1 Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes. -*- text -*-
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
7 Changes since the stable branch:
9 ** Variables have no longer a special behavior for `equal?'.
11 Previously, comparing two variables with `equal?' would recursivly
12 compare their values. This is no longer done. Variables are now only
13 `equal?' if they are `eq?'.
15 * Changes to the C interface
17 ** New function: scm_str2string
19 This function creates a scheme string from a 0-terminated C string. The input
22 Changes since Guile 1.4:
24 * Changes to the distribution
26 ** A top-level TODO file is included.
28 ** Guile now uses a versioning scheme similar to that of the Linux kernel.
30 Guile now always uses three numbers to represent the version,
31 i.e. "1.6.5". The first number, 1, is the major version number, the
32 second number, 6, is the minor version number, and the third number,
33 5, is the micro version number. Changes in major version number
34 indicate major changes in Guile.
36 Minor version numbers that are even denote stable releases, and odd
37 minor version numbers denote development versions (which may be
38 unstable). The micro version number indicates a minor sub-revision of
39 a given MAJOR.MINOR release.
41 In keeping with the new scheme, (minor-version) and scm_minor_version
42 no longer return everything but the major version number. They now
43 just return the minor version number. Two new functions
44 (micro-version) and scm_micro_version have been added to report the
47 In addition, ./GUILE-VERSION now defines GUILE_MICRO_VERSION.
49 ** Guile now actively warns about deprecated features.
51 The new configure option `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' and the
52 environment variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED control this mechanism.
53 See INSTALL and README for more information.
55 ** Guile is much more likely to work on 64-bit architectures.
57 Guile now compiles and passes "make check" with only two UNRESOLVED GC
58 cases on Alpha based machines now. Thanks to John Goerzen for the use
61 ** New functions: setitimer and getitimer.
63 These implement a fairly direct interface to the libc functions of the
66 ** The #. reader extension is now disabled by default.
68 For safety reasons, #. evaluation is disabled by default. To
69 re-enable it, set the fluid read-eval? to #t. For example:
71 (fluid-set! read-eval? #t)
73 but make sure you realize the potential security risks involved. With
74 read-eval? enabled, reading a data file from an untrusted source can
77 ** New SRFI modules have been added:
79 SRFI-0 `cond-expand' is now supported in Guile, without requiring
82 (srfi srfi-1) is a library containing many useful pair- and list-processing
85 (srfi srfi-2) exports and-let*.
87 (srfi srfi-4) implements homogeneous numeric vector datatypes.
89 (srfi srfi-6) is a dummy module for now, since guile already provides
90 all of the srfi-6 procedures by default: open-input-string,
91 open-output-string, get-output-string.
93 (srfi srfi-8) exports receive.
95 (srfi srfi-9) exports define-record-type.
97 (srfi srfi-10) exports define-reader-ctor and implements the reader
100 (srfi srfi-11) exports let-values and let*-values.
102 (srfi srfi-13) implements the SRFI String Library.
104 (srfi srfi-14) implements the SRFI Character-Set Library.
106 (srfi srfi-17) implements setter and getter-with-setter and redefines
107 some accessor procedures as procedures with getters. (such as car,
108 cdr, vector-ref etc.)
110 (srfi srfi-19) implements the SRFI Time/Date Library.
112 ** New scripts / "executable modules"
114 Subdirectory "scripts" contains Scheme modules that are packaged to
115 also be executable as scripts. At this time, these scripts are available:
124 See README there for more info.
126 These scripts can be invoked from the shell with the new program
127 "guile-tools", which keeps track of installation directory for you.
130 $ guile-tools display-commentary srfi/*.scm
132 guile-tools is copied to the standard $bindir on "make install".
134 ** New module (ice-9 stack-catch):
136 stack-catch is like catch, but saves the current state of the stack in
137 the fluid the-last-stack. This fluid can be useful when using the
138 debugger and when re-throwing an error.
140 ** The module (ice-9 and-let*) has been renamed to (ice-9 and-let-star)
142 This has been done to prevent problems on lesser operating systems
143 that can't tolerate `*'s in file names. The exported macro continues
144 to be named `and-let*', of course.
146 On systems that support it, there is also a compatibility module named
147 (ice-9 and-let*). It will go away in the next release.
149 ** New modules (oop goops) etc.:
154 (oop goops active-slot)
155 (oop goops composite-slot)
157 The Guile Object Oriented Programming System (GOOPS) has been
158 integrated into Guile. For further information, consult the GOOPS
159 manual and tutorial in the `doc' directory.
161 ** New module (ice-9 rdelim).
163 This exports the following procedures which were previously defined
164 in the default environment:
166 read-line read-line! read-delimited read-delimited! %read-delimited!
167 %read-line write-line
169 For backwards compatibility the definitions are still imported into the
170 default environment in this version of Guile. However you should add:
172 (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim))
174 to any program which uses the definitions, since this may change in
177 Alternatively, if guile-scsh is installed, the (scsh rdelim) module
178 can be used for similar functionality.
180 ** New module (ice-9 rw)
182 This is a subset of the (scsh rw) module from guile-scsh. Currently
183 it defines two procedures:
185 *** New function: read-string!/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
187 Read characters from a port or file descriptor into a string STR.
188 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
189 fport. This procedure is scsh-compatible and can efficiently read
192 *** New function: write-string/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
194 Write characters from a string STR to a port or file descriptor.
195 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
196 fport. This procedure is mostly compatible and can efficiently
199 ** New module (ice-9 match)
201 This module includes Andrew K. Wright's pattern matcher. See
202 ice-9/match.scm for brief description or
204 http://www.star-lab.com/wright/code.html
206 for complete documentation.
208 ** New module (ice-9 buffered-input)
210 This module provides procedures to construct an input port from an
211 underlying source of input that reads and returns its input in chunks.
212 The underlying input source is a Scheme procedure, specified by the
213 caller, which the port invokes whenever it needs more input.
215 This is useful when building an input port whose back end is Readline
216 or a UI element such as the GtkEntry widget.
220 The reference and tutorial documentation that was previously
221 distributed separately, as `guile-doc', is now included in the core
222 Guile distribution. The documentation consists of the following
225 - The Guile Tutorial (guile-tut.texi) contains a tutorial introduction
228 - The Guile Reference Manual (guile.texi) contains (or is intended to
229 contain) reference documentation on all aspects of Guile.
231 - The GOOPS Manual (goops.texi) contains both tutorial-style and
232 reference documentation for using GOOPS, Guile's Object Oriented
235 - The Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
238 See the README file in the `doc' directory for more details.
240 ** There are a couple of examples in the examples/ directory now.
242 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
244 ** New command line option `--use-srfi'
246 Using this option, SRFI modules can be loaded on startup and be
247 available right from the beginning. This makes programming portable
248 Scheme programs easier.
250 The option `--use-srfi' expects a comma-separated list of numbers,
251 each representing a SRFI number to be loaded into the interpreter
252 before starting evaluating a script file or the REPL. Additionally,
253 the feature identifier for the loaded SRFIs is recognized by
254 `cond-expand' when using this option.
257 $ guile --use-srfi=8,13
258 guile> (receive (x z) (values 1 2) (+ 1 2))
260 guile> (string-pad "bla" 20)
263 ** Guile now always starts up in the `(guile-user)' module.
265 Previously, scripts executed via the `-s' option would run in the
266 `(guile)' module and the repl would run in the `(guile-user)' module.
267 Now every user action takes place in the `(guile-user)' module by
270 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
272 ** Character classifiers work for non-ASCII characters.
274 The predicates `char-alphabetic?', `char-numeric?',
275 `char-whitespace?', `char-lower?', `char-upper?' and `char-is-both?'
276 no longer check whether their arguments are ASCII characters.
277 Previously, a character would only be considered alphabetic when it
278 was also ASCII, for example.
280 ** Previously deprecated Scheme functions have been removed:
282 tag - no replacement.
283 fseek - replaced by seek.
284 list* - replaced by cons*.
286 ** It's now possible to create modules with controlled environments
290 (use-modules (ice-9 safe))
291 (define m (make-safe-module))
292 ;;; m will now be a module containing only a safe subset of R5RS
293 (eval '(+ 1 2) m) --> 3
294 (eval 'load m) --> ERROR: Unbound variable: load
296 ** Evaluation of "()", the empty list, is now an error.
298 Previously, the expression "()" evaluated to the empty list. This has
299 been changed to signal a "missing expression" error. The correct way
300 to write the empty list as a literal constant is to use quote: "'()".
302 ** New concept of `Guile Extensions'.
304 A Guile Extension is just a ordinary shared library that can be linked
305 at run-time. We found it advantageous to give this simple concept a
306 dedicated name to distinguish the issues related to shared libraries
307 from the issues related to the module system.
309 *** New function: load-extension
311 Executing (load-extension lib init) is mostly equivalent to
313 (dynamic-call init (dynamic-link lib))
315 except when scm_register_extension has been called previously.
316 Whenever appropriate, you should use `load-extension' instead of
317 dynamic-link and dynamic-call.
319 *** New C function: scm_c_register_extension
321 This function registers a initialization function for use by
322 `load-extension'. Use it when you don't want specific extensions to
323 be loaded as shared libraries (for example on platforms that don't
324 support dynamic linking).
326 ** Auto-loading of compiled-code modules is deprecated.
328 Guile used to be able to automatically find and link a shared
329 library to satisfy requests for a module. For example, the module
330 `(foo bar)' could be implemented by placing a shared library named
331 "foo/libbar.so" (or with a different extension) in a directory on the
334 This has been found to be too tricky, and is no longer supported. The
335 shared libraries are now called "extensions". You should now write a
336 small Scheme file that calls `load-extension' to load the shared
337 library and initialize it explicitely.
339 The shared libraries themselves should be installed in the usual
340 places for shared libraries, with names like "libguile-foo-bar".
342 For example, place this into a file "foo/bar.scm"
344 (define-module (foo bar))
346 (load-extension "libguile-foo-bar" "foobar_init")
348 ** Backward incompatible change: eval EXP ENVIRONMENT-SPECIFIER
350 `eval' is now R5RS, that is it takes two arguments.
351 The second argument is an environment specifier, i.e. either
353 (scheme-report-environment 5)
355 (interaction-environment)
361 ** The module system has been made more disciplined.
363 The function `eval' will save and restore the current module around
364 the evaluation of the specified expression. While this expression is
365 evaluated, `(current-module)' will now return the right module, which
366 is the module specified as the second argument to `eval'.
368 A consequence of this change is that `eval' is not particularly
369 useful when you want allow the evaluated code to change what module is
370 designated as the current module and have this change persist from one
371 call to `eval' to the next. The read-eval-print-loop is an example
372 where `eval' is now inadequate. To compensate, there is a new
373 function `primitive-eval' that does not take a module specifier and
374 that does not save/restore the current module. You should use this
375 function together with `set-current-module', `current-module', etc
376 when you want to have more control over the state that is carried from
377 one eval to the next.
379 Additionally, it has been made sure that forms that are evaluated at
380 the top level are always evaluated with respect to the current module.
381 Previously, subforms of top-level forms such as `begin', `case',
382 etc. did not respect changes to the current module although these
383 subforms are at the top-level as well.
385 To prevent strange behavior, the forms `define-module',
386 `use-modules', `use-syntax', and `export' have been restricted to only
387 work on the top level. The forms `define-public' and
388 `defmacro-public' only export the new binding on the top level. They
389 behave just like `define' and `defmacro', respectively, when they are
390 used in a lexical environment.
392 Also, `export' will no longer silently re-export bindings imported
393 from a used module. It will emit a `deprecation' warning and will
394 cease to perform any re-export in the next version. If you actually
395 want to re-export bindings, use the new `re-export' in place of
396 `export'. The new `re-export' will not make copies of variables when
397 rexporting them, as `export' did wrongly.
399 ** Module system now allows selection and renaming of imported bindings
401 Previously, when using `use-modules' or the `#:use-module' clause in
402 the `define-module' form, all the bindings (association of symbols to
403 values) for imported modules were added to the "current module" on an
404 as-is basis. This has been changed to allow finer control through two
405 new facilities: selection and renaming.
407 You can now select which of the imported module's bindings are to be
408 visible in the current module by using the `:select' clause. This
409 clause also can be used to rename individual bindings. For example:
411 ;; import all bindings no questions asked
412 (use-modules (ice-9 common-list))
414 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them;
415 ;; the current module sees: every some zonk-y zonk-n
416 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
419 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))))
421 You can also programmatically rename all selected bindings using the
422 `:renamer' clause, which specifies a proc that takes a symbol and
423 returns another symbol. Because it is common practice to use a prefix,
424 we now provide the convenience procedure `symbol-prefix-proc'. For
427 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
428 ;; and all four w/ prefix "CL:";
429 ;; the current module sees: CL:every CL:some CL:zonk-y CL:zonk-n
430 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
433 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
434 :renamer (symbol-prefix-proc 'CL:)))
436 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
437 ;; and all four by upcasing.
438 ;; the current module sees: EVERY SOME ZONK-Y ZONK-N
439 (define (upcase-symbol sym)
440 (string->symbol (string-upcase (symbol->string sym))))
442 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
445 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
446 :renamer upcase-symbol))
448 Note that programmatic renaming is done *after* individual renaming.
449 Also, the above examples show `use-modules', but the same facilities are
450 available for the `#:use-module' clause of `define-module'.
452 See manual for more info.
454 ** The semantics of guardians have changed.
456 The changes are for the most part compatible. An important criterion
457 was to keep the typical usage of guardians as simple as before, but to
458 make the semantics safer and (as a result) more useful.
460 *** All objects returned from guardians are now properly alive.
462 It is now guaranteed that any object referenced by an object returned
463 from a guardian is alive. It's now impossible for a guardian to
464 return a "contained" object before its "containing" object.
466 One incompatible (but probably not very important) change resulting
467 from this is that it is no longer possible to guard objects that
468 indirectly reference themselves (i.e. are parts of cycles). If you do
469 so accidentally, you'll get a warning.
471 *** There are now two types of guardians: greedy and sharing.
473 If you call (make-guardian #t) or just (make-guardian), you'll get a
474 greedy guardian, and for (make-guardian #f) a sharing guardian.
476 Greedy guardians are the default because they are more "defensive".
477 You can only greedily guard an object once. If you guard an object
478 more than once, once in a greedy guardian and the rest of times in
479 sharing guardians, then it is guaranteed that the object won't be
480 returned from sharing guardians as long as it is greedily guarded
483 Guardians returned by calls to `make-guardian' can now take one more
484 optional parameter, which says whether to throw an error in case an
485 attempt is made to greedily guard an object that is already greedily
486 guarded. The default is true, i.e. throw an error. If the parameter
487 is false, the guardian invocation returns #t if guarding was
488 successful and #f if it wasn't.
490 Also, since greedy guarding is, in effect, a side-effecting operation
491 on objects, a new function is introduced: `destroy-guardian!'.
492 Invoking this function on a guardian renders it unoperative and, if
493 the guardian is greedy, clears the "greedily guarded" property of the
494 objects that were guarded by it, thus undoing the side effect.
496 Note that all this hair is hardly very important, since guardian
497 objects are usually permanent.
499 ** Continuations created by call-with-current-continuation now accept
500 any number of arguments, as required by R5RS.
502 ** New function `issue-deprecation-warning'
504 This function is used to display the deprecation messages that are
505 controlled by GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION as explained in the README.
508 (issue-deprecation-warning "`id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.")
512 ;; `id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.
517 ** New syntax `begin-deprecated'
519 When deprecated features are included (as determined by the configure
520 option --enable-deprecated), `begin-deprecated' is identical to
521 `begin'. When deprecated features are excluded, it always evaluates
522 to `#f', ignoring the body forms.
524 ** New function `make-object-property'
526 This function returns a new `procedure with setter' P that can be used
527 to attach a property to objects. When calling P as
531 where `obj' is any kind of object, it attaches `val' to `obj' in such
532 a way that it can be retrieved by calling P as
536 This function will replace procedure properties, symbol properties and
537 source properties eventually.
539 ** Module (ice-9 optargs) now uses keywords instead of `#&'.
541 Instead of #&optional, #&key, etc you should now use #:optional,
542 #:key, etc. Since #:optional is a keyword, you can write it as just
543 :optional when (read-set! keywords 'prefix) is active.
545 The old reader syntax `#&' is still supported, but deprecated. It
546 will be removed in the next release.
548 ** New define-module option: pure
550 Tells the module system not to include any bindings from the root
555 (define-module (totally-empty-module)
558 ** New define-module option: export NAME1 ...
560 Export names NAME1 ...
562 This option is required if you want to be able to export bindings from
563 a module which doesn't import one of `define-public' or `export'.
569 :use-module (ice-9 r5rs)
572 ;;; Note that we're pure R5RS below this point!
577 ** New function: object->string OBJ
579 Return a Scheme string obtained by printing a given object.
581 ** New function: port? X
583 Returns a boolean indicating whether X is a port. Equivalent to
584 `(or (input-port? X) (output-port? X))'.
586 ** New function: file-port?
588 Determines whether a given object is a port that is related to a file.
590 ** New function: port-for-each proc
592 Apply PROC to each port in the Guile port table in turn. The return
593 value is unspecified. More specifically, PROC is applied exactly once
594 to every port that exists in the system at the time PORT-FOR-EACH is
595 invoked. Changes to the port table while PORT-FOR-EACH is running
596 have no effect as far as PORT-FOR-EACH is concerned.
598 ** New function: dup2 oldfd newfd
600 A simple wrapper for the `dup2' system call. Copies the file
601 descriptor OLDFD to descriptor number NEWFD, replacing the
602 previous meaning of NEWFD. Both OLDFD and NEWFD must be integers.
603 Unlike for dup->fdes or primitive-move->fdes, no attempt is made
604 to move away ports which are using NEWFD. The return value is
607 ** New function: close-fdes fd
609 A simple wrapper for the `close' system call. Close file
610 descriptor FD, which must be an integer. Unlike close (*note
611 close: Ports and File Descriptors.), the file descriptor will be
612 closed even if a port is using it. The return value is
615 ** New function: crypt password salt
617 Encrypts `password' using the standard unix password encryption
620 ** New function: chroot path
622 Change the root directory of the running process to `path'.
624 ** New functions: getlogin, cuserid
626 Return the login name or the user name of the current effective user
629 ** New functions: getpriority which who, setpriority which who prio
631 Get or set the priority of the running process.
633 ** New function: getpass prompt
635 Read a password from the terminal, first displaying `prompt' and
638 ** New function: flock file operation
640 Set/remove an advisory shared or exclusive lock on `file'.
642 ** New functions: sethostname name, gethostname
644 Set or get the hostname of the machine the current process is running
647 ** New function: mkstemp! tmpl
649 mkstemp creates a new unique file in the file system and returns a
650 new buffered port open for reading and writing to the file. TMPL
651 is a string specifying where the file should be created: it must
652 end with `XXXXXX' and will be changed in place to return the name
653 of the temporary file.
655 ** New function: open-input-string string
657 Return an input string port which delivers the characters from
658 `string'. This procedure, together with `open-output-string' and
659 `get-output-string' implements SRFI-6.
661 ** New function: open-output-string
663 Return an output string port which collects all data written to it.
664 The data can then be retrieved by `get-output-string'.
666 ** New function: get-output-string
668 Return the contents of an output string port.
670 ** New function: identity
674 ** socket, connect, accept etc., now have support for IPv6. IPv6 addresses
675 are represented in Scheme as integers with normal host byte ordering.
677 ** New function: inet-pton family address
679 Convert a printable string network address into an integer. Note that
680 unlike the C version of this function, the result is an integer with
681 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
684 (inet-pton AF_INET "127.0.0.1") => 2130706433
685 (inet-pton AF_INET6 "::1") => 1
687 ** New function: inet-ntop family address
689 Convert an integer network address into a printable string. Note that
690 unlike the C version of this function, the input is an integer with
691 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
694 (inet-ntop AF_INET 2130706433) => "127.0.0.1"
695 (inet-ntop AF_INET6 (- (expt 2 128) 1)) =>
696 ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
700 Use `identity' instead.
706 ** Deprecated: return-it
710 ** Deprecated: string-character-length
712 Use `string-length' instead.
716 Use `logior' instead.
718 ** Deprecated: close-all-ports-except.
720 This was intended for closing ports in a child process after a fork,
721 but it has the undesirable side effect of flushing buffers.
722 port-for-each is more flexible.
724 ** The (ice-9 popen) module now attempts to set up file descriptors in
725 the child process from the current Scheme ports, instead of using the
726 current values of file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 in the parent process.
728 ** Removed function: builtin-weak-bindings
730 There is no such concept as a weak binding any more.
732 ** Removed constants: bignum-radix, scm-line-incrementors
734 ** define-method: New syntax mandatory.
736 The new method syntax is now mandatory:
738 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ...) BODY ...)
739 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ... . REST-ARG) BODY ...)
741 ARG-SPEC ::= ARG-NAME | (ARG-NAME TYPE)
742 REST-ARG ::= ARG-NAME
744 If you have old code using the old syntax, import
745 (oop goops old-define-method) before (oop goops) as in:
747 (use-modules (oop goops old-define-method) (oop goops))
749 ** Deprecated function: builtin-variable
750 Removed function: builtin-bindings
752 There is no longer a distinction between builtin or other variables.
753 Use module system operations for all variables.
755 ** Lazy-catch handlers are no longer allowed to return.
757 That is, a call to `throw', `error', etc is now guaranteed to not
760 ** Bugfixes for (ice-9 getopt-long)
762 This module is now tested using test-suite/tests/getopt-long.test.
763 The following bugs have been fixed:
765 *** Parsing for options that are specified to have `optional' args now checks
766 if the next element is an option instead of unconditionally taking it as the
769 *** An error is now thrown for `--opt=val' when the option description
770 does not specify `(value #t)' or `(value optional)'. This condition used to
771 be accepted w/o error, contrary to the documentation.
773 *** The error message for unrecognized options is now more informative.
774 It used to be "not a record", an artifact of the implementation.
776 *** The error message for `--opt' terminating the arg list (no value), when
777 `(value #t)' is specified, is now more informative. It used to be "not enough
780 *** "Clumped" single-char args now preserve trailing string, use it as arg.
781 The expansion used to be like so:
783 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "--xyz")
785 Note that the "5d" is dropped. Now it is like so:
787 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "5d" "--xyz")
789 This enables single-char options to have adjoining arguments as long as their
790 constituent characters are not potential single-char options.
792 ** (ice-9 session) procedure `arity' now works with (ice-9 optargs) `lambda*'
794 The `lambda*' and derivative forms in (ice-9 optargs) now set a procedure
795 property `arglist', which can be retrieved by `arity'. The result is that
796 `arity' can give more detailed information than before:
800 guile> (use-modules (ice-9 optargs))
801 guile> (define* (foo #:optional a b c) a)
803 0 or more arguments in `lambda*:G0'.
808 3 optional arguments: `a', `b' and `c'.
809 guile> (define* (bar a b #:key c d #:allow-other-keys) a)
811 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 2 keyword arguments: `c'
812 and `d', other keywords allowed.
813 guile> (define* (baz a b #:optional c #:rest r) a)
815 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 1 optional argument: `c',
818 * Changes to the C interface
820 ** Types have been renamed from scm_*_t to scm_t_*.
822 This has been done for POSIX sake. It reserves identifiers ending
823 with "_t". What a concept.
825 The old names are still available with status `deprecated'.
827 ** scm_t_bits (former scm_bits_t) is now a unsigned type.
829 ** Deprecated features have been removed.
833 SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP SCM_ICHRP, SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR
834 SCM_SETJMPBUF SCM_NSTRINGP SCM_NRWSTRINGP SCM_NVECTORP SCM_DOUBLE_CELLP
836 *** C Functions removed
838 scm_sysmissing scm_tag scm_tc16_flo scm_tc_flo
839 scm_fseek - replaced by scm_seek.
840 gc-thunk - replaced by after-gc-hook.
841 gh_int2scmb - replaced by gh_bool2scm.
842 scm_tc_dblr - replaced by scm_tc16_real.
843 scm_tc_dblc - replaced by scm_tc16_complex.
844 scm_list_star - replaced by scm_cons_star.
846 ** Deprecated: scm_makfromstr
848 Use scm_mem2string instead.
850 ** Deprecated: scm_make_shared_substring
852 Explicit shared substrings will disappear from Guile.
854 Instead, "normal" strings will be implemented using sharing
855 internally, combined with a copy-on-write strategy.
857 ** Deprecated: scm_read_only_string_p
859 The concept of read-only strings will disappear in next release of
862 ** Deprecated: scm_sloppy_memq, scm_sloppy_memv, scm_sloppy_member
864 Instead, use scm_c_memq or scm_memq, scm_memv, scm_member.
866 ** New functions: scm_call_0, scm_call_1, scm_call_2, scm_call_3
868 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments.
872 scm_call_1 (proc, arg1);
874 ** New functions: scm_apply_0, scm_apply_1, scm_apply_2, scm_apply_3
876 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments and a list
881 scm_apply_1 (proc, arg1, args);
883 ** New functions: scm_list_1, scm_list_2, scm_list_3, scm_list_4, scm_list_5
885 Create a list of the given number of elements.
887 ** Renamed function: scm_listify has been replaced by scm_list_n.
889 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_LIST0, SCM_LIST1, SCM_LIST2, SCM_LIST3, SCM_LIST4,
890 SCM_LIST5, SCM_LIST6, SCM_LIST7, SCM_LIST8, SCM_LIST9.
892 Use functions scm_list_N instead.
894 ** New function: scm_c_read (SCM port, void *buffer, scm_sizet size)
896 Used by an application to read arbitrary number of bytes from a port.
897 Same semantics as libc read, except that scm_c_read only returns less
898 than SIZE bytes if at end-of-file.
900 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
902 ** New function: scm_c_write (SCM port, const void *ptr, scm_sizet size)
904 Used by an application to write arbitrary number of bytes to an SCM
905 port. Similar semantics as libc write. However, unlike libc
906 write, scm_c_write writes the requested number of bytes and has no
909 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
911 ** New function: scm_init_guile ()
913 In contrast to scm_boot_guile, scm_init_guile will return normally
914 after initializing Guile. It is not available on all systems, tho.
916 ** New functions: scm_str2symbol, scm_mem2symbol
918 The function scm_str2symbol takes a const char* pointing to a zero-terminated
919 field of characters and creates a scheme symbol object from that C string.
920 The function scm_mem2symbol takes a const char* and a number of characters and
921 creates a symbol from the characters in that memory area.
923 ** New functions: scm_primitive_make_property
924 scm_primitive_property_ref
925 scm_primitive_property_set_x
926 scm_primitive_property_del_x
928 These functions implement a new way to deal with object properties.
929 See libguile/properties.c for their documentation.
931 ** New function: scm_done_free (long size)
933 This function is the inverse of scm_done_malloc. Use it to report the
934 amount of smob memory you free. The previous method, which involved
935 calling scm_done_malloc with negative argument, was somewhat
936 unintuitive (and is still available, of course).
938 ** New function: scm_c_memq (SCM obj, SCM list)
940 This function provides a fast C level alternative for scm_memq for the case
941 that the list parameter is known to be a proper list. The function is a
942 replacement for scm_sloppy_memq, but is stricter in its requirements on its
943 list input parameter, since for anything else but a proper list the function's
944 behaviour is undefined - it may even crash or loop endlessly. Further, for
945 the case that the object is not found in the list, scm_c_memq returns #f which
946 is similar to scm_memq, but different from scm_sloppy_memq's behaviour.
948 ** New functions: scm_remember_upto_here_1, scm_remember_upto_here_2,
949 scm_remember_upto_here
951 These functions replace the function scm_remember.
953 ** Deprecated function: scm_remember
955 Use one of the new functions scm_remember_upto_here_1,
956 scm_remember_upto_here_2 or scm_remember_upto_here instead.
958 ** New function: scm_allocate_string
960 This function replaces the function scm_makstr.
962 ** Deprecated function: scm_makstr
964 Use the new function scm_allocate_string instead.
966 ** New global variable scm_gc_running_p introduced.
968 Use this variable to find out if garbage collection is being executed. Up to
969 now applications have used scm_gc_heap_lock to test if garbage collection was
970 running, which also works because of the fact that up to know only the garbage
971 collector has set this variable. But, this is an implementation detail that
972 may change. Further, scm_gc_heap_lock is not set throughout gc, thus the use
973 of this variable is (and has been) not fully safe anyway.
975 ** New macros: SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH
977 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
979 ** New macros: SCM_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_CCLO_LENGTH, SCM_STACK_LENGTH,
980 SCM_STRING_LENGTH, SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
981 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH.
983 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH.
985 ** New macros: SCM_SET_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH,
986 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
987 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH
989 Use these instead of SCM_SETLENGTH
991 ** New macros: SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_CCLO_BASE,
992 SCM_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_COMPLEX_MEM,
995 Use these instead of SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS, SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS or
998 ** New macros: SCM_SET_BIGNUM_BASE, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS,
999 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE,
1002 Use these instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
1004 ** New macro: SCM_BITVECTOR_P
1006 ** New macro: SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X
1008 Use instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
1010 ** New macros: SCM_DIR_OPEN_P, SCM_DIR_FLAG_OPEN
1012 For directory objects, use these instead of SCM_OPDIRP and SCM_OPN.
1014 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_OUTOFRANGE, SCM_NALLOC, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL,
1015 SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL,
1016 SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD,
1017 SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS, SCM_SYMBOL_SLOTS, SCM_SLOTS, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
1018 SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_FREEP, SCM_NFREEP, SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS,
1019 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY,
1020 SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_HUGE_LENGTH,
1021 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
1022 SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_RWSTRINGP, SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, SCM_ROCHARS,
1023 SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_GC8MARKP,
1024 SCM_SETGC8MARK, SCM_CLRGC8MARK, SCM_GCTYP16, SCM_GCCDR, SCM_SUBR_DOC,
1025 SCM_OPDIRP, SCM_VALIDATE_OPDIR, SCM_WTA, RETURN_SCM_WTA, SCM_CONST_LONG,
1026 SCM_WNA, SCM_FUNC_NAME, SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_COPY,
1027 SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_DEF_COPY, SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP, SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP,
1028 SCM_SETAND_CDR, SCM_SETOR_CDR, SCM_SETAND_CAR, SCM_SETOR_CAR
1030 Use SCM_ASSERT_RANGE or SCM_VALIDATE_XXX_RANGE instead of SCM_OUTOFRANGE.
1031 Use scm_memory_error instead of SCM_NALLOC.
1032 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP.
1033 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR.
1034 Use SCM_FREE_CELL_P instead of SCM_FREEP/SCM_NFREEP
1035 Use a type specific accessor macro instead of SCM_CHARS/SCM_UCHARS.
1036 Use a type specific accessor instead of SCM(_|_RO|_HUGE_)LENGTH.
1037 Use SCM_VALIDATE_(SYMBOL|STRING) instead of SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING.
1038 Use SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
1039 Use SCM_STRINGP or SCM_SYMBOLP instead of SCM_ROSTRINGP.
1040 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_RWSTRINGP.
1041 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING.
1042 Use SCM_STRING_CHARS instead of SCM_ROCHARS.
1043 Use SCM_STRING_UCHARS instead of SCM_ROUCHARS.
1044 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETLENGTH.
1045 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
1046 Use a type specific length macro instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
1047 Use SCM_GCMARKP instead of SCM_GC8MARKP.
1048 Use SCM_SETGCMARK instead of SCM_SETGC8MARK.
1049 Use SCM_CLRGCMARK instead of SCM_CLRGC8MARK.
1050 Use SCM_TYP16 instead of SCM_GCTYP16.
1051 Use SCM_CDR instead of SCM_GCCDR.
1052 Use SCM_DIR_OPEN_P instead of SCM_OPDIRP.
1053 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of SCM_WTA.
1054 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of RETURN_SCM_WTA.
1055 Use SCM_VCELL_INIT instead of SCM_CONST_LONG.
1056 Use SCM_WRONG_NUM_ARGS instead of SCM_WNA.
1057 Use SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP.
1058 Use !SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP.
1060 ** Removed function: scm_struct_init
1062 ** Removed variable: scm_symhash_dim
1064 ** Renamed function: scm_make_cont has been replaced by
1065 scm_make_continuation, which has a different interface.
1067 ** Deprecated function: scm_call_catching_errors
1069 Use scm_catch or scm_lazy_catch from throw.[ch] instead.
1071 ** Deprecated function: scm_strhash
1073 Use scm_string_hash instead.
1075 ** Deprecated function: scm_vector_set_length_x
1077 Instead, create a fresh vector of the desired size and copy the contents.
1079 ** scm_gensym has changed prototype
1081 scm_gensym now only takes one argument.
1083 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc7_ssymbol, scm_tc7_msymbol, scm_tcs_symbols,
1086 There is now only a single symbol type scm_tc7_symbol.
1087 The tag scm_tc7_lvector was not used anyway.
1089 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe, scm_set_smob_mfpe.
1091 Use scm_make_smob_type and scm_set_smob_XXX instead.
1093 ** New function scm_set_smob_apply.
1095 This can be used to set an apply function to a smob type.
1097 ** Deprecated function: scm_strprint_obj
1099 Use scm_object_to_string instead.
1101 ** Deprecated function: scm_wta
1103 Use scm_wrong_type_arg, or another appropriate error signalling function
1106 ** Explicit support for obarrays has been deprecated.
1108 Use `scm_str2symbol' and the generic hashtable functions instead.
1110 ** The concept of `vcells' has been deprecated.
1112 The data type `variable' is now used exclusively. `Vcells' have been
1113 a low-level concept so you are likely not affected by this change.
1115 *** Deprecated functions: scm_sym2vcell, scm_sysintern,
1116 scm_sysintern0, scm_symbol_value0, scm_intern, scm_intern0.
1118 Use scm_c_define or scm_c_lookup instead, as appropriate.
1120 *** New functions: scm_c_module_lookup, scm_c_lookup,
1121 scm_c_module_define, scm_c_define, scm_module_lookup, scm_lookup,
1122 scm_module_define, scm_define.
1124 These functions work with variables instead of with vcells.
1126 ** New functions for creating and defining `subr's and `gsubr's.
1128 The new functions more clearly distinguish between creating a subr (or
1129 gsubr) object and adding it to the current module.
1131 These new functions are available: scm_c_make_subr, scm_c_define_subr,
1132 scm_c_make_subr_with_generic, scm_c_define_subr_with_generic,
1133 scm_c_make_gsubr, scm_c_define_gsubr, scm_c_make_gsubr_with_generic,
1134 scm_c_define_gsubr_with_generic.
1136 ** Deprecated functions: scm_make_subr, scm_make_subr_opt,
1137 scm_make_subr_with_generic, scm_make_gsubr,
1138 scm_make_gsubr_with_generic.
1140 Use the new ones from above instead.
1142 ** C interface to the module system has changed.
1144 While we suggest that you avoid as many explicit module system
1145 operations from C as possible for the time being, the C interface has
1146 been made more similar to the high-level Scheme module system.
1148 *** New functions: scm_c_define_module, scm_c_use_module,
1149 scm_c_export, scm_c_resolve_module.
1151 They mostly work like their Scheme namesakes. scm_c_define_module
1152 takes a function that is called a context where the new module is
1155 *** Deprecated functions: scm_the_root_module, scm_make_module,
1156 scm_ensure_user_module, scm_load_scheme_module.
1158 Use the new functions instead.
1160 ** Renamed function: scm_internal_with_fluids becomes
1163 scm_internal_with_fluids is available as a deprecated function.
1165 ** New function: scm_c_with_fluid.
1167 Just like scm_c_with_fluids, but takes one fluid and one value instead
1170 ** Deprecated typedefs: long_long, ulong_long.
1172 They are of questionable utility and they pollute the global
1175 ** Deprecated typedef: scm_sizet
1177 It is of questionable utility now that Guile requires ANSI C, and is
1180 ** Deprecated typedefs: scm_port_rw_active, scm_port,
1181 scm_ptob_descriptor, scm_debug_info, scm_debug_frame, scm_fport,
1182 scm_option, scm_rstate, scm_rng, scm_array, scm_array_dim.
1184 Made more compliant with the naming policy by adding a _t at the end.
1186 ** Deprecated functions: scm_mkbig, scm_big2num, scm_adjbig,
1187 scm_normbig, scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl
1189 With the exception of the mysterious scm_2ulong2big, they are still
1190 available under new names (scm_i_mkbig etc). These functions are not
1191 intended to be used in user code. You should avoid dealing with
1192 bignums directly, and should deal with numbers in general (which can
1195 ** Change in behavior: scm_num2long, scm_num2ulong
1197 The scm_num2[u]long functions don't any longer accept an inexact
1198 argument. This change in behavior is motivated by concordance with
1199 R5RS: It is more common that a primitive doesn't want to accept an
1200 inexact for an exact.
1202 ** New functions: scm_short2num, scm_ushort2num, scm_int2num,
1203 scm_uint2num, scm_size2num, scm_ptrdiff2num, scm_num2short,
1204 scm_num2ushort, scm_num2int, scm_num2uint, scm_num2ptrdiff,
1207 These are conversion functions between the various ANSI C integral
1208 types and Scheme numbers. NOTE: The scm_num2xxx functions don't
1209 accept an inexact argument.
1211 ** New functions: scm_float2num, scm_double2num,
1212 scm_num2float, scm_num2double.
1214 These are conversion functions between the two ANSI C float types and
1217 ** New number validation macros:
1218 SCM_NUM2{SIZE,PTRDIFF,SHORT,USHORT,INT,UINT}[_DEF]
1222 ** New functions: scm_gc_protect_object, scm_gc_unprotect_object
1224 These are just nicer-named old scm_protect_object and
1225 scm_unprotect_object.
1227 ** Deprecated functions: scm_protect_object, scm_unprotect_object
1229 ** New functions: scm_gc_[un]register_root, scm_gc_[un]register_roots
1231 These functions can be used to register pointers to locations that
1234 ** Deprecated function: scm_create_hook.
1236 Its sins are: misleading name, non-modularity and lack of general
1240 Changes since Guile 1.3.4:
1242 * Changes to the distribution
1244 ** Trees from nightly snapshots and CVS now require you to run autogen.sh.
1246 We've changed the way we handle generated files in the Guile source
1247 repository. As a result, the procedure for building trees obtained
1248 from the nightly FTP snapshots or via CVS has changed:
1249 - You must have appropriate versions of autoconf, automake, and
1250 libtool installed on your system. See README for info on how to
1251 obtain these programs.
1252 - Before configuring the tree, you must first run the script
1253 `autogen.sh' at the top of the source tree.
1255 The Guile repository used to contain not only source files, written by
1256 humans, but also some generated files, like configure scripts and
1257 Makefile.in files. Even though the contents of these files could be
1258 derived mechanically from other files present, we thought it would
1259 make the tree easier to build if we checked them into CVS.
1261 However, this approach means that minor differences between
1262 developer's installed tools and habits affected the whole team.
1263 So we have removed the generated files from the repository, and
1264 added the autogen.sh script, which will reconstruct them
1268 ** configure now has experimental options to remove support for certain
1271 --disable-arrays omit array and uniform array support
1272 --disable-posix omit posix interfaces
1273 --disable-networking omit networking interfaces
1274 --disable-regex omit regular expression interfaces
1276 These are likely to become separate modules some day.
1278 ** New configure option --enable-debug-freelist
1280 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
1281 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
1283 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
1284 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
1286 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
1287 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
1289 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
1290 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can
1291 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
1292 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
1294 ** New configure option --enable-debug-malloc
1296 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
1300 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
1301 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
1303 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
1305 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
1306 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
1308 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
1309 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
1310 number of objects of that kind.
1312 ** All includes are now referenced relative to the root directory
1314 Since some users have had problems with mixups between Guile and
1315 system headers, we have decided to always refer to Guile headers via
1316 their parent directories. This essentially creates a "private name
1317 space" for Guile headers. This means that the compiler only is given
1318 -I options for the root build and root source directory.
1320 ** Header files kw.h and genio.h have been removed.
1322 ** The module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) has been removed.
1324 ** New module (ice-9 documentation)
1326 Implements the interface to documentation strings associated with
1329 ** New module (ice-9 time)
1331 Provides a macro `time', which displays execution time of a given form.
1333 ** New module (ice-9 history)
1335 Loading this module enables value history in the repl.
1337 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
1339 ** New command line option --debug
1341 Start Guile with debugging evaluator and backtraces enabled.
1343 This is useful when debugging your .guile init file or scripts.
1345 ** New help facility
1347 Usage: (help NAME) gives documentation about objects named NAME (a symbol)
1348 (help REGEXP) ditto for objects with names matching REGEXP (a string)
1349 (help 'NAME) gives documentation for NAME, even if it is not an object
1350 (help ,EXPR) gives documentation for object returned by EXPR
1351 (help (my module)) gives module commentary for `(my module)'
1352 (help) gives this text
1354 `help' searches among bindings exported from loaded modules, while
1355 `apropos' searches among bindings visible from the "current" module.
1357 Examples: (help help)
1359 (help "output-string")
1361 ** `help' and `apropos' now prints full module names
1363 ** Dynamic linking now uses libltdl from the libtool package.
1365 The old system dependent code for doing dynamic linking has been
1366 replaced with calls to the libltdl functions which do all the hairy
1369 The major improvement is that you can now directly pass libtool
1370 library names like "libfoo.la" to `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-link'
1371 will be able to do the best shared library job you can get, via
1374 The way dynamic libraries are found has changed and is not really
1375 portable across platforms, probably. It is therefore recommended to
1376 use absolute filenames when possible.
1378 If you pass a filename without an extension to `dynamic-link', it will
1379 try a few appropriate ones. Thus, the most platform ignorant way is
1380 to specify a name like "libfoo", without any directories and
1383 ** Guile COOP threads are now compatible with LinuxThreads
1385 Previously, COOP threading wasn't possible in applications linked with
1386 Linux POSIX threads due to their use of the stack pointer to find the
1387 thread context. This has now been fixed with a workaround which uses
1388 the pthreads to allocate the stack.
1390 ** New primitives: `pkgdata-dir', `site-dir', `library-dir'
1392 ** Positions of erring expression in scripts
1394 With version 1.3.4, the location of the erring expression in Guile
1395 scipts is no longer automatically reported. (This should have been
1396 documented before the 1.3.4 release.)
1398 You can get this information by enabling recording of positions of
1399 source expressions and running the debugging evaluator. Put this at
1400 the top of your script (or in your "site" file):
1402 (read-enable 'positions)
1403 (debug-enable 'debug)
1405 ** Backtraces in scripts
1407 It is now possible to get backtraces in scripts.
1411 (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
1413 at the top of the script.
1415 (The first options enables the debugging evaluator.
1416 The second enables backtraces.)
1418 ** Part of module system symbol lookup now implemented in C
1420 The eval closure of most modules is now implemented in C. Since this
1421 was one of the bottlenecks for loading speed, Guile now loads code
1422 substantially faster than before.
1424 ** Attempting to get the value of an unbound variable now produces
1425 an exception with a key of 'unbound-variable instead of 'misc-error.
1427 ** The initial default output port is now unbuffered if it's using a
1428 tty device. Previously in this situation it was line-buffered.
1430 ** New hook: after-gc-hook
1432 after-gc-hook takes over the role of gc-thunk. This hook is run at
1433 the first SCM_TICK after a GC. (Thus, the code is run at the same
1434 point during evaluation as signal handlers.)
1436 Note that this hook should be used only for diagnostic and debugging
1437 purposes. It is not certain that it will continue to be well-defined
1438 when this hook is run in the future.
1440 C programmers: Note the new C level hooks scm_before_gc_c_hook,
1441 scm_before_sweep_c_hook, scm_after_gc_c_hook.
1443 ** Improvements to garbage collector
1445 Guile 1.4 has a new policy for triggering heap allocation and
1446 determining the sizes of heap segments. It fixes a number of problems
1449 1. The new policy can handle two separate pools of cells
1450 (2-word/4-word) better. (The old policy would run wild, allocating
1451 more and more memory for certain programs.)
1453 2. The old code would sometimes allocate far too much heap so that the
1454 Guile process became gigantic. The new code avoids this.
1456 3. The old code would sometimes allocate too little so that few cells
1457 were freed at GC so that, in turn, too much time was spent in GC.
1459 4. The old code would often trigger heap allocation several times in a
1460 row. (The new scheme predicts how large the segments needs to be
1461 in order not to need further allocation.)
1463 All in all, the new GC policy will make larger applications more
1466 The new GC scheme also is prepared for POSIX threading. Threads can
1467 allocate private pools of cells ("clusters") with just a single
1468 function call. Allocation of single cells from such a cluster can
1469 then proceed without any need of inter-thread synchronization.
1471 ** New environment variables controlling GC parameters
1473 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE Maximal segment size
1476 Allocation of 2-word cell heaps:
1478 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1 Size of initial heap segment in bytes
1481 GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1 Minimum number of freed cells at each
1482 GC in percent of total heap size
1485 Allocation of 4-word cell heaps
1486 (used for real numbers and misc other objects):
1488 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2
1490 (See entry "Way for application to customize GC parameters" under
1491 section "Changes to the scm_ interface" below.)
1493 ** Guile now implements reals using 4-word cells
1495 This speeds up computation with reals. (They were earlier allocated
1496 with `malloc'.) There is still some room for optimizations, however.
1498 ** Some further steps toward POSIX thread support have been taken
1500 *** Guile's critical sections (SCM_DEFER/ALLOW_INTS)
1501 don't have much effect any longer, and many of them will be removed in
1505 are only handled at the top of the evaluator loop, immediately after
1506 I/O, and in scm_equalp.
1508 *** The GC can allocate thread private pools of pairs.
1510 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
1512 ** close-input-port and close-output-port are now R5RS
1514 These procedures have been turned into primitives and have R5RS behaviour.
1516 ** New procedure: simple-format PORT MESSAGE ARG1 ...
1518 (ice-9 boot) makes `format' an alias for `simple-format' until possibly
1519 extended by the more sophisticated version in (ice-9 format)
1521 (simple-format port message . args)
1522 Write MESSAGE to DESTINATION, defaulting to `current-output-port'.
1523 MESSAGE can contain ~A (was %s) and ~S (was %S) escapes. When printed,
1524 the escapes are replaced with corresponding members of ARGS:
1525 ~A formats using `display' and ~S formats using `write'.
1526 If DESTINATION is #t, then use the `current-output-port',
1527 if DESTINATION is #f, then return a string containing the formatted text.
1528 Does not add a trailing newline."
1530 ** string-ref: the second argument is no longer optional.
1532 ** string, list->string: no longer accept strings in their arguments,
1533 only characters, for compatibility with R5RS.
1535 ** New procedure: port-closed? PORT
1536 Returns #t if PORT is closed or #f if it is open.
1538 ** Deprecated: list*
1540 The list* functionality is now provided by cons* (SRFI-1 compliant)
1542 ** New procedure: cons* ARG1 ARG2 ... ARGn
1544 Like `list', but the last arg provides the tail of the constructed list,
1545 returning (cons ARG1 (cons ARG2 (cons ... ARGn))).
1547 Requires at least one argument. If given one argument, that argument
1548 is returned as result.
1550 This function is called `list*' in some other Schemes and in Common LISP.
1552 ** Removed deprecated: serial-map, serial-array-copy!, serial-array-map!
1554 ** New procedure: object-documentation OBJECT
1556 Returns the documentation string associated with OBJECT. The
1557 procedure uses a caching mechanism so that subsequent lookups are
1560 Exported by (ice-9 documentation).
1562 ** module-name now returns full names of modules
1564 Previously, only the last part of the name was returned (`session' for
1565 `(ice-9 session)'). Ex: `(ice-9 session)'.
1567 * Changes to the gh_ interface
1569 ** Deprecated: gh_int2scmb
1571 Use gh_bool2scm instead.
1573 * Changes to the scm_ interface
1575 ** Guile primitives now carry docstrings!
1577 Thanks to Greg Badros!
1579 ** Guile primitives are defined in a new way: SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
1581 Now Guile primitives are defined using the SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
1582 macros and must contain a docstring that is extracted into foo.doc using a new
1583 guile-doc-snarf script (that uses guile-doc-snarf.awk).
1585 However, a major overhaul of these macros is scheduled for the next release of
1588 ** Guile primitives use a new technique for validation of arguments
1590 SCM_VALIDATE_* macros are defined to ease the redundancy and improve
1591 the readability of argument checking.
1593 ** All (nearly?) K&R prototypes for functions replaced with ANSI C equivalents.
1595 ** New macros: SCM_PACK, SCM_UNPACK
1597 Compose/decompose an SCM value.
1599 The SCM type is now treated as an abstract data type and may be defined as a
1600 long, a void* or as a struct, depending on the architecture and compile time
1601 options. This makes it easier to find several types of bugs, for example when
1602 SCM values are treated as integers without conversion. Values of the SCM type
1603 should be treated as "atomic" values. These macros are used when
1604 composing/decomposing an SCM value, either because you want to access
1605 individual bits, or because you want to treat it as an integer value.
1607 E.g., in order to set bit 7 in an SCM value x, use the expression
1609 SCM_PACK (SCM_UNPACK (x) | 0x80)
1611 ** The name property of hooks is deprecated.
1612 Thus, the use of SCM_HOOK_NAME and scm_make_hook_with_name is deprecated.
1614 You can emulate this feature by using object properties.
1616 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP, SCM_CRDY, SCM_ICHRP,
1617 SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR, SCM_SETJMPBUF, SCM_NSTRINGP, SCM_NRWSTRINGP,
1620 These macros will be removed in a future release of Guile.
1622 ** The following types, functions and macros from numbers.h are deprecated:
1623 scm_dblproc, SCM_UNEGFIXABLE, SCM_FLOBUFLEN, SCM_INEXP, SCM_CPLXP, SCM_REAL,
1624 SCM_IMAG, SCM_REALPART, scm_makdbl, SCM_SINGP, SCM_NUM2DBL, SCM_NO_BIGDIG
1626 Further, it is recommended not to rely on implementation details for guile's
1627 current implementation of bignums. It is planned to replace this
1628 implementation with gmp in the future.
1630 ** Port internals: the rw_random variable in the scm_port structure
1631 must be set to non-zero in any random access port. In recent Guile
1632 releases it was only set for bidirectional random-access ports.
1634 ** Port internals: the seek ptob procedure is now responsible for
1635 resetting the buffers if required. The change was made so that in the
1636 special case of reading the current position (i.e., seek p 0 SEEK_CUR)
1637 the fport and strport ptobs can avoid resetting the buffers,
1638 in particular to avoid discarding unread chars. An existing port
1639 type can be fixed by adding something like the following to the
1640 beginning of the ptob seek procedure:
1642 if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_READ)
1643 scm_end_input (object);
1644 else if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_WRITE)
1645 ptob->flush (object);
1647 although to actually avoid resetting the buffers and discard unread
1648 chars requires further hacking that depends on the characteristics
1651 ** Deprecated functions: scm_fseek, scm_tag
1653 These functions are no longer used and will be removed in a future version.
1655 ** The scm_sysmissing procedure is no longer used in libguile.
1656 Unless it turns out to be unexpectedly useful to somebody, it will be
1657 removed in a future version.
1659 ** The format of error message strings has changed
1661 The two C procedures: scm_display_error and scm_error, as well as the
1662 primitive `scm-error', now use scm_simple_format to do their work.
1663 This means that the message strings of all code must be updated to use
1664 ~A where %s was used before, and ~S where %S was used before.
1666 During the period when there still are a lot of old Guiles out there,
1667 you might want to support both old and new versions of Guile.
1669 There are basically two methods to achieve this. Both methods use
1672 AC_CHECK_FUNCS(scm_simple_format)
1674 in your configure.in.
1676 Method 1: Use the string concatenation features of ANSI C's
1681 #ifdef HAVE_SCM_SIMPLE_FORMAT
1687 Then represent each of your error messages using a preprocessor macro:
1689 #define E_SPIDER_ERROR "There's a spider in your " ## FMT_S ## "!!!"
1693 (define fmt-s (if (defined? 'simple-format) "~S" "%S"))
1694 (define make-message string-append)
1696 (define e-spider-error (make-message "There's a spider in your " fmt-s "!!!"))
1698 Method 2: Use the oldfmt function found in doc/oldfmt.c.
1702 scm_misc_error ("picnic", scm_c_oldfmt0 ("There's a spider in your ~S!!!"),
1707 (scm-error 'misc-error "picnic" (oldfmt "There's a spider in your ~S!!!")
1711 ** Deprecated: coop_mutex_init, coop_condition_variable_init
1713 Don't use the functions coop_mutex_init and
1714 coop_condition_variable_init. They will change.
1716 Use scm_mutex_init and scm_cond_init instead.
1718 ** New function: int scm_cond_timedwait (scm_cond_t *COND, scm_mutex_t *MUTEX, const struct timespec *ABSTIME)
1719 `scm_cond_timedwait' atomically unlocks MUTEX and waits on
1720 COND, as `scm_cond_wait' does, but it also bounds the duration
1721 of the wait. If COND has not been signaled before time ABSTIME,
1722 the mutex MUTEX is re-acquired and `scm_cond_timedwait'
1723 returns the error code `ETIMEDOUT'.
1725 The ABSTIME parameter specifies an absolute time, with the same
1726 origin as `time' and `gettimeofday': an ABSTIME of 0 corresponds
1727 to 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970.
1729 ** New function: scm_cond_broadcast (scm_cond_t *COND)
1730 `scm_cond_broadcast' restarts all the threads that are waiting
1731 on the condition variable COND. Nothing happens if no threads are
1734 ** New function: scm_key_create (scm_key_t *KEY, void (*destr_function) (void *))
1735 `scm_key_create' allocates a new TSD key. The key is stored in
1736 the location pointed to by KEY. There is no limit on the number
1737 of keys allocated at a given time. The value initially associated
1738 with the returned key is `NULL' in all currently executing threads.
1740 The DESTR_FUNCTION argument, if not `NULL', specifies a destructor
1741 function associated with the key. When a thread terminates,
1742 DESTR_FUNCTION is called on the value associated with the key in
1743 that thread. The DESTR_FUNCTION is not called if a key is deleted
1744 with `scm_key_delete' or a value is changed with
1745 `scm_setspecific'. The order in which destructor functions are
1746 called at thread termination time is unspecified.
1748 Destructors are not yet implemented.
1750 ** New function: scm_setspecific (scm_key_t KEY, const void *POINTER)
1751 `scm_setspecific' changes the value associated with KEY in the
1752 calling thread, storing the given POINTER instead.
1754 ** New function: scm_getspecific (scm_key_t KEY)
1755 `scm_getspecific' returns the value currently associated with
1756 KEY in the calling thread.
1758 ** New function: scm_key_delete (scm_key_t KEY)
1759 `scm_key_delete' deallocates a TSD key. It does not check
1760 whether non-`NULL' values are associated with that key in the
1761 currently executing threads, nor call the destructor function
1762 associated with the key.
1764 ** New function: scm_c_hook_init (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *HOOK_DATA, scm_c_hook_type_t TYPE)
1766 Initialize a C level hook HOOK with associated HOOK_DATA and type
1767 TYPE. (See scm_c_hook_run ().)
1769 ** New function: scm_c_hook_add (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA, int APPENDP)
1771 Add hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA to HOOK. If APPENDP
1772 is true, add it last, otherwise first. The same FUNC can be added
1773 multiple times if FUNC_DATA differ and vice versa.
1775 ** New function: scm_c_hook_remove (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA)
1777 Remove hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA from HOOK. A
1778 function is only removed if both FUNC and FUNC_DATA matches.
1780 ** New function: void *scm_c_hook_run (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *DATA)
1782 Run hook HOOK passing DATA to the hook functions.
1784 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_NORMAL, all hook functions are run. The value
1785 returned is undefined.
1787 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_OR, hook functions are run until a function
1788 returns a non-NULL value. This value is returned as the result of
1789 scm_c_hook_run. If all functions return NULL, NULL is returned.
1791 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_AND, hook functions are run until a function
1792 returns a NULL value, and NULL is returned. If all functions returns
1793 a non-NULL value, the last value is returned.
1795 ** New C level GC hooks
1797 Five new C level hooks has been added to the garbage collector.
1799 scm_before_gc_c_hook
1802 are run before locking and after unlocking the heap. The system is
1803 thus in a mode where evaluation can take place. (Except that
1804 scm_before_gc_c_hook must not allocate new cells.)
1806 scm_before_mark_c_hook
1807 scm_before_sweep_c_hook
1808 scm_after_sweep_c_hook
1810 are run when the heap is locked. These are intended for extension of
1811 the GC in a modular fashion. Examples are the weaks and guardians
1814 ** Way for application to customize GC parameters
1816 The application can set up other default values for the GC heap
1817 allocation parameters
1819 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_1, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1,
1820 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2,
1821 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE,
1825 scm_default_init_heap_size_1, scm_default_min_yield_1,
1826 scm_default_init_heap_size_2, scm_default_min_yield_2,
1827 scm_default_max_segment_size
1829 respectively before callong scm_boot_guile.
1831 (See entry "New environment variables ..." in section
1832 "Changes to the stand-alone interpreter" above.)
1834 ** scm_protect_object/scm_unprotect_object now nest
1836 This means that you can call scm_protect_object multiple times on an
1837 object and count on the object being protected until
1838 scm_unprotect_object has been call the same number of times.
1840 The functions also have better time complexity.
1842 Still, it is usually possible to structure the application in a way
1843 that you don't need to use these functions. For example, if you use a
1844 protected standard Guile list to keep track of live objects rather
1845 than some custom data type, objects will die a natural death when they
1846 are no longer needed.
1848 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc16_flo, scm_tc_flo, scm_tc_dblr, scm_tc_dblc
1850 Guile does not provide the float representation for inexact real numbers any
1851 more. Now, only doubles are used to represent inexact real numbers. Further,
1852 the tag names scm_tc_dblr and scm_tc_dblc have been changed to scm_tc16_real
1853 and scm_tc16_complex, respectively.
1855 ** Removed deprecated type scm_smobfuns
1857 ** Removed deprecated function scm_newsmob
1859 ** Warning: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe might become deprecated in a future release
1861 There is an ongoing discussion among the developers whether to
1862 deprecate `scm_make_smob_type_mfpe' or not. Please use the current
1863 standard interface (scm_make_smob_type, scm_set_smob_XXX) in new code
1864 until this issue has been settled.
1866 ** Removed deprecated type tag scm_tc16_kw
1868 ** Added type tag scm_tc16_keyword
1870 (This was introduced already in release 1.3.4 but was not documented
1873 ** gdb_print now prints "*** Guile not initialized ***" until Guile initialized
1875 * Changes to system call interfaces:
1877 ** The "select" procedure now tests port buffers for the ability to
1878 provide input or accept output. Previously only the underlying file
1879 descriptors were checked.
1881 ** New variable PIPE_BUF: the maximum number of bytes that can be
1882 atomically written to a pipe.
1884 ** If a facility is not available on the system when Guile is
1885 compiled, the corresponding primitive procedure will not be defined.
1886 Previously it would have been defined but would throw a system-error
1887 exception if called. Exception handlers which catch this case may
1888 need minor modification: an error will be thrown with key
1889 'unbound-variable instead of 'system-error. Alternatively it's
1890 now possible to use `defined?' to check whether the facility is
1893 ** Procedures which depend on the timezone should now give the correct
1894 result on systems which cache the TZ environment variable, even if TZ
1895 is changed without calling tzset.
1897 * Changes to the networking interfaces:
1899 ** New functions: htons, ntohs, htonl, ntohl: for converting short and
1900 long integers between network and host format. For now, it's not
1901 particularly convenient to do this kind of thing, but consider:
1903 (define write-network-long
1904 (lambda (value port)
1905 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
1906 (uniform-vector-set! v 0 (htonl value))
1907 (uniform-vector-write v port))))
1909 (define read-network-long
1911 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
1912 (uniform-vector-read! v port)
1913 (ntohl (uniform-vector-ref v 0)))))
1915 ** If inet-aton fails, it now throws an error with key 'misc-error
1916 instead of 'system-error, since errno is not relevant.
1918 ** Certain gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr failures now throw errors with
1919 specific keys instead of 'system-error. The latter is inappropriate
1920 since errno will not have been set. The keys are:
1921 'host-not-found, 'try-again, 'no-recovery and 'no-data.
1923 ** sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent: now take an
1924 optional argument STAYOPEN, which specifies whether the database
1925 remains open after a database entry is accessed randomly (e.g., using
1926 gethostbyname for the hosts database.) The default is #f. Previously
1930 Changes since Guile 1.3.2:
1932 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
1936 An initial version of the Guile debugger written by Chris Hanson has
1937 been added. The debugger is still under development but is included
1938 in the distribution anyway since it is already quite useful.
1944 after an error to enter the debugger. Type `help' inside the debugger
1945 for a description of available commands.
1947 If you prefer to have stack frames numbered and printed in
1948 anti-chronological order and prefer up in the stack to be down on the
1949 screen as is the case in gdb, you can put
1951 (debug-enable 'backwards)
1953 in your .guile startup file. (However, this means that Guile can't
1954 use indentation to indicate stack level.)
1956 The debugger is autoloaded into Guile at the first use.
1958 ** Further enhancements to backtraces
1960 There is a new debug option `width' which controls the maximum width
1961 on the screen of printed stack frames. Fancy printing parameters
1962 ("level" and "length" as in Common LISP) are adaptively adjusted for
1963 each stack frame to give maximum information while still fitting
1964 within the bounds. If the stack frame can't be made to fit by
1965 adjusting parameters, it is simply cut off at the end. This is marked
1968 ** Some modules are now only loaded when the repl is started
1970 The modules (ice-9 debug), (ice-9 session), (ice-9 threads) and (ice-9
1971 regex) are now loaded into (guile-user) only if the repl has been
1972 started. The effect is that the startup time for scripts has been
1973 reduced to 30% of what it was previously.
1975 Correctly written scripts load the modules they require at the top of
1976 the file and should not be affected by this change.
1978 ** Hooks are now represented as smobs
1980 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
1982 ** Readline support has changed again.
1984 The old (readline-activator) module is gone. Use (ice-9 readline)
1985 instead, which now contains all readline functionality. So the code
1986 to activate readline is now
1988 (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
1991 This should work at any time, including from the guile prompt.
1993 To avoid confusion about the terms of Guile's license, please only
1994 enable readline for your personal use; please don't make it the
1995 default for others. Here is why we make this rather odd-sounding
1998 Guile is normally licensed under a weakened form of the GNU General
1999 Public License, which allows you to link code with Guile without
2000 placing that code under the GPL. This exception is important to some
2003 However, since readline is distributed under the GNU General Public
2004 License, when you link Guile with readline, either statically or
2005 dynamically, you effectively change Guile's license to the strict GPL.
2006 Whenever you link any strictly GPL'd code into Guile, uses of Guile
2007 which are normally permitted become forbidden. This is a rather
2008 non-obvious consequence of the licensing terms.
2010 So, to make sure things remain clear, please let people choose for
2011 themselves whether to link GPL'd libraries like readline with Guile.
2013 ** regexp-substitute/global has changed slightly, but incompatibly.
2015 If you include a function in the item list, the string of the match
2016 object it receives is the same string passed to
2017 regexp-substitute/global, not some suffix of that string.
2018 Correspondingly, the match's positions are relative to the entire
2019 string, not the suffix.
2021 If the regexp can match the empty string, the way matches are chosen
2022 from the string has changed. regexp-substitute/global recognizes the
2023 same set of matches that list-matches does; see below.
2025 ** New function: list-matches REGEXP STRING [FLAGS]
2027 Return a list of match objects, one for every non-overlapping, maximal
2028 match of REGEXP in STRING. The matches appear in left-to-right order.
2029 list-matches only reports matches of the empty string if there are no
2030 other matches which begin on, end at, or include the empty match's
2033 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
2035 ** New function: fold-matches REGEXP STRING INIT PROC [FLAGS]
2037 For each match of REGEXP in STRING, apply PROC to the match object,
2038 and the last value PROC returned, or INIT for the first call. Return
2039 the last value returned by PROC. We apply PROC to the matches as they
2040 appear from left to right.
2042 This function recognizes matches according to the same criteria as
2045 Thus, you could define list-matches like this:
2047 (define (list-matches regexp string . flags)
2048 (reverse! (apply fold-matches regexp string '() cons flags)))
2050 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
2054 *** New function: hook? OBJ
2056 Return #t if OBJ is a hook, otherwise #f.
2058 *** New function: make-hook-with-name NAME [ARITY]
2060 Return a hook with name NAME and arity ARITY. The default value for
2061 ARITY is 0. The only effect of NAME is that it will appear when the
2062 hook object is printed to ease debugging.
2064 *** New function: hook-empty? HOOK
2066 Return #t if HOOK doesn't contain any procedures, otherwise #f.
2068 *** New function: hook->list HOOK
2070 Return a list of the procedures that are called when run-hook is
2073 ** `map' signals an error if its argument lists are not all the same length.
2075 This is the behavior required by R5RS, so this change is really a bug
2076 fix. But it seems to affect a lot of people's code, so we're
2077 mentioning it here anyway.
2079 ** Print-state handling has been made more transparent
2081 Under certain circumstances, ports are represented as a port with an
2082 associated print state. Earlier, this pair was represented as a pair
2083 (see "Some magic has been added to the printer" below). It is now
2084 indistinguishable (almost; see `get-print-state') from a port on the
2087 *** New function: port-with-print-state OUTPUT-PORT PRINT-STATE
2089 Return a new port with the associated print state PRINT-STATE.
2091 *** New function: get-print-state OUTPUT-PORT
2093 Return the print state associated with this port if it exists,
2094 otherwise return #f.
2096 *** New function: directory-stream? OBJECT
2098 Returns true iff OBJECT is a directory stream --- the sort of object
2099 returned by `opendir'.
2101 ** New function: using-readline?
2103 Return #t if readline is in use in the current repl.
2105 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
2107 Structs will be replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into Guile
2108 and use GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
2110 * Changes to the scm_ interface
2112 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
2114 The entire current struct interface (struct.c, struct.h) will be
2115 replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into libguile and use
2116 GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
2118 ** The internal representation of subr's has changed
2120 Instead of giving a hint to the subr name, the CAR field of the subr
2121 now contains an index to a subr entry in scm_subr_table.
2123 *** New variable: scm_subr_table
2125 An array of subr entries. A subr entry contains the name, properties
2126 and documentation associated with the subr. The properties and
2127 documentation slots are not yet used.
2129 ** A new scheme for "forwarding" calls to a builtin to a generic function
2131 It is now possible to extend the functionality of some Guile
2132 primitives by letting them defer a call to a GOOPS generic function on
2133 argument mismatch. This means that there is no loss of efficiency in
2138 (use-modules (oop goops)) ; Must be GOOPS version 0.2.
2139 (define-method + ((x <string>) (y <string>))
2140 (string-append x y))
2142 + will still be as efficient as usual in numerical calculations, but
2143 can also be used for concatenating strings.
2145 Who will be the first one to extend Guile's numerical tower to
2146 rationals? :) [OK, there a few other things to fix before this can
2147 be made in a clean way.]
2149 *** New snarf macros for defining primitives: SCM_GPROC, SCM_GPROC1
2151 New macro: SCM_GPROC (CNAME, SNAME, REQ, OPT, VAR, CFUNC, GENERIC)
2153 New macro: SCM_GPROC1 (CNAME, SNAME, TYPE, CFUNC, GENERIC)
2155 These do the same job as SCM_PROC and SCM_PROC1, but they also define
2156 a variable GENERIC which can be used by the dispatch macros below.
2158 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
2160 *** New macros for forwarding control to a generic on arg type error
2162 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_1 (GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
2164 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
2166 These correspond to the scm_wta function call, and have the same
2167 behaviour until the user has called the GOOPS primitive
2168 `enable-primitive-generic!'. After that, these macros will apply the
2169 generic function GENERIC to the argument(s) instead of calling
2172 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
2174 *** New macros for argument testing with generic dispatch
2176 New macro: SCM_GASSERT1 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
2178 New macro: SCM_GASSERT2 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
2180 These correspond to the SCM_ASSERT macro, but will defer control to
2181 GENERIC on error after `enable-primitive-generic!' has been called.
2183 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
2185 ** New function: SCM scm_eval_body (SCM body, SCM env)
2187 Evaluates the body of a special form.
2189 ** The internal representation of struct's has changed
2191 Previously, four slots were allocated for the procedure(s) of entities
2192 and operators. The motivation for this representation had to do with
2193 the structure of the evaluator, the wish to support tail-recursive
2194 generic functions, and efficiency. Since the generic function
2195 dispatch mechanism has changed, there is no longer a need for such an
2196 expensive representation, and the representation has been simplified.
2198 This should not make any difference for most users.
2200 ** GOOPS support has been cleaned up.
2202 Some code has been moved from eval.c to objects.c and code in both of
2203 these compilation units has been cleaned up and better structured.
2205 *** New functions for applying generic functions
2207 New function: SCM scm_apply_generic (GENERIC, ARGS)
2208 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_0 (GENERIC)
2209 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_1 (GENERIC, ARG1)
2210 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2)
2211 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_3 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, ARG3)
2213 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_named_hook
2215 It is now replaced by:
2217 ** New function: SCM scm_create_hook (const char *name, int arity)
2219 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
2220 binds a variable named NAME to it.
2222 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
2224 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module.
2225 This might change when we get the new module system.
2227 [The behaviour is identical to scm_make_named_hook.]
2231 Changes since Guile 1.3:
2233 * Changes to mailing lists
2235 ** Some of the Guile mailing lists have moved to sourceware.cygnus.com.
2237 See the README file to find current addresses for all the Guile
2240 * Changes to the distribution
2242 ** Readline support is no longer included with Guile by default.
2244 Based on the different license terms of Guile and Readline, we
2245 concluded that Guile should not *by default* cause the linking of
2246 Readline into an application program. Readline support is now offered
2247 as a separate module, which is linked into an application only when
2248 you explicitly specify it.
2250 Although Guile is GNU software, its distribution terms add a special
2251 exception to the usual GNU General Public License (GPL). Guile's
2252 license includes a clause that allows you to link Guile with non-free
2253 programs. We add this exception so as not to put Guile at a
2254 disadvantage vis-a-vis other extensibility packages that support other
2257 In contrast, the GNU Readline library is distributed under the GNU
2258 General Public License pure and simple. This means that you may not
2259 link Readline, even dynamically, into an application unless it is
2260 distributed under a free software license that is compatible the GPL.
2262 Because of this difference in distribution terms, an application that
2263 can use Guile may not be able to use Readline. Now users will be
2264 explicitly offered two independent decisions about the use of these
2267 You can activate the readline support by issuing
2269 (use-modules (readline-activator))
2272 from your ".guile" file, for example.
2274 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2276 ** All builtins now print as primitives.
2277 Previously builtin procedures not belonging to the fundamental subr
2278 types printed as #<compiled closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>.
2279 Now, they print as #<primitive-procedure NAME>.
2281 ** Backtraces slightly more intelligible.
2282 gsubr-apply and macro transformer application frames no longer appear
2285 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2287 ** Guile now correctly handles internal defines by rewriting them into
2288 their equivalent letrec. Previously, internal defines would
2289 incrementally add to the innermost environment, without checking
2290 whether the restrictions specified in RnRS were met. This lead to the
2291 correct behaviour when these restriction actually were met, but didn't
2292 catch all illegal uses. Such an illegal use could lead to crashes of
2293 the Guile interpreter or or other unwanted results. An example of
2294 incorrect internal defines that made Guile behave erratically:
2306 The problem with this example is that the definition of `c' uses the
2307 value of `b' directly. This confuses the meoization machine of Guile
2308 so that the second call of `b' (this time in a larger environment that
2309 also contains bindings for `c' and `d') refers to the binding of `c'
2310 instead of `a'. You could also make Guile crash with a variation on
2315 (define (b flag) (if flag a 1))
2316 (define c (1+ (b flag)))
2324 From now on, Guile will issue an `Unbound variable: b' error message
2329 A hook contains a list of functions which should be called on
2330 particular occasions in an existing program. Hooks are used for
2333 A window manager might have a hook before-window-map-hook. The window
2334 manager uses the function run-hooks to call all functions stored in
2335 before-window-map-hook each time a window is mapped. The user can
2336 store functions in the hook using add-hook!.
2338 In Guile, hooks are first class objects.
2340 *** New function: make-hook [N_ARGS]
2342 Return a hook for hook functions which can take N_ARGS arguments.
2343 The default value for N_ARGS is 0.
2345 (See also scm_make_named_hook below.)
2347 *** New function: add-hook! HOOK PROC [APPEND_P]
2349 Put PROC at the beginning of the list of functions stored in HOOK.
2350 If APPEND_P is supplied, and non-false, put PROC at the end instead.
2352 PROC must be able to take the number of arguments specified when the
2355 If PROC already exists in HOOK, then remove it first.
2357 *** New function: remove-hook! HOOK PROC
2359 Remove PROC from the list of functions in HOOK.
2361 *** New function: reset-hook! HOOK
2363 Clear the list of hook functions stored in HOOK.
2365 *** New function: run-hook HOOK ARG1 ...
2367 Run all hook functions stored in HOOK with arguments ARG1 ... .
2368 The number of arguments supplied must correspond to the number given
2369 when the hook was created.
2371 ** The function `dynamic-link' now takes optional keyword arguments.
2372 The only keyword argument that is currently defined is `:global
2373 BOOL'. With it, you can control whether the shared library will be
2374 linked in global mode or not. In global mode, the symbols from the
2375 linked library can be used to resolve references from other
2376 dynamically linked libraries. In non-global mode, the linked
2377 library is essentially invisible and can only be accessed via
2378 `dynamic-func', etc. The default is now to link in global mode.
2379 Previously, the default has been non-global mode.
2381 The `#:global' keyword is only effective on platforms that support
2382 the dlopen family of functions.
2384 ** New function `provided?'
2386 - Function: provided? FEATURE
2387 Return true iff FEATURE is supported by this installation of
2388 Guile. FEATURE must be a symbol naming a feature; the global
2389 variable `*features*' is a list of available features.
2391 ** Changes to the module (ice-9 expect):
2393 *** The expect-strings macro now matches `$' in a regular expression
2394 only at a line-break or end-of-file by default. Previously it would
2395 match the end of the string accumulated so far. The old behaviour
2396 can be obtained by setting the variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
2399 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
2400 for the regexp-exec flags. If `regexp/noteol' is included, then `$'
2401 in a regular expression will still match before a line-break or
2402 end-of-file. The default is `regexp/noteol'.
2404 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable
2405 `expect-strings-compile-flags' for the flags to be supplied to
2406 `make-regexp'. The default is `regexp/newline', which was previously
2409 *** The expect macro now supplies two arguments to a match procedure:
2410 the current accumulated string and a flag to indicate whether
2411 end-of-file has been reached. Previously only the string was supplied.
2412 If end-of-file is reached, the match procedure will be called an
2413 additional time with the same accumulated string as the previous call
2414 but with the flag set.
2416 ** New module (ice-9 format), implementing the Common Lisp `format' function.
2418 This code, and the documentation for it that appears here, was
2419 borrowed from SLIB, with minor adaptations for Guile.
2421 - Function: format DESTINATION FORMAT-STRING . ARGUMENTS
2422 An almost complete implementation of Common LISP format description
2423 according to the CL reference book `Common LISP' from Guy L.
2424 Steele, Digital Press. Backward compatible to most of the
2425 available Scheme format implementations.
2427 Returns `#t', `#f' or a string; has side effect of printing
2428 according to FORMAT-STRING. If DESTINATION is `#t', the output is
2429 to the current output port and `#t' is returned. If DESTINATION
2430 is `#f', a formatted string is returned as the result of the call.
2431 NEW: If DESTINATION is a string, DESTINATION is regarded as the
2432 format string; FORMAT-STRING is then the first argument and the
2433 output is returned as a string. If DESTINATION is a number, the
2434 output is to the current error port if available by the
2435 implementation. Otherwise DESTINATION must be an output port and
2438 FORMAT-STRING must be a string. In case of a formatting error
2439 format returns `#f' and prints a message on the current output or
2440 error port. Characters are output as if the string were output by
2441 the `display' function with the exception of those prefixed by a
2442 tilde (~). For a detailed description of the FORMAT-STRING syntax
2443 please consult a Common LISP format reference manual. For a test
2444 suite to verify this format implementation load `formatst.scm'.
2445 Please send bug reports to `lutzeb@cs.tu-berlin.de'.
2447 Note: `format' is not reentrant, i.e. only one `format'-call may
2448 be executed at a time.
2451 *** Format Specification (Format version 3.0)
2453 Please consult a Common LISP format reference manual for a detailed
2454 description of the format string syntax. For a demonstration of the
2455 implemented directives see `formatst.scm'.
2457 This implementation supports directive parameters and modifiers (`:'
2458 and `@' characters). Multiple parameters must be separated by a comma
2459 (`,'). Parameters can be numerical parameters (positive or negative),
2460 character parameters (prefixed by a quote character (`''), variable
2461 parameters (`v'), number of rest arguments parameter (`#'), empty and
2462 default parameters. Directive characters are case independent. The
2463 general form of a directive is:
2465 DIRECTIVE ::= ~{DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER,}[:][@]DIRECTIVE-CHARACTER
2467 DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER ::= [ [-|+]{0-9}+ | 'CHARACTER | v | # ]
2469 *** Implemented CL Format Control Directives
2471 Documentation syntax: Uppercase characters represent the
2472 corresponding control directive characters. Lowercase characters
2473 represent control directive parameter descriptions.
2476 Any (print as `display' does).
2480 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARA'
2484 S-expression (print as `write' does).
2488 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARS'
2494 print number sign always.
2497 print comma separated.
2499 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARD'
2505 print number sign always.
2508 print comma separated.
2510 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARX'
2516 print number sign always.
2519 print comma separated.
2521 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARO'
2527 print number sign always.
2530 print comma separated.
2532 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARB'
2537 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARR'
2541 print a number as a Roman numeral.
2544 print a number as an "old fashioned" Roman numeral.
2547 print a number as an ordinal English number.
2550 print a number as a cardinal English number.
2555 prints `y' and `ies'.
2558 as `~P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
2561 as `~@P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
2566 prints a character as the reader can understand it (i.e. `#\'
2570 prints a character as emacs does (eg. `^C' for ASCII 03).
2573 Fixed-format floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN).
2574 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHARF'
2576 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
2579 Exponential floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN`E'EE).
2580 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARE'
2582 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
2585 General floating-point (prints a flonum either fixed or
2587 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARG'
2589 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
2592 Dollars floating-point (prints a flonum in fixed with signs
2594 `~DIGITS,SCALE,WIDTH,PADCHAR$'
2596 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
2599 A sign is always printed and appears before the padding.
2602 The sign appears before the padding.
2610 print newline if not at the beginning of the output line.
2612 prints `~&' and then N-1 newlines.
2617 print N page separators.
2627 newline is ignored, white space left.
2630 newline is left, white space ignored.
2635 relative tabulation.
2641 Indirection (expects indirect arguments as a list).
2643 extracts indirect arguments from format arguments.
2646 Case conversion (converts by `string-downcase').
2648 converts by `string-capitalize'.
2651 converts by `string-capitalize-first'.
2654 converts by `string-upcase'.
2657 Argument Jumping (jumps 1 argument forward).
2659 jumps N arguments forward.
2662 jumps 1 argument backward.
2665 jumps N arguments backward.
2668 jumps to the 0th argument.
2671 jumps to the Nth argument (beginning from 0)
2673 `~[STR0~;STR1~;...~;STRN~]'
2674 Conditional Expression (numerical clause conditional).
2676 take argument from N.
2679 true test conditional.
2682 if-else-then conditional.
2688 default clause follows.
2691 Iteration (args come from the next argument (a list)).
2693 at most N iterations.
2696 args from next arg (a list of lists).
2699 args from the rest of arguments.
2702 args from the rest args (lists).
2713 aborts if N <= M <= K
2715 *** Not Implemented CL Format Control Directives
2718 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
2721 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
2727 (sorry I don't understand its semantics completely)
2729 *** Extended, Replaced and Additional Control Directives
2731 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHD'
2732 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHX'
2733 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHO'
2734 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHB'
2735 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHR'
2736 COMMAWIDTH is the number of characters between two comma
2740 print a R4RS complex number as `~F~@Fi' with passed parameters for
2744 Pretty print formatting of an argument for scheme code lists.
2750 Flushes the output if format DESTINATION is a port.
2753 Print a `#\space' character
2755 print N `#\space' characters.
2758 Print a `#\tab' character
2760 print N `#\tab' characters.
2763 Takes N as an integer representation for a character. No arguments
2764 are consumed. N is converted to a character by `integer->char'. N
2765 must be a positive decimal number.
2768 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
2769 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
2770 be processed by `read'.
2773 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
2774 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
2775 be processed by `read'.
2778 Prints information and a copyright notice on the format
2781 prints format version.
2784 may also print number strings, i.e. passing a number as a string
2785 and format it accordingly.
2787 *** Configuration Variables
2789 The format module exports some configuration variables to suit the
2790 systems and users needs. There should be no modification necessary for
2791 the configuration that comes with Guile. Format detects automatically
2792 if the running scheme system implements floating point numbers and
2795 format:symbol-case-conv
2796 Symbols are converted by `symbol->string' so the case type of the
2797 printed symbols is implementation dependent.
2798 `format:symbol-case-conv' is a one arg closure which is either
2799 `#f' (no conversion), `string-upcase', `string-downcase' or
2800 `string-capitalize'. (default `#f')
2802 format:iobj-case-conv
2803 As FORMAT:SYMBOL-CASE-CONV but applies for the representation of
2804 implementation internal objects. (default `#f')
2807 The character prefixing the exponent value in `~E' printing.
2810 *** Compatibility With Other Format Implementations
2816 Downward compatible except for padding support and `~A', `~S',
2817 `~P', `~X' uppercase printing. SLIB format 1.4 uses C-style
2818 `printf' padding support which is completely replaced by the CL
2819 `format' padding style.
2822 Downward compatible except for `~', which is not documented
2823 (ignores all characters inside the format string up to a newline
2824 character). (7.1 implements `~a', `~s', ~NEWLINE, `~~', `~%',
2825 numerical and variable parameters and `:/@' modifiers in the CL
2829 Downward compatible except for `~A' and `~S' which print in
2830 uppercase. (Elk implements `~a', `~s', `~~', and `~%' (no
2831 directive parameters or modifiers)).
2834 Downward compatible except for an optional destination parameter:
2835 S2C accepts a format call without a destination which returns a
2836 formatted string. This is equivalent to a #f destination in S2C.
2837 (S2C implements `~a', `~s', `~c', `~%', and `~~' (no directive
2838 parameters or modifiers)).
2841 ** Changes to string-handling functions.
2843 These functions were added to support the (ice-9 format) module, above.
2845 *** New function: string-upcase STRING
2846 *** New function: string-downcase STRING
2848 These are non-destructive versions of the existing string-upcase! and
2849 string-downcase! functions.
2851 *** New function: string-capitalize! STRING
2852 *** New function: string-capitalize STRING
2854 These functions convert the first letter of each word in the string to
2857 (string-capitalize "howdy there")
2860 As with the other functions, string-capitalize! modifies the string in
2861 place, while string-capitalize returns a modified copy of its argument.
2863 *** New function: string-ci->symbol STRING
2865 Return a symbol whose name is STRING, but having the same case as if
2866 the symbol had be read by `read'.
2868 Guile can be configured to be sensitive or insensitive to case
2869 differences in Scheme identifiers. If Guile is case-insensitive, all
2870 symbols are converted to lower case on input. The `string-ci->symbol'
2871 function returns a symbol whose name in STRING, transformed as Guile
2872 would if STRING were input.
2874 *** New function: substring-move! STRING1 START END STRING2 START
2876 Copy the substring of STRING1 from START (inclusive) to END
2877 (exclusive) to STRING2 at START. STRING1 and STRING2 may be the same
2878 string, and the source and destination areas may overlap; in all
2879 cases, the function behaves as if all the characters were copied
2882 *** Extended functions: substring-move-left! substring-move-right!
2884 These functions now correctly copy arbitrarily overlapping substrings;
2885 they are both synonyms for substring-move!.
2888 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-long), with the function `getopt-long'.
2890 getopt-long is a function for parsing command-line arguments in a
2891 manner consistent with other GNU programs.
2893 (getopt-long ARGS GRAMMAR)
2894 Parse the arguments ARGS according to the argument list grammar GRAMMAR.
2896 ARGS should be a list of strings. Its first element should be the
2897 name of the program; subsequent elements should be the arguments
2898 that were passed to the program on the command line. The
2899 `program-arguments' procedure returns a list of this form.
2901 GRAMMAR is a list of the form:
2902 ((OPTION (PROPERTY VALUE) ...) ...)
2904 Each OPTION should be a symbol. `getopt-long' will accept a
2905 command-line option named `--OPTION'.
2906 Each option can have the following (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs:
2908 (single-char CHAR) --- Accept `-CHAR' as a single-character
2909 equivalent to `--OPTION'. This is how to specify traditional
2911 (required? BOOL) --- If BOOL is true, the option is required.
2912 getopt-long will raise an error if it is not found in ARGS.
2913 (value BOOL) --- If BOOL is #t, the option accepts a value; if
2914 it is #f, it does not; and if it is the symbol
2915 `optional', the option may appear in ARGS with or
2917 (predicate FUNC) --- If the option accepts a value (i.e. you
2918 specified `(value #t)' for this option), then getopt
2919 will apply FUNC to the value, and throw an exception
2920 if it returns #f. FUNC should be a procedure which
2921 accepts a string and returns a boolean value; you may
2922 need to use quasiquotes to get it into GRAMMAR.
2924 The (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs may occur in any order, but each
2925 property may occur only once. By default, options do not have
2926 single-character equivalents, are not required, and do not take
2929 In ARGS, single-character options may be combined, in the usual
2930 Unix fashion: ("-x" "-y") is equivalent to ("-xy"). If an option
2931 accepts values, then it must be the last option in the
2932 combination; the value is the next argument. So, for example, using
2933 the following grammar:
2934 ((apples (single-char #\a))
2935 (blimps (single-char #\b) (value #t))
2936 (catalexis (single-char #\c) (value #t)))
2937 the following argument lists would be acceptable:
2938 ("-a" "-b" "bang" "-c" "couth") ("bang" and "couth" are the values
2939 for "blimps" and "catalexis")
2940 ("-ab" "bang" "-c" "couth") (same)
2941 ("-ac" "couth" "-b" "bang") (same)
2942 ("-abc" "couth" "bang") (an error, since `-b' is not the
2943 last option in its combination)
2945 If an option's value is optional, then `getopt-long' decides
2946 whether it has a value by looking at what follows it in ARGS. If
2947 the next element is a string, and it does not appear to be an
2948 option itself, then that string is the option's value.
2950 The value of a long option can appear as the next element in ARGS,
2951 or it can follow the option name, separated by an `=' character.
2952 Thus, using the same grammar as above, the following argument lists
2954 ("--apples" "Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
2955 ("--apples=Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
2956 ("--blimps" "Goodyear" "--apples=Braeburn")
2958 If the option "--" appears in ARGS, argument parsing stops there;
2959 subsequent arguments are returned as ordinary arguments, even if
2960 they resemble options. So, in the argument list:
2961 ("--apples" "Granny Smith" "--" "--blimp" "Goodyear")
2962 `getopt-long' will recognize the `apples' option as having the
2963 value "Granny Smith", but it will not recognize the `blimp'
2964 option; it will return the strings "--blimp" and "Goodyear" as
2965 ordinary argument strings.
2967 The `getopt-long' function returns the parsed argument list as an
2968 assocation list, mapping option names --- the symbols from GRAMMAR
2969 --- onto their values, or #t if the option does not accept a value.
2970 Unused options do not appear in the alist.
2972 All arguments that are not the value of any option are returned
2973 as a list, associated with the empty list.
2975 `getopt-long' throws an exception if:
2976 - it finds an unrecognized option in ARGS
2977 - a required option is omitted
2978 - an option that requires an argument doesn't get one
2979 - an option that doesn't accept an argument does get one (this can
2980 only happen using the long option `--opt=value' syntax)
2981 - an option predicate fails
2986 `((lockfile-dir (required? #t)
2989 (predicate ,file-is-directory?))
2990 (verbose (required? #f)
2993 (x-includes (single-char #\x))
2994 (rnet-server (single-char #\y)
2995 (predicate ,string?))))
2997 (getopt-long '("my-prog" "-vk" "/tmp" "foo1" "--x-includes=/usr/include"
2998 "--rnet-server=lamprod" "--" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
3000 => ((() "foo1" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
3001 (rnet-server . "lamprod")
3002 (x-includes . "/usr/include")
3003 (lockfile-dir . "/tmp")
3006 ** The (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) module is obsolete; use (ice-9 getopt-long).
3008 It will be removed in a few releases.
3010 ** New syntax: lambda*
3011 ** New syntax: define*
3012 ** New syntax: define*-public
3013 ** New syntax: defmacro*
3014 ** New syntax: defmacro*-public
3015 Guile now supports optional arguments.
3017 `lambda*', `define*', `define*-public', `defmacro*' and
3018 `defmacro*-public' are identical to the non-* versions except that
3019 they use an extended type of parameter list that has the following BNF
3020 syntax (parentheses are literal, square brackets indicate grouping,
3021 and `*', `+' and `?' have the usual meaning):
3023 ext-param-list ::= ( [identifier]* [#&optional [ext-var-decl]+]?
3024 [#&key [ext-var-decl]+ [#&allow-other-keys]?]?
3025 [[#&rest identifier]|[. identifier]]? ) | [identifier]
3027 ext-var-decl ::= identifier | ( identifier expression )
3029 The semantics are best illustrated with the following documentation
3030 and examples for `lambda*':
3033 lambda extended for optional and keyword arguments
3035 lambda* creates a procedure that takes optional arguments. These
3036 are specified by putting them inside brackets at the end of the
3037 paramater list, but before any dotted rest argument. For example,
3038 (lambda* (a b #&optional c d . e) '())
3039 creates a procedure with fixed arguments a and b, optional arguments c
3040 and d, and rest argument e. If the optional arguments are omitted
3041 in a call, the variables for them are unbound in the procedure. This
3042 can be checked with the bound? macro.
3044 lambda* can also take keyword arguments. For example, a procedure
3046 (lambda* (#&key xyzzy larch) '())
3047 can be called with any of the argument lists (#:xyzzy 11)
3048 (#:larch 13) (#:larch 42 #:xyzzy 19) (). Whichever arguments
3049 are given as keywords are bound to values.
3051 Optional and keyword arguments can also be given default values
3052 which they take on when they are not present in a call, by giving a
3053 two-item list in place of an optional argument, for example in:
3054 (lambda* (foo #&optional (bar 42) #&key (baz 73)) (list foo bar baz))
3055 foo is a fixed argument, bar is an optional argument with default
3056 value 42, and baz is a keyword argument with default value 73.
3057 Default value expressions are not evaluated unless they are needed
3058 and until the procedure is called.
3060 lambda* now supports two more special parameter list keywords.
3062 lambda*-defined procedures now throw an error by default if a
3063 keyword other than one of those specified is found in the actual
3064 passed arguments. However, specifying #&allow-other-keys
3065 immediately after the kyword argument declarations restores the
3066 previous behavior of ignoring unknown keywords. lambda* also now
3067 guarantees that if the same keyword is passed more than once, the
3068 last one passed is the one that takes effect. For example,
3069 ((lambda* (#&key (heads 0) (tails 0)) (display (list heads tails)))
3070 #:heads 37 #:tails 42 #:heads 99)
3071 would result in (99 47) being displayed.
3073 #&rest is also now provided as a synonym for the dotted syntax rest
3074 argument. The argument lists (a . b) and (a #&rest b) are equivalent in
3075 all respects to lambda*. This is provided for more similarity to DSSSL,
3076 MIT-Scheme and Kawa among others, as well as for refugees from other
3079 Further documentation may be found in the optargs.scm file itself.
3081 The optional argument module also exports the macros `let-optional',
3082 `let-optional*', `let-keywords', `let-keywords*' and `bound?'. These
3083 are not documented here because they may be removed in the future, but
3084 full documentation is still available in optargs.scm.
3086 ** New syntax: and-let*
3087 Guile now supports the `and-let*' form, described in the draft SRFI-2.
3089 Syntax: (land* (<clause> ...) <body> ...)
3090 Each <clause> should have one of the following forms:
3091 (<variable> <expression>)
3094 Each <variable> or <bound-variable> should be an identifier. Each
3095 <expression> should be a valid expression. The <body> should be a
3096 possibly empty sequence of expressions, like the <body> of a
3099 Semantics: A LAND* expression is evaluated by evaluating the
3100 <expression> or <bound-variable> of each of the <clause>s from
3101 left to right. The value of the first <expression> or
3102 <bound-variable> that evaluates to a false value is returned; the
3103 remaining <expression>s and <bound-variable>s are not evaluated.
3104 The <body> forms are evaluated iff all the <expression>s and
3105 <bound-variable>s evaluate to true values.
3107 The <expression>s and the <body> are evaluated in an environment
3108 binding each <variable> of the preceding (<variable> <expression>)
3109 clauses to the value of the <expression>. Later bindings
3110 shadow earlier bindings.
3112 Guile's and-let* macro was contributed by Michael Livshin.
3114 ** New sorting functions
3116 *** New function: sorted? SEQUENCE LESS?
3117 Returns `#t' when the sequence argument is in non-decreasing order
3118 according to LESS? (that is, there is no adjacent pair `... x y
3119 ...' for which `(less? y x)').
3121 Returns `#f' when the sequence contains at least one out-of-order
3122 pair. It is an error if the sequence is neither a list nor a
3125 *** New function: merge LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
3126 LIST1 and LIST2 are sorted lists.
3127 Returns the sorted list of all elements in LIST1 and LIST2.
3129 Assume that the elements a and b1 in LIST1 and b2 in LIST2 are "equal"
3130 in the sense that (LESS? x y) --> #f for x, y in {a, b1, b2},
3131 and that a < b1 in LIST1. Then a < b1 < b2 in the result.
3132 (Here "<" should read "comes before".)
3134 *** New procedure: merge! LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
3135 Merges two lists, re-using the pairs of LIST1 and LIST2 to build
3136 the result. If the code is compiled, and LESS? constructs no new
3137 pairs, no pairs at all will be allocated. The first pair of the
3138 result will be either the first pair of LIST1 or the first pair of
3141 *** New function: sort SEQUENCE LESS?
3142 Accepts either a list or a vector, and returns a new sequence
3143 which is sorted. The new sequence is the same type as the input.
3144 Always `(sorted? (sort sequence less?) less?)'. The original
3145 sequence is not altered in any way. The new sequence shares its
3146 elements with the old one; no elements are copied.
3148 *** New procedure: sort! SEQUENCE LESS
3149 Returns its sorted result in the original boxes. No new storage is
3150 allocated at all. Proper usage: (set! slist (sort! slist <))
3152 *** New function: stable-sort SEQUENCE LESS?
3153 Similar to `sort' but stable. That is, if "equal" elements are
3154 ordered a < b in the original sequence, they will have the same order
3157 *** New function: stable-sort! SEQUENCE LESS?
3158 Similar to `sort!' but stable.
3159 Uses temporary storage when sorting vectors.
3161 *** New functions: sort-list, sort-list!
3162 Added for compatibility with scsh.
3164 ** New built-in random number support
3166 *** New function: random N [STATE]
3167 Accepts a positive integer or real N and returns a number of the
3168 same type between zero (inclusive) and N (exclusive). The values
3169 returned have a uniform distribution.
3171 The optional argument STATE must be of the type produced by
3172 `copy-random-state' or `seed->random-state'. It defaults to the value
3173 of the variable `*random-state*'. This object is used to maintain the
3174 state of the pseudo-random-number generator and is altered as a side
3175 effect of the `random' operation.
3177 *** New variable: *random-state*
3178 Holds a data structure that encodes the internal state of the
3179 random-number generator that `random' uses by default. The nature
3180 of this data structure is implementation-dependent. It may be
3181 printed out and successfully read back in, but may or may not
3182 function correctly as a random-number state object in another
3185 *** New function: copy-random-state [STATE]
3186 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
3187 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
3188 If argument STATE is given, a copy of it is returned. Otherwise a
3189 copy of `*random-state*' is returned.
3191 *** New function: seed->random-state SEED
3192 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
3193 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
3194 SEED is a string or a number. A new state is generated and
3195 initialized using SEED.
3197 *** New function: random:uniform [STATE]
3198 Returns an uniformly distributed inexact real random number in the
3199 range between 0 and 1.
3201 *** New procedure: random:solid-sphere! VECT [STATE]
3202 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose
3203 squares is less than 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in
3204 space of dimension N = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are
3205 uniformly distributed within the unit N-shere. The sum of the
3206 squares of the numbers is returned. VECT can be either a vector
3207 or a uniform vector of doubles.
3209 *** New procedure: random:hollow-sphere! VECT [STATE]
3210 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose squares
3211 is equal to 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in space of
3212 dimension n = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are uniformly
3213 distributed over the surface of the unit n-shere. VECT can be either
3214 a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
3216 *** New function: random:normal [STATE]
3217 Returns an inexact real in a normal distribution with mean 0 and
3218 standard deviation 1. For a normal distribution with mean M and
3219 standard deviation D use `(+ M (* D (random:normal)))'.
3221 *** New procedure: random:normal-vector! VECT [STATE]
3222 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers which are independent and
3223 standard normally distributed (i.e., with mean 0 and variance 1).
3224 VECT can be either a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
3226 *** New function: random:exp STATE
3227 Returns an inexact real in an exponential distribution with mean 1.
3228 For an exponential distribution with mean U use (* U (random:exp)).
3230 ** The range of logand, logior, logxor, logtest, and logbit? have changed.
3232 These functions now operate on numbers in the range of a C unsigned
3235 These functions used to operate on numbers in the range of a C signed
3236 long; however, this seems inappropriate, because Guile integers don't
3239 ** New function: make-guardian
3240 This is an implementation of guardians as described in
3241 R. Kent Dybvig, Carl Bruggeman, and David Eby (1993) "Guardians in a
3242 Generation-Based Garbage Collector" ACM SIGPLAN Conference on
3243 Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1993
3244 ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/guardians.ps.gz
3246 ** New functions: delq1!, delv1!, delete1!
3247 These procedures behave similar to delq! and friends but delete only
3248 one object if at all.
3250 ** New function: unread-string STRING PORT
3251 Unread STRING to PORT, that is, push it back onto the port so that
3252 next read operation will work on the pushed back characters.
3254 ** unread-char can now be called multiple times
3255 If unread-char is called multiple times, the unread characters will be
3256 read again in last-in first-out order.
3258 ** the procedures uniform-array-read! and uniform-array-write! now
3259 work on any kind of port, not just ports which are open on a file.
3261 ** Now 'l' in a port mode requests line buffering.
3263 ** The procedure truncate-file now works on string ports as well
3264 as file ports. If the size argument is omitted, the current
3265 file position is used.
3267 ** new procedure: seek PORT/FDES OFFSET WHENCE
3268 The arguments are the same as for the old fseek procedure, but it
3269 works on string ports as well as random-access file ports.
3271 ** the fseek procedure now works on string ports, since it has been
3272 redefined using seek.
3274 ** the setvbuf procedure now uses a default size if mode is _IOFBF and
3275 size is not supplied.
3277 ** the newline procedure no longer flushes the port if it's not
3278 line-buffered: previously it did if it was the current output port.
3280 ** open-pipe and close-pipe are no longer primitive procedures, but
3281 an emulation can be obtained using `(use-modules (ice-9 popen))'.
3283 ** the freopen procedure has been removed.
3285 ** new procedure: drain-input PORT
3286 Drains PORT's read buffers (including any pushed-back characters)
3287 and returns the contents as a single string.
3289 ** New function: map-in-order PROC LIST1 LIST2 ...
3290 Version of `map' which guarantees that the procedure is applied to the
3291 lists in serial order.
3293 ** Renamed `serial-array-copy!' and `serial-array-map!' to
3294 `array-copy-in-order!' and `array-map-in-order!'. The old names are
3295 now obsolete and will go away in release 1.5.
3297 ** New syntax: collect BODY1 ...
3298 Version of `begin' which returns a list of the results of the body
3299 forms instead of the result of the last body form. In contrast to
3300 `begin', `collect' allows an empty body.
3302 ** New functions: read-history FILENAME, write-history FILENAME
3303 Read/write command line history from/to file. Returns #t on success
3304 and #f if an error occured.
3306 ** `ls' and `lls' in module (ice-9 ls) now handle no arguments.
3308 These procedures return a list of definitions available in the specified
3309 argument, a relative module reference. In the case of no argument,
3310 `(current-module)' is now consulted for definitions to return, instead
3311 of simply returning #f, the former behavior.
3313 ** The #/ syntax for lists is no longer supported.
3315 Earlier versions of Scheme accepted this syntax, but printed a
3318 ** Guile no longer consults the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable.
3320 Instead, you should set GUILE_LOAD_PATH to tell Guile where to find
3323 * Changes to the gh_ interface
3327 Now takes a second argument which is the result array. If this
3328 pointer is NULL, a new array is malloced (the old behaviour).
3330 ** gh_chars2byvect, gh_shorts2svect, gh_floats2fvect, gh_scm2chars,
3331 gh_scm2shorts, gh_scm2longs, gh_scm2floats
3335 * Changes to the scm_ interface
3337 ** Function: scm_make_named_hook (char* name, int n_args)
3339 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
3340 binds a variable named NAME to it.
3342 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
3344 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module. This
3345 might change when we get the new module system.
3347 ** The smob interface
3349 The interface for creating smobs has changed. For documentation, see
3350 data-rep.info (made from guile-core/doc/data-rep.texi).
3352 *** Deprecated function: SCM scm_newsmob (scm_smobfuns *)
3354 >>> This function will be removed in 1.3.4. <<<
3358 *** Function: SCM scm_make_smob_type (const char *name, scm_sizet size)
3359 This function adds a new smob type, named NAME, with instance size
3360 SIZE to the system. The return value is a tag that is used in
3361 creating instances of the type. If SIZE is 0, then no memory will
3362 be allocated when instances of the smob are created, and nothing
3363 will be freed by the default free function.
3365 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_mark (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
3366 This function sets the smob marking procedure for the smob type
3367 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
3368 `scm_make_smob_type'.
3370 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_free (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
3371 This function sets the smob freeing procedure for the smob type
3372 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
3373 `scm_make_smob_type'.
3375 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_print (tc, print)
3377 - Function: void scm_set_smob_print (long tc,
3378 scm_sizet (*print) (SCM,
3382 This function sets the smob printing procedure for the smob type
3383 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
3384 `scm_make_smob_type'.
3386 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_equalp (long tc, SCM (*equalp) (SCM, SCM))
3387 This function sets the smob equality-testing predicate for the
3388 smob type specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
3389 `scm_make_smob_type'.
3391 *** Macro: void SCM_NEWSMOB (SCM var, long tc, void *data)
3392 Make VALUE contain a smob instance of the type with type code TC and
3393 smob data DATA. VALUE must be previously declared as C type `SCM'.
3395 *** Macro: fn_returns SCM_RETURN_NEWSMOB (long tc, void *data)
3396 This macro expands to a block of code that creates a smob instance
3397 of the type with type code TC and smob data DATA, and returns that
3398 `SCM' value. It should be the last piece of code in a block.
3400 ** The interfaces for using I/O ports and implementing port types
3401 (ptobs) have changed significantly. The new interface is based on
3402 shared access to buffers and a new set of ptob procedures.
3404 *** scm_newptob has been removed
3408 *** Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (type_name, fill_buffer, write_flush)
3410 - Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (char *type_name,
3411 int (*fill_buffer) (SCM port),
3412 void (*write_flush) (SCM port));
3414 Similarly to the new smob interface, there is a set of function
3415 setters by which the user can customize the behaviour of his port
3416 type. See ports.h (scm_set_port_XXX).
3418 ** scm_strport_to_string: New function: creates a new string from
3419 a string port's buffer.
3421 ** Plug in interface for random number generators
3422 The variable `scm_the_rng' in random.c contains a value and three
3423 function pointers which together define the current random number
3424 generator being used by the Scheme level interface and the random
3425 number library functions.
3427 The user is free to replace the default generator with the generator
3430 *** Variable: size_t scm_the_rng.rstate_size
3431 The size of the random state type used by the current RNG
3434 *** Function: unsigned long scm_the_rng.random_bits (scm_rstate *STATE)
3435 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
3437 *** Function: void scm_the_rng.init_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE, chars *S, int N)
3438 Seed random state STATE using string S of length N.
3440 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_the_rng.copy_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE)
3441 Given random state STATE, return a malloced copy.
3444 The default RNG is the MWC (Multiply With Carry) random number
3445 generator described by George Marsaglia at the Department of
3446 Statistics and Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The
3447 Florida State University (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo).
3449 It uses 64 bits, has a period of 4578426017172946943 (4.6e18), and
3450 passes all tests in the DIEHARD test suite
3451 (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo/diehard.html). The generation of 32 bits
3452 costs one multiply and one add on platforms which either supports long
3453 longs (gcc does this on most systems) or have 64 bit longs. The cost
3454 is four multiply on other systems but this can be optimized by writing
3455 scm_i_uniform32 in assembler.
3457 These functions are provided through the scm_the_rng interface for use
3458 by libguile and the application.
3460 *** Function: unsigned long scm_i_uniform32 (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
3461 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
3462 Don't use this function directly. Instead go through the plugin
3463 interface (see "Plug in interface" above).
3465 *** Function: void scm_i_init_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE, char *SEED, int N)
3466 Initialize STATE using SEED of length N.
3468 *** Function: scm_i_rstate *scm_i_copy_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
3469 Return a malloc:ed copy of STATE. This function can easily be re-used
3470 in the interfaces to other RNGs.
3472 ** Random number library functions
3473 These functions use the current RNG through the scm_the_rng interface.
3474 It might be a good idea to use these functions from your C code so
3475 that only one random generator is used by all code in your program.
3477 The default random state is stored in:
3479 *** Variable: SCM scm_var_random_state
3480 Contains the vcell of the Scheme variable "*random-state*" which is
3481 used as default state by all random number functions in the Scheme
3486 double x = scm_c_uniform01 (SCM_RSTATE (SCM_CDR (scm_var_random_state)));
3488 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_default_rstate (void)
3489 This is a convenience function which returns the value of
3490 scm_var_random_state. An error message is generated if this value
3491 isn't a random state.
3493 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_make_rstate (char *SEED, int LENGTH)
3494 Make a new random state from the string SEED of length LENGTH.
3496 It is generally not a good idea to use multiple random states in a
3497 program. While subsequent random numbers generated from one random
3498 state are guaranteed to be reasonably independent, there is no such
3499 guarantee for numbers generated from different random states.
3501 *** Macro: unsigned long scm_c_uniform32 (scm_rstate *STATE)
3502 Return 32 random bits.
3504 *** Function: double scm_c_uniform01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
3505 Return a sample from the uniform(0,1) distribution.
3507 *** Function: double scm_c_normal01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
3508 Return a sample from the normal(0,1) distribution.
3510 *** Function: double scm_c_exp1 (scm_rstate *STATE)
3511 Return a sample from the exp(1) distribution.
3513 *** Function: unsigned long scm_c_random (scm_rstate *STATE, unsigned long M)
3514 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
3516 *** Function: SCM scm_c_random_bignum (scm_rstate *STATE, SCM M)
3517 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
3518 M must be a bignum object. The returned value may be an INUM.
3522 Changes in Guile 1.3 (released Monday, October 19, 1998):
3524 * Changes to the distribution
3526 ** We renamed the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable to GUILE_LOAD_PATH.
3527 To avoid conflicts, programs should name environment variables after
3528 themselves, except when there's a common practice establishing some
3531 For now, Guile supports both GUILE_LOAD_PATH and SCHEME_LOAD_PATH,
3532 giving the former precedence, and printing a warning message if the
3533 latter is set. Guile 1.4 will not recognize SCHEME_LOAD_PATH at all.
3535 ** The header files related to multi-byte characters have been removed.
3536 They were: libguile/extchrs.h and libguile/mbstrings.h. Any C code
3537 which referred to these explicitly will probably need to be rewritten,
3538 since the support for the variant string types has been removed; see
3541 ** The header files append.h and sequences.h have been removed. These
3542 files implemented non-R4RS operations which would encourage
3543 non-portable programming style and less easy-to-read code.
3545 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3547 ** New procedures have been added to implement a "batch mode":
3549 *** Function: batch-mode?
3551 Returns a boolean indicating whether the interpreter is in batch
3554 *** Function: set-batch-mode?! ARG
3556 If ARG is true, switches the interpreter to batch mode. The `#f'
3557 case has not been implemented.
3559 ** Guile now provides full command-line editing, when run interactively.
3560 To use this feature, you must have the readline library installed.
3561 The Guile build process will notice it, and automatically include
3564 The readline library is available via anonymous FTP from any GNU
3565 mirror site; the canonical location is "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
3567 ** the-last-stack is now a fluid.
3569 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
3571 ** You can now use the `guile-config' utility to build programs that use Guile.
3573 Guile now includes a command-line utility called `guile-config', which
3574 can provide information about how to compile and link programs that
3577 *** `guile-config compile' prints any C compiler flags needed to use Guile.
3578 You should include this command's output on the command line you use
3579 to compile C or C++ code that #includes the Guile header files. It's
3580 usually just a `-I' flag to help the compiler find the Guile headers.
3583 *** `guile-config link' prints any linker flags necessary to link with Guile.
3585 This command writes to its standard output a list of flags which you
3586 must pass to the linker to link your code against the Guile library.
3587 The flags include '-lguile' itself, any other libraries the Guile
3588 library depends upon, and any `-L' flags needed to help the linker
3589 find those libraries.
3591 For example, here is a Makefile rule that builds a program named 'foo'
3592 from the object files ${FOO_OBJECTS}, and links them against Guile:
3595 ${CC} ${CFLAGS} ${FOO_OBJECTS} `guile-config link` -o foo
3597 Previous Guile releases recommended that you use autoconf to detect
3598 which of a predefined set of libraries were present on your system.
3599 It is more robust to use `guile-config', since it records exactly which
3600 libraries the installed Guile library requires.
3602 This was originally called `build-guile', but was renamed to
3603 `guile-config' before Guile 1.3 was released, to be consistent with
3604 the analogous script for the GTK+ GUI toolkit, which is called
3608 ** Use the GUILE_FLAGS macro in your configure.in file to find Guile.
3610 If you are using the GNU autoconf package to configure your program,
3611 you can use the GUILE_FLAGS autoconf macro to call `guile-config'
3612 (described above) and gather the necessary values for use in your
3615 The GUILE_FLAGS macro expands to configure script code which runs the
3616 `guile-config' script, to find out where Guile's header files and
3617 libraries are installed. It sets two variables, marked for
3618 substitution, as by AC_SUBST.
3620 GUILE_CFLAGS --- flags to pass to a C or C++ compiler to build
3621 code that uses Guile header files. This is almost always just a
3624 GUILE_LDFLAGS --- flags to pass to the linker to link a
3625 program against Guile. This includes `-lguile' for the Guile
3626 library itself, any libraries that Guile itself requires (like
3627 -lqthreads), and so on. It may also include a -L flag to tell the
3628 compiler where to find the libraries.
3630 GUILE_FLAGS is defined in the file guile.m4, in the top-level
3631 directory of the Guile distribution. You can copy it into your
3632 package's aclocal.m4 file, and then use it in your configure.in file.
3634 If you are using the `aclocal' program, distributed with GNU automake,
3635 to maintain your aclocal.m4 file, the Guile installation process
3636 installs guile.m4 where aclocal will find it. All you need to do is
3637 use GUILE_FLAGS in your configure.in file, and then run `aclocal';
3638 this will copy the definition of GUILE_FLAGS into your aclocal.m4
3642 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3644 ** Multi-byte strings have been removed, as have multi-byte and wide
3645 ports. We felt that these were the wrong approach to
3646 internationalization support.
3648 ** New function: readline [PROMPT]
3649 Read a line from the terminal, and allow the user to edit it,
3650 prompting with PROMPT. READLINE provides a large set of Emacs-like
3651 editing commands, lets the user recall previously typed lines, and
3652 works on almost every kind of terminal, including dumb terminals.
3654 READLINE assumes that the cursor is at the beginning of the line when
3655 it is invoked. Thus, you can't print a prompt yourself, and then call
3656 READLINE; you need to package up your prompt as a string, pass it to
3657 the function, and let READLINE print the prompt itself. This is
3658 because READLINE needs to know the prompt's screen width.
3660 For Guile to provide this function, you must have the readline
3661 library, version 2.1 or later, installed on your system. Readline is
3662 available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in pub/gnu, or from
3663 any GNU mirror site.
3665 See also ADD-HISTORY function.
3667 ** New function: add-history STRING
3668 Add STRING as the most recent line in the history used by the READLINE
3669 command. READLINE does not add lines to the history itself; you must
3670 call ADD-HISTORY to make previous input available to the user.
3672 ** The behavior of the read-line function has changed.
3674 This function now uses standard C library functions to read the line,
3675 for speed. This means that it doesn not respect the value of
3676 scm-line-incrementors; it assumes that lines are delimited with
3679 (Note that this is read-line, the function that reads a line of text
3680 from a port, not readline, the function that reads a line from a
3681 terminal, providing full editing capabilities.)
3683 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style): Parse command-line arguments.
3685 This module provides some simple argument parsing. It exports one
3688 Function: getopt-gnu-style ARG-LS
3689 Parse a list of program arguments into an alist of option
3692 Each item in the list of program arguments is examined to see if
3693 it meets the syntax of a GNU long-named option. An argument like
3694 `--MUMBLE' produces an element of the form (MUMBLE . #t) in the
3695 returned alist, where MUMBLE is a keyword object with the same
3696 name as the argument. An argument like `--MUMBLE=FROB' produces
3697 an element of the form (MUMBLE . FROB), where FROB is a string.
3699 As a special case, the returned alist also contains a pair whose
3700 car is the symbol `rest'. The cdr of this pair is a list
3701 containing all the items in the argument list that are not options
3702 of the form mentioned above.
3704 The argument `--' is treated specially: all items in the argument
3705 list appearing after such an argument are not examined, and are
3706 returned in the special `rest' list.
3708 This function does not parse normal single-character switches.
3709 You will need to parse them out of the `rest' list yourself.
3711 ** The read syntax for byte vectors and short vectors has changed.
3713 Instead of #bytes(...), write #y(...).
3715 Instead of #short(...), write #h(...).
3717 This may seem nutty, but, like the other uniform vectors, byte vectors
3718 and short vectors want to have the same print and read syntax (and,
3719 more basic, want to have read syntax!). Changing the read syntax to
3720 use multiple characters after the hash sign breaks with the
3721 conventions used in R5RS and the conventions used for the other
3722 uniform vectors. It also introduces complexity in the current reader,
3723 both on the C and Scheme levels. (The Right solution is probably to
3724 change the syntax and prototypes for uniform vectors entirely.)
3727 ** The new module (ice-9 session) provides useful interactive functions.
3729 *** New procedure: (apropos REGEXP OPTION ...)
3731 Display a list of top-level variables whose names match REGEXP, and
3732 the modules they are imported from. Each OPTION should be one of the
3735 value --- Show the value of each matching variable.
3736 shadow --- Show bindings shadowed by subsequently imported modules.
3737 full --- Same as both `shadow' and `value'.
3741 guile> (apropos "trace" 'full)
3742 debug: trace #<procedure trace args>
3743 debug: untrace #<procedure untrace args>
3744 the-scm-module: display-backtrace #<compiled-closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>
3745 the-scm-module: before-backtrace-hook ()
3746 the-scm-module: backtrace #<primitive-procedure backtrace>
3747 the-scm-module: after-backtrace-hook ()
3748 the-scm-module: has-shown-backtrace-hint? #f
3751 ** There are new functions and syntax for working with macros.
3753 Guile implements macros as a special object type. Any variable whose
3754 top-level binding is a macro object acts as a macro. The macro object
3755 specifies how the expression should be transformed before evaluation.
3757 *** Macro objects now print in a reasonable way, resembling procedures.
3759 *** New function: (macro? OBJ)
3760 True iff OBJ is a macro object.
3762 *** New function: (primitive-macro? OBJ)
3763 Like (macro? OBJ), but true only if OBJ is one of the Guile primitive
3764 macro transformers, implemented in eval.c rather than Scheme code.
3766 Why do we have this function?
3767 - For symmetry with procedure? and primitive-procedure?,
3768 - to allow custom print procedures to tell whether a macro is
3769 primitive, and display it differently, and
3770 - to allow compilers and user-written evaluators to distinguish
3771 builtin special forms from user-defined ones, which could be
3774 *** New function: (macro-type OBJ)
3775 Return a value indicating what kind of macro OBJ is. Possible return
3778 The symbol `syntax' --- a macro created by procedure->syntax.
3779 The symbol `macro' --- a macro created by procedure->macro.
3780 The symbol `macro!' --- a macro created by procedure->memoizing-macro.
3781 The boolean #f --- if OBJ is not a macro object.
3783 *** New function: (macro-name MACRO)
3784 Return the name of the macro object MACRO's procedure, as returned by
3787 *** New function: (macro-transformer MACRO)
3788 Return the transformer procedure for MACRO.
3790 *** New syntax: (use-syntax MODULE ... TRANSFORMER)
3792 Specify a new macro expander to use in the current module. Each
3793 MODULE is a module name, with the same meaning as in the `use-modules'
3794 form; each named module's exported bindings are added to the current
3795 top-level environment. TRANSFORMER is an expression evaluated in the
3796 resulting environment which must yield a procedure to use as the
3797 module's eval transformer: every expression evaluated in this module
3798 is passed to this function, and the result passed to the Guile
3801 *** macro-eval! is removed. Use local-eval instead.
3803 ** Some magic has been added to the printer to better handle user
3804 written printing routines (like record printers, closure printers).
3806 The problem is that these user written routines must have access to
3807 the current `print-state' to be able to handle fancy things like
3808 detection of circular references. These print-states have to be
3809 passed to the builtin printing routines (display, write, etc) to
3810 properly continue the print chain.
3812 We didn't want to change all existing print code so that it
3813 explicitly passes thru a print state in addition to a port. Instead,
3814 we extented the possible values that the builtin printing routines
3815 accept as a `port'. In addition to a normal port, they now also take
3816 a pair of a normal port and a print-state. Printing will go to the
3817 port and the print-state will be used to control the detection of
3818 circular references, etc. If the builtin function does not care for a
3819 print-state, it is simply ignored.
3821 User written callbacks are now called with such a pair as their
3822 `port', but because every function now accepts this pair as a PORT
3823 argument, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, it is probably
3824 safest to not check for these pairs.
3826 However, it is sometimes necessary to continue a print chain on a
3827 different port, for example to get a intermediate string
3828 representation of the printed value, mangle that string somehow, and
3829 then to finally print the mangled string. Use the new function
3831 inherit-print-state OLD-PORT NEW-PORT
3833 for this. It constructs a new `port' that prints to NEW-PORT but
3834 inherits the print-state of OLD-PORT.
3836 ** struct-vtable-offset renamed to vtable-offset-user
3838 ** New constants: vtable-index-layout, vtable-index-vtable, vtable-index-printer
3840 ** There is now a third optional argument to make-vtable-vtable
3841 (and fourth to make-struct) when constructing new types (vtables).
3842 This argument initializes field vtable-index-printer of the vtable.
3844 ** The detection of circular references has been extended to structs.
3845 That is, a structure that -- in the process of being printed -- prints
3846 itself does not lead to infinite recursion.
3848 ** There is now some basic support for fluids. Please read
3849 "libguile/fluid.h" to find out more. It is accessible from Scheme with
3850 the following functions and macros:
3852 Function: make-fluid
3854 Create a new fluid object. Fluids are not special variables or
3855 some other extension to the semantics of Scheme, but rather
3856 ordinary Scheme objects. You can store them into variables (that
3857 are still lexically scoped, of course) or into any other place you
3858 like. Every fluid has a initial value of `#f'.
3860 Function: fluid? OBJ
3862 Test whether OBJ is a fluid.
3864 Function: fluid-ref FLUID
3865 Function: fluid-set! FLUID VAL
3867 Access/modify the fluid FLUID. Modifications are only visible
3868 within the current dynamic root (that includes threads).
3870 Function: with-fluids* FLUIDS VALUES THUNK
3872 FLUIDS is a list of fluids and VALUES a corresponding list of
3873 values for these fluids. Before THUNK gets called the values are
3874 installed in the fluids and the old values of the fluids are
3875 saved in the VALUES list. When the flow of control leaves THUNK
3876 or reenters it, the values get swapped again. You might think of
3877 this as a `safe-fluid-excursion'. Note that the VALUES list is
3878 modified by `with-fluids*'.
3880 Macro: with-fluids ((FLUID VALUE) ...) FORM ...
3882 The same as `with-fluids*' but with a different syntax. It looks
3883 just like `let', but both FLUID and VALUE are evaluated. Remember,
3884 fluids are not special variables but ordinary objects. FLUID
3885 should evaluate to a fluid.
3887 ** Changes to system call interfaces:
3889 *** close-port, close-input-port and close-output-port now return a
3890 boolean instead of an `unspecified' object. #t means that the port
3891 was successfully closed, while #f means it was already closed. It is
3892 also now possible for these procedures to raise an exception if an
3893 error occurs (some errors from write can be delayed until close.)
3895 *** the first argument to chmod, fcntl, ftell and fseek can now be a
3898 *** the third argument to fcntl is now optional.
3900 *** the first argument to chown can now be a file descriptor or a port.
3902 *** the argument to stat can now be a port.
3904 *** The following new procedures have been added (most use scsh
3907 *** procedure: close PORT/FD
3908 Similar to close-port (*note close-port: Closing Ports.), but also
3909 works on file descriptors. A side effect of closing a file
3910 descriptor is that any ports using that file descriptor are moved
3911 to a different file descriptor and have their revealed counts set
3914 *** procedure: port->fdes PORT
3915 Returns the integer file descriptor underlying PORT. As a side
3916 effect the revealed count of PORT is incremented.
3918 *** procedure: fdes->ports FDES
3919 Returns a list of existing ports which have FDES as an underlying
3920 file descriptor, without changing their revealed counts.
3922 *** procedure: fdes->inport FDES
3923 Returns an existing input port which has FDES as its underlying
3924 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
3925 Otherwise, returns a new input port with a revealed count of 1.
3927 *** procedure: fdes->outport FDES
3928 Returns an existing output port which has FDES as its underlying
3929 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
3930 Otherwise, returns a new output port with a revealed count of 1.
3932 The next group of procedures perform a `dup2' system call, if NEWFD
3933 (an integer) is supplied, otherwise a `dup'. The file descriptor to be
3934 duplicated can be supplied as an integer or contained in a port. The
3935 type of value returned varies depending on which procedure is used.
3937 All procedures also have the side effect when performing `dup2' that
3938 any ports using NEWFD are moved to a different file descriptor and have
3939 their revealed counts set to zero.
3941 *** procedure: dup->fdes PORT/FD [NEWFD]
3942 Returns an integer file descriptor.
3944 *** procedure: dup->inport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
3945 Returns a new input port using the new file descriptor.
3947 *** procedure: dup->outport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
3948 Returns a new output port using the new file descriptor.
3950 *** procedure: dup PORT/FD [NEWFD]
3951 Returns a new port if PORT/FD is a port, with the same mode as the
3952 supplied port, otherwise returns an integer file descriptor.
3954 *** procedure: dup->port PORT/FD MODE [NEWFD]
3955 Returns a new port using the new file descriptor. MODE supplies a
3956 mode string for the port (*note open-file: File Ports.).
3958 *** procedure: setenv NAME VALUE
3959 Modifies the environment of the current process, which is also the
3960 default environment inherited by child processes.
3962 If VALUE is `#f', then NAME is removed from the environment.
3963 Otherwise, the string NAME=VALUE is added to the environment,
3964 replacing any existing string with name matching NAME.
3966 The return value is unspecified.
3968 *** procedure: truncate-file OBJ SIZE
3969 Truncates the file referred to by OBJ to at most SIZE bytes. OBJ
3970 can be a string containing a file name or an integer file
3971 descriptor or port open for output on the file. The underlying
3972 system calls are `truncate' and `ftruncate'.
3974 The return value is unspecified.
3976 *** procedure: setvbuf PORT MODE [SIZE]
3977 Set the buffering mode for PORT. MODE can be:
3985 block buffered, using a newly allocated buffer of SIZE bytes.
3986 However if SIZE is zero or unspecified, the port will be made
3989 This procedure should not be used after I/O has been performed with
3992 Ports are usually block buffered by default, with a default buffer
3993 size. Procedures e.g., *Note open-file: File Ports, which accept a
3994 mode string allow `0' to be added to request an unbuffered port.
3996 *** procedure: fsync PORT/FD
3997 Copies any unwritten data for the specified output file descriptor
3998 to disk. If PORT/FD is a port, its buffer is flushed before the
3999 underlying file descriptor is fsync'd. The return value is
4002 *** procedure: open-fdes PATH FLAGS [MODES]
4003 Similar to `open' but returns a file descriptor instead of a port.
4005 *** procedure: execle PATH ENV [ARG] ...
4006 Similar to `execl', but the environment of the new process is
4007 specified by ENV, which must be a list of strings as returned by
4008 the `environ' procedure.
4010 This procedure is currently implemented using the `execve' system
4011 call, but we call it `execle' because of its Scheme calling
4014 *** procedure: strerror ERRNO
4015 Returns the Unix error message corresponding to ERRNO, an integer.
4017 *** procedure: primitive-exit [STATUS]
4018 Terminate the current process without unwinding the Scheme stack.
4019 This is would typically be useful after a fork. The exit status
4020 is STATUS if supplied, otherwise zero.
4022 *** procedure: times
4023 Returns an object with information about real and processor time.
4024 The following procedures accept such an object as an argument and
4025 return a selected component:
4028 The current real time, expressed as time units relative to an
4032 The CPU time units used by the calling process.
4035 The CPU time units used by the system on behalf of the
4039 The CPU time units used by terminated child processes of the
4040 calling process, whose status has been collected (e.g., using
4044 Similarly, the CPU times units used by the system on behalf of
4045 terminated child processes.
4047 ** Removed: list-length
4048 ** Removed: list-append, list-append!
4049 ** Removed: list-reverse, list-reverse!
4051 ** array-map renamed to array-map!
4053 ** serial-array-map renamed to serial-array-map!
4055 ** catch doesn't take #f as first argument any longer
4057 Previously, it was possible to pass #f instead of a key to `catch'.
4058 That would cause `catch' to pass a jump buffer object to the procedure
4059 passed as second argument. The procedure could then use this jump
4060 buffer objekt as an argument to throw.
4062 This mechanism has been removed since its utility doesn't motivate the
4063 extra complexity it introduces.
4065 ** The `#/' notation for lists now provokes a warning message from Guile.
4066 This syntax will be removed from Guile in the near future.
4068 To disable the warning message, set the GUILE_HUSH environment
4069 variable to any non-empty value.
4071 ** The newline character now prints as `#\newline', following the
4072 normal Scheme notation, not `#\nl'.
4074 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4076 ** The gh_enter function now takes care of loading the Guile startup files.
4077 gh_enter works by calling scm_boot_guile; see the remarks below.
4079 ** Function: void gh_write (SCM x)
4081 Write the printed representation of the scheme object x to the current
4082 output port. Corresponds to the scheme level `write'.
4084 ** gh_list_length renamed to gh_length.
4086 ** vector handling routines
4088 Several major changes. In particular, gh_vector() now resembles
4089 (vector ...) (with a caveat -- see manual), and gh_make_vector() now
4090 exists and behaves like (make-vector ...). gh_vset() and gh_vref()
4091 have been renamed gh_vector_set_x() and gh_vector_ref(). Some missing
4092 vector-related gh_ functions have been implemented.
4094 ** pair and list routines
4096 Implemented several of the R4RS pair and list functions that were
4099 ** gh_scm2doubles, gh_doubles2scm, gh_doubles2dvect
4101 New function. Converts double arrays back and forth between Scheme
4104 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4106 ** The function scm_boot_guile now takes care of loading the startup files.
4108 Guile's primary initialization function, scm_boot_guile, now takes
4109 care of loading `boot-9.scm', in the `ice-9' module, to initialize
4110 Guile, define the module system, and put together some standard
4111 bindings. It also loads `init.scm', which is intended to hold
4112 site-specific initialization code.
4114 Since Guile cannot operate properly until boot-9.scm is loaded, there
4115 is no reason to separate loading boot-9.scm from Guile's other
4116 initialization processes.
4118 This job used to be done by scm_compile_shell_switches, which didn't
4119 make much sense; in particular, it meant that people using Guile for
4120 non-shell-like applications had to jump through hoops to get Guile
4121 initialized properly.
4123 ** The function scm_compile_shell_switches no longer loads the startup files.
4124 Now, Guile always loads the startup files, whenever it is initialized;
4125 see the notes above for scm_boot_guile and scm_load_startup_files.
4127 ** Function: scm_load_startup_files
4128 This new function takes care of loading Guile's initialization file
4129 (`boot-9.scm'), and the site initialization file, `init.scm'. Since
4130 this is always called by the Guile initialization process, it's
4131 probably not too useful to call this yourself, but it's there anyway.
4133 ** The semantics of smob marking have changed slightly.
4135 The smob marking function (the `mark' member of the scm_smobfuns
4136 structure) is no longer responsible for setting the mark bit on the
4137 smob. The generic smob handling code in the garbage collector will
4138 set this bit. The mark function need only ensure that any other
4139 objects the smob refers to get marked.
4141 Note that this change means that the smob's GC8MARK bit is typically
4142 already set upon entry to the mark function. Thus, marking functions
4143 which look like this:
4146 if (SCM_GC8MARKP (ptr))
4148 SCM_SETGC8MARK (ptr);
4149 ... mark objects to which the smob refers ...
4152 are now incorrect, since they will return early, and fail to mark any
4153 other objects the smob refers to. Some code in the Guile library used
4156 ** The semantics of the I/O port functions in scm_ptobfuns have changed.
4158 If you have implemented your own I/O port type, by writing the
4159 functions required by the scm_ptobfuns and then calling scm_newptob,
4160 you will need to change your functions slightly.
4162 The functions in a scm_ptobfuns structure now expect the port itself
4163 as their argument; they used to expect the `stream' member of the
4164 port's scm_port_table structure. This allows functions in an
4165 scm_ptobfuns structure to easily access the port's cell (and any flags
4166 it its CAR), and the port's scm_port_table structure.
4168 Guile now passes the I/O port itself as the `port' argument in the
4169 following scm_ptobfuns functions:
4171 int (*free) (SCM port);
4172 int (*fputc) (int, SCM port);
4173 int (*fputs) (char *, SCM port);
4174 scm_sizet (*fwrite) SCM_P ((char *ptr,
4178 int (*fflush) (SCM port);
4179 int (*fgetc) (SCM port);
4180 int (*fclose) (SCM port);
4182 The interfaces to the `mark', `print', `equalp', and `fgets' methods
4185 If you have existing code which defines its own port types, it is easy
4186 to convert your code to the new interface; simply apply SCM_STREAM to
4187 the port argument to yield the value you code used to expect.
4189 Note that since both the port and the stream have the same type in the
4190 C code --- they are both SCM values --- the C compiler will not remind
4191 you if you forget to update your scm_ptobfuns functions.
4194 ** Function: int scm_internal_select (int fds,
4198 struct timeval *timeout);
4200 This is a replacement for the `select' function provided by the OS.
4201 It enables I/O blocking and sleeping to happen for one cooperative
4202 thread without blocking other threads. It also avoids busy-loops in
4203 these situations. It is intended that all I/O blocking and sleeping
4204 will finally go through this function. Currently, this function is
4205 only available on systems providing `gettimeofday' and `select'.
4207 ** Function: SCM scm_internal_stack_catch (SCM tag,
4208 scm_catch_body_t body,
4210 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
4213 A new sibling to the other two C level `catch' functions
4214 scm_internal_catch and scm_internal_lazy_catch. Use it if you want
4215 the stack to be saved automatically into the variable `the-last-stack'
4216 (scm_the_last_stack_var) on error. This is necessary if you want to
4217 use advanced error reporting, such as calling scm_display_error and
4218 scm_display_backtrace. (They both take a stack object as argument.)
4220 ** Function: SCM scm_spawn_thread (scm_catch_body_t body,
4222 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
4225 Spawns a new thread. It does a job similar to
4226 scm_call_with_new_thread but takes arguments more suitable when
4227 spawning threads from application C code.
4229 ** The hook scm_error_callback has been removed. It was originally
4230 intended as a way for the user to install his own error handler. But
4231 that method works badly since it intervenes between throw and catch,
4232 thereby changing the semantics of expressions like (catch #t ...).
4233 The correct way to do it is to use one of the C level catch functions
4234 in throw.c: scm_internal_catch/lazy_catch/stack_catch.
4236 ** Removed functions:
4238 scm_obj_length, scm_list_length, scm_list_append, scm_list_append_x,
4239 scm_list_reverse, scm_list_reverse_x
4241 ** New macros: SCM_LISTn where n is one of the integers 0-9.
4243 These can be used for pretty list creation from C. The idea is taken
4244 from Erick Gallesio's STk.
4246 ** scm_array_map renamed to scm_array_map_x
4248 ** mbstrings are now removed
4250 This means that the type codes scm_tc7_mb_string and
4251 scm_tc7_mb_substring has been removed.
4253 ** scm_gen_putc, scm_gen_puts, scm_gen_write, and scm_gen_getc have changed.
4255 Since we no longer support multi-byte strings, these I/O functions
4256 have been simplified, and renamed. Here are their old names, and
4257 their new names and arguments:
4259 scm_gen_putc -> void scm_putc (int c, SCM port);
4260 scm_gen_puts -> void scm_puts (char *s, SCM port);
4261 scm_gen_write -> void scm_lfwrite (char *ptr, scm_sizet size, SCM port);
4262 scm_gen_getc -> void scm_getc (SCM port);
4265 ** The macros SCM_TYP7D and SCM_TYP7SD has been removed.
4267 ** The macro SCM_TYP7S has taken the role of the old SCM_TYP7D
4269 SCM_TYP7S now masks away the bit which distinguishes substrings from
4272 ** scm_catch_body_t: Backward incompatible change!
4274 Body functions to scm_internal_catch and friends do not any longer
4275 take a second argument. This is because it is no longer possible to
4276 pass a #f arg to catch.
4278 ** Calls to scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect now nest properly.
4280 The function scm_protect_object protects its argument from being freed
4281 by the garbage collector. scm_unprotect_object removes that
4284 These functions now nest properly. That is, for every object O, there
4285 is a counter which scm_protect_object(O) increments and
4286 scm_unprotect_object(O) decrements, if the counter is greater than
4287 zero. Every object's counter is zero when it is first created. If an
4288 object's counter is greater than zero, the garbage collector will not
4289 reclaim its storage.
4291 This allows you to use scm_protect_object in your code without
4292 worrying that some other function you call will call
4293 scm_unprotect_object, and allow it to be freed. Assuming that the
4294 functions you call are well-behaved, and unprotect only those objects
4295 they protect, you can follow the same rule and have confidence that
4296 objects will be freed only at appropriate times.
4299 Changes in Guile 1.2 (released Tuesday, June 24 1997):
4301 * Changes to the distribution
4303 ** Nightly snapshots are now available from ftp.red-bean.com.
4304 The old server, ftp.cyclic.com, has been relinquished to its rightful
4307 Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are now available via
4308 anonymous FTP from ftp.red-bean.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.
4310 Via the web, that's: ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
4311 For getit, that's: ftp.red-bean.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
4313 ** To run Guile without installing it, the procedure has changed a bit.
4315 If you used a separate build directory to compile Guile, you'll need
4316 to include the build directory in SCHEME_LOAD_PATH, as well as the
4317 source directory. See the `INSTALL' file for examples.
4319 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
4321 ** The standard Guile load path for Scheme code now includes
4322 $(datadir)/guile (usually /usr/local/share/guile). This means that
4323 you can install your own Scheme files there, and Guile will find them.
4324 (Previous versions of Guile only checked a directory whose name
4325 contained the Guile version number, so you had to re-install or move
4326 your Scheme sources each time you installed a fresh version of Guile.)
4328 The load path also includes $(datadir)/guile/site; we recommend
4329 putting individual Scheme files there. If you want to install a
4330 package with multiple source files, create a directory for them under
4333 ** Guile 1.2 will now use the Rx regular expression library, if it is
4334 installed on your system. When you are linking libguile into your own
4335 programs, this means you will have to link against -lguile, -lqt (if
4336 you configured Guile with thread support), and -lrx.
4338 If you are using autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your
4339 application, the following lines should suffice to add the appropriate
4340 libraries to your link command:
4342 ### Find Rx, quickthreads and libguile.
4343 AC_CHECK_LIB(rx, main)
4344 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
4345 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
4347 The Guile 1.2 distribution does not contain sources for the Rx
4348 library, as Guile 1.0 did. If you want to use Rx, you'll need to
4349 retrieve it from a GNU FTP site and install it separately.
4351 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
4353 ** The dynamic linking features of Guile are now enabled by default.
4354 You can disable them by giving the `--disable-dynamic-linking' option
4357 (dynamic-link FILENAME)
4359 Find the object file denoted by FILENAME (a string) and link it
4360 into the running Guile application. When everything works out,
4361 return a Scheme object suitable for representing the linked object
4362 file. Otherwise an error is thrown. How object files are
4363 searched is system dependent.
4365 (dynamic-object? VAL)
4367 Determine whether VAL represents a dynamically linked object file.
4369 (dynamic-unlink DYNOBJ)
4371 Unlink the indicated object file from the application. DYNOBJ
4372 should be one of the values returned by `dynamic-link'.
4374 (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
4376 Search the C function indicated by FUNCTION (a string or symbol)
4377 in DYNOBJ and return some Scheme object that can later be used
4378 with `dynamic-call' to actually call this function. Right now,
4379 these Scheme objects are formed by casting the address of the
4380 function to `long' and converting this number to its Scheme
4383 (dynamic-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
4385 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ. The
4386 function is passed no arguments and its return value is ignored.
4387 When FUNCTION is something returned by `dynamic-func', call that
4388 function and ignore DYNOBJ. When FUNCTION is a string (or symbol,
4389 etc.), look it up in DYNOBJ; this is equivalent to
4391 (dynamic-call (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ) #f)
4393 Interrupts are deferred while the C function is executing (with
4394 SCM_DEFER_INTS/SCM_ALLOW_INTS).
4396 (dynamic-args-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ ARGS)
4398 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ, but pass it
4399 some arguments and return its return value. The C function is
4400 expected to take two arguments and return an `int', just like
4403 int c_func (int argc, char **argv);
4405 ARGS must be a list of strings and is converted into an array of
4406 `char *'. The array is passed in ARGV and its size in ARGC. The
4407 return value is converted to a Scheme number and returned from the
4408 call to `dynamic-args-call'.
4410 When dynamic linking is disabled or not supported on your system,
4411 the above functions throw errors, but they are still available.
4413 Here is a small example that works on GNU/Linux:
4415 (define libc-obj (dynamic-link "libc.so"))
4416 (dynamic-args-call 'rand libc-obj '())
4418 See the file `libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING' for additional comments.
4420 ** The #/ syntax for module names is depreciated, and will be removed
4421 in a future version of Guile. Instead of
4429 The latter syntax is more consistent with existing Lisp practice.
4431 ** Guile now does fancier printing of structures. Structures are the
4432 underlying implementation for records, which in turn are used to
4433 implement modules, so all of these object now print differently and in
4434 a more informative way.
4436 The Scheme printer will examine the builtin variable *struct-printer*
4437 whenever it needs to print a structure object. When this variable is
4438 not `#f' it is deemed to be a procedure and will be applied to the
4439 structure object and the output port. When *struct-printer* is `#f'
4440 or the procedure return `#f' the structure object will be printed in
4441 the boring #<struct 80458270> form.
4443 This hook is used by some routines in ice-9/boot-9.scm to implement
4444 type specific printing routines. Please read the comments there about
4447 One of the more specific uses of structs are records. The printing
4448 procedure that could be passed to MAKE-RECORD-TYPE is now actually
4449 called. It should behave like a *struct-printer* procedure (described
4452 ** Guile now supports a new R4RS-compliant syntax for keywords. A
4453 token of the form #:NAME, where NAME has the same syntax as a Scheme
4454 symbol, is the external representation of the keyword named NAME.
4455 Keyword objects print using this syntax as well, so values containing
4456 keyword objects can be read back into Guile. When used in an
4457 expression, keywords are self-quoting objects.
4459 Guile suports this read syntax, and uses this print syntax, regardless
4460 of the current setting of the `keyword' read option. The `keyword'
4461 read option only controls whether Guile recognizes the `:NAME' syntax,
4462 which is incompatible with R4RS. (R4RS says such token represent
4465 ** Guile has regular expression support again. Guile 1.0 included
4466 functions for matching regular expressions, based on the Rx library.
4467 In Guile 1.1, the Guile/Rx interface was removed to simplify the
4468 distribution, and thus Guile had no regular expression support. Guile
4469 1.2 again supports the most commonly used functions, and supports all
4470 of SCSH's regular expression functions.
4472 If your system does not include a POSIX regular expression library,
4473 and you have not linked Guile with a third-party regexp library such as
4474 Rx, these functions will not be available. You can tell whether your
4475 Guile installation includes regular expression support by checking
4476 whether the `*features*' list includes the `regex' symbol.
4478 *** regexp functions
4480 By default, Guile supports POSIX extended regular expressions. That
4481 means that the characters `(', `)', `+' and `?' are special, and must
4482 be escaped if you wish to match the literal characters.
4484 This regular expression interface was modeled after that implemented
4485 by SCSH, the Scheme Shell. It is intended to be upwardly compatible
4486 with SCSH regular expressions.
4488 **** Function: string-match PATTERN STR [START]
4489 Compile the string PATTERN into a regular expression and compare
4490 it with STR. The optional numeric argument START specifies the
4491 position of STR at which to begin matching.
4493 `string-match' returns a "match structure" which describes what,
4494 if anything, was matched by the regular expression. *Note Match
4495 Structures::. If STR does not match PATTERN at all,
4496 `string-match' returns `#f'.
4498 Each time `string-match' is called, it must compile its PATTERN
4499 argument into a regular expression structure. This operation is
4500 expensive, which makes `string-match' inefficient if the same regular
4501 expression is used several times (for example, in a loop). For better
4502 performance, you can compile a regular expression in advance and then
4503 match strings against the compiled regexp.
4505 **** Function: make-regexp STR [FLAGS]
4506 Compile the regular expression described by STR, and return the
4507 compiled regexp structure. If STR does not describe a legal
4508 regular expression, `make-regexp' throws a
4509 `regular-expression-syntax' error.
4511 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
4513 **** Constant: regexp/extended
4514 Use POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting
4515 STR. If not set, POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used.
4516 If the FLAGS argument is omitted, we assume regexp/extended.
4518 **** Constant: regexp/icase
4519 Do not differentiate case. Subsequent searches using the
4520 returned regular expression will be case insensitive.
4522 **** Constant: regexp/newline
4523 Match-any-character operators don't match a newline.
4525 A non-matching list ([^...]) not containing a newline matches a
4528 Match-beginning-of-line operator (^) matches the empty string
4529 immediately after a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
4530 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/notbol.
4532 Match-end-of-line operator ($) matches the empty string
4533 immediately before a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
4534 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/noteol.
4536 **** Function: regexp-exec REGEXP STR [START [FLAGS]]
4537 Match the compiled regular expression REGEXP against `str'. If
4538 the optional integer START argument is provided, begin matching
4539 from that position in the string. Return a match structure
4540 describing the results of the match, or `#f' if no match could be
4543 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
4545 **** Constant: regexp/notbol
4546 The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but
4547 see the compilation flag regexp/newline above) This flag may be
4548 used when different portions of a string are passed to
4549 regexp-exec and the beginning of the string should not be
4550 interpreted as the beginning of the line.
4552 **** Constant: regexp/noteol
4553 The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the
4554 compilation flag regexp/newline above)
4556 **** Function: regexp? OBJ
4557 Return `#t' if OBJ is a compiled regular expression, or `#f'
4560 Regular expressions are commonly used to find patterns in one string
4561 and replace them with the contents of another string.
4563 **** Function: regexp-substitute PORT MATCH [ITEM...]
4564 Write to the output port PORT selected contents of the match
4565 structure MATCH. Each ITEM specifies what should be written, and
4566 may be one of the following arguments:
4568 * A string. String arguments are written out verbatim.
4570 * An integer. The submatch with that number is written.
4572 * The symbol `pre'. The portion of the matched string preceding
4573 the regexp match is written.
4575 * The symbol `post'. The portion of the matched string
4576 following the regexp match is written.
4578 PORT may be `#f', in which case nothing is written; instead,
4579 `regexp-substitute' constructs a string from the specified ITEMs
4582 **** Function: regexp-substitute/global PORT REGEXP TARGET [ITEM...]
4583 Similar to `regexp-substitute', but can be used to perform global
4584 substitutions on STR. Instead of taking a match structure as an
4585 argument, `regexp-substitute/global' takes two string arguments: a
4586 REGEXP string describing a regular expression, and a TARGET string
4587 which should be matched against this regular expression.
4589 Each ITEM behaves as in REGEXP-SUBSTITUTE, with the following
4592 * A function may be supplied. When this function is called, it
4593 will be passed one argument: a match structure for a given
4594 regular expression match. It should return a string to be
4595 written out to PORT.
4597 * The `post' symbol causes `regexp-substitute/global' to recurse
4598 on the unmatched portion of STR. This *must* be supplied in
4599 order to perform global search-and-replace on STR; if it is
4600 not present among the ITEMs, then `regexp-substitute/global'
4601 will return after processing a single match.
4603 *** Match Structures
4605 A "match structure" is the object returned by `string-match' and
4606 `regexp-exec'. It describes which portion of a string, if any, matched
4607 the given regular expression. Match structures include: a reference to
4608 the string that was checked for matches; the starting and ending
4609 positions of the regexp match; and, if the regexp included any
4610 parenthesized subexpressions, the starting and ending positions of each
4613 In each of the regexp match functions described below, the `match'
4614 argument must be a match structure returned by a previous call to
4615 `string-match' or `regexp-exec'. Most of these functions return some
4616 information about the original target string that was matched against a
4617 regular expression; we will call that string TARGET for easy reference.
4619 **** Function: regexp-match? OBJ
4620 Return `#t' if OBJ is a match structure returned by a previous
4621 call to `regexp-exec', or `#f' otherwise.
4623 **** Function: match:substring MATCH [N]
4624 Return the portion of TARGET matched by subexpression number N.
4625 Submatch 0 (the default) represents the entire regexp match. If
4626 the regular expression as a whole matched, but the subexpression
4627 number N did not match, return `#f'.
4629 **** Function: match:start MATCH [N]
4630 Return the starting position of submatch number N.
4632 **** Function: match:end MATCH [N]
4633 Return the ending position of submatch number N.
4635 **** Function: match:prefix MATCH
4636 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET preceding the regexp match.
4638 **** Function: match:suffix MATCH
4639 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET following the regexp match.
4641 **** Function: match:count MATCH
4642 Return the number of parenthesized subexpressions from MATCH.
4643 Note that the entire regular expression match itself counts as a
4644 subexpression, and failed submatches are included in the count.
4646 **** Function: match:string MATCH
4647 Return the original TARGET string.
4649 *** Backslash Escapes
4651 Sometimes you will want a regexp to match characters like `*' or `$'
4652 exactly. For example, to check whether a particular string represents
4653 a menu entry from an Info node, it would be useful to match it against
4654 a regexp like `^* [^:]*::'. However, this won't work; because the
4655 asterisk is a metacharacter, it won't match the `*' at the beginning of
4656 the string. In this case, we want to make the first asterisk un-magic.
4658 You can do this by preceding the metacharacter with a backslash
4659 character `\'. (This is also called "quoting" the metacharacter, and
4660 is known as a "backslash escape".) When Guile sees a backslash in a
4661 regular expression, it considers the following glyph to be an ordinary
4662 character, no matter what special meaning it would ordinarily have.
4663 Therefore, we can make the above example work by changing the regexp to
4664 `^\* [^:]*::'. The `\*' sequence tells the regular expression engine
4665 to match only a single asterisk in the target string.
4667 Since the backslash is itself a metacharacter, you may force a
4668 regexp to match a backslash in the target string by preceding the
4669 backslash with itself. For example, to find variable references in a
4670 TeX program, you might want to find occurrences of the string `\let\'
4671 followed by any number of alphabetic characters. The regular expression
4672 `\\let\\[A-Za-z]*' would do this: the double backslashes in the regexp
4673 each match a single backslash in the target string.
4675 **** Function: regexp-quote STR
4676 Quote each special character found in STR with a backslash, and
4677 return the resulting string.
4679 *Very important:* Using backslash escapes in Guile source code (as
4680 in Emacs Lisp or C) can be tricky, because the backslash character has
4681 special meaning for the Guile reader. For example, if Guile encounters
4682 the character sequence `\n' in the middle of a string while processing
4683 Scheme code, it replaces those characters with a newline character.
4684 Similarly, the character sequence `\t' is replaced by a horizontal tab.
4685 Several of these "escape sequences" are processed by the Guile reader
4686 before your code is executed. Unrecognized escape sequences are
4687 ignored: if the characters `\*' appear in a string, they will be
4688 translated to the single character `*'.
4690 This translation is obviously undesirable for regular expressions,
4691 since we want to be able to include backslashes in a string in order to
4692 escape regexp metacharacters. Therefore, to make sure that a backslash
4693 is preserved in a string in your Guile program, you must use *two*
4694 consecutive backslashes:
4696 (define Info-menu-entry-pattern (make-regexp "^\\* [^:]*"))
4698 The string in this example is preprocessed by the Guile reader before
4699 any code is executed. The resulting argument to `make-regexp' is the
4700 string `^\* [^:]*', which is what we really want.
4702 This also means that in order to write a regular expression that
4703 matches a single backslash character, the regular expression string in
4704 the source code must include *four* backslashes. Each consecutive pair
4705 of backslashes gets translated by the Guile reader to a single
4706 backslash, and the resulting double-backslash is interpreted by the
4707 regexp engine as matching a single backslash character. Hence:
4709 (define tex-variable-pattern (make-regexp "\\\\let\\\\=[A-Za-z]*"))
4711 The reason for the unwieldiness of this syntax is historical. Both
4712 regular expression pattern matchers and Unix string processing systems
4713 have traditionally used backslashes with the special meanings described
4714 above. The POSIX regular expression specification and ANSI C standard
4715 both require these semantics. Attempting to abandon either convention
4716 would cause other kinds of compatibility problems, possibly more severe
4717 ones. Therefore, without extending the Scheme reader to support
4718 strings with different quoting conventions (an ungainly and confusing
4719 extension when implemented in other languages), we must adhere to this
4720 cumbersome escape syntax.
4722 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4724 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4726 * Changes to system call interfaces:
4728 ** The value returned by `raise' is now unspecified. It throws an exception
4731 *** A new procedure `sigaction' can be used to install signal handlers
4733 (sigaction signum [action] [flags])
4735 signum is the signal number, which can be specified using the value
4738 If action is omitted, sigaction returns a pair: the CAR is the current
4739 signal hander, which will be either an integer with the value SIG_DFL
4740 (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or the Scheme procedure which
4741 handles the signal, or #f if a non-Scheme procedure handles the
4742 signal. The CDR contains the current sigaction flags for the handler.
4744 If action is provided, it is installed as the new handler for signum.
4745 action can be a Scheme procedure taking one argument, or the value of
4746 SIG_DFL (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or #f to restore
4747 whatever signal handler was installed before sigaction was first used.
4748 Flags can optionally be specified for the new handler (SA_RESTART is
4749 always used if the system provides it, so need not be specified.) The
4750 return value is a pair with information about the old handler as
4753 This interface does not provide access to the "signal blocking"
4754 facility. Maybe this is not needed, since the thread support may
4755 provide solutions to the problem of consistent access to data
4758 *** A new procedure `flush-all-ports' is equivalent to running
4759 `force-output' on every port open for output.
4761 ** Guile now provides information on how it was built, via the new
4762 global variable, %guile-build-info. This variable records the values
4763 of the standard GNU makefile directory variables as an assocation
4764 list, mapping variable names (symbols) onto directory paths (strings).
4765 For example, to find out where the Guile link libraries were
4766 installed, you can say:
4768 guile -c "(display (assq-ref %guile-build-info 'libdir)) (newline)"
4771 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4773 ** The new function scm_handle_by_message_noexit is just like the
4774 existing scm_handle_by_message function, except that it doesn't call
4775 exit to terminate the process. Instead, it prints a message and just
4776 returns #f. This might be a more appropriate catch-all handler for
4777 new dynamic roots and threads.
4780 Changes in Guile 1.1 (released Friday, May 16 1997):
4782 * Changes to the distribution.
4784 The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
4786 guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
4787 guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
4788 Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
4789 is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
4790 guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
4791 expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
4792 programming language. These are packaged together because the
4793 Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
4795 This NEWS file describes the changes made to guile-core since the 1.0
4798 We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
4799 date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
4804 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
4806 ** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
4807 Shivers' Scheme Shell.
4809 In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
4810 exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
4811 stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
4812 the (command-line) function.
4813 -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
4814 -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
4815 -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
4817 The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
4818 -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
4819 -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
4820 command line arguments
4821 -ds do -s script at this point
4822 --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
4823 -h, --help display this help and exit
4824 -v, --version display version information and exit
4825 \ read arguments from following script lines
4827 So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
4828 which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
4830 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
4833 (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
4837 (main (command-line))
4839 Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
4841 ekko a speckled gecko
4843 Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
4844 token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
4845 following list of command-line arguments:
4847 ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
4849 Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
4850 the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
4851 with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
4852 defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
4853 remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
4855 In Unix, the first line of a script file must take the following form:
4857 #!INTERPRETER ARGUMENT
4859 where INTERPRETER is the absolute filename of the interpreter
4860 executable, and ARGUMENT is a single command-line argument to pass to
4863 You may only pass one argument to the interpreter, and its length is
4864 limited. These restrictions can be annoying to work around, so Guile
4865 provides a general mechanism (borrowed from, and compatible with,
4866 SCSH) for circumventing them.
4868 If the ARGUMENT in a Guile script is a single backslash character,
4869 `\', Guile will open the script file, parse arguments from its second
4870 and subsequent lines, and replace the `\' with them. So, for example,
4871 here is another implementation of the `ekko' script:
4873 #!/usr/local/bin/guile \
4877 (for-each (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
4881 If the user invokes this script as follows:
4883 ekko a speckled gecko
4885 Unix expands this into
4887 /usr/local/bin/guile \ ekko a speckled gecko
4889 When Guile sees the `\' argument, it replaces it with the arguments
4890 read from the second line of the script, producing:
4892 /usr/local/bin/guile -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
4894 This tells Guile to load the `ekko' script, and apply the function
4895 `main' to the argument list ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
4897 Here is how Guile parses the command-line arguments:
4898 - Each space character terminates an argument. This means that two
4899 spaces in a row introduce an empty-string argument.
4900 - The tab character is not permitted (unless you quote it with the
4901 backslash character, as described below), to avoid confusion.
4902 - The newline character terminates the sequence of arguments, and will
4903 also terminate a final non-empty argument. (However, a newline
4904 following a space will not introduce a final empty-string argument;
4905 it only terminates the argument list.)
4906 - The backslash character is the escape character. It escapes
4907 backslash, space, tab, and newline. The ANSI C escape sequences
4908 like \n and \t are also supported. These produce argument
4909 constituents; the two-character combination \n doesn't act like a
4910 terminating newline. The escape sequence \NNN for exactly three
4911 octal digits reads as the character whose ASCII code is NNN. As
4912 above, characters produced this way are argument constituents.
4913 Backslash followed by other characters is not allowed.
4915 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
4917 ** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
4918 system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
4919 all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
4920 supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
4921 libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
4923 Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
4924 it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
4925 independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
4927 ** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
4929 To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
4930 -lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
4931 autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
4932 following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
4935 ### Find quickthreads and libguile.
4936 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
4937 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
4939 * Changes to Scheme functions
4941 ** Guile Scheme's special syntax for keyword objects is now optional,
4942 and disabled by default.
4944 The syntax variation from R4RS made it difficult to port some
4945 interesting packages to Guile. The routines which accepted keyword
4946 arguments (mostly in the module system) have been modified to also
4947 accept symbols whose names begin with `:'.
4949 To change the keyword syntax, you must first import the (ice-9 debug)
4951 (use-modules (ice-9 debug))
4953 Then you can enable the keyword syntax as follows:
4954 (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
4956 To disable keyword syntax, do this:
4957 (read-set! keywords #f)
4959 ** Many more primitive functions accept shared substrings as
4960 arguments. In the past, these functions required normal, mutable
4961 strings as arguments, although they never made use of this
4964 ** The uniform array functions now operate on byte vectors. These
4965 functions are `array-fill!', `serial-array-copy!', `array-copy!',
4966 `serial-array-map', `array-map', `array-for-each', and
4969 ** The new functions `trace' and `untrace' implement simple debugging
4970 support for Scheme functions.
4972 The `trace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
4973 and tells the Guile interpreter to display each procedure's name and
4974 arguments each time the procedure is invoked. When invoked with no
4975 arguments, `trace' returns the list of procedures currently being
4978 The `untrace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
4979 and tells the Guile interpreter not to trace them any more. When
4980 invoked with no arguments, `untrace' untraces all curretly traced
4983 The tracing in Guile has an advantage over most other systems: we
4984 don't create new procedure objects, but mark the procedure objects
4985 themselves. This means that anonymous and internal procedures can be
4988 ** The function `assert-repl-prompt' has been renamed to
4989 `set-repl-prompt!'. It takes one argument, PROMPT.
4990 - If PROMPT is #f, the Guile read-eval-print loop will not prompt.
4991 - If PROMPT is a string, we use it as a prompt.
4992 - If PROMPT is a procedure accepting no arguments, we call it, and
4993 display the result as a prompt.
4994 - Otherwise, we display "> ".
4996 ** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
4997 string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
4998 in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
5001 ** The new function `thunk?' returns true iff its argument is a
5002 procedure of zero arguments.
5004 ** `defined?' is now a builtin function, instead of syntax. This
5005 means that its argument should be quoted. It returns #t iff its
5006 argument is bound in the current module.
5008 ** The new syntax `use-modules' allows you to add new modules to your
5009 environment without re-typing a complete `define-module' form. It
5010 accepts any number of module names as arguments, and imports their
5011 public bindings into the current module.
5013 ** The new function (module-defined? NAME MODULE) returns true iff
5014 NAME, a symbol, is defined in MODULE, a module object.
5016 ** The new function `builtin-bindings' creates and returns a hash
5017 table containing copies of all the root module's bindings.
5019 ** The new function `builtin-weak-bindings' does the same as
5020 `builtin-bindings', but creates a doubly-weak hash table.
5022 ** The `equal?' function now considers variable objects to be
5023 equivalent if they have the same name and the same value.
5025 ** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
5026 given to Guile, as a list of strings.
5028 When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
5029 script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
5030 `-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
5031 behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
5032 command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
5034 ** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
5035 in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
5036 mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
5037 but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
5039 ** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
5042 ** Changes to I/O functions
5044 *** The functions `read', `primitive-load', `read-and-eval!', and
5045 `primitive-load-path' no longer take optional arguments controlling
5046 case insensitivity and a `#' parser.
5048 Case sensitivity is now controlled by a read option called
5049 `case-insensitive'. The user can add new `#' syntaxes with the
5050 `read-hash-extend' function (see below).
5052 *** The new function `read-hash-extend' allows the user to change the
5053 syntax of Guile Scheme in a somewhat controlled way.
5055 (read-hash-extend CHAR PROC)
5056 When parsing S-expressions, if we read a `#' character followed by
5057 the character CHAR, use PROC to parse an object from the stream.
5058 If PROC is #f, remove any parsing procedure registered for CHAR.
5060 The reader applies PROC to two arguments: CHAR and an input port.
5062 *** The new functions read-delimited and read-delimited! provide a
5063 general mechanism for doing delimited input on streams.
5065 (read-delimited DELIMS [PORT HANDLE-DELIM])
5066 Read until we encounter one of the characters in DELIMS (a string),
5067 or end-of-file. PORT is the input port to read from; it defaults to
5068 the current input port. The HANDLE-DELIM parameter determines how
5069 the terminating character is handled; it should be one of the
5072 'trim omit delimiter from result
5073 'peek leave delimiter character in input stream
5074 'concat append delimiter character to returned value
5075 'split return a pair: (RESULT . TERMINATOR)
5077 HANDLE-DELIM defaults to 'peek.
5079 (read-delimited! DELIMS BUF [PORT HANDLE-DELIM START END])
5080 A side-effecting variant of `read-delimited'.
5082 The data is written into the string BUF at the indices in the
5083 half-open interval [START, END); the default interval is the whole
5084 string: START = 0 and END = (string-length BUF). The values of
5085 START and END must specify a well-defined interval in BUF, i.e.
5086 0 <= START <= END <= (string-length BUF).
5088 It returns NBYTES, the number of bytes read. If the buffer filled
5089 up without a delimiter character being found, it returns #f. If the
5090 port is at EOF when the read starts, it returns the EOF object.
5092 If an integer is returned (i.e., the read is successfully terminated
5093 by reading a delimiter character), then the HANDLE-DELIM parameter
5094 determines how to handle the terminating character. It is described
5095 above, and defaults to 'peek.
5097 (The descriptions of these functions were borrowed from the SCSH
5098 manual, by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
5100 *** The `%read-delimited!' function is the primitive used to implement
5101 `read-delimited' and `read-delimited!'.
5103 (%read-delimited! DELIMS BUF GOBBLE? [PORT START END])
5105 This returns a pair of values: (TERMINATOR . NUM-READ).
5106 - TERMINATOR describes why the read was terminated. If it is a
5107 character or the eof object, then that is the value that terminated
5108 the read. If it is #f, the function filled the buffer without finding
5109 a delimiting character.
5110 - NUM-READ is the number of characters read into BUF.
5112 If the read is successfully terminated by reading a delimiter
5113 character, then the gobble? parameter determines what to do with the
5114 terminating character. If true, the character is removed from the
5115 input stream; if false, the character is left in the input stream
5116 where a subsequent read operation will retrieve it. In either case,
5117 the character is also the first value returned by the procedure call.
5119 (The descriptions of this function was borrowed from the SCSH manual,
5120 by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
5122 *** The `read-line' and `read-line!' functions have changed; they now
5123 trim the terminator by default; previously they appended it to the
5124 returned string. For the old behavior, use (read-line PORT 'concat).
5126 *** The functions `uniform-array-read!' and `uniform-array-write!' now
5127 take new optional START and END arguments, specifying the region of
5128 the array to read and write.
5130 *** The `ungetc-char-ready?' function has been removed. We feel it's
5131 inappropriate for an interface to expose implementation details this
5134 ** Changes to the Unix library and system call interface
5136 *** The new fcntl function provides access to the Unix `fcntl' system
5139 (fcntl PORT COMMAND VALUE)
5140 Apply COMMAND to PORT's file descriptor, with VALUE as an argument.
5141 Values for COMMAND are:
5143 F_DUPFD duplicate a file descriptor
5144 F_GETFD read the descriptor's close-on-exec flag
5145 F_SETFD set the descriptor's close-on-exec flag to VALUE
5146 F_GETFL read the descriptor's flags, as set on open
5147 F_SETFL set the descriptor's flags, as set on open to VALUE
5148 F_GETOWN return the process ID of a socket's owner, for SIGIO
5149 F_SETOWN set the process that owns a socket to VALUE, for SIGIO
5150 FD_CLOEXEC not sure what this is
5152 For details, see the documentation for the fcntl system call.
5154 *** The arguments to `select' have changed, for compatibility with
5155 SCSH. The TIMEOUT parameter may now be non-integral, yielding the
5156 expected behavior. The MILLISECONDS parameter has been changed to
5157 MICROSECONDS, to more closely resemble the underlying system call.
5158 The RVEC, WVEC, and EVEC arguments can now be vectors; the type of the
5159 corresponding return set will be the same.
5161 *** The arguments to the `mknod' system call have changed. They are
5164 (mknod PATH TYPE PERMS DEV)
5165 Create a new file (`node') in the file system. PATH is the name of
5166 the file to create. TYPE is the kind of file to create; it should
5167 be 'fifo, 'block-special, or 'char-special. PERMS specifies the
5168 permission bits to give the newly created file. If TYPE is
5169 'block-special or 'char-special, DEV specifies which device the
5170 special file refers to; its interpretation depends on the kind of
5171 special file being created.
5173 *** The `fork' function has been renamed to `primitive-fork', to avoid
5174 clashing with various SCSH forks.
5176 *** The `recv' and `recvfrom' functions have been renamed to `recv!'
5177 and `recvfrom!'. They no longer accept a size for a second argument;
5178 you must pass a string to hold the received value. They no longer
5179 return the buffer. Instead, `recv' returns the length of the message
5180 received, and `recvfrom' returns a pair containing the packet's length
5181 and originating address.
5183 *** The file descriptor datatype has been removed, as have the
5184 `read-fd', `write-fd', `close', `lseek', and `dup' functions.
5185 We plan to replace these functions with a SCSH-compatible interface.
5187 *** The `create' function has been removed; it's just a special case
5190 *** There are new functions to break down process termination status
5191 values. In the descriptions below, STATUS is a value returned by
5194 (status:exit-val STATUS)
5195 If the child process exited normally, this function returns the exit
5196 code for the child process (i.e., the value passed to exit, or
5197 returned from main). If the child process did not exit normally,
5198 this function returns #f.
5200 (status:stop-sig STATUS)
5201 If the child process was suspended by a signal, this function
5202 returns the signal that suspended the child. Otherwise, it returns
5205 (status:term-sig STATUS)
5206 If the child process terminated abnormally, this function returns
5207 the signal that terminated the child. Otherwise, this function
5210 POSIX promises that exactly one of these functions will return true on
5211 a valid STATUS value.
5213 These functions are compatible with SCSH.
5215 *** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
5216 returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
5218 Component Accessor Setter
5219 ========================= ============ ============
5220 seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
5221 minutes tm:min set-tm:min
5222 hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
5223 day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
5224 month tm:mon set-tm:mon
5225 year tm:year set-tm:year
5226 day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
5227 day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
5228 daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
5229 GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
5230 name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
5232 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname',
5233 describing the host system:
5236 ============================================== ================
5237 name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
5238 network name of this machine utsname:nodename
5239 release level of the operating system utsname:release
5240 version level of the operating system utsname:version
5241 machine hardware platform utsname:machine
5243 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getpw',
5244 `getpwnam', `getpwuid', and `getpwent', describing entries from the
5245 system's user database:
5248 ====================== =================
5249 user name passwd:name
5250 user password passwd:passwd
5253 real name passwd:gecos
5254 home directory passwd:dir
5255 shell program passwd:shell
5257 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getgr',
5258 `getgrnam', `getgrgid', and `getgrent', describing entries from the
5259 system's group database:
5262 ======================= ============
5263 group name group:name
5264 group password group:passwd
5266 group members group:mem
5268 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `gethost',
5269 `gethostbyaddr', `gethostbyname', and `gethostent', describing
5273 ========================= ===============
5274 official name of host hostent:name
5275 alias list hostent:aliases
5276 host address type hostent:addrtype
5277 length of address hostent:length
5278 list of addresses hostent:addr-list
5280 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getnet',
5281 `getnetbyaddr', `getnetbyname', and `getnetent', describing internet
5285 ========================= ===============
5286 official name of net netent:name
5287 alias list netent:aliases
5288 net number type netent:addrtype
5289 net number netent:net
5291 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getproto',
5292 `getprotobyname', `getprotobynumber', and `getprotoent', describing
5296 ========================= ===============
5297 official protocol name protoent:name
5298 alias list protoent:aliases
5299 protocol number protoent:proto
5301 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getserv',
5302 `getservbyname', `getservbyport', and `getservent', describing
5306 ========================= ===============
5307 official service name servent:name
5308 alias list servent:aliases
5309 port number servent:port
5310 protocol to use servent:proto
5312 *** There are new accessors for the sockaddr structures returned by
5313 `accept', `getsockname', `getpeername', `recvfrom!':
5316 ======================================== ===============
5317 address format (`family') sockaddr:fam
5318 path, for file domain addresses sockaddr:path
5319 address, for internet domain addresses sockaddr:addr
5320 TCP or UDP port, for internet sockaddr:port
5322 *** The `getpwent', `getgrent', `gethostent', `getnetent',
5323 `getprotoent', and `getservent' functions now return #f at the end of
5324 the user database. (They used to throw an exception.)
5326 Note that calling MUMBLEent function is equivalent to calling the
5327 corresponding MUMBLE function with no arguments.
5329 *** The `setpwent', `setgrent', `sethostent', `setnetent',
5330 `setprotoent', and `setservent' routines now take no arguments.
5332 *** The `gethost', `getproto', `getnet', and `getserv' functions now
5333 provide more useful information when they throw an exception.
5335 *** The `lnaof' function has been renamed to `inet-lnaof'.
5337 *** Guile now claims to have the `current-time' feature.
5339 *** The `mktime' function now takes an optional second argument ZONE,
5340 giving the time zone to use for the conversion. ZONE should be a
5341 string, in the same format as expected for the "TZ" environment variable.
5343 *** The `strptime' function now returns a pair (TIME . COUNT), where
5344 TIME is the parsed time as a vector, and COUNT is the number of
5345 characters from the string left unparsed. This function used to
5346 return the remaining characters as a string.
5348 *** The `gettimeofday' function has replaced the old `time+ticks' function.
5349 The return value is now (SECONDS . MICROSECONDS); the fractional
5350 component is no longer expressed in "ticks".
5352 *** The `ticks/sec' constant has been removed, in light of the above change.
5354 * Changes to the gh_ interface
5356 ** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
5359 ** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
5362 ** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
5363 and returns the array
5365 ** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
5366 null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
5367 the user to interpret the data both ways.
5369 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5371 ** The new function scm_symbol_value0 provides an easy way to get a
5372 symbol's value from C code:
5374 SCM scm_symbol_value0 (char *NAME)
5375 Return the value of the symbol named by the null-terminated string
5376 NAME in the current module. If the symbol named NAME is unbound in
5377 the current module, return SCM_UNDEFINED.
5379 ** The new function scm_sysintern0 creates new top-level variables,
5380 without assigning them a value.
5382 SCM scm_sysintern0 (char *NAME)
5383 Create a new Scheme top-level variable named NAME. NAME is a
5384 null-terminated string. Return the variable's value cell.
5386 ** The function scm_internal_catch is the guts of catch. It handles
5387 all the mechanics of setting up a catch target, invoking the catch
5388 body, and perhaps invoking the handler if the body does a throw.
5390 The function is designed to be usable from C code, but is general
5391 enough to implement all the semantics Guile Scheme expects from throw.
5393 TAG is the catch tag. Typically, this is a symbol, but this function
5394 doesn't actually care about that.
5396 BODY is a pointer to a C function which runs the body of the catch;
5397 this is the code you can throw from. We call it like this:
5398 BODY (BODY_DATA, JMPBUF)
5400 BODY_DATA is just the BODY_DATA argument we received; we pass it
5401 through to BODY as its first argument. The caller can make
5402 BODY_DATA point to anything useful that BODY might need.
5403 JMPBUF is the Scheme jmpbuf object corresponding to this catch,
5404 which we have just created and initialized.
5406 HANDLER is a pointer to a C function to deal with a throw to TAG,
5407 should one occur. We call it like this:
5408 HANDLER (HANDLER_DATA, THROWN_TAG, THROW_ARGS)
5410 HANDLER_DATA is the HANDLER_DATA argument we recevied; it's the
5411 same idea as BODY_DATA above.
5412 THROWN_TAG is the tag that the user threw to; usually this is
5413 TAG, but it could be something else if TAG was #t (i.e., a
5414 catch-all), or the user threw to a jmpbuf.
5415 THROW_ARGS is the list of arguments the user passed to the THROW
5418 BODY_DATA is just a pointer we pass through to BODY. HANDLER_DATA
5419 is just a pointer we pass through to HANDLER. We don't actually
5420 use either of those pointers otherwise ourselves. The idea is
5421 that, if our caller wants to communicate something to BODY or
5422 HANDLER, it can pass a pointer to it as MUMBLE_DATA, which BODY and
5423 HANDLER can then use. Think of it as a way to make BODY and
5424 HANDLER closures, not just functions; MUMBLE_DATA points to the
5427 Of course, it's up to the caller to make sure that any data a
5428 MUMBLE_DATA needs is protected from GC. A common way to do this is
5429 to make MUMBLE_DATA a pointer to data stored in an automatic
5430 structure variable; since the collector must scan the stack for
5431 references anyway, this assures that any references in MUMBLE_DATA
5434 ** The new function scm_internal_lazy_catch is exactly like
5435 scm_internal_catch, except:
5437 - It does not unwind the stack (this is the major difference).
5438 - If handler returns, its value is returned from the throw.
5439 - BODY always receives #f as its JMPBUF argument (since there's no
5440 jmpbuf associated with a lazy catch, because we don't unwind the
5443 ** scm_body_thunk is a new body function you can pass to
5444 scm_internal_catch if you want the body to be like Scheme's `catch'
5445 --- a thunk, or a function of one argument if the tag is #f.
5447 BODY_DATA is a pointer to a scm_body_thunk_data structure, which
5448 contains the Scheme procedure to invoke as the body, and the tag
5449 we're catching. If the tag is #f, then we pass JMPBUF (created by
5450 scm_internal_catch) to the body procedure; otherwise, the body gets
5453 ** scm_handle_by_proc is a new handler function you can pass to
5454 scm_internal_catch if you want the handler to act like Scheme's catch
5455 --- call a procedure with the tag and the throw arguments.
5457 If the user does a throw to this catch, this function runs a handler
5458 procedure written in Scheme. HANDLER_DATA is a pointer to an SCM
5459 variable holding the Scheme procedure object to invoke. It ought to
5460 be a pointer to an automatic variable (i.e., one living on the stack),
5461 or the procedure object should be otherwise protected from GC.
5463 ** scm_handle_by_message is a new handler function to use with
5464 `scm_internal_catch' if you want Guile to print a message and die.
5465 It's useful for dealing with throws to uncaught keys at the top level.
5467 HANDLER_DATA, if non-zero, is assumed to be a char * pointing to a
5468 message header to print; if zero, we use "guile" instead. That
5469 text is followed by a colon, then the message described by ARGS.
5471 ** The return type of scm_boot_guile is now void; the function does
5472 not return a value, and indeed, never returns at all.
5474 ** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
5475 process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
5476 stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
5479 To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
5480 linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
5481 of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will add
5482 any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
5483 argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
5484 generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
5485 command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
5488 ** The new functions scm_get_meta_args and scm_count_argv help you
5489 implement the SCSH-style meta-argument, `\'.
5491 char **scm_get_meta_args (int ARGC, char **ARGV)
5492 If the second element of ARGV is a string consisting of a single
5493 backslash character (i.e. "\\" in Scheme notation), open the file
5494 named by the following argument, parse arguments from it, and return
5495 the spliced command line. The returned array is terminated by a
5498 For details of argument parsing, see above, under "guile now accepts
5499 command-line arguments compatible with SCSH..."
5501 int scm_count_argv (char **ARGV)
5502 Count the arguments in ARGV, assuming it is terminated by a null
5505 For an example of how these functions might be used, see the source
5506 code for the function scm_shell in libguile/script.c.
5508 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
5511 ** The new function scm_compile_shell_switches turns an array of
5512 command-line arguments into Scheme code to carry out the actions they
5513 describe. Given ARGC and ARGV, it returns a Scheme expression to
5514 evaluate, and calls scm_set_program_arguments to make any remaining
5515 command-line arguments available to the Scheme code. For example,
5516 given the following arguments:
5518 -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
5520 scm_set_program_arguments will return the following expression:
5522 (begin (load "ekko") (main (command-line)) (quit))
5524 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
5527 ** The function scm_shell_usage prints a usage message appropriate for
5528 an interpreter that uses scm_compile_shell_switches to handle its
5529 command-line arguments.
5531 void scm_shell_usage (int FATAL, char *MESSAGE)
5532 Print a usage message to the standard error output. If MESSAGE is
5533 non-zero, write it before the usage message, followed by a newline.
5534 If FATAL is non-zero, exit the process, using FATAL as the
5535 termination status. (If you want to be compatible with Guile,
5536 always use 1 as the exit status when terminating due to command-line
5539 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
5542 ** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
5543 expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL. Earth-shattering.
5545 ** The macros for declaring scheme objects in C code have been
5546 rearranged slightly. They are now:
5548 SCM_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
5549 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
5550 point to the Scheme symbol whose name is SCHEME_NAME. C_NAME should
5551 be a C identifier, and SCHEME_NAME should be a C string.
5553 SCM_GLOBAL_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
5554 Just like SCM_SYMBOL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
5556 SCM_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
5557 Create a global variable at the Scheme level named SCHEME_NAME.
5558 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
5559 point to the Scheme variable's value cell.
5561 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
5562 Just like SCM_VCELL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
5564 The `guile-snarf' script writes initialization code for these macros
5565 to its standard output, given C source code as input.
5567 The SCM_GLOBAL macro is gone.
5569 ** The scm_read_line and scm_read_line_x functions have been replaced
5570 by Scheme code based on the %read-delimited! procedure (known to C
5571 code as scm_read_delimited_x). See its description above for more
5574 ** The function scm_sys_open has been renamed to scm_open. It now
5575 returns a port instead of an FD object.
5577 * The dynamic linking support has changed. For more information, see
5578 libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING.
5583 User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
5586 * Changes to the 'guile' program:
5588 ** Guile now loads some new files when it starts up. Guile first
5589 searches the load path for init.scm, and loads it if found. Then, if
5590 Guile is not being used to execute a script, and the user's home
5591 directory contains a file named `.guile', Guile loads that.
5593 ** You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
5595 To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
5597 When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
5598 characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
5599 be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
5600 to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
5601 specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
5602 the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
5603 and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
5604 filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
5605 following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
5606 for more information.
5608 Now you can use Guile as an interpreter, using a mechanism which is a
5609 compatible subset of that provided by SCSH.
5611 Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
5612 name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
5613 characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
5614 to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
5615 following two lines at the top of the file:
5617 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
5620 Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
5621 of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
5622 start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
5624 For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
5626 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
5628 (let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
5631 (display (car args))
5632 (if (pair? (cdr args))
5634 (loop (cdr args)))))
5637 Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
5638 end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
5639 don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
5640 we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
5641 scripts once we do. Furthermore, if the path to Guile on your system
5642 is too long for your kernel, you can start the script with this
5646 exec /really/long/path/to/guile -s "$0" ${1+"$@"}
5649 Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
5652 ** You can now run Guile without installing it.
5654 Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
5655 couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
5656 they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
5657 later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
5658 itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
5661 To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
5662 then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
5663 colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
5664 of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
5665 full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
5668 export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
5671 ** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
5672 results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
5673 expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
5676 ** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
5677 however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
5678 request that they be displayed by default. After an error, evaluate
5680 to see a backtrace, and
5681 (debug-enable 'backtrace)
5682 to see them by default.
5686 * Changes to Guile Scheme:
5688 ** Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
5690 This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
5691 upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
5694 Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
5695 type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
5696 caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
5697 way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
5700 ** Guile's delq, delv, delete functions, and their destructive
5701 counterparts, delq!, delv!, and delete!, now remove all matching
5702 elements from the list, not just the first. This matches the behavior
5703 of the corresponding Emacs Lisp functions, and (I believe) the Maclisp
5704 functions which inspired them.
5706 I recognize that this change may break code in subtle ways, but it
5707 seems best to make the change before the FSF's first Guile release,
5711 ** The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
5713 ** The facilities for loading Scheme source files have changed.
5715 *** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
5716 for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
5719 *** The variable %load-extensions now tells Guile which extensions to
5720 try appending to a filename when searching the load path. Its value
5721 is a list of strings. Its default value is ("" ".scm").
5723 *** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
5724 value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME,
5725 with all the extensions listed in %load-extensions. If it finds a
5726 match, then it returns its full filename. If FILENAME is absolute, it
5727 returns it unchanged. Otherwise, it returns #f.
5729 %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to directories.
5731 *** (primitive-load FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
5732 uses %seach-load-path to find a file named FILENAME, and loads it if
5733 it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for any reason, it throws an
5736 The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
5739 *** load uses the same searching semantics as primitive-load.
5741 *** The functions %try-load, try-load-with-path, %load, load-with-path,
5742 basic-try-load-with-path, basic-load-with-path, try-load-module-with-
5743 path, and load-module-with-path have been deleted. The functions
5744 above should serve their purposes.
5746 *** If the value of the variable %load-hook is a procedure,
5747 `primitive-load' applies its value to the name of the file being
5748 loaded (without the load path directory name prepended). If its value
5749 is #f, it is ignored. Otherwise, an error occurs.
5751 This is mostly useful for printing load notification messages.
5754 ** The function `eval!' is no longer accessible from the scheme level.
5755 We can't allow operations which introduce glocs into the scheme level,
5756 because Guile's type system can't handle these as data. Use `eval' or
5757 `read-and-eval!' (see below) as replacement.
5759 ** The new function read-and-eval! reads an expression from PORT,
5760 evaluates it, and returns the result. This is more efficient than
5761 simply calling `read' and `eval', since it is not necessary to make a
5762 copy of the expression for the evaluator to munge.
5764 Its optional arguments CASE_INSENSITIVE_P and SHARP are interpreted as
5765 for the `read' function.
5768 ** The function `int?' has been removed; its definition was identical
5769 to that of `integer?'.
5771 ** The functions `<?', `<?', `<=?', `=?', `>?', and `>=?'. Code should
5772 use the R4RS names for these functions.
5774 ** The function object-properties no longer returns the hash handle;
5775 it simply returns the object's property list.
5777 ** Many functions have been changed to throw errors, instead of
5778 returning #f on failure. The point of providing exception handling in
5779 the language is to simplify the logic of user code, but this is less
5780 useful if Guile's primitives don't throw exceptions.
5782 ** The function `fileno' has been renamed from `%fileno'.
5784 ** The function primitive-mode->fdes returns #t or #f now, not 1 or 0.
5787 * Changes to Guile's C interface:
5789 ** The library's initialization procedure has been simplified.
5790 scm_boot_guile now has the prototype:
5792 void scm_boot_guile (int ARGC,
5794 void (*main_func) (),
5797 scm_boot_guile calls MAIN_FUNC, passing it CLOSURE, ARGC, and ARGV.
5798 MAIN_FUNC should do all the work of the program (initializing other
5799 packages, reading user input, etc.) before returning. When MAIN_FUNC
5800 returns, call exit (0); this function never returns. If you want some
5801 other exit value, MAIN_FUNC may call exit itself.
5803 scm_boot_guile arranges for program-arguments to return the strings
5804 given by ARGC and ARGV. If MAIN_FUNC modifies ARGC/ARGV, should call
5805 scm_set_program_arguments with the final list, so Scheme code will
5806 know which arguments have been processed.
5808 scm_boot_guile establishes a catch-all catch handler which prints an
5809 error message and exits the process. This means that Guile exits in a
5810 coherent way when system errors occur and the user isn't prepared to
5811 handle it. If the user doesn't like this behavior, they can establish
5812 their own universal catcher in MAIN_FUNC to shadow this one.
5814 Why must the caller do all the real work from MAIN_FUNC? The garbage
5815 collector assumes that all local variables of type SCM will be above
5816 scm_boot_guile's stack frame on the stack. If you try to manipulate
5817 SCM values after this function returns, it's the luck of the draw
5818 whether the GC will be able to find the objects you allocate. So,
5819 scm_boot_guile function exits, rather than returning, to discourage
5820 people from making that mistake.
5822 The IN, OUT, and ERR arguments were removed; there are other
5823 convenient ways to override these when desired.
5825 The RESULT argument was deleted; this function should never return.
5827 The BOOT_CMD argument was deleted; the MAIN_FUNC argument is more
5831 ** Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
5834 In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
5835 versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
5836 Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
5837 Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
5840 Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
5841 refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
5842 Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
5843 the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
5846 ** Two new C functions, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object,
5847 have been added to the Guile library.
5849 scm_protect_object (OBJ) protects OBJ from the garbage collector.
5850 OBJ will not be freed, even if all other references are dropped,
5851 until someone does scm_unprotect_object (OBJ). Both functions
5854 Note that calls to scm_protect_object do not nest. You can call
5855 scm_protect_object any number of times on a given object, and the
5856 next call to scm_unprotect_object will unprotect it completely.
5858 Basically, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object just
5859 maintain a list of references to things. Since the GC knows about
5860 this list, all objects it mentions stay alive. scm_protect_object
5861 adds its argument to the list; scm_unprotect_object remove its
5862 argument from the list.
5865 ** scm_eval_0str now returns the value of the last expression
5868 ** The new function scm_read_0str reads an s-expression from a
5869 null-terminated string, and returns it.
5871 ** The new function `scm_stdio_to_port' converts a STDIO file pointer
5872 to a Scheme port object.
5874 ** The new function `scm_set_program_arguments' allows C code to set
5875 the value returned by the Scheme `program-arguments' function.
5880 * Guile no longer includes sophisticated Tcl/Tk support.
5882 The old Tcl/Tk support was unsatisfying to us, because it required the
5883 user to link against the Tcl library, as well as Tk and Guile. The
5884 interface was also un-lispy, in that it preserved Tcl/Tk's practice of
5885 referring to widgets by names, rather than exporting widgets to Scheme
5886 code as a special datatype.
5888 In the Usenix Tk Developer's Workshop held in July 1996, the Tcl/Tk
5889 maintainers described some very interesting changes in progress to the
5890 Tcl/Tk internals, which would facilitate clean interfaces between lone
5891 Tk and other interpreters --- even for garbage-collected languages
5892 like Scheme. They expected the new Tk to be publicly available in the
5895 Since it seems that Guile might soon have a new, cleaner interface to
5896 lone Tk, and that the old Guile/Tk glue code would probably need to be
5897 completely rewritten, we (Jim Blandy and Richard Stallman) have
5898 decided not to support the old code. We'll spend the time instead on
5899 a good interface to the newer Tk, as soon as it is available.
5901 Until then, gtcltk-lib provides trivial, low-maintenance functionality.
5904 Copyright information:
5906 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
5908 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
5909 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
5910 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
5911 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
5913 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
5914 of this document, or of portions of it,
5915 under the above conditions, provided also that they
5916 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
5921 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"