on a
4744 different port, for example to get a intermediate string
4745 representation of the printed value, mangle that string somehow, and
4746 then to finally print the mangled string. Use the new function
4748 inherit-print-state OLD-PORT NEW-PORT
4750 for this. It constructs a new `port' that prints to NEW-PORT but
4751 inherits the print-state of OLD-PORT.
4753 ** struct-vtable-offset renamed to vtable-offset-user
4755 ** New constants: vtable-index-layout, vtable-index-vtable, vtable-index-printer
4757 ** There is now a third optional argument to make-vtable-vtable
4758 (and fourth to make-struct) when constructing new types (vtables).
4759 This argument initializes field vtable-index-printer of the vtable.
4761 ** The detection of circular references has been extended to structs.
4762 That is, a structure that -- in the process of being printed -- prints
4763 itself does not lead to infinite recursion.
4765 ** There is now some basic support for fluids. Please read
4766 "libguile/fluid.h" to find out more. It is accessible from Scheme with
4767 the following functions and macros:
4769 Function: make-fluid
4771 Create a new fluid object. Fluids are not special variables or
4772 some other extension to the semantics of Scheme, but rather
4773 ordinary Scheme objects. You can store them into variables (that
4774 are still lexically scoped, of course) or into any other place you
4775 like. Every fluid has a initial value of `#f'.
4777 Function: fluid? OBJ
4779 Test whether OBJ is a fluid.
4781 Function: fluid-ref FLUID
4782 Function: fluid-set! FLUID VAL
4784 Access/modify the fluid FLUID. Modifications are only visible
4785 within the current dynamic root (that includes threads).
4787 Function: with-fluids* FLUIDS VALUES THUNK
4789 FLUIDS is a list of fluids and VALUES a corresponding list of
4790 values for these fluids. Before THUNK gets called the values are
4791 installed in the fluids and the old values of the fluids are
4792 saved in the VALUES list. When the flow of control leaves THUNK
4793 or reenters it, the values get swapped again. You might think of
4794 this as a `safe-fluid-excursion'. Note that the VALUES list is
4795 modified by `with-fluids*'.
4797 Macro: with-fluids ((FLUID VALUE) ...) FORM ...
4799 The same as `with-fluids*' but with a different syntax. It looks
4800 just like `let', but both FLUID and VALUE are evaluated. Remember,
4801 fluids are not special variables but ordinary objects. FLUID
4802 should evaluate to a fluid.
4804 ** Changes to system call interfaces:
4806 *** close-port, close-input-port and close-output-port now return a
4807 boolean instead of an `unspecified' object. #t means that the port
4808 was successfully closed, while #f means it was already closed. It is
4809 also now possible for these procedures to raise an exception if an
4810 error occurs (some errors from write can be delayed until close.)
4812 *** the first argument to chmod, fcntl, ftell and fseek can now be a
4815 *** the third argument to fcntl is now optional.
4817 *** the first argument to chown can now be a file descriptor or a port.
4819 *** the argument to stat can now be a port.
4821 *** The following new procedures have been added (most use scsh
4824 *** procedure: close PORT/FD
4825 Similar to close-port (*note close-port: Closing Ports.), but also
4826 works on file descriptors. A side effect of closing a file
4827 descriptor is that any ports using that file descriptor are moved
4828 to a different file descriptor and have their revealed counts set
4831 *** procedure: port->fdes PORT
4832 Returns the integer file descriptor underlying PORT. As a side
4833 effect the revealed count of PORT is incremented.
4835 *** procedure: fdes->ports FDES
4836 Returns a list of existing ports which have FDES as an underlying
4837 file descriptor, without changing their revealed counts.
4839 *** procedure: fdes->inport FDES
4840 Returns an existing input port which has FDES as its underlying
4841 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
4842 Otherwise, returns a new input port with a revealed count of 1.
4844 *** procedure: fdes->outport FDES
4845 Returns an existing output port which has FDES as its underlying
4846 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
4847 Otherwise, returns a new output port with a revealed count of 1.
4849 The next group of procedures perform a `dup2' system call, if NEWFD
4850 (an integer) is supplied, otherwise a `dup'. The file descriptor to be
4851 duplicated can be supplied as an integer or contained in a port. The
4852 type of value returned varies depending on which procedure is used.
4854 All procedures also have the side effect when performing `dup2' that
4855 any ports using NEWFD are moved to a different file descriptor and have
4856 their revealed counts set to zero.
4858 *** procedure: dup->fdes PORT/FD [NEWFD]
4859 Returns an integer file descriptor.
4861 *** procedure: dup->inport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
4862 Returns a new input port using the new file descriptor.
4864 *** procedure: dup->outport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
4865 Returns a new output port using the new file descriptor.
4867 *** procedure: dup PORT/FD [NEWFD]
4868 Returns a new port if PORT/FD is a port, with the same mode as the
4869 supplied port, otherwise returns an integer file descriptor.
4871 *** procedure: dup->port PORT/FD MODE [NEWFD]
4872 Returns a new port using the new file descriptor. MODE supplies a
4873 mode string for the port (*note open-file: File Ports.).
4875 *** procedure: setenv NAME VALUE
4876 Modifies the environment of the current process, which is also the
4877 default environment inherited by child processes.
4879 If VALUE is `#f', then NAME is removed from the environment.
4880 Otherwise, the string NAME=VALUE is added to the environment,
4881 replacing any existing string with name matching NAME.
4883 The return value is unspecified.
4885 *** procedure: truncate-file OBJ SIZE
4886 Truncates the file referred to by OBJ to at most SIZE bytes. OBJ
4887 can be a string containing a file name or an integer file
4888 descriptor or port open for output on the file. The underlying
4889 system calls are `truncate' and `ftruncate'.
4891 The return value is unspecified.
4893 *** procedure: setvbuf PORT MODE [SIZE]
4894 Set the buffering mode for PORT. MODE can be:
4902 block buffered, using a newly allocated buffer of SIZE bytes.
4903 However if SIZE is zero or unspecified, the port will be made
4906 This procedure should not be used after I/O has been performed with
4909 Ports are usually block buffered by default, with a default buffer
4910 size. Procedures e.g., *Note open-file: File Ports, which accept a
4911 mode string allow `0' to be added to request an unbuffered port.
4913 *** procedure: fsync PORT/FD
4914 Copies any unwritten data for the specified output file descriptor
4915 to disk. If PORT/FD is a port, its buffer is flushed before the
4916 underlying file descriptor is fsync'd. The return value is
4919 *** procedure: open-fdes PATH FLAGS [MODES]
4920 Similar to `open' but returns a file descriptor instead of a port.
4922 *** procedure: execle PATH ENV [ARG] ...
4923 Similar to `execl', but the environment of the new process is
4924 specified by ENV, which must be a list of strings as returned by
4925 the `environ' procedure.
4927 This procedure is currently implemented using the `execve' system
4928 call, but we call it `execle' because of its Scheme calling
4931 *** procedure: strerror ERRNO
4932 Returns the Unix error message corresponding to ERRNO, an integer.
4934 *** procedure: primitive-exit [STATUS]
4935 Terminate the current process without unwinding the Scheme stack.
4936 This is would typically be useful after a fork. The exit status
4937 is STATUS if supplied, otherwise zero.
4939 *** procedure: times
4940 Returns an object with information about real and processor time.
4941 The following procedures accept such an object as an argument and
4942 return a selected component:
4945 The current real time, expressed as time units relative to an
4949 The CPU time units used by the calling process.
4952 The CPU time units used by the system on behalf of the
4956 The CPU time units used by terminated child processes of the
4957 calling process, whose status has been collected (e.g., using
4961 Similarly, the CPU times units used by the system on behalf of
4962 terminated child processes.
4964 ** Removed: list-length
4965 ** Removed: list-append, list-append!
4966 ** Removed: list-reverse, list-reverse!
4968 ** array-map renamed to array-map!
4970 ** serial-array-map renamed to serial-array-map!
4972 ** catch doesn't take #f as first argument any longer
4974 Previously, it was possible to pass #f instead of a key to `catch'.
4975 That would cause `catch' to pass a jump buffer object to the procedure
4976 passed as second argument. The procedure could then use this jump
4977 buffer objekt as an argument to throw.
4979 This mechanism has been removed since its utility doesn't motivate the
4980 extra complexity it introduces.
4982 ** The `#/' notation for lists now provokes a warning message from Guile.
4983 This syntax will be removed from Guile in the near future.
4985 To disable the warning message, set the GUILE_HUSH environment
4986 variable to any non-empty value.
4988 ** The newline character now prints as `#\newline', following the
4989 normal Scheme notation, not `#\nl'.
4991 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4993 ** The gh_enter function now takes care of loading the Guile startup files.
4994 gh_enter works by calling scm_boot_guile; see the remarks below.
4996 ** Function: void gh_write (SCM x)
4998 Write the printed representation of the scheme object x to the current
4999 output port. Corresponds to the scheme level `write'.
5001 ** gh_list_length renamed to gh_length.
5003 ** vector handling routines
5005 Several major changes. In particular, gh_vector() now resembles
5006 (vector ...) (with a caveat -- see manual), and gh_make_vector() now
5007 exists and behaves like (make-vector ...). gh_vset() and gh_vref()
5008 have been renamed gh_vector_set_x() and gh_vector_ref(). Some missing
5009 vector-related gh_ functions have been implemented.
5011 ** pair and list routines
5013 Implemented several of the R4RS pair and list functions that were
5016 ** gh_scm2doubles, gh_doubles2scm, gh_doubles2dvect
5018 New function. Converts double arrays back and forth between Scheme
5021 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5023 ** The function scm_boot_guile now takes care of loading the startup files.
5025 Guile's primary initialization function, scm_boot_guile, now takes
5026 care of loading `boot-9.scm', in the `ice-9' module, to initialize
5027 Guile, define the module system, and put together some standard
5028 bindings. It also loads `init.scm', which is intended to hold
5029 site-specific initialization code.
5031 Since Guile cannot operate properly until boot-9.scm is loaded, there
5032 is no reason to separate loading boot-9.scm from Guile's other
5033 initialization processes.
5035 This job used to be done by scm_compile_shell_switches, which didn't
5036 make much sense; in particular, it meant that people using Guile for
5037 non-shell-like applications had to jump through hoops to get Guile
5038 initialized properly.
5040 ** The function scm_compile_shell_switches no longer loads the startup files.
5041 Now, Guile always loads the startup files, whenever it is initialized;
5042 see the notes above for scm_boot_guile and scm_load_startup_files.
5044 ** Function: scm_load_startup_files
5045 This new function takes care of loading Guile's initialization file
5046 (`boot-9.scm'), and the site initialization file, `init.scm'. Since
5047 this is always called by the Guile initialization process, it's
5048 probably not too useful to call this yourself, but it's there anyway.
5050 ** The semantics of smob marking have changed slightly.
5052 The smob marking function (the `mark' member of the scm_smobfuns
5053 structure) is no longer responsible for setting the mark bit on the
5054 smob. The generic smob handling code in the garbage collector will
5055 set this bit. The mark function need only ensure that any other
5056 objects the smob refers to get marked.
5058 Note that this change means that the smob's GC8MARK bit is typically
5059 already set upon entry to the mark function. Thus, marking functions
5060 which look like this:
5063 if (SCM_GC8MARKP (ptr))
5065 SCM_SETGC8MARK (ptr);
5066 ... mark objects to which the smob refers ...
5069 are now incorrect, since they will return early, and fail to mark any
5070 other objects the smob refers to. Some code in the Guile library used
5073 ** The semantics of the I/O port functions in scm_ptobfuns have changed.
5075 If you have implemented your own I/O port type, by writing the
5076 functions required by the scm_ptobfuns and then calling scm_newptob,
5077 you will need to change your functions slightly.
5079 The functions in a scm_ptobfuns structure now expect the port itself
5080 as their argument; they used to expect the `stream' member of the
5081 port's scm_port_table structure. This allows functions in an
5082 scm_ptobfuns structure to easily access the port's cell (and any flags
5083 it its CAR), and the port's scm_port_table structure.
5085 Guile now passes the I/O port itself as the `port' argument in the
5086 following scm_ptobfuns functions:
5088 int (*free) (SCM port);
5089 int (*fputc) (int, SCM port);
5090 int (*fputs) (char *, SCM port);
5091 scm_sizet (*fwrite) SCM_P ((char *ptr,
5095 int (*fflush) (SCM port);
5096 int (*fgetc) (SCM port);
5097 int (*fclose) (SCM port);
5099 The interfaces to the `mark', `print', `equalp', and `fgets' methods
5102 If you have existing code which defines its own port types, it is easy
5103 to convert your code to the new interface; simply apply SCM_STREAM to
5104 the port argument to yield the value you code used to expect.
5106 Note that since both the port and the stream have the same type in the
5107 C code --- they are both SCM values --- the C compiler will not remind
5108 you if you forget to update your scm_ptobfuns functions.
5111 ** Function: int scm_internal_select (int fds,
5115 struct timeval *timeout);
5117 This is a replacement for the `select' function provided by the OS.
5118 It enables I/O blocking and sleeping to happen for one cooperative
5119 thread without blocking other threads. It also avoids busy-loops in
5120 these situations. It is intended that all I/O blocking and sleeping
5121 will finally go through this function. Currently, this function is
5122 only available on systems providing `gettimeofday' and `select'.
5124 ** Function: SCM scm_internal_stack_catch (SCM tag,
5125 scm_catch_body_t body,
5127 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
5130 A new sibling to the other two C level `catch' functions
5131 scm_internal_catch and scm_internal_lazy_catch. Use it if you want
5132 the stack to be saved automatically into the variable `the-last-stack'
5133 (scm_the_last_stack_var) on error. This is necessary if you want to
5134 use advanced error reporting, such as calling scm_display_error and
5135 scm_display_backtrace. (They both take a stack object as argument.)
5137 ** Function: SCM scm_spawn_thread (scm_catch_body_t body,
5139 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
5142 Spawns a new thread. It does a job similar to
5143 scm_call_with_new_thread but takes arguments more suitable when
5144 spawning threads from application C code.
5146 ** The hook scm_error_callback has been removed. It was originally
5147 intended as a way for the user to install his own error handler. But
5148 that method works badly since it intervenes between throw and catch,
5149 thereby changing the semantics of expressions like (catch #t ...).
5150 The correct way to do it is to use one of the C level catch functions
5151 in throw.c: scm_internal_catch/lazy_catch/stack_catch.
5153 ** Removed functions:
5155 scm_obj_length, scm_list_length, scm_list_append, scm_list_append_x,
5156 scm_list_reverse, scm_list_reverse_x
5158 ** New macros: SCM_LISTn where n is one of the integers 0-9.
5160 These can be used for pretty list creation from C. The idea is taken
5161 from Erick Gallesio's STk.
5163 ** scm_array_map renamed to scm_array_map_x
5165 ** mbstrings are now removed
5167 This means that the type codes scm_tc7_mb_string and
5168 scm_tc7_mb_substring has been removed.
5170 ** scm_gen_putc, scm_gen_puts, scm_gen_write, and scm_gen_getc have changed.
5172 Since we no longer support multi-byte strings, these I/O functions
5173 have been simplified, and renamed. Here are their old names, and
5174 their new names and arguments:
5176 scm_gen_putc -> void scm_putc (int c, SCM port);
5177 scm_gen_puts -> void scm_puts (char *s, SCM port);
5178 scm_gen_write -> void scm_lfwrite (char *ptr, scm_sizet size, SCM port);
5179 scm_gen_getc -> void scm_getc (SCM port);
5182 ** The macros SCM_TYP7D and SCM_TYP7SD has been removed.
5184 ** The macro SCM_TYP7S has taken the role of the old SCM_TYP7D
5186 SCM_TYP7S now masks away the bit which distinguishes substrings from
5189 ** scm_catch_body_t: Backward incompatible change!
5191 Body functions to scm_internal_catch and friends do not any longer
5192 take a second argument. This is because it is no longer possible to
5193 pass a #f arg to catch.
5195 ** Calls to scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect now nest properly.
5197 The function scm_protect_object protects its argument from being freed
5198 by the garbage collector. scm_unprotect_object removes that
5201 These functions now nest properly. That is, for every object O, there
5202 is a counter which scm_protect_object(O) increments and
5203 scm_unprotect_object(O) decrements, if the counter is greater than
5204 zero. Every object's counter is zero when it is first created. If an
5205 object's counter is greater than zero, the garbage collector will not
5206 reclaim its storage.
5208 This allows you to use scm_protect_object in your code without
5209 worrying that some other function you call will call
5210 scm_unprotect_object, and allow it to be freed. Assuming that the
5211 functions you call are well-behaved, and unprotect only those objects
5212 they protect, you can follow the same rule and have confidence that
5213 objects will be freed only at appropriate times.
5216 Changes in Guile 1.2 (released Tuesday, June 24 1997):
5218 * Changes to the distribution
5220 ** Nightly snapshots are now available from ftp.red-bean.com.
5221 The old server, ftp.cyclic.com, has been relinquished to its rightful
5224 Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are now available via
5225 anonymous FTP from ftp.red-bean.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.
5227 Via the web, that's: ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
5228 For getit, that's: ftp.red-bean.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
5230 ** To run Guile without installing it, the procedure has changed a bit.
5232 If you used a separate build directory to compile Guile, you'll need
5233 to include the build directory in SCHEME_LOAD_PATH, as well as the
5234 source directory. See the `INSTALL' file for examples.
5236 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
5238 ** The standard Guile load path for Scheme code now includes
5239 $(datadir)/guile (usually /usr/local/share/guile). This means that
5240 you can install your own Scheme files there, and Guile will find them.
5241 (Previous versions of Guile only checked a directory whose name
5242 contained the Guile version number, so you had to re-install or move
5243 your Scheme sources each time you installed a fresh version of Guile.)
5245 The load path also includes $(datadir)/guile/site; we recommend
5246 putting individual Scheme files there. If you want to install a
5247 package with multiple source files, create a directory for them under
5250 ** Guile 1.2 will now use the Rx regular expression library, if it is
5251 installed on your system. When you are linking libguile into your own
5252 programs, this means you will have to link against -lguile, -lqt (if
5253 you configured Guile with thread support), and -lrx.
5255 If you are using autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your
5256 application, the following lines should suffice to add the appropriate
5257 libraries to your link command:
5259 ### Find Rx, quickthreads and libguile.
5260 AC_CHECK_LIB(rx, main)
5261 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
5262 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
5264 The Guile 1.2 distribution does not contain sources for the Rx
5265 library, as Guile 1.0 did. If you want to use Rx, you'll need to
5266 retrieve it from a GNU FTP site and install it separately.
5268 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
5270 ** The dynamic linking features of Guile are now enabled by default.
5271 You can disable them by giving the `--disable-dynamic-linking' option
5274 (dynamic-link FILENAME)
5276 Find the object file denoted by FILENAME (a string) and link it
5277 into the running Guile application. When everything works out,
5278 return a Scheme object suitable for representing the linked object
5279 file. Otherwise an error is thrown. How object files are
5280 searched is system dependent.
5282 (dynamic-object? VAL)
5284 Determine whether VAL represents a dynamically linked object file.
5286 (dynamic-unlink DYNOBJ)
5288 Unlink the indicated object file from the application. DYNOBJ
5289 should be one of the values returned by `dynamic-link'.
5291 (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
5293 Search the C function indicated by FUNCTION (a string or symbol)
5294 in DYNOBJ and return some Scheme object that can later be used
5295 with `dynamic-call' to actually call this function. Right now,
5296 these Scheme objects are formed by casting the address of the
5297 function to `long' and converting this number to its Scheme
5300 (dynamic-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
5302 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ. The
5303 function is passed no arguments and its return value is ignored.
5304 When FUNCTION is something returned by `dynamic-func', call that
5305 function and ignore DYNOBJ. When FUNCTION is a string (or symbol,
5306 etc.), look it up in DYNOBJ; this is equivalent to
5308 (dynamic-call (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ) #f)
5310 Interrupts are deferred while the C function is executing (with
5311 SCM_DEFER_INTS/SCM_ALLOW_INTS).
5313 (dynamic-args-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ ARGS)
5315 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ, but pass it
5316 some arguments and return its return value. The C function is
5317 expected to take two arguments and return an `int', just like
5320 int c_func (int argc, char **argv);
5322 ARGS must be a list of strings and is converted into an array of
5323 `char *'. The array is passed in ARGV and its size in ARGC. The
5324 return value is converted to a Scheme number and returned from the
5325 call to `dynamic-args-call'.
5327 When dynamic linking is disabled or not supported on your system,
5328 the above functions throw errors, but they are still available.
5330 Here is a small example that works on GNU/Linux:
5332 (define libc-obj (dynamic-link "libc.so"))
5333 (dynamic-args-call 'rand libc-obj '())
5335 See the file `libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING' for additional comments.
5337 ** The #/ syntax for module names is depreciated, and will be removed
5338 in a future version of Guile. Instead of
5346 The latter syntax is more consistent with existing Lisp practice.
5348 ** Guile now does fancier printing of structures. Structures are the
5349 underlying implementation for records, which in turn are used to
5350 implement modules, so all of these object now print differently and in
5351 a more informative way.
5353 The Scheme printer will examine the builtin variable *struct-printer*
5354 whenever it needs to print a structure object. When this variable is
5355 not `#f' it is deemed to be a procedure and will be applied to the
5356 structure object and the output port. When *struct-printer* is `#f'
5357 or the procedure return `#f' the structure object will be printed in
5358 the boring #<struct 80458270> form.
5360 This hook is used by some routines in ice-9/boot-9.scm to implement
5361 type specific printing routines. Please read the comments there about
5364 One of the more specific uses of structs are records. The printing
5365 procedure that could be passed to MAKE-RECORD-TYPE is now actually
5366 called. It should behave like a *struct-printer* procedure (described
5369 ** Guile now supports a new R4RS-compliant syntax for keywords. A
5370 token of the form #:NAME, where NAME has the same syntax as a Scheme
5371 symbol, is the external representation of the keyword named NAME.
5372 Keyword objects print using this syntax as well, so values containing
5373 keyword objects can be read back into Guile. When used in an
5374 expression, keywords are self-quoting objects.
5376 Guile suports this read syntax, and uses this print syntax, regardless
5377 of the current setting of the `keyword' read option. The `keyword'
5378 read option only controls whether Guile recognizes the `:NAME' syntax,
5379 which is incompatible with R4RS. (R4RS says such token represent
5382 ** Guile has regular expression support again. Guile 1.0 included
5383 functions for matching regular expressions, based on the Rx library.
5384 In Guile 1.1, the Guile/Rx interface was removed to simplify the
5385 distribution, and thus Guile had no regular expression support. Guile
5386 1.2 again supports the most commonly used functions, and supports all
5387 of SCSH's regular expression functions.
5389 If your system does not include a POSIX regular expression library,
5390 and you have not linked Guile with a third-party regexp library such as
5391 Rx, these functions will not be available. You can tell whether your
5392 Guile installation includes regular expression support by checking
5393 whether the `*features*' list includes the `regex' symbol.
5395 *** regexp functions
5397 By default, Guile supports POSIX extended regular expressions. That
5398 means that the characters `(', `)', `+' and `?' are special, and must
5399 be escaped if you wish to match the literal characters.
5401 This regular expression interface was modeled after that implemented
5402 by SCSH, the Scheme Shell. It is intended to be upwardly compatible
5403 with SCSH regular expressions.
5405 **** Function: string-match PATTERN STR [START]
5406 Compile the string PATTERN into a regular expression and compare
5407 it with STR. The optional numeric argument START specifies the
5408 position of STR at which to begin matching.
5410 `string-match' returns a "match structure" which describes what,
5411 if anything, was matched by the regular expression. *Note Match
5412 Structures::. If STR does not match PATTERN at all,
5413 `string-match' returns `#f'.
5415 Each time `string-match' is called, it must compile its PATTERN
5416 argument into a regular expression structure. This operation is
5417 expensive, which makes `string-match' inefficient if the same regular
5418 expression is used several times (for example, in a loop). For better
5419 performance, you can compile a regular expression in advance and then
5420 match strings against the compiled regexp.
5422 **** Function: make-regexp STR [FLAGS]
5423 Compile the regular expression described by STR, and return the
5424 compiled regexp structure. If STR does not describe a legal
5425 regular expression, `make-regexp' throws a
5426 `regular-expression-syntax' error.
5428 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
5430 **** Constant: regexp/extended
5431 Use POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting
5432 STR. If not set, POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used.
5433 If the FLAGS argument is omitted, we assume regexp/extended.
5435 **** Constant: regexp/icase
5436 Do not differentiate case. Subsequent searches using the
5437 returned regular expression will be case insensitive.
5439 **** Constant: regexp/newline
5440 Match-any-character operators don't match a newline.
5442 A non-matching list ([^...]) not containing a newline matches a
5445 Match-beginning-of-line operator (^) matches the empty string
5446 immediately after a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
5447 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/notbol.
5449 Match-end-of-line operator ($) matches the empty string
5450 immediately before a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
5451 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/noteol.
5453 **** Function: regexp-exec REGEXP STR [START [FLAGS]]
5454 Match the compiled regular expression REGEXP against `str'. If
5455 the optional integer START argument is provided, begin matching
5456 from that position in the string. Return a match structure
5457 describing the results of the match, or `#f' if no match could be
5460 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
5462 **** Constant: regexp/notbol
5463 The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but
5464 see the compilation flag regexp/newline above) This flag may be
5465 used when different portions of a string are passed to
5466 regexp-exec and the beginning of the string should not be
5467 interpreted as the beginning of the line.
5469 **** Constant: regexp/noteol
5470 The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the
5471 compilation flag regexp/newline above)
5473 **** Function: regexp? OBJ
5474 Return `#t' if OBJ is a compiled regular expression, or `#f'
5477 Regular expressions are commonly used to find patterns in one string
5478 and replace them with the contents of another string.
5480 **** Function: regexp-substitute PORT MATCH [ITEM...]
5481 Write to the output port PORT selected contents of the match
5482 structure MATCH. Each ITEM specifies what should be written, and
5483 may be one of the following arguments:
5485 * A string. String arguments are written out verbatim.
5487 * An integer. The submatch with that number is written.
5489 * The symbol `pre'. The portion of the matched string preceding
5490 the regexp match is written.
5492 * The symbol `post'. The portion of the matched string
5493 following the regexp match is written.
5495 PORT may be `#f', in which case nothing is written; instead,
5496 `regexp-substitute' constructs a string from the specified ITEMs
5499 **** Function: regexp-substitute/global PORT REGEXP TARGET [ITEM...]
5500 Similar to `regexp-substitute', but can be used to perform global
5501 substitutions on STR. Instead of taking a match structure as an
5502 argument, `regexp-substitute/global' takes two string arguments: a
5503 REGEXP string describing a regular expression, and a TARGET string
5504 which should be matched against this regular expression.
5506 Each ITEM behaves as in REGEXP-SUBSTITUTE, with the following
5509 * A function may be supplied. When this function is called, it
5510 will be passed one argument: a match structure for a given
5511 regular expression match. It should return a string to be
5512 written out to PORT.
5514 * The `post' symbol causes `regexp-substitute/global' to recurse
5515 on the unmatched portion of STR. This *must* be supplied in
5516 order to perform global search-and-replace on STR; if it is
5517 not present among the ITEMs, then `regexp-substitute/global'
5518 will return after processing a single match.
5520 *** Match Structures
5522 A "match structure" is the object returned by `string-match' and
5523 `regexp-exec'. It describes which portion of a string, if any, matched
5524 the given regular expression. Match structures include: a reference to
5525 the string that was checked for matches; the starting and ending
5526 positions of the regexp match; and, if the regexp included any
5527 parenthesized subexpressions, the starting and ending positions of each
5530 In each of the regexp match functions described below, the `match'
5531 argument must be a match structure returned by a previous call to
5532 `string-match' or `regexp-exec'. Most of these functions return some
5533 information about the original target string that was matched against a
5534 regular expression; we will call that string TARGET for easy reference.
5536 **** Function: regexp-match? OBJ
5537 Return `#t' if OBJ is a match structure returned by a previous
5538 call to `regexp-exec', or `#f' otherwise.
5540 **** Function: match:substring MATCH [N]
5541 Return the portion of TARGET matched by subexpression number N.
5542 Submatch 0 (the default) represents the entire regexp match. If
5543 the regular expression as a whole matched, but the subexpression
5544 number N did not match, return `#f'.
5546 **** Function: match:start MATCH [N]
5547 Return the starting position of submatch number N.
5549 **** Function: match:end MATCH [N]
5550 Return the ending position of submatch number N.
5552 **** Function: match:prefix MATCH
5553 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET preceding the regexp match.
5555 **** Function: match:suffix MATCH
5556 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET following the regexp match.
5558 **** Function: match:count MATCH
5559 Return the number of parenthesized subexpressions from MATCH.
5560 Note that the entire regular expression match itself counts as a
5561 subexpression, and failed submatches are included in the count.
5563 **** Function: match:string MATCH
5564 Return the original TARGET string.
5566 *** Backslash Escapes
5568 Sometimes you will want a regexp to match characters like `*' or `$'
5569 exactly. For example, to check whether a particular string represents
5570 a menu entry from an Info node, it would be useful to match it against
5571 a regexp like `^* [^:]*::'. However, this won't work; because the
5572 asterisk is a metacharacter, it won't match the `*' at the beginning of
5573 the string. In this case, we want to make the first asterisk un-magic.
5575 You can do this by preceding the metacharacter with a backslash
5576 character `\'. (This is also called "quoting" the metacharacter, and
5577 is known as a "backslash escape".) When Guile sees a backslash in a
5578 regular expression, it considers the following glyph to be an ordinary
5579 character, no matter what special meaning it would ordinarily have.
5580 Therefore, we can make the above example work by changing the regexp to
5581 `^\* [^:]*::'. The `\*' sequence tells the regular expression engine
5582 to match only a single asterisk in the target string.
5584 Since the backslash is itself a metacharacter, you may force a
5585 regexp to match a backslash in the target string by preceding the
5586 backslash with itself. For example, to find variable references in a
5587 TeX program, you might want to find occurrences of the string `\let\'
5588 followed by any number of alphabetic characters. The regular expression
5589 `\\let\\[A-Za-z]*' would do this: the double backslashes in the regexp
5590 each match a single backslash in the target string.
5592 **** Function: regexp-quote STR
5593 Quote each special character found in STR with a backslash, and
5594 return the resulting string.
5596 *Very important:* Using backslash escapes in Guile source code (as
5597 in Emacs Lisp or C) can be tricky, because the backslash character has
5598 special meaning for the Guile reader. For example, if Guile encounters
5599 the character sequence `\n' in the middle of a string while processing
5600 Scheme code, it replaces those characters with a newline character.
5601 Similarly, the character sequence `\t' is replaced by a horizontal tab.
5602 Several of these "escape sequences" are processed by the Guile reader
5603 before your code is executed. Unrecognized escape sequences are
5604 ignored: if the characters `\*' appear in a string, they will be
5605 translated to the single character `*'.
5607 This translation is obviously undesirable for regular expressions,
5608 since we want to be able to include backslashes in a string in order to
5609 escape regexp metacharacters. Therefore, to make sure that a backslash
5610 is preserved in a string in your Guile program, you must use *two*
5611 consecutive backslashes:
5613 (define Info-menu-entry-pattern (make-regexp "^\\* [^:]*"))
5615 The string in this example is preprocessed by the Guile reader before
5616 any code is executed. The resulting argument to `make-regexp' is the
5617 string `^\* [^:]*', which is what we really want.
5619 This also means that in order to write a regular expression that
5620 matches a single backslash character, the regular expression string in
5621 the source code must include *four* backslashes. Each consecutive pair
5622 of backslashes gets translated by the Guile reader to a single
5623 backslash, and the resulting double-backslash is interpreted by the
5624 regexp engine as matching a single backslash character. Hence:
5626 (define tex-variable-pattern (make-regexp "\\\\let\\\\=[A-Za-z]*"))
5628 The reason for the unwieldiness of this syntax is historical. Both
5629 regular expression pattern matchers and Unix string processing systems
5630 have traditionally used backslashes with the special meanings described
5631 above. The POSIX regular expression specification and ANSI C standard
5632 both require these semantics. Attempting to abandon either convention
5633 would cause other kinds of compatibility problems, possibly more severe
5634 ones. Therefore, without extending the Scheme reader to support
5635 strings with different quoting conventions (an ungainly and confusing
5636 extension when implemented in other languages), we must adhere to this
5637 cumbersome escape syntax.
5639 * Changes to the gh_ interface
5641 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5643 * Changes to system call interfaces:
5645 ** The value returned by `raise' is now unspecified. It throws an exception
5648 *** A new procedure `sigaction' can be used to install signal handlers
5650 (sigaction signum [action] [flags])
5652 signum is the signal number, which can be specified using the value
5655 If action is omitted, sigaction returns a pair: the CAR is the current
5656 signal hander, which will be either an integer with the value SIG_DFL
5657 (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or the Scheme procedure which
5658 handles the signal, or #f if a non-Scheme procedure handles the
5659 signal. The CDR contains the current sigaction flags for the handler.
5661 If action is provided, it is installed as the new handler for signum.
5662 action can be a Scheme procedure taking one argument, or the value of
5663 SIG_DFL (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or #f to restore
5664 whatever signal handler was installed before sigaction was first used.
5665 Flags can optionally be specified for the new handler (SA_RESTART is
5666 always used if the system provides it, so need not be specified.) The
5667 return value is a pair with information about the old handler as
5670 This interface does not provide access to the "signal blocking"
5671 facility. Maybe this is not needed, since the thread support may
5672 provide solutions to the problem of consistent access to data
5675 *** A new procedure `flush-all-ports' is equivalent to running
5676 `force-output' on every port open for output.
5678 ** Guile now provides information on how it was built, via the new
5679 global variable, %guile-build-info. This variable records the values
5680 of the standard GNU makefile directory variables as an assocation
5681 list, mapping variable names (symbols) onto directory paths (strings).
5682 For example, to find out where the Guile link libraries were
5683 installed, you can say:
5685 guile -c "(display (assq-ref %guile-build-info 'libdir)) (newline)"
5688 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5690 ** The new function scm_handle_by_message_noexit is just like the
5691 existing scm_handle_by_message function, except that it doesn't call
5692 exit to terminate the process. Instead, it prints a message and just
5693 returns #f. This might be a more appropriate catch-all handler for
5694 new dynamic roots and threads.
5697 Changes in Guile 1.1 (released Friday, May 16 1997):
5699 * Changes to the distribution.
5701 The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
5703 guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
5704 guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
5705 Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
5706 is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
5707 guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
5708 expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
5709 programming language. These are packaged together because the
5710 Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
5712 This NEWS file describes the changes made to guile-core since the 1.0
5715 We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
5716 date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
5721 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
5723 ** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
5724 Shivers' Scheme Shell.
5726 In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
5727 exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
5728 stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
5729 the (command-line) function.
5730 -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
5731 -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
5732 -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
5734 The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
5735 -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
5736 -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
5737 command line arguments
5738 -ds do -s script at this point
5739 --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
5740 -h, --help display this help and exit
5741 -v, --version display version information and exit
5742 \ read arguments from following script lines
5744 So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
5745 which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
5747 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
5750 (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
5754 (main (command-line))
5756 Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
5758 ekko a speckled gecko
5760 Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
5761 token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
5762 following list of command-line arguments:
5764 ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
5766 Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
5767 the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
5768 with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
5769 defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
5770 remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
5772 In Unix, the first line of a script file must take the following form:
5774 #!INTERPRETER ARGUMENT
5776 where INTERPRETER is the absolute filename of the interpreter
5777 executable, and ARGUMENT is a single command-line argument to pass to
5780 You may only pass one argument to the interpreter, and its length is
5781 limited. These restrictions can be annoying to work around, so Guile
5782 provides a general mechanism (borrowed from, and compatible with,
5783 SCSH) for circumventing them.
5785 If the ARGUMENT in a Guile script is a single backslash character,
5786 `\', Guile will open the script file, parse arguments from its second
5787 and subsequent lines, and replace the `\' with them. So, for example,
5788 here is another implementation of the `ekko' script:
5790 #!/usr/local/bin/guile \
5794 (for-each (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
5798 If the user invokes this script as follows:
5800 ekko a speckled gecko
5802 Unix expands this into
5804 /usr/local/bin/guile \ ekko a speckled gecko
5806 When Guile sees the `\' argument, it replaces it with the arguments
5807 read from the second line of the script, producing:
5809 /usr/local/bin/guile -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
5811 This tells Guile to load the `ekko' script, and apply the function
5812 `main' to the argument list ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
5814 Here is how Guile parses the command-line arguments:
5815 - Each space character terminates an argument. This means that two
5816 spaces in a row introduce an empty-string argument.
5817 - The tab character is not permitted (unless you quote it with the
5818 backslash character, as described below), to avoid confusion.
5819 - The newline character terminates the sequence of arguments, and will
5820 also terminate a final non-empty argument. (However, a newline
5821 following a space will not introduce a final empty-string argument;
5822 it only terminates the argument list.)
5823 - The backslash character is the escape character. It escapes
5824 backslash, space, tab, and newline. The ANSI C escape sequences
5825 like \n and \t are also supported. These produce argument
5826 constituents; the two-character combination \n doesn't act like a
5827 terminating newline. The escape sequence \NNN for exactly three
5828 octal digits reads as the character whose ASCII code is NNN. As
5829 above, characters produced this way are argument constituents.
5830 Backslash followed by other characters is not allowed.
5832 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
5834 ** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
5835 system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
5836 all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
5837 supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
5838 libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
5840 Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
5841 it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
5842 independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
5844 ** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
5846 To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
5847 -lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
5848 autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
5849 following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
5852 ### Find quickthreads and libguile.
5853 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
5854 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
5856 * Changes to Scheme functions
5858 ** Guile Scheme's special syntax for keyword objects is now optional,
5859 and disabled by default.
5861 The syntax variation from R4RS made it difficult to port some
5862 interesting packages to Guile. The routines which accepted keyword
5863 arguments (mostly in the module system) have been modified to also
5864 accept symbols whose names begin with `:'.
5866 To change the keyword syntax, you must first import the (ice-9 debug)
5868 (use-modules (ice-9 debug))
5870 Then you can enable the keyword syntax as follows:
5871 (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
5873 To disable keyword syntax, do this:
5874 (read-set! keywords #f)
5876 ** Many more primitive functions accept shared substrings as
5877 arguments. In the past, these functions required normal, mutable
5878 strings as arguments, although they never made use of this
5881 ** The uniform array functions now operate on byte vectors. These
5882 functions are `array-fill!', `serial-array-copy!', `array-copy!',
5883 `serial-array-map', `array-map', `array-for-each', and
5886 ** The new functions `trace' and `untrace' implement simple debugging
5887 support for Scheme functions.
5889 The `trace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
5890 and tells the Guile interpreter to display each procedure's name and
5891 arguments each time the procedure is invoked. When invoked with no
5892 arguments, `trace' returns the list of procedures currently being
5895 The `untrace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
5896 and tells the Guile interpreter not to trace them any more. When
5897 invoked with no arguments, `untrace' untraces all curretly traced
5900 The tracing in Guile has an advantage over most other systems: we
5901 don't create new procedure objects, but mark the procedure objects
5902 themselves. This means that anonymous and internal procedures can be
5905 ** The function `assert-repl-prompt' has been renamed to
5906 `set-repl-prompt!'. It takes one argument, PROMPT.
5907 - If PROMPT is #f, the Guile read-eval-print loop will not prompt.
5908 - If PROMPT is a string, we use it as a prompt.
5909 - If PROMPT is a procedure accepting no arguments, we call it, and
5910 display the result as a prompt.
5911 - Otherwise, we display "> ".
5913 ** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
5914 string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
5915 in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
5918 ** The new function `thunk?' returns true iff its argument is a
5919 procedure of zero arguments.
5921 ** `defined?' is now a builtin function, instead of syntax. This
5922 means that its argument should be quoted. It returns #t iff its
5923 argument is bound in the current module.
5925 ** The new syntax `use-modules' allows you to add new modules to your
5926 environment without re-typing a complete `define-module' form. It
5927 accepts any number of module names as arguments, and imports their
5928 public bindings into the current module.
5930 ** The new function (module-defined? NAME MODULE) returns true iff
5931 NAME, a symbol, is defined in MODULE, a module object.
5933 ** The new function `builtin-bindings' creates and returns a hash
5934 table containing copies of all the root module's bindings.
5936 ** The new function `builtin-weak-bindings' does the same as
5937 `builtin-bindings', but creates a doubly-weak hash table.
5939 ** The `equal?' function now considers variable objects to be
5940 equivalent if they have the same name and the same value.
5942 ** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
5943 given to Guile, as a list of strings.
5945 When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
5946 script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
5947 `-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
5948 behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
5949 command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
5951 ** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
5952 in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
5953 mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
5954 but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
5956 ** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
5959 ** Changes to I/O functions
5961 *** The functions `read', `primitive-load', `read-and-eval!', and
5962 `primitive-load-path' no longer take optional arguments controlling
5963 case insensitivity and a `#' parser.
5965 Case sensitivity is now controlled by a read option called
5966 `case-insensitive'. The user can add new `#' syntaxes with the
5967 `read-hash-extend' function (see below).
5969 *** The new function `read-hash-extend' allows the user to change the
5970 syntax of Guile Scheme in a somewhat controlled way.
5972 (read-hash-extend CHAR PROC)
5973 When parsing S-expressions, if we read a `#' character followed by
5974 the character CHAR, use PROC to parse an object from the stream.
5975 If PROC is #f, remove any parsing procedure registered for CHAR.
5977 The reader applies PROC to two arguments: CHAR and an input port.
5979 *** The new functions read-delimited and read-delimited! provide a
5980 general mechanism for doing delimited input on streams.
5982 (read-delimited DELIMS [PORT HANDLE-DELIM])
5983 Read until we encounter one of the characters in DELIMS (a string),
5984 or end-of-file. PORT is the input port to read from; it defaults to
5985 the current input port. The HANDLE-DELIM parameter determines how
5986 the terminating character is handled; it should be one of the
5989 'trim omit delimiter from result
5990 'peek leave delimiter character in input stream
5991 'concat append delimiter character to returned value
5992 'split return a pair: (RESULT . TERMINATOR)
5994 HANDLE-DELIM defaults to 'peek.
5996 (read-delimited! DELIMS BUF [PORT HANDLE-DELIM START END])
5997 A side-effecting variant of `read-delimited'.
5999 The data is written into the string BUF at the indices in the
6000 half-open interval [START, END); the default interval is the whole
6001 string: START = 0 and END = (string-length BUF). The values of
6002 START and END must specify a well-defined interval in BUF, i.e.
6003 0 <= START <= END <= (string-length BUF).
6005 It returns NBYTES, the number of bytes read. If the buffer filled
6006 up without a delimiter character being found, it returns #f. If the
6007 port is at EOF when the read starts, it returns the EOF object.
6009 If an integer is returned (i.e., the read is successfully terminated
6010 by reading a delimiter character), then the HANDLE-DELIM parameter
6011 determines how to handle the terminating character. It is described
6012 above, and defaults to 'peek.
6014 (The descriptions of these functions were borrowed from the SCSH
6015 manual, by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
6017 *** The `%read-delimited!' function is the primitive used to implement
6018 `read-delimited' and `read-delimited!'.
6020 (%read-delimited! DELIMS BUF GOBBLE? [PORT START END])
6022 This returns a pair of values: (TERMINATOR . NUM-READ).
6023 - TERMINATOR describes why the read was terminated. If it is a
6024 character or the eof object, then that is the value that terminated
6025 the read. If it is #f, the function filled the buffer without finding
6026 a delimiting character.
6027 - NUM-READ is the number of characters read into BUF.
6029 If the read is successfully terminated by reading a delimiter
6030 character, then the gobble? parameter determines what to do with the
6031 terminating character. If true, the character is removed from the
6032 input stream; if false, the character is left in the input stream
6033 where a subsequent read operation will retrieve it. In either case,
6034 the character is also the first value returned by the procedure call.
6036 (The descriptions of this function was borrowed from the SCSH manual,
6037 by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
6039 *** The `read-line' and `read-line!' functions have changed; they now
6040 trim the terminator by default; previously they appended it to the
6041 returned string. For the old behavior, use (read-line PORT 'concat).
6043 *** The functions `uniform-array-read!' and `uniform-array-write!' now
6044 take new optional START and END arguments, specifying the region of
6045 the array to read and write.
6047 *** The `ungetc-char-ready?' function has been removed. We feel it's
6048 inappropriate for an interface to expose implementation details this
6051 ** Changes to the Unix library and system call interface
6053 *** The new fcntl function provides access to the Unix `fcntl' system
6056 (fcntl PORT COMMAND VALUE)
6057 Apply COMMAND to PORT's file descriptor, with VALUE as an argument.
6058 Values for COMMAND are:
6060 F_DUPFD duplicate a file descriptor
6061 F_GETFD read the descriptor's close-on-exec flag
6062 F_SETFD set the descriptor's close-on-exec flag to VALUE
6063 F_GETFL read the descriptor's flags, as set on open
6064 F_SETFL set the descriptor's flags, as set on open to VALUE
6065 F_GETOWN return the process ID of a socket's owner, for SIGIO
6066 F_SETOWN set the process that owns a socket to VALUE, for SIGIO
6067 FD_CLOEXEC not sure what this is
6069 For details, see the documentation for the fcntl system call.
6071 *** The arguments to `select' have changed, for compatibility with
6072 SCSH. The TIMEOUT parameter may now be non-integral, yielding the
6073 expected behavior. The MILLISECONDS parameter has been changed to
6074 MICROSECONDS, to more closely resemble the underlying system call.
6075 The RVEC, WVEC, and EVEC arguments can now be vectors; the type of the
6076 corresponding return set will be the same.
6078 *** The arguments to the `mknod' system call have changed. They are
6081 (mknod PATH TYPE PERMS DEV)
6082 Create a new file (`node') in the file system. PATH is the name of
6083 the file to create. TYPE is the kind of file to create; it should
6084 be 'fifo, 'block-special, or 'char-special. PERMS specifies the
6085 permission bits to give the newly created file. If TYPE is
6086 'block-special or 'char-special, DEV specifies which device the
6087 special file refers to; its interpretation depends on the kind of
6088 special file being created.
6090 *** The `fork' function has been renamed to `primitive-fork', to avoid
6091 clashing with various SCSH forks.
6093 *** The `recv' and `recvfrom' functions have been renamed to `recv!'
6094 and `recvfrom!'. They no longer accept a size for a second argument;
6095 you must pass a string to hold the received value. They no longer
6096 return the buffer. Instead, `recv' returns the length of the message
6097 received, and `recvfrom' returns a pair containing the packet's length
6098 and originating address.
6100 *** The file descriptor datatype has been removed, as have the
6101 `read-fd', `write-fd', `close', `lseek', and `dup' functions.
6102 We plan to replace these functions with a SCSH-compatible interface.
6104 *** The `create' function has been removed; it's just a special case
6107 *** There are new functions to break down process termination status
6108 values. In the descriptions below, STATUS is a value returned by
6111 (status:exit-val STATUS)
6112 If the child process exited normally, this function returns the exit
6113 code for the child process (i.e., the value passed to exit, or
6114 returned from main). If the child process did not exit normally,
6115 this function returns #f.
6117 (status:stop-sig STATUS)
6118 If the child process was suspended by a signal, this function
6119 returns the signal that suspended the child. Otherwise, it returns
6122 (status:term-sig STATUS)
6123 If the child process terminated abnormally, this function returns
6124 the signal that terminated the child. Otherwise, this function
6127 POSIX promises that exactly one of these functions will return true on
6128 a valid STATUS value.
6130 These functions are compatible with SCSH.
6132 *** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
6133 returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
6135 Component Accessor Setter
6136 ========================= ============ ============
6137 seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
6138 minutes tm:min set-tm:min
6139 hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
6140 day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
6141 month tm:mon set-tm:mon
6142 year tm:year set-tm:year
6143 day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
6144 day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
6145 daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
6146 GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
6147 name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
6149 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname',
6150 describing the host system:
6153 ============================================== ================
6154 name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
6155 network name of this machine utsname:nodename
6156 release level of the operating system utsname:release
6157 version level of the operating system utsname:version
6158 machine hardware platform utsname:machine
6160 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getpw',
6161 `getpwnam', `getpwuid', and `getpwent', describing entries from the
6162 system's user database:
6165 ====================== =================
6166 user name passwd:name
6167 user password passwd:passwd
6170 real name passwd:gecos
6171 home directory passwd:dir
6172 shell program passwd:shell
6174 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getgr',
6175 `getgrnam', `getgrgid', and `getgrent', describing entries from the
6176 system's group database:
6179 ======================= ============
6180 group name group:name
6181 group password group:passwd
6183 group members group:mem
6185 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `gethost',
6186 `gethostbyaddr', `gethostbyname', and `gethostent', describing
6190 ========================= ===============
6191 official name of host hostent:name
6192 alias list hostent:aliases
6193 host address type hostent:addrtype
6194 length of address hostent:length
6195 list of addresses hostent:addr-list
6197 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getnet',
6198 `getnetbyaddr', `getnetbyname', and `getnetent', describing internet
6202 ========================= ===============
6203 official name of net netent:name
6204 alias list netent:aliases
6205 net number type netent:addrtype
6206 net number netent:net
6208 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getproto',
6209 `getprotobyname', `getprotobynumber', and `getprotoent', describing
6213 ========================= ===============
6214 official protocol name protoent:name
6215 alias list protoent:aliases
6216 protocol number protoent:proto
6218 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getserv',
6219 `getservbyname', `getservbyport', and `getservent', describing
6223 ========================= ===============
6224 official service name servent:name
6225 alias list servent:aliases
6226 port number servent:port
6227 protocol to use servent:proto
6229 *** There are new accessors for the sockaddr structures returned by
6230 `accept', `getsockname', `getpeername', `recvfrom!':
6233 ======================================== ===============
6234 address format (`family') sockaddr:fam
6235 path, for file domain addresses sockaddr:path
6236 address, for internet domain addresses sockaddr:addr
6237 TCP or UDP port, for internet sockaddr:port
6239 *** The `getpwent', `getgrent', `gethostent', `getnetent',
6240 `getprotoent', and `getservent' functions now return #f at the end of
6241 the user database. (They used to throw an exception.)
6243 Note that calling MUMBLEent function is equivalent to calling the
6244 corresponding MUMBLE function with no arguments.
6246 *** The `setpwent', `setgrent', `sethostent', `setnetent',
6247 `setprotoent', and `setservent' routines now take no arguments.
6249 *** The `gethost', `getproto', `getnet', and `getserv' functions now
6250 provide more useful information when they throw an exception.
6252 *** The `lnaof' function has been renamed to `inet-lnaof'.
6254 *** Guile now claims to have the `current-time' feature.
6256 *** The `mktime' function now takes an optional second argument ZONE,
6257 giving the time zone to use for the conversion. ZONE should be a
6258 string, in the same format as expected for the "TZ" environment variable.
6260 *** The `strptime' function now returns a pair (TIME . COUNT), where
6261 TIME is the parsed time as a vector, and COUNT is the number of
6262 characters from the string left unparsed. This function used to
6263 return the remaining characters as a string.
6265 *** The `gettimeofday' function has replaced the old `time+ticks' function.
6266 The return value is now (SECONDS . MICROSECONDS); the fractional
6267 component is no longer expressed in "ticks".
6269 *** The `ticks/sec' constant has been removed, in light of the above change.
6271 * Changes to the gh_ interface
6273 ** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
6276 ** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
6279 ** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
6280 and returns the array
6282 ** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
6283 null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
6284 the user to interpret the data both ways.
6286 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6288 ** The new function scm_symbol_value0 provides an easy way to get a
6289 symbol's value from C code:
6291 SCM scm_symbol_value0 (char *NAME)
6292 Return the value of the symbol named by the null-terminated string
6293 NAME in the current module. If the symbol named NAME is unbound in
6294 the current module, return SCM_UNDEFINED.
6296 ** The new function scm_sysintern0 creates new top-level variables,
6297 without assigning them a value.
6299 SCM scm_sysintern0 (char *NAME)
6300 Create a new Scheme top-level variable named NAME. NAME is a
6301 null-terminated string. Return the variable's value cell.
6303 ** The function scm_internal_catch is the guts of catch. It handles
6304 all the mechanics of setting up a catch target, invoking the catch
6305 body, and perhaps invoking the handler if the body does a throw.
6307 The function is designed to be usable from C code, but is general
6308 enough to implement all the semantics Guile Scheme expects from throw.
6310 TAG is the catch tag. Typically, this is a symbol, but this function
6311 doesn't actually care about that.
6313 BODY is a pointer to a C function which runs the body of the catch;
6314 this is the code you can throw from. We call it like this:
6315 BODY (BODY_DATA, JMPBUF)
6317 BODY_DATA is just the BODY_DATA argument we received; we pass it
6318 through to BODY as its first argument. The caller can make
6319 BODY_DATA point to anything useful that BODY might need.
6320 JMPBUF is the Scheme jmpbuf object corresponding to this catch,
6321 which we have just created and initialized.
6323 HANDLER is a pointer to a C function to deal with a throw to TAG,
6324 should one occur. We call it like this:
6325 HANDLER (HANDLER_DATA, THROWN_TAG, THROW_ARGS)
6327 HANDLER_DATA is the HANDLER_DATA argument we recevied; it's the
6328 same idea as BODY_DATA above.
6329 THROWN_TAG is the tag that the user threw to; usually this is
6330 TAG, but it could be something else if TAG was #t (i.e., a
6331 catch-all), or the user threw to a jmpbuf.
6332 THROW_ARGS is the list of arguments the user passed to the THROW
6335 BODY_DATA is just a pointer we pass through to BODY. HANDLER_DATA
6336 is just a pointer we pass through to HANDLER. We don't actually
6337 use either of those pointers otherwise ourselves. The idea is
6338 that, if our caller wants to communicate something to BODY or
6339 HANDLER, it can pass a pointer to it as MUMBLE_DATA, which BODY and
6340 HANDLER can then use. Think of it as a way to make BODY and
6341 HANDLER closures, not just functions; MUMBLE_DATA points to the
6344 Of course, it's up to the caller to make sure that any data a
6345 MUMBLE_DATA needs is protected from GC. A common way to do this is
6346 to make MUMBLE_DATA a pointer to data stored in an automatic
6347 structure variable; since the collector must scan the stack for
6348 references anyway, this assures that any references in MUMBLE_DATA
6351 ** The new function scm_internal_lazy_catch is exactly like
6352 scm_internal_catch, except:
6354 - It does not unwind the stack (this is the major difference).
6355 - If handler returns, its value is returned from the throw.
6356 - BODY always receives #f as its JMPBUF argument (since there's no
6357 jmpbuf associated with a lazy catch, because we don't unwind the
6360 ** scm_body_thunk is a new body function you can pass to
6361 scm_internal_catch if you want the body to be like Scheme's `catch'
6362 --- a thunk, or a function of one argument if the tag is #f.
6364 BODY_DATA is a pointer to a scm_body_thunk_data structure, which
6365 contains the Scheme procedure to invoke as the body, and the tag
6366 we're catching. If the tag is #f, then we pass JMPBUF (created by
6367 scm_internal_catch) to the body procedure; otherwise, the body gets
6370 ** scm_handle_by_proc is a new handler function you can pass to
6371 scm_internal_catch if you want the handler to act like Scheme's catch
6372 --- call a procedure with the tag and the throw arguments.
6374 If the user does a throw to this catch, this function runs a handler
6375 procedure written in Scheme. HANDLER_DATA is a pointer to an SCM
6376 variable holding the Scheme procedure object to invoke. It ought to
6377 be a pointer to an automatic variable (i.e., one living on the stack),
6378 or the procedure object should be otherwise protected from GC.
6380 ** scm_handle_by_message is a new handler function to use with
6381 `scm_internal_catch' if you want Guile to print a message and die.
6382 It's useful for dealing with throws to uncaught keys at the top level.
6384 HANDLER_DATA, if non-zero, is assumed to be a char * pointing to a
6385 message header to print; if zero, we use "guile" instead. That
6386 text is followed by a colon, then the message described by ARGS.
6388 ** The return type of scm_boot_guile is now void; the function does
6389 not return a value, and indeed, never returns at all.
6391 ** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
6392 process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
6393 stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
6396 To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
6397 linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
6398 of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will add
6399 any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
6400 argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
6401 generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
6402 command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
6405 ** The new functions scm_get_meta_args and scm_count_argv help you
6406 implement the SCSH-style meta-argument, `\'.
6408 char **scm_get_meta_args (int ARGC, char **ARGV)
6409 If the second element of ARGV is a string consisting of a single
6410 backslash character (i.e. "\\" in Scheme notation), open the file
6411 named by the following argument, parse arguments from it, and return
6412 the spliced command line. The returned array is terminated by a
6415 For details of argument parsing, see above, under "guile now accepts
6416 command-line arguments compatible with SCSH..."
6418 int scm_count_argv (char **ARGV)
6419 Count the arguments in ARGV, assuming it is terminated by a null
6422 For an example of how these functions might be used, see the source
6423 code for the function scm_shell in libguile/script.c.
6425 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6428 ** The new function scm_compile_shell_switches turns an array of
6429 command-line arguments into Scheme code to carry out the actions they
6430 describe. Given ARGC and ARGV, it returns a Scheme expression to
6431 evaluate, and calls scm_set_program_arguments to make any remaining
6432 command-line arguments available to the Scheme code. For example,
6433 given the following arguments:
6435 -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
6437 scm_set_program_arguments will return the following expression:
6439 (begin (load "ekko") (main (command-line)) (quit))
6441 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6444 ** The function scm_shell_usage prints a usage message appropriate for
6445 an interpreter that uses scm_compile_shell_switches to handle its
6446 command-line arguments.
6448 void scm_shell_usage (int FATAL, char *MESSAGE)
6449 Print a usage message to the standard error output. If MESSAGE is
6450 non-zero, write it before the usage message, followed by a newline.
6451 If FATAL is non-zero, exit the process, using FATAL as the
6452 termination status. (If you want to be compatible with Guile,
6453 always use 1 as the exit status when terminating due to command-line
6456 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6459 ** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
6460 expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL. Earth-shattering.
6462 ** The macros for declaring scheme objects in C code have been
6463 rearranged slightly. They are now:
6465 SCM_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6466 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
6467 point to the Scheme symbol whose name is SCHEME_NAME. C_NAME should
6468 be a C identifier, and SCHEME_NAME should be a C string.
6470 SCM_GLOBAL_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6471 Just like SCM_SYMBOL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
6473 SCM_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6474 Create a global variable at the Scheme level named SCHEME_NAME.
6475 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
6476 point to the Scheme variable's value cell.
6478 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6479 Just like SCM_VCELL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
6481 The `guile-snarf' script writes initialization code for these macros
6482 to its standard output, given C source code as input.
6484 The SCM_GLOBAL macro is gone.
6486 ** The scm_read_line and scm_read_line_x functions have been replaced
6487 by Scheme code based on the %read-delimited! procedure (known to C
6488 code as scm_read_delimited_x). See its description above for more
6491 ** The function scm_sys_open has been renamed to scm_open. It now
6492 returns a port instead of an FD object.
6494 * The dynamic linking support has changed. For more information, see
6495 libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING.
6500 User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
6503 * Changes to the 'guile' program:
6505 ** Guile now loads some new files when it starts up. Guile first
6506 searches the load path for init.scm, and loads it if found. Then, if
6507 Guile is not being used to execute a script, and the user's home
6508 directory contains a file named `.guile', Guile loads that.
6510 ** You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
6512 To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
6514 When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
6515 characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
6516 be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
6517 to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
6518 specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
6519 the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
6520 and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
6521 filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
6522 following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
6523 for more information.
6525 Now you can use Guile as an interpreter, using a mechanism which is a
6526 compatible subset of that provided by SCSH.
6528 Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
6529 name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
6530 characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
6531 to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
6532 following two lines at the top of the file:
6534 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6537 Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
6538 of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
6539 start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
6541 For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
6543 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6545 (let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
6548 (display (car args))
6549 (if (pair? (cdr args))
6551 (loop (cdr args)))))
6554 Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
6555 end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
6556 don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
6557 we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
6558 scripts once we do. Furthermore, if the path to Guile on your system
6559 is too long for your kernel, you can start the script with this
6563 exec /really/long/path/to/guile -s "$0" ${1+"$@"}
6566 Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
6569 ** You can now run Guile without installing it.
6571 Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
6572 couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
6573 they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
6574 later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
6575 itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
6578 To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
6579 then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
6580 colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
6581 of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
6582 full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
6585 export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
6588 ** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
6589 results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
6590 expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
6593 ** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
6594 however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
6595 request that they be displayed by default. After an error, evaluate
6597 to see a backtrace, and
6598 (debug-enable 'backtrace)
6599 to see them by default.
6603 * Changes to Guile Scheme:
6605 ** Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
6607 This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
6608 upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
6611 Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
6612 type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
6613 caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
6614 way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
6617 ** Guile's delq, delv, delete functions, and their destructive
6618 counterparts, delq!, delv!, and delete!, now remove all matching
6619 elements from the list, not just the first. This matches the behavior
6620 of the corresponding Emacs Lisp functions, and (I believe) the Maclisp
6621 functions which inspired them.
6623 I recognize that this change may break code in subtle ways, but it
6624 seems best to make the change before the FSF's first Guile release,
6628 ** The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
6630 ** The facilities for loading Scheme source files have changed.
6632 *** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
6633 for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
6636 *** The variable %load-extensions now tells Guile which extensions to
6637 try appending to a filename when searching the load path. Its value
6638 is a list of strings. Its default value is ("" ".scm").
6640 *** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
6641 value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME,
6642 with all the extensions listed in %load-extensions. If it finds a
6643 match, then it returns its full filename. If FILENAME is absolute, it
6644 returns it unchanged. Otherwise, it returns #f.
6646 %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to directories.
6648 *** (primitive-load FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
6649 uses %seach-load-path to find a file named FILENAME, and loads it if
6650 it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for any reason, it throws an
6653 The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
6656 *** load uses the same searching semantics as primitive-load.
6658 *** The functions %try-load, try-load-with-path, %load, load-with-path,
6659 basic-try-load-with-path, basic-load-with-path, try-load-module-with-
6660 path, and load-module-with-path have been deleted. The functions
6661 above should serve their purposes.
6663 *** If the value of the variable %load-hook is a procedure,
6664 `primitive-load' applies its value to the name of the file being
6665 loaded (without the load path directory name prepended). If its value
6666 is #f, it is ignored. Otherwise, an error occurs.
6668 This is mostly useful for printing load notification messages.
6671 ** The function `eval!' is no longer accessible from the scheme level.
6672 We can't allow operations which introduce glocs into the scheme level,
6673 because Guile's type system can't handle these as data. Use `eval' or
6674 `read-and-eval!' (see below) as replacement.
6676 ** The new function read-and-eval! reads an expression from PORT,
6677 evaluates it, and returns the result. This is more efficient than
6678 simply calling `read' and `eval', since it is not necessary to make a
6679 copy of the expression for the evaluator to munge.
6681 Its optional arguments CASE_INSENSITIVE_P and SHARP are interpreted as
6682 for the `read' function.
6685 ** The function `int?' has been removed; its definition was identical
6686 to that of `integer?'.
6688 ** The functions `<?', `<?', `<=?', `=?', `>?', and `>=?'. Code should
6689 use the R4RS names for these functions.
6691 ** The function object-properties no longer returns the hash handle;
6692 it simply returns the object's property list.
6694 ** Many functions have been changed to throw errors, instead of
6695 returning #f on failure. The point of providing exception handling in
6696 the language is to simplify the logic of user code, but this is less
6697 useful if Guile's primitives don't throw exceptions.
6699 ** The function `fileno' has been renamed from `%fileno'.
6701 ** The function primitive-mode->fdes returns #t or #f now, not 1 or 0.
6704 * Changes to Guile's C interface:
6706 ** The library's initialization procedure has been simplified.
6707 scm_boot_guile now has the prototype:
6709 void scm_boot_guile (int ARGC,
6711 void (*main_func) (),
6714 scm_boot_guile calls MAIN_FUNC, passing it CLOSURE, ARGC, and ARGV.
6715 MAIN_FUNC should do all the work of the program (initializing other
6716 packages, reading user input, etc.) before returning. When MAIN_FUNC
6717 returns, call exit (0); this function never returns. If you want some
6718 other exit value, MAIN_FUNC may call exit itself.
6720 scm_boot_guile arranges for program-arguments to return the strings
6721 given by ARGC and ARGV. If MAIN_FUNC modifies ARGC/ARGV, should call
6722 scm_set_program_arguments with the final list, so Scheme code will
6723 know which arguments have been processed.
6725 scm_boot_guile establishes a catch-all catch handler which prints an
6726 error message and exits the process. This means that Guile exits in a
6727 coherent way when system errors occur and the user isn't prepared to
6728 handle it. If the user doesn't like this behavior, they can establish
6729 their own universal catcher in MAIN_FUNC to shadow this one.
6731 Why must the caller do all the real work from MAIN_FUNC? The garbage
6732 collector assumes that all local variables of type SCM will be above
6733 scm_boot_guile's stack frame on the stack. If you try to manipulate
6734 SCM values after this function returns, it's the luck of the draw
6735 whether the GC will be able to find the objects you allocate. So,
6736 scm_boot_guile function exits, rather than returning, to discourage
6737 people from making that mistake.
6739 The IN, OUT, and ERR arguments were removed; there are other
6740 convenient ways to override these when desired.
6742 The RESULT argument was deleted; this function should never return.
6744 The BOOT_CMD argument was deleted; the MAIN_FUNC argument is more
6748 ** Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
6751 In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
6752 versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
6753 Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
6754 Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
6757 Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
6758 refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
6759 Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
6760 the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
6763 ** Two new C functions, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object,
6764 have been added to the Guile library.
6766 scm_protect_object (OBJ) protects OBJ from the garbage collector.
6767 OBJ will not be freed, even if all other references are dropped,
6768 until someone does scm_unprotect_object (OBJ). Both functions
6771 Note that calls to scm_protect_object do not nest. You can call
6772 scm_protect_object any number of times on a given object, and the
6773 next call to scm_unprotect_object will unprotect it completely.
6775 Basically, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object just
6776 maintain a list of references to things. Since the GC knows about
6777 this list, all objects it mentions stay alive. scm_protect_object
6778 adds its argument to the list; scm_unprotect_object remove its
6779 argument from the list.
6782 ** scm_eval_0str now returns the value of the last expression
6785 ** The new function scm_read_0str reads an s-expression from a
6786 null-terminated string, and returns it.
6788 ** The new function `scm_stdio_to_port' converts a STDIO file pointer
6789 to a Scheme port object.
6791 ** The new function `scm_set_program_arguments' allows C code to set
6792 the value returned by the Scheme `program-arguments' function.
6797 * Guile no longer includes sophisticated Tcl/Tk support.
6799 The old Tcl/Tk support was unsatisfying to us, because it required the
6800 user to link against the Tcl library, as well as Tk and Guile. The
6801 interface was also un-lispy, in that it preserved Tcl/Tk's practice of
6802 referring to widgets by names, rather than exporting widgets to Scheme
6803 code as a special datatype.
6805 In the Usenix Tk Developer's Workshop held in July 1996, the Tcl/Tk
6806 maintainers described some very interesting changes in progress to the
6807 Tcl/Tk internals, which would facilitate clean interfaces between lone
6808 Tk and other interpreters --- even for garbage-collected languages
6809 like Scheme. They expected the new Tk to be publicly available in the
6812 Since it seems that Guile might soon have a new, cleaner interface to
6813 lone Tk, and that the old Guile/Tk glue code would probably need to be
6814 completely rewritten, we (Jim Blandy and Richard Stallman) have
6815 decided not to support the old code. We'll spend the time instead on
6816 a good interface to the newer Tk, as soon as it is available.
6818 Until then, gtcltk-lib provides trivial, low-maintenance functionality.
6821 Copyright information:
6823 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
6825 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
6826 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
6827 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
6828 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
6830 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
6831 of this document, or of portions of it,
6832 under the above conditions, provided also that they
6833 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
6838 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"