(Miscellaneous Tools): Add under "Part II".
[bpt/guile.git] / doc / ref / guile.texi
1 \input texinfo
2 @c -*-texinfo-*-
3 @c %**start of header
4 @setfilename guile.info
5 @settitle Guile Reference Manual
6 @set guile
7 @set MANUAL_EDITION 1.1
8 @c %**end of header
9
10 @c Notes
11 @c
12 @c We no longer use the category "primitive" to distinguish C-defined
13 @c Scheme procedures from those defined in Scheme. Instead, the
14 @c reference manual now includes a C declaration as well as a Scheme
15 @c declaration for each procedure that is available in both Scheme and
16 @c C.
17 @c
18 @c When adding a new reference entry to the Guile manual, please
19 @c document it with @deffn using one of the following categories:
20 @c
21 @c {Scheme Procedure}
22 @c {Scheme Syntax}
23 @c {C Function}
24 @c {C Macro}
25 @c
26 @c If the entry is for a new primitive, it should have both a @deffn
27 @c {Scheme Procedure} line and a @deffnx {C Function} line; see the
28 @c manual source for plenty of existing examples of this.
29 @c
30 @c For {C Function} entries where the return type and all parameter
31 @c types are SCM, we omit the SCMs. This is easier to read and also
32 @c gets round the problem that Texinfo doesn't allow a @deftypefnx
33 @c inside a @deffn.
34 @c
35 @c For a list of Guile primitives that are not yet incorporated into the
36 @c reference manual, see the file `new-docstrings.texi', which holds all
37 @c the docstrings snarfed from the libguile C sources for primitives
38 @c that are not in the reference manual. If you have worked with some
39 @c of these concepts, implemented them, or just happen to know what they
40 @c do, please write up a little explanation -- it would be a big help.
41 @c Alternatively, if you know of any reason why some of these should
42 @c *not* go in the manual, please let the mailing list
43 @c <guile-devel@gnu.org> know.
44
45 @c Define indices that are used in the Guile Scheme part of the
46 @c reference manual to group stuff according to whether it is R5RS or a
47 @c Guile extension.
48 @defcodeindex rn
49 @defcodeindex ge
50
51 @include version.texi
52
53 @c @iftex
54 @c @cropmarks
55 @c @end iftex
56
57 @dircategory The Algorithmic Language Scheme
58 @direntry
59 * Guile Reference: (guile). The Guile reference manual.
60 @end direntry
61
62 @setchapternewpage off
63
64 @ifinfo
65 Guile Reference Manual
66 Copyright (C) 1996 Free Software Foundation @*
67 Copyright (C) 1997 Free Software Foundation @*
68 Copyright (C) 2000 Free Software Foundation @*
69 Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation
70
71 Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
72 this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
73 are preserved on all copies.
74
75 @ignore
76 Permission is granted to process this file through TeX and print the
77 results, provided the printed document carries copying permission
78 notice identical to this one except for the removal of this paragraph
79 (this paragraph not being relevant to the printed manual).
80 @end ignore
81
82 Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
83 manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire
84 resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission
85 notice identical to this one.
86
87 Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
88 into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions,
89 except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved
90 by the Free Software Foundation.
91 @end ifinfo
92
93 @titlepage
94 @sp 10
95 @comment The title is printed in a large font.
96 @title Guile Reference Manual
97 @subtitle $Id: guile.texi,v 1.13 2002-03-08 21:23:36 ttn Exp $
98 @subtitle For use with Guile @value{VERSION}
99
100 @c AUTHORS
101
102 @c The Guile reference and tutorial manuals were written and edited
103 @c largely by Mark Galassi and Jim Blandy. In particular, Jim wrote the
104 @c original tutorial on Guile's data representation and the C API for
105 @c accessing Guile objects.
106
107 @c Significant portions were contributed by Gary Houston (contributions
108 @c to POSIX system calls and networking, expect, I/O internals and
109 @c extensions, slib installation, error handling) and Tim Pierce
110 @c (sections on script interpreter triggers, alists, function tracing).
111
112 @c Tom Lord contributed a great deal of material with early Guile
113 @c snapshots; although most of this text has been rewritten, all of it
114 @c was important, and some of the structure remains.
115
116 @c Aubrey Jaffer wrote the SCM Scheme implementation and manual upon
117 @c which the Guile program and manual are based. Some portions of the
118 @c SCM and SLIB manuals have been included here verbatim.
119
120 @c Since Guile 1.4, Neil Jerram has been maintaining and improving the
121 @c reference manual. Among other contributions, he wrote the Basic
122 @c Ideas chapter, developed the tools for keeping the manual in sync
123 @c with snarfed libguile docstrings, and reorganized the structure so as
124 @c to accommodate docstrings for all Guile's primitives.
125
126 @c Martin Grabmueller has made substantial contributions throughout the
127 @c reference manual in preparation for the Guile 1.6 release, including
128 @c filling out a lot of the documentation of Scheme data types, control
129 @c mechanisms and procedures. In addition, he wrote the documentation
130 @c for Guile's SRFI modules and modules associated with the Guile REPL.
131
132 @author Mark Galassi
133 @author Cygnus Solution and Los Alamos National Laboratory
134 @author @email{rosalia@@cygnus.com}
135 @author
136 @author Jim Blandy
137 @author Free Software Foundation and MIT AI Lab
138 @author @email{jimb@@red-bean.com}
139 @author
140 @author Gary Houston
141 @author @email{ghouston@@arglist.com}
142 @author
143 @author Tim Pierce
144 @author @email{twp@@skepsis.com}
145 @author
146 @author Neil Jerram
147 @author @email{neil@@ossau.uklinux.net}
148 @author
149 @author Martin Grabmueller
150 @author @email{mgrabmue@@cs.tu-berlin.de}
151
152 @c The following two commands start the copyright page.
153 @page
154 @vskip 0pt plus 1filll
155 @vskip 0pt plus 1filll
156 Copyright @copyright{} 1996 Free Software Foundation
157
158 Copyright @copyright{} 1997 Free Software Foundation
159
160 Copyright @copyright{} 2000 Free Software Foundation
161
162 Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
163 this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice
164 are preserved on all copies.
165
166 Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
167 manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire
168 resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission
169 notice identical to this one.
170
171 Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual
172 into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions,
173 except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved
174 by Free Software Foundation.
175 @end titlepage
176
177 @c @smallbook
178 @finalout
179 @headings double
180
181 @c Where to find Guile examples.
182 @set example-dir doc/examples
183
184 @ifinfo
185 @node Top, Guile License, (dir), (dir)
186 @top The Guile Reference Manual
187
188 This reference manual documents Guile, GNU's Ubiquitous Intelligent
189 Language for Extensions. It describes how to use Guile in many useful
190 and interesting ways.
191
192 This Info file contains edition @value{MANUAL_EDITION} of the reference
193 manual, corresponding to Guile version @value{VERSION}.
194 @end ifinfo
195
196 @menu
197 Preface
198
199 * Guile License:: Conditions for copying and using Guile.
200 * Manual Layout:: How to read the rest of this manual.
201 * Manual Conventions:: Conventional terminology.
202
203 Part I: Introduction to Guile
204
205 * What is Guile?:: And what does it do?
206 * Whirlwind Tour:: An introductory whirlwind tour.
207 * Obtaining and Installing Guile::
208 * Reporting Bugs:: Reporting bugs in Guile or this manual.
209
210 Part II: Programming with Guile
211
212 * Programming Intro:: Introduction to this part.
213 * Programming Overview:: An overview of Guile programming.
214 * Scheme Intro:: Introduction to Guile Scheme.
215 * Basic Ideas:: Basic ideas in Scheme.
216 * Guile Scripting:: How to write Guile scripts.
217 * Command Line Handling:: Command line options and arguments.
218 * Libguile Intro:: Using Guile as an extension language.
219 * Guile API:: Overview of the Guile API.
220 * Data Representation:: Data representation in Guile.
221 * GH:: The deprecated GH interface.
222 * Debugger User Interface::
223 * Autoconf Support:: Guile-specific configure.in macros.
224 * Miscellaneous Tools:: Snarfing, linting, etc.
225 * Further Reading:: Where to find out more about Scheme programming.
226
227 Part III: Guile API Reference
228
229 * Reference Intro:: Introduction to the Guile API reference.
230 * Simple Data Types:: Numbers, strings, booleans and so on.
231 * Compound Data Types:: Data types for holding other data.
232 * Procedures and Macros:: Procedures and macros.
233 * Utility Functions:: General utility functions.
234 * Binding Constructs:: Definitions and variable bindings.
235 * Control Mechanisms:: Controlling the flow of program execution.
236 * Input and Output:: Ports, reading and writing.
237 * Read/Load/Eval:: Reading and evaluating Scheme code.
238 * Memory Management:: Memory management and garbage collection.
239 * Objects:: Low level object orientation support.
240 * Modules:: Designing reusable code libraries.
241 * Scheduling:: Threads, mutexes, asyncs and dynamic roots.
242 * Options and Config:: Runtime options and configuration.
243 * Translation:: Support for translating other languages.
244 * Debugging:: Internal debugging interface.
245 * Deprecated:: Features that are planned to disappear.
246
247 Part IV: Guile Modules
248
249 * SLIB:: Using the SLIB Scheme library.
250 * POSIX:: POSIX system calls and networking.
251 * SRFI Support:: Support for various SRFIs.
252 * Readline Support:: Module for using the readline library.
253 * Value History:: Maintaining a value history in the REPL.
254 * Pretty Printing:: Nicely formatting Scheme objects for output.
255 * Formatted Output:: The @code{format} procedure.
256 * Rx Regexps:: The Rx regular expression library.
257 * Expect:: Controlling interactive programs with Guile.
258 * The Scheme shell (scsh):: Using scsh interfaces in Guile.
259
260 Indices
261
262 * Concept Index::
263 * Procedure Index::
264 * Variable Index::
265 * Type Index::
266 * R5RS Index::
267 * Guile Extensions Index::
268
269 @end menu
270
271 @include preface.texi
272
273 @iftex
274 @page
275 @unnumbered{Part I: Introduction to Guile}
276 @end iftex
277
278 @include intro.texi
279
280 @page
281 @node Programming Intro
282 @unnumbered Part II: Programming with Guile
283
284 In this part of the manual, we aim to present a wide ranging picture of
285 what it means to program using Guile, to provide guidance, practical
286 guidelines and tips for @emph{how} to program in Guile, and to document
287 the tools that are available to help you with your programming. For
288 detailed reference information on the variables, functions etc. that
289 make up Guile's application programming interface (API), please refer to
290 Part III (@pxref{Reference Intro,,Part III --- Guile API Reference}).
291
292 We begin in the first chapter of this part by looking at the programming
293 options available.
294
295 @include program.texi
296 @include scheme-intro.texi
297 @include scheme-ideas.texi
298 @include scripts.texi
299 @include script-getopt.texi
300 @include extend.texi
301 @include scm.texi
302 @include data-rep.texi
303 @include gh.texi
304 @include debugging.texi
305 @include autoconf.texi
306 @include tools.texi
307 @include scheme-reading.texi
308
309 @page
310 @node Reference Intro
311 @unnumbered Part III: Guile API Reference
312
313 Guile provides an application programming interface (@dfn{API}) to
314 developers in two core languages: Scheme and C. This part of the manual
315 contains reference documentation for all of the functionality that is
316 available through both Scheme and C interfaces.
317
318 @include scheme-data.texi
319 @include scheme-compound.texi
320 @include scheme-procedures.texi
321 @include scheme-utility.texi
322 @include scheme-binding.texi
323 @include scheme-control.texi
324 @include scheme-io.texi
325 @include scheme-evaluation.texi
326 @include scheme-memory.texi
327 @include scheme-modules.texi
328 @include scheme-scheduling.texi
329 @c object orientation support here
330 @include scheme-options.texi
331 @include scheme-translation.texi
332 @include scheme-debug.texi
333 @include deprecated.texi
334
335 @iftex
336 @page
337 @unnumbered{Part IV: Guile Modules}
338 @end iftex
339
340 @include slib.texi
341 @include posix.texi
342 @include srfi-modules.texi
343 @include repl-modules.texi
344 @include misc-modules.texi
345 @include expect.texi
346 @include scsh.texi
347
348 @iftex
349 @page
350 @unnumbered{Indices}
351 @end iftex
352
353 @include indices.texi
354 @include scheme-indices.texi
355
356 @contents
357
358 @bye