1 Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes.
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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9 Each release reports the NEWS in the following sections:
11 * Changes to the distribution
12 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
13 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
14 * Changes to the C interface
17 Changes in 1.9.XXXXXXXX:
19 * Changes to the distribution
20 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
21 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
23 ** A new 'memoize-symbol evaluator trap has been added. This trap can
24 be used for efficiently implementing a Scheme code coverage.
26 * Changes to the C interface
28 ** Functions for handling scm_option now no longer require an argument
29 indicating length of the scm_t_option array.
32 Changes in 1.8.2 (since 1.8.1):
34 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
36 ** set-program-arguments
41 ** Fractions were not `equal?' if stored in unreduced form.
42 (A subtle problem, since printing a value reduced it, making it work.)
43 ** srfi-60 `copy-bit' failed on 64-bit systems
44 ** "guile --use-srfi" option at the REPL can replace core functions
45 (Programs run with that option were ok, but in the interactive REPL
46 the core bindings got priority, preventing SRFI replacements or
48 ** `regexp-exec' doesn't abort() on #\nul in the input or bad flags arg
49 ** `kill' on mingw throws an error for a pid other than oneself
50 ** Procedure names are attached to procedure-with-setters
51 ** Array read syntax works with negative lower bound
52 ** `array-in-bounds?' fix if an array has different lower bounds on each index
53 ** `*' returns exact 0 for "(* inexact 0)"
54 This follows what it always did for "(* 0 inexact)".
55 ** SRFI-19: Value returned by `(current-time time-process)' was incorrect
56 ** `ttyname' no longer crashes when passed a non-tty argument
57 ** Build problems on Solaris fixed
58 ** Build problems on Mingw fixed
61 Changes in 1.8.1 (since 1.8.0):
63 * LFS functions are now used to access 64-bit files on 32-bit systems.
65 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
67 ** primitive-_exit - [Scheme] the-root-module
68 ** scm_primitive__exit - [C]
69 ** make-completion-function - [Scheme] (ice-9 readline)
70 ** scm_c_locale_stringn_to_number - [C]
71 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse [C]
72 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse_x [C]
78 * New `(ice-9 i18n)' module (see the manual for details)
82 ** Build problems have been fixed on MacOS, SunOS, and QNX.
84 ** `strftime' fix sign of %z timezone offset.
86 ** A one-dimensional array can now be 'equal?' to a vector.
88 ** Structures, records, and SRFI-9 records can now be compared with `equal?'.
90 ** SRFI-14 standard char sets are recomputed upon a successful `setlocale'.
92 ** `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' now have strict type checks.
94 Record accessor and modifier procedures now throw an error if the
95 record type of the record they're given is not the type expected.
96 (Previously accessors returned #f and modifiers silently did nothing).
98 ** It is now OK to use both autoload and use-modules on a given module.
100 ** `apply' checks the number of arguments more carefully on "0 or 1" funcs.
102 Previously there was no checking on primatives like make-vector that
103 accept "one or two" arguments. Now there is.
105 ** The srfi-1 assoc function now calls its equality predicate properly.
107 Previously srfi-1 assoc would call the equality predicate with the key
108 last. According to the SRFI, the key should be first.
110 ** A bug in n-par-for-each and n-for-each-par-map has been fixed.
112 ** The array-set! procedure no longer segfaults when given a bit vector.
114 ** Bugs in make-shared-array have been fixed.
116 ** string<? and friends now follow char<? etc order on 8-bit chars.
118 ** The format procedure now handles inf and nan values for ~f correctly.
120 ** exact->inexact should no longer overflow when given certain large fractions.
122 ** srfi-9 accessor and modifier procedures now have strict record type checks.
124 This matches the srfi-9 specification.
126 ** (ice-9 ftw) procedures won't ignore different files with same inode number.
128 Previously the (ice-9 ftw) procedures would ignore any file that had
129 the same inode number as a file they had already seen, even if that
130 file was on a different device.
133 Changes in 1.8.0 (changes since the 1.6.x series):
135 * Changes to the distribution
137 ** Guile is now licensed with the GNU Lesser General Public License.
139 ** The manual is now licensed with the GNU Free Documentation License.
141 ** Guile now requires GNU MP (http://swox.com/gmp).
143 Guile now uses the GNU MP library for arbitrary precision arithmetic.
145 ** Guile now has separate private and public configuration headers.
147 That is, things like HAVE_STRING_H no longer leak from Guile's
150 ** Guile now provides and uses an "effective" version number.
152 Guile now provides scm_effective_version and effective-version
153 functions which return the "effective" version number. This is just
154 the normal full version string without the final micro-version number,
155 so the current effective-version is "1.8". The effective version
156 should remain unchanged during a stable series, and should be used for
157 items like the versioned share directory name
158 i.e. /usr/share/guile/1.8.
160 Providing an unchanging version number during a stable release for
161 things like the versioned share directory can be particularly
162 important for Guile "add-on" packages, since it provides a directory
163 that they can install to that won't be changed out from under them
164 with each micro release during a stable series.
166 ** Thread implementation has changed.
168 When you configure "--with-threads=null", you will get the usual
169 threading API (call-with-new-thread, make-mutex, etc), but you can't
170 actually create new threads. Also, "--with-threads=no" is now
171 equivalent to "--with-threads=null". This means that the thread API
172 is always present, although you might not be able to create new
175 When you configure "--with-threads=pthreads" or "--with-threads=yes",
176 you will get threads that are implemented with the portable POSIX
177 threads. These threads can run concurrently (unlike the previous
178 "coop" thread implementation), but need to cooperate for things like
181 The default is "pthreads", unless your platform doesn't have pthreads,
182 in which case "null" threads are used.
184 See the manual for details, nodes "Initialization", "Multi-Threading",
185 "Blocking", and others.
187 ** There is the new notion of 'discouraged' features.
189 This is a milder form of deprecation.
191 Things that are discouraged should not be used in new code, but it is
192 OK to leave them in old code for now. When a discouraged feature is
193 used, no warning message is printed like there is for 'deprecated'
194 features. Also, things that are merely discouraged are nevertheless
195 implemented efficiently, while deprecated features can be very slow.
197 You can omit discouraged features from libguile by configuring it with
198 the '--disable-discouraged' option.
200 ** Deprecation warnings can be controlled at run-time.
202 (debug-enable 'warn-deprecated) switches them on and (debug-disable
203 'warn-deprecated) switches them off.
205 ** Support for SRFI 61, extended cond syntax for multiple values has
208 This SRFI is always available.
210 ** Support for require-extension, SRFI-55, has been added.
212 The SRFI-55 special form `require-extension' has been added. It is
213 available at startup, and provides a portable way to load Scheme
214 extensions. SRFI-55 only requires support for one type of extension,
215 "srfi"; so a set of SRFIs may be loaded via (require-extension (srfi 1
218 ** New module (srfi srfi-26) provides support for `cut' and `cute'.
220 The (srfi srfi-26) module is an implementation of SRFI-26 which
221 provides the `cut' and `cute' syntax. These may be used to specialize
222 parameters without currying.
224 ** New module (srfi srfi-31)
226 This is an implementation of SRFI-31 which provides a special form
227 `rec' for recursive evaluation.
229 ** The modules (srfi srfi-13), (srfi srfi-14) and (srfi srfi-4) have
230 been merged with the core, making their functionality always
233 The modules are still available, tho, and you could use them together
234 with a renaming import, for example.
236 ** Guile no longer includes its own version of libltdl.
238 The official version is good enough now.
240 ** The --enable-htmldoc option has been removed from 'configure'.
242 Support for translating the documentation into HTML is now always
243 provided. Use 'make html'.
245 ** New module (ice-9 serialize):
247 (serialize FORM1 ...) and (parallelize FORM1 ...) are useful when you
248 don't trust the thread safety of most of your program, but where you
249 have some section(s) of code which you consider can run in parallel to
250 other sections. See ice-9/serialize.scm for more information.
252 ** The configure option '--disable-arrays' has been removed.
254 Support for arrays and uniform numeric arrays is now always included
257 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
259 ** New command line option `-L'.
261 This option adds a directory to the front of the load path.
263 ** New command line option `--no-debug'.
265 Specifying `--no-debug' on the command line will keep the debugging
266 evaluator turned off, even for interactive sessions.
268 ** User-init file ~/.guile is now loaded with the debugging evaluator.
270 Previously, the normal evaluator would have been used. Using the
271 debugging evaluator gives better error messages.
273 ** The '-e' option now 'read's its argument.
275 This is to allow the new '(@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)' construct to
276 be used with '-e'. For example, you can now write a script like
279 exec guile -e '(@ (demo) main)' -s "$0" "$@"
282 (define-module (demo)
286 (format #t "Demo: ~a~%" args))
289 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
291 ** Guardians have changed back to their original semantics
293 Guardians now behave like described in the paper by Dybvig et al. In
294 particular, they no longer make guarantees about the order in which
295 they return objects, and they can no longer be greedy.
297 They no longer drop cyclic data structures.
299 The C function scm_make_guardian has been changed incompatibly and no
300 longer takes the 'greedy_p' argument.
302 ** New function hashx-remove!
304 This function completes the set of 'hashx' functions.
306 ** The concept of dynamic roots has been factored into continuation
307 barriers and dynamic states.
309 Each thread has a current dynamic state that carries the values of the
310 fluids. You can create and copy dynamic states and use them as the
311 second argument for 'eval'. See "Fluids and Dynamic States" in the
314 To restrict the influence that captured continuations can have on the
315 control flow, you can errect continuation barriers. See "Continuation
316 Barriers" in the manual.
318 The function call-with-dynamic-root now essentially temporarily
319 installs a new dynamic state and errects a continuation barrier.
321 ** The default load path no longer includes "." at the end.
323 Automatically loading modules from the current directory should not
324 happen by default. If you want to allow it in a more controlled
325 manner, set the environment variable GUILE_LOAD_PATH or the Scheme
328 ** The uniform vector and array support has been overhauled.
330 It now complies with SRFI-4 and the weird prototype based uniform
331 array creation has been deprecated. See the manual for more details.
333 Some non-compatible changes have been made:
334 - characters can no longer be stored into byte arrays.
335 - strings and bit vectors are no longer considered to be uniform numeric
337 - array-rank throws an error for non-arrays instead of returning zero.
338 - array-ref does no longer accept non-arrays when no indices are given.
340 There is the new notion of 'generalized vectors' and corresponding
341 procedures like 'generalized-vector-ref'. Generalized vectors include
342 strings, bitvectors, ordinary vectors, and uniform numeric vectors.
344 Arrays use generalized vectors as their storage, so that you still
345 have arrays of characters, bits, etc. However, uniform-array-read!
346 and uniform-array-write can no longer read/write strings and
349 ** There is now support for copy-on-write substrings, mutation-sharing
350 substrings and read-only strings.
352 Three new procedures are related to this: substring/shared,
353 substring/copy, and substring/read-only. See the manual for more
356 ** Backtraces will now highlight the value that caused the error.
358 By default, these values are enclosed in "{...}", such as in this
367 <unnamed port>:1:1: In procedure car in expression (car (quote a)):
368 <unnamed port>:1:1: Wrong type (expecting pair): a
369 ABORT: (wrong-type-arg)
371 The prefix and suffix used for highlighting can be set via the two new
372 printer options 'highlight-prefix' and 'highlight-suffix'. For
373 example, putting this into ~/.guile will output the bad value in bold
376 (print-set! highlight-prefix "\x1b[1m")
377 (print-set! highlight-suffix "\x1b[22m")
380 ** 'gettext' support for internationalization has been added.
382 See the manual for details.
384 ** New syntax '@' and '@@':
386 You can now directly refer to variables exported from a module by
389 (@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)
391 For example (@ (ice-9 pretty-print) pretty-print) will directly access
392 the pretty-print variable exported from the (ice-9 pretty-print)
393 module. You don't need to 'use' that module first. You can also use
394 '@' as a target of 'set!', as in (set! (@ mod var) val).
396 The related syntax (@@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME) works just like '@',
397 but it can also access variables that have not been exported. It is
398 intended only for kluges and temporary fixes and for debugging, not
401 ** Keyword syntax has been made more disciplined.
403 Previously, the name of a keyword was read as a 'token' but printed as
404 a symbol. Now, it is read as a general Scheme datum which must be a
415 ERROR: In expression (a b c):
419 ERROR: Unbound variable: foo
424 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): 12
428 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): (a b c)
432 ** The printing of symbols that might look like keywords can be
435 The new printer option 'quote-keywordish-symbols' controls how symbols
436 are printed that have a colon as their first or last character. The
437 default now is to only quote a symbol with #{...}# when the read
438 option 'keywords' is not '#f'. Thus:
440 guile> (define foo (string->symbol ":foo"))
441 guile> (read-set! keywords #f)
444 guile> (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
447 guile> (print-set! quote-keywordish-symbols #f)
451 ** 'while' now provides 'break' and 'continue'
453 break and continue were previously bound in a while loop, but not
454 documented, and continue didn't quite work properly. The undocumented
455 parameter to break which gave a return value for the while has been
458 ** 'call-with-current-continuation' is now also available under the name
461 ** The module system now checks for duplicate bindings.
463 The module system now can check for name conflicts among imported
466 The behavior can be controlled by specifying one or more 'duplicates'
467 handlers. For example, to make Guile return an error for every name
475 The new default behavior of the module system when a name collision
476 has been detected is to
478 1. Give priority to bindings marked as a replacement.
479 2. Issue a warning (different warning if overriding core binding).
480 3. Give priority to the last encountered binding (this corresponds to
483 If you want the old behavior back without replacements or warnings you
486 (default-duplicate-binding-handler 'last)
488 to your .guile init file.
490 ** New define-module option: :replace
492 :replace works as :export, but, in addition, marks the binding as a
495 A typical example is `format' in (ice-9 format) which is a replacement
496 for the core binding `format'.
498 ** Adding prefixes to imported bindings in the module system
500 There is now a new :use-module option :prefix. It can be used to add
501 a prefix to all imported bindings.
504 :use-module ((bar) :prefix bar:))
506 will import all bindings exported from bar, but rename them by adding
509 ** Conflicting generic functions can be automatically merged.
511 When two imported bindings conflict and they are both generic
512 functions, the two functions can now be merged automatically. This is
513 activated with the 'duplicates' handler 'merge-generics'.
515 ** New function: effective-version
517 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
518 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
519 to the distribution" above.
521 ** New threading functions: parallel, letpar, par-map, and friends
523 These are convenient ways to run calculations in parallel in new
524 threads. See "Parallel forms" in the manual for details.
526 ** New function 'try-mutex'.
528 This function will attempt to lock a mutex but will return immediately
529 instead of blocking and indicate failure.
531 ** Waiting on a condition variable can have a timeout.
533 The function 'wait-condition-variable' now takes a third, optional
534 argument that specifies the point in time where the waiting should be
537 ** New function 'broadcast-condition-variable'.
539 ** New functions 'all-threads' and 'current-thread'.
541 ** Signals and system asyncs work better with threads.
543 The function 'sigaction' now takes a fourth, optional, argument that
544 specifies the thread that the handler should run in. When the
545 argument is omitted, the handler will run in the thread that called
548 Likewise, 'system-async-mark' takes a second, optional, argument that
549 specifies the thread that the async should run in. When it is
550 omitted, the async will run in the thread that called
553 C code can use the new functions scm_sigaction_for_thread and
554 scm_system_async_mark_for_thread to pass the new thread argument.
556 When a thread blocks on a mutex, a condition variable or is waiting
557 for IO to be possible, it will still execute system asyncs. This can
558 be used to interrupt such a thread by making it execute a 'throw', for
561 ** The function 'system-async' is deprecated.
563 You can now pass any zero-argument procedure to 'system-async-mark'.
564 The function 'system-async' will just return its argument unchanged
567 ** New functions 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' and
568 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
570 The expression (call-with-blocked-asyncs PROC) will call PROC and will
571 block execution of system asyncs for the current thread by one level
572 while PROC runs. Likewise, call-with-unblocked-asyncs will call a
573 procedure and will unblock the execution of system asyncs by one
574 level for the current thread.
576 Only system asyncs are affected by these functions.
578 ** The functions 'mask-signals' and 'unmask-signals' are deprecated.
580 Use 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' or 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
581 instead. Those functions are easier to use correctly and can be
584 ** New function 'unsetenv'.
586 ** New macro 'define-syntax-public'.
588 It works like 'define-syntax' and also exports the defined macro (but
591 ** There is support for Infinity and NaNs.
593 Following PLT Scheme, Guile can now work with infinite numbers, and
596 There is new syntax for numbers: "+inf.0" (infinity), "-inf.0"
597 (negative infinity), "+nan.0" (not-a-number), and "-nan.0" (same as
598 "+nan.0"). These numbers are inexact and have no exact counterpart.
600 Dividing by an inexact zero returns +inf.0 or -inf.0, depending on the
601 sign of the dividend. The infinities are integers, and they answer #t
602 for both 'even?' and 'odd?'. The +nan.0 value is not an integer and is
603 not '=' to itself, but '+nan.0' is 'eqv?' to itself.
614 ERROR: Numerical overflow
616 Two new predicates 'inf?' and 'nan?' can be used to test for the
619 ** Inexact zero can have a sign.
621 Guile can now distinguish between plus and minus inexact zero, if your
622 platform supports this, too. The two zeros are equal according to
623 '=', but not according to 'eqv?'. For example
634 ** Guile now has exact rationals.
636 Guile can now represent fractions such as 1/3 exactly. Computing with
637 them is also done exactly, of course:
642 ** 'floor', 'ceiling', 'round' and 'truncate' now return exact numbers
645 For example: (floor 2) now returns an exact 2 where in the past it
646 returned an inexact 2.0. Likewise, (floor 5/4) returns an exact 1.
648 ** inexact->exact no longer returns only integers.
650 Without exact rationals, the closest exact number was always an
651 integer, but now inexact->exact returns the fraction that is exactly
652 equal to a floating point number. For example:
654 (inexact->exact 1.234)
655 => 694680242521899/562949953421312
657 When you want the old behavior, use 'round' explicitly:
659 (inexact->exact (round 1.234))
662 ** New function 'rationalize'.
664 This function finds a simple fraction that is close to a given real
665 number. For example (and compare with inexact->exact above):
667 (rationalize (inexact->exact 1.234) 1/2000)
670 Note that, as required by R5RS, rationalize returns only then an exact
671 result when both its arguments are exact.
673 ** 'odd?' and 'even?' work also for inexact integers.
675 Previously, (odd? 1.0) would signal an error since only exact integers
676 were recognized as integers. Now (odd? 1.0) returns #t, (odd? 2.0)
677 returns #f and (odd? 1.5) signals an error.
679 ** Guile now has uninterned symbols.
681 The new function 'make-symbol' will return an uninterned symbol. This
682 is a symbol that is unique and is guaranteed to remain unique.
683 However, uninterned symbols can not yet be read back in.
685 Use the new function 'symbol-interned?' to check whether a symbol is
688 ** pretty-print has more options.
690 The function pretty-print from the (ice-9 pretty-print) module can now
691 also be invoked with keyword arguments that control things like
692 maximum output width. See the manual for details.
694 ** Variables have no longer a special behavior for `equal?'.
696 Previously, comparing two variables with `equal?' would recursivly
697 compare their values. This is no longer done. Variables are now only
698 `equal?' if they are `eq?'.
700 ** `(begin)' is now valid.
702 You can now use an empty `begin' form. It will yield #<unspecified>
703 when evaluated and simply be ignored in a definition context.
705 ** Deprecated: procedure->macro
707 Change your code to use 'define-macro' or r5rs macros. Also, be aware
708 that macro expansion will not be done during evaluation, but prior to
711 ** Soft ports now allow a `char-ready?' procedure
713 The vector argument to `make-soft-port' can now have a length of
714 either 5 or 6. (Previously the length had to be 5.) The optional 6th
715 element is interpreted as an `input-waiting' thunk -- i.e. a thunk
716 that returns the number of characters that can be read immediately
717 without the soft port blocking.
719 ** Deprecated: undefine
721 There is no replacement for undefine.
723 ** The functions make-keyword-from-dash-symbol and keyword-dash-symbol
724 have been discouraged.
726 They are relics from a time where a keyword like #:foo was used
727 directly as a Tcl option "-foo" and thus keywords were internally
728 stored as a symbol with a starting dash. We now store a symbol
731 Use symbol->keyword and keyword->symbol instead.
733 ** The `cheap' debug option is now obsolete
735 Evaluator trap calls are now unconditionally "cheap" - in other words,
736 they pass a debug object to the trap handler rather than a full
737 continuation. The trap handler code can capture a full continuation
738 by using `call-with-current-continuation' in the usual way, if it so
741 The `cheap' option is retained for now so as not to break existing
742 code which gets or sets it, but setting it now has no effect. It will
743 be removed in the next major Guile release.
745 ** Evaluator trap calls now support `tweaking'
747 `Tweaking' means that the trap handler code can modify the Scheme
748 expression that is about to be evaluated (in the case of an
749 enter-frame trap) or the value that is being returned (in the case of
750 an exit-frame trap). The trap handler code indicates that it wants to
751 do this by returning a pair whose car is the symbol 'instead and whose
752 cdr is the modified expression or return value.
754 * Changes to the C interface
756 ** The functions scm_hash_fn_remove_x and scm_hashx_remove_x no longer
757 take a 'delete' function argument.
759 This argument makes no sense since the delete function is used to
760 remove a pair from an alist, and this must not be configurable.
762 This is an incompatible change.
764 ** The GH interface is now subject to the deprecation mechanism
766 The GH interface has been deprecated for quite some time but now it is
767 actually removed from Guile when it is configured with
768 --disable-deprecated.
770 See the manual "Transitioning away from GH" for more information.
772 ** A new family of functions for converting between C values and
773 Scheme values has been added.
775 These functions follow a common naming scheme and are designed to be
776 easier to use, thread-safe and more future-proof than the older
781 These are predicates that return a C boolean: 1 or 0. Instead of
782 SCM_NFALSEP, you can now use scm_is_true, for example.
784 - <type> scm_to_<type> (SCM val, ...)
786 These are functions that convert a Scheme value into an appropriate
787 C value. For example, you can use scm_to_int to safely convert from
790 - SCM scm_from_<type> (<type> val, ...)
792 These functions convert from a C type to a SCM value; for example,
793 scm_from_int for ints.
795 There is a huge number of these functions, for numbers, strings,
796 symbols, vectors, etc. They are documented in the reference manual in
797 the API section together with the types that they apply to.
799 ** New functions for dealing with complex numbers in C have been added.
801 The new functions are scm_c_make_rectangular, scm_c_make_polar,
802 scm_c_real_part, scm_c_imag_part, scm_c_magnitude and scm_c_angle.
803 They work like scm_make_rectangular etc but take or return doubles
806 ** The function scm_make_complex has been discouraged.
808 Use scm_c_make_rectangular instead.
810 ** The INUM macros have been deprecated.
812 A lot of code uses these macros to do general integer conversions,
813 although the macros only work correctly with fixnums. Use the
814 following alternatives.
816 SCM_INUMP -> scm_is_integer or similar
817 SCM_NINUMP -> !scm_is_integer or similar
818 SCM_MAKINUM -> scm_from_int or similar
819 SCM_INUM -> scm_to_int or similar
821 SCM_VALIDATE_INUM_* -> Do not use these; scm_to_int, etc. will
822 do the validating for you.
824 ** The scm_num2<type> and scm_<type>2num functions and scm_make_real
825 have been discouraged.
827 Use the newer scm_to_<type> and scm_from_<type> functions instead for
828 new code. The functions have been discouraged since they don't fit
831 ** The 'boolean' macros SCM_FALSEP etc have been discouraged.
833 They have strange names, especially SCM_NFALSEP, and SCM_BOOLP
834 evaluates its argument twice. Use scm_is_true, etc. instead for new
837 ** The macro SCM_EQ_P has been discouraged.
839 Use scm_is_eq for new code, which fits better into the naming
842 ** The macros SCM_CONSP, SCM_NCONSP, SCM_NULLP, and SCM_NNULLP have
845 Use the function scm_is_pair or scm_is_null instead.
847 ** The functions scm_round and scm_truncate have been deprecated and
848 are now available as scm_c_round and scm_c_truncate, respectively.
850 These functions occupy the names that scm_round_number and
851 scm_truncate_number should have.
853 ** The functions scm_c_string2str, scm_c_substring2str, and
854 scm_c_symbol2str have been deprecated.
856 Use scm_to_locale_stringbuf or similar instead, maybe together with
859 ** New functions scm_c_make_string, scm_c_string_length,
860 scm_c_string_ref, scm_c_string_set_x, scm_c_substring,
861 scm_c_substring_shared, scm_c_substring_copy.
863 These are like scm_make_string, scm_length, etc. but are slightly
864 easier to use from C.
866 ** The macros SCM_STRINGP, SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_STRING_LENGTH,
867 SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, and SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH have been deprecated.
869 They export too many assumptions about the implementation of strings
870 and symbols that are no longer true in the presence of
871 mutation-sharing substrings and when Guile switches to some form of
874 When working with strings, it is often best to use the normal string
875 functions provided by Guile, such as scm_c_string_ref,
876 scm_c_string_set_x, scm_string_append, etc. Be sure to look in the
877 manual since many more such functions are now provided than
880 When you want to convert a SCM string to a C string, use the
881 scm_to_locale_string function or similar instead. For symbols, use
882 scm_symbol_to_string and then work with that string. Because of the
883 new string representation, scm_symbol_to_string does not need to copy
884 and is thus quite efficient.
886 ** Some string, symbol and keyword functions have been discouraged.
888 They don't fit into the uniform naming scheme and are not explicit
889 about the character encoding.
891 Replace according to the following table:
893 scm_allocate_string -> scm_c_make_string
894 scm_take_str -> scm_take_locale_stringn
895 scm_take0str -> scm_take_locale_string
896 scm_mem2string -> scm_from_locale_stringn
897 scm_str2string -> scm_from_locale_string
898 scm_makfrom0str -> scm_from_locale_string
899 scm_mem2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symboln
900 scm_mem2uninterned_symbol -> scm_from_locale_stringn + scm_make_symbol
901 scm_str2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symbol
903 SCM_SYMBOL_HASH -> scm_hashq
904 SCM_SYMBOL_INTERNED_P -> scm_symbol_interned_p
906 scm_c_make_keyword -> scm_from_locale_keyword
908 ** The functions scm_keyword_to_symbol and sym_symbol_to_keyword are
909 now also available to C code.
911 ** SCM_KEYWORDP and SCM_KEYWORDSYM have been deprecated.
913 Use scm_is_keyword and scm_keyword_to_symbol instead, but note that
914 the latter returns the true name of the keyword, not the 'dash name',
915 as SCM_KEYWORDSYM used to do.
917 ** A new way to access arrays in a thread-safe and efficient way has
920 See the manual, node "Accessing Arrays From C".
922 ** The old uniform vector and bitvector implementations have been
923 unceremoniously removed.
925 This implementation exposed the details of the tagging system of
926 Guile. Use the new C API explained in the manual in node "Uniform
927 Numeric Vectors" and "Bit Vectors", respectively.
929 The following macros are gone: SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE,
930 SCM_UVECTOR_MAXLENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_UVECTOR_TAG,
931 SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVECTOR_P, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE,
932 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
933 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_BITVECTOR_TAG,
934 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVEC_REF, SCM_BITVEC_SET,
937 ** The macros dealing with vectors have been deprecated.
939 Use the new functions scm_is_vector, scm_vector_elements,
940 scm_vector_writable_elements, etc, or scm_is_simple_vector,
941 SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_REF, SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_SET, etc instead. See the
942 manual for more details.
944 Deprecated are SCM_VECTORP, SCM_VELTS, SCM_VECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
945 SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_REF, SCM_VECTOR_SET, SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS.
947 The following macros have been removed: SCM_VECTOR_BASE,
948 SCM_SET_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_MAKE_VECTOR_TAG, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH,
949 SCM_VELTS_AS_STACKITEMS, SCM_SETVELTS, SCM_GC_WRITABLE_VELTS.
951 ** Some C functions and macros related to arrays have been deprecated.
953 Migrate according to the following table:
955 scm_make_uve -> scm_make_typed_array, scm_make_u8vector etc.
956 scm_make_ra -> scm_make_array
957 scm_shap2ra -> scm_make_array
958 scm_cvref -> scm_c_generalized_vector_ref
959 scm_ra_set_contp -> do not use
960 scm_aind -> scm_array_handle_pos
961 scm_raprin1 -> scm_display or scm_write
963 SCM_ARRAYP -> scm_is_array
964 SCM_ARRAY_NDIM -> scm_c_array_rank
965 SCM_ARRAY_DIMS -> scm_array_handle_dims
966 SCM_ARRAY_CONTP -> do not use
967 SCM_ARRAY_MEM -> do not use
968 SCM_ARRAY_V -> scm_array_handle_elements or similar
969 SCM_ARRAY_BASE -> do not use
971 ** SCM_CELL_WORD_LOC has been deprecated.
973 Use the new macro SCM_CELL_OBJECT_LOC instead, which returns a pointer
974 to a SCM, as opposed to a pointer to a scm_t_bits.
976 This was done to allow the correct use of pointers into the Scheme
977 heap. Previously, the heap words were of type scm_t_bits and local
978 variables and function arguments were of type SCM, making it
979 non-standards-conformant to have a pointer that can point to both.
981 ** New macros SCM_SMOB_DATA_2, SCM_SMOB_DATA_3, etc.
983 These macros should be used instead of SCM_CELL_WORD_2/3 to access the
984 second and third words of double smobs. Likewise for
985 SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_2 and SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_3.
987 Also, there is SCM_SMOB_FLAGS and SCM_SET_SMOB_FLAGS that should be
988 used to get and set the 16 exra bits in the zeroth word of a smob.
990 And finally, there is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT and SCM_SMOB_SET_OBJECT for
991 accesing the first immediate word of a smob as a SCM value, and there
992 is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_LOC for getting a pointer to the first immediate
993 smob word. Like wise for SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_2, etc.
995 ** New way to deal with non-local exits and re-entries.
997 There is a new set of functions that essentially do what
998 scm_internal_dynamic_wind does, but in a way that is more convenient
999 for C code in some situations. Here is a quick example of how to
1000 prevent a potential memory leak:
1007 scm_dynwind_begin (0);
1009 mem = scm_malloc (100);
1010 scm_dynwind_unwind_handler (free, mem, SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY);
1012 /* MEM would leak if BAR throws an error.
1013 SCM_DYNWIND_UNWIND_HANDLER frees it nevertheless.
1020 /* Because of SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY, MEM will be freed by
1021 SCM_DYNWIND_END as well.
1025 For full documentation, see the node "Dynamic Wind" in the manual.
1027 ** New function scm_dynwind_free
1029 This function calls 'free' on a given pointer when a dynwind context
1030 is left. Thus the call to scm_dynwind_unwind_handler above could be
1031 replaced with simply scm_dynwind_free (mem).
1033 ** New functions scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
1034 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs
1036 Like scm_call_with_blocked_asyncs etc. but for C functions.
1038 ** New functions scm_dynwind_block_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs
1040 In addition to scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs you can now also use
1041 scm_dynwind_block_asyncs in a 'dynwind context' (see above). Likewise for
1042 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs.
1044 ** The macros SCM_DEFER_INTS, SCM_ALLOW_INTS, SCM_REDEFER_INTS,
1045 SCM_REALLOW_INTS have been deprecated.
1047 They do no longer fulfill their original role of blocking signal
1048 delivery. Depending on what you want to achieve, replace a pair of
1049 SCM_DEFER_INTS and SCM_ALLOW_INTS with a dynwind context that locks a
1050 mutex, blocks asyncs, or both. See node "Critical Sections" in the
1053 ** The value 'scm_mask_ints' is no longer writable.
1055 Previously, you could set scm_mask_ints directly. This is no longer
1056 possible. Use scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
1057 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs instead.
1059 ** New way to temporarily set the current input, output or error ports
1061 C code can now use scm_dynwind_current_<foo>_port in a 'dynwind
1062 context' (see above). <foo> is one of "input", "output" or "error".
1064 ** New way to temporarily set fluids
1066 C code can now use scm_dynwind_fluid in a 'dynwind context' (see
1067 above) to temporarily set the value of a fluid.
1069 ** New types scm_t_intmax and scm_t_uintmax.
1071 On platforms that have them, these types are identical to intmax_t and
1072 uintmax_t, respectively. On other platforms, they are identical to
1073 the largest integer types that Guile knows about.
1075 ** The functions scm_unmemocopy and scm_unmemoize have been removed.
1077 You should not have used them.
1079 ** Many public #defines with generic names have been made private.
1081 #defines with generic names like HAVE_FOO or SIZEOF_FOO have been made
1082 private or renamed with a more suitable public name.
1084 ** The macro SCM_TYP16S has been deprecated.
1086 This macro is not intended for public use.
1088 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_INEXACTP has been deprecated.
1090 Use scm_is_true (scm_inexact_p (...)) instead.
1092 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_REALP has been deprecated.
1094 Use scm_is_real instead.
1096 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_COMPLEXP has been deprecated.
1098 Use scm_is_complex instead.
1100 ** Some preprocessor defines have been deprecated.
1102 These defines indicated whether a certain feature was present in Guile
1103 or not. Going forward, assume that the features are always present.
1105 The macros are: USE_THREADS, GUILE_ISELECT, READER_EXTENSIONS,
1106 DEBUG_EXTENSIONS, DYNAMIC_LINKING.
1108 The following macros have been removed completely: MEMOIZE_LOCALS,
1109 SCM_RECKLESS, SCM_CAUTIOUS.
1111 ** The preprocessor define STACK_DIRECTION has been deprecated.
1113 There should be no need to know about the stack direction for ordinary
1116 ** New function: scm_effective_version
1118 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
1119 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
1120 to the distribution" above.
1122 ** The function scm_call_with_new_thread has a new prototype.
1124 Instead of taking a list with the thunk and handler, these two
1125 arguments are now passed directly:
1127 SCM scm_call_with_new_thread (SCM thunk, SCM handler);
1129 This is an incompatible change.
1131 ** New snarfer macro SCM_DEFINE_PUBLIC.
1133 This is like SCM_DEFINE, but also calls scm_c_export for the defined
1134 function in the init section.
1136 ** The snarfer macro SCM_SNARF_INIT is now officially supported.
1138 ** Garbage collector rewrite.
1140 The garbage collector is cleaned up a lot, and now uses lazy
1141 sweeping. This is reflected in the output of (gc-stats); since cells
1142 are being freed when they are allocated, the cells-allocated field
1143 stays roughly constant.
1145 For malloc related triggers, the behavior is changed. It uses the same
1146 heuristic as the cell-triggered collections. It may be tuned with the
1147 environment variables GUILE_MIN_YIELD_MALLOC. This is the percentage
1148 for minimum yield of malloc related triggers. The default is 40.
1149 GUILE_INIT_MALLOC_LIMIT sets the initial trigger for doing a GC. The
1152 Debugging operations for the freelist have been deprecated, along with
1153 the C variables that control garbage collection. The environment
1154 variables GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE, GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2,
1155 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1, and GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2 should be used.
1157 For understanding the memory usage of a GUILE program, the routine
1158 gc-live-object-stats returns an alist containing the number of live
1159 objects for every type.
1162 ** The function scm_definedp has been renamed to scm_defined_p
1164 The name scm_definedp is deprecated.
1166 ** The struct scm_cell type has been renamed to scm_t_cell
1168 This is in accordance to Guile's naming scheme for types. Note that
1169 the name scm_cell is now used for a function that allocates and
1170 initializes a new cell (see below).
1172 ** New functions for memory management
1174 A new set of functions for memory management has been added since the
1175 old way (scm_must_malloc, scm_must_free, etc) was error prone and
1176 indeed, Guile itself contained some long standing bugs that could
1177 cause aborts in long running programs.
1179 The new functions are more symmetrical and do not need cooperation
1180 from smob free routines, among other improvements.
1182 The new functions are scm_malloc, scm_realloc, scm_calloc, scm_strdup,
1183 scm_strndup, scm_gc_malloc, scm_gc_calloc, scm_gc_realloc,
1184 scm_gc_free, scm_gc_register_collectable_memory, and
1185 scm_gc_unregister_collectable_memory. Refer to the manual for more
1186 details and for upgrading instructions.
1188 The old functions for memory management have been deprecated. They
1189 are: scm_must_malloc, scm_must_realloc, scm_must_free,
1190 scm_must_strdup, scm_must_strndup, scm_done_malloc, scm_done_free.
1192 ** Declarations of exported features are marked with SCM_API.
1194 Every declaration of a feature that belongs to the exported Guile API
1195 has been marked by adding the macro "SCM_API" to the start of the
1196 declaration. This macro can expand into different things, the most
1197 common of which is just "extern" for Unix platforms. On Win32, it can
1198 be used to control which symbols are exported from a DLL.
1200 If you `#define SCM_IMPORT' before including <libguile.h>, SCM_API
1201 will expand into "__declspec (dllimport) extern", which is needed for
1202 linking to the Guile DLL in Windows.
1204 There are also SCM_RL_IMPORT, SCM_SRFI1314_IMPORT, and
1205 SCM_SRFI4_IMPORT, for the corresponding libraries.
1207 ** SCM_NEWCELL and SCM_NEWCELL2 have been deprecated.
1209 Use the new functions scm_cell and scm_double_cell instead. The old
1210 macros had problems because with them allocation and initialization
1211 was separated and the GC could sometimes observe half initialized
1212 cells. Only careful coding by the user of SCM_NEWCELL and
1213 SCM_NEWCELL2 could make this safe and efficient.
1215 ** CHECK_ENTRY, CHECK_APPLY and CHECK_EXIT have been deprecated.
1217 Use the variables scm_check_entry_p, scm_check_apply_p and scm_check_exit_p
1220 ** SRCBRKP has been deprecated.
1222 Use scm_c_source_property_breakpoint_p instead.
1224 ** Deprecated: scm_makmacro
1226 Change your code to use either scm_makmmacro or to define macros in
1227 Scheme, using 'define-macro'.
1229 ** New function scm_c_port_for_each.
1231 This function is like scm_port_for_each but takes a pointer to a C
1232 function as the callback instead of a SCM value.
1234 ** The names scm_internal_select, scm_thread_sleep, and
1235 scm_thread_usleep have been discouraged.
1237 Use scm_std_select, scm_std_sleep, scm_std_usleep instead.
1239 ** The GC can no longer be blocked.
1241 The global flags scm_gc_heap_lock and scm_block_gc have been removed.
1242 The GC can now run (partially) concurrently with other code and thus
1243 blocking it is not well defined.
1245 ** Many definitions have been removed that were previously deprecated.
1247 scm_lisp_nil, scm_lisp_t, s_nil_ify, scm_m_nil_ify, s_t_ify,
1248 scm_m_t_ify, s_0_cond, scm_m_0_cond, s_0_ify, scm_m_0_ify, s_1_ify,
1249 scm_m_1_ify, scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2,
1250 scm_tc16_allocated, SCM_SET_SYMBOL_HASH, SCM_IM_NIL_IFY, SCM_IM_T_IFY,
1251 SCM_IM_0_COND, SCM_IM_0_IFY, SCM_IM_1_IFY, SCM_GC_SET_ALLOCATED,
1252 scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL, SCM_INT_SIGNAL,
1253 SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL, SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL,
1254 SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD, SCM_ORD_SIG,
1255 SCM_NUM_SIGS, scm_top_level_lookup_closure_var,
1256 *top-level-lookup-closure*, scm_system_transformer, scm_eval_3,
1257 scm_eval2, root_module_lookup_closure, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
1258 SCM_RWSTRINGP, scm_read_only_string_p, scm_make_shared_substring,
1259 scm_tc7_substring, sym_huh, SCM_VARVCELL, SCM_UDVARIABLEP,
1260 SCM_DEFVARIABLEP, scm_mkbig, scm_big2inum, scm_adjbig, scm_normbig,
1261 scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl, SCM_FIXNUM_BIT,
1262 SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_SLOPPY_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET,
1263 SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_ROLENGTH,
1264 SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
1265 scm_sym2vcell, scm_intern, scm_intern0, scm_sysintern, scm_sysintern0,
1266 scm_sysintern0_no_module_lookup, scm_init_symbols_deprecated,
1267 scm_vector_set_length_x, scm_contregs, scm_debug_info,
1268 scm_debug_frame, SCM_DSIDEVAL, SCM_CONST_LONG, SCM_VCELL,
1269 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL, SCM_VCELL_INIT, SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL_INIT,
1270 SCM_HUGE_LENGTH, SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING,
1271 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY, SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY,
1272 SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, DIGITS, scm_small_istr2int, scm_istr2int,
1273 scm_istr2flo, scm_istring2number, scm_istr2int, scm_istr2flo,
1274 scm_istring2number, scm_vtable_index_vcell, scm_si_vcell, SCM_ECONSP,
1275 SCM_NECONSP, SCM_GLOC_VAR, SCM_GLOC_VAL, SCM_GLOC_SET_VAL,
1276 SCM_GLOC_VAL_LOC, scm_make_gloc, scm_gloc_p, scm_tc16_variable,
1277 SCM_CHARS, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH.
1279 * Changes to bundled modules
1283 Using the (ice-9 debug) module no longer automatically switches Guile
1284 to use the debugging evaluator. If you want to switch to the
1285 debugging evaluator (which is needed for backtrace information if you
1286 hit an error), please add an explicit "(debug-enable 'debug)" to your
1287 code just after the code to use (ice-9 debug).
1290 Changes since Guile 1.4:
1292 * Changes to the distribution
1294 ** A top-level TODO file is included.
1296 ** Guile now uses a versioning scheme similar to that of the Linux kernel.
1298 Guile now always uses three numbers to represent the version,
1299 i.e. "1.6.5". The first number, 1, is the major version number, the
1300 second number, 6, is the minor version number, and the third number,
1301 5, is the micro version number. Changes in major version number
1302 indicate major changes in Guile.
1304 Minor version numbers that are even denote stable releases, and odd
1305 minor version numbers denote development versions (which may be
1306 unstable). The micro version number indicates a minor sub-revision of
1307 a given MAJOR.MINOR release.
1309 In keeping with the new scheme, (minor-version) and scm_minor_version
1310 no longer return everything but the major version number. They now
1311 just return the minor version number. Two new functions
1312 (micro-version) and scm_micro_version have been added to report the
1313 micro version number.
1315 In addition, ./GUILE-VERSION now defines GUILE_MICRO_VERSION.
1317 ** New preprocessor definitions are available for checking versions.
1319 version.h now #defines SCM_MAJOR_VERSION, SCM_MINOR_VERSION, and
1320 SCM_MICRO_VERSION to the appropriate integer values.
1322 ** Guile now actively warns about deprecated features.
1324 The new configure option `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' and the
1325 environment variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED control this mechanism.
1326 See INSTALL and README for more information.
1328 ** Guile is much more likely to work on 64-bit architectures.
1330 Guile now compiles and passes "make check" with only two UNRESOLVED GC
1331 cases on Alpha and ia64 based machines now. Thanks to John Goerzen
1332 for the use of a test machine, and thanks to Stefan Jahn for ia64
1335 ** New functions: setitimer and getitimer.
1337 These implement a fairly direct interface to the libc functions of the
1340 ** The #. reader extension is now disabled by default.
1342 For safety reasons, #. evaluation is disabled by default. To
1343 re-enable it, set the fluid read-eval? to #t. For example:
1345 (fluid-set! read-eval? #t)
1347 but make sure you realize the potential security risks involved. With
1348 read-eval? enabled, reading a data file from an untrusted source can
1351 ** New SRFI modules have been added:
1353 SRFI-0 `cond-expand' is now supported in Guile, without requiring
1356 (srfi srfi-1) is a library containing many useful pair- and list-processing
1359 (srfi srfi-2) exports and-let*.
1361 (srfi srfi-4) implements homogeneous numeric vector datatypes.
1363 (srfi srfi-6) is a dummy module for now, since guile already provides
1364 all of the srfi-6 procedures by default: open-input-string,
1365 open-output-string, get-output-string.
1367 (srfi srfi-8) exports receive.
1369 (srfi srfi-9) exports define-record-type.
1371 (srfi srfi-10) exports define-reader-ctor and implements the reader
1374 (srfi srfi-11) exports let-values and let*-values.
1376 (srfi srfi-13) implements the SRFI String Library.
1378 (srfi srfi-14) implements the SRFI Character-Set Library.
1380 (srfi srfi-17) implements setter and getter-with-setter and redefines
1381 some accessor procedures as procedures with getters. (such as car,
1382 cdr, vector-ref etc.)
1384 (srfi srfi-19) implements the SRFI Time/Date Library.
1386 ** New scripts / "executable modules"
1388 Subdirectory "scripts" contains Scheme modules that are packaged to
1389 also be executable as scripts. At this time, these scripts are available:
1398 See README there for more info.
1400 These scripts can be invoked from the shell with the new program
1401 "guile-tools", which keeps track of installation directory for you.
1404 $ guile-tools display-commentary srfi/*.scm
1406 guile-tools is copied to the standard $bindir on "make install".
1408 ** New module (ice-9 stack-catch):
1410 stack-catch is like catch, but saves the current state of the stack in
1411 the fluid the-last-stack. This fluid can be useful when using the
1412 debugger and when re-throwing an error.
1414 ** The module (ice-9 and-let*) has been renamed to (ice-9 and-let-star)
1416 This has been done to prevent problems on lesser operating systems
1417 that can't tolerate `*'s in file names. The exported macro continues
1418 to be named `and-let*', of course.
1420 On systems that support it, there is also a compatibility module named
1421 (ice-9 and-let*). It will go away in the next release.
1423 ** New modules (oop goops) etc.:
1426 (oop goops describe)
1428 (oop goops active-slot)
1429 (oop goops composite-slot)
1431 The Guile Object Oriented Programming System (GOOPS) has been
1432 integrated into Guile. For further information, consult the GOOPS
1433 manual and tutorial in the `doc' directory.
1435 ** New module (ice-9 rdelim).
1437 This exports the following procedures which were previously defined
1438 in the default environment:
1440 read-line read-line! read-delimited read-delimited! %read-delimited!
1441 %read-line write-line
1443 For backwards compatibility the definitions are still imported into the
1444 default environment in this version of Guile. However you should add:
1446 (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim))
1448 to any program which uses the definitions, since this may change in
1451 Alternatively, if guile-scsh is installed, the (scsh rdelim) module
1452 can be used for similar functionality.
1454 ** New module (ice-9 rw)
1456 This is a subset of the (scsh rw) module from guile-scsh. Currently
1457 it defines two procedures:
1459 *** New function: read-string!/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
1461 Read characters from a port or file descriptor into a string STR.
1462 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
1463 fport. This procedure is scsh-compatible and can efficiently read
1466 *** New function: write-string/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
1468 Write characters from a string STR to a port or file descriptor.
1469 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
1470 fport. This procedure is mostly compatible and can efficiently
1471 write large strings.
1473 ** New module (ice-9 match)
1475 This module includes Andrew K. Wright's pattern matcher. See
1476 ice-9/match.scm for brief description or
1478 http://www.star-lab.com/wright/code.html
1480 for complete documentation.
1482 ** New module (ice-9 buffered-input)
1484 This module provides procedures to construct an input port from an
1485 underlying source of input that reads and returns its input in chunks.
1486 The underlying input source is a Scheme procedure, specified by the
1487 caller, which the port invokes whenever it needs more input.
1489 This is useful when building an input port whose back end is Readline
1490 or a UI element such as the GtkEntry widget.
1494 The reference and tutorial documentation that was previously
1495 distributed separately, as `guile-doc', is now included in the core
1496 Guile distribution. The documentation consists of the following
1499 - The Guile Tutorial (guile-tut.texi) contains a tutorial introduction
1502 - The Guile Reference Manual (guile.texi) contains (or is intended to
1503 contain) reference documentation on all aspects of Guile.
1505 - The GOOPS Manual (goops.texi) contains both tutorial-style and
1506 reference documentation for using GOOPS, Guile's Object Oriented
1509 - The Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
1512 See the README file in the `doc' directory for more details.
1514 ** There are a couple of examples in the examples/ directory now.
1516 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
1518 ** New command line option `--use-srfi'
1520 Using this option, SRFI modules can be loaded on startup and be
1521 available right from the beginning. This makes programming portable
1522 Scheme programs easier.
1524 The option `--use-srfi' expects a comma-separated list of numbers,
1525 each representing a SRFI number to be loaded into the interpreter
1526 before starting evaluating a script file or the REPL. Additionally,
1527 the feature identifier for the loaded SRFIs is recognized by
1528 `cond-expand' when using this option.
1531 $ guile --use-srfi=8,13
1532 guile> (receive (x z) (values 1 2) (+ 1 2))
1534 guile> (string-pad "bla" 20)
1537 ** Guile now always starts up in the `(guile-user)' module.
1539 Previously, scripts executed via the `-s' option would run in the
1540 `(guile)' module and the repl would run in the `(guile-user)' module.
1541 Now every user action takes place in the `(guile-user)' module by
1544 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
1546 ** Character classifiers work for non-ASCII characters.
1548 The predicates `char-alphabetic?', `char-numeric?',
1549 `char-whitespace?', `char-lower?', `char-upper?' and `char-is-both?'
1550 no longer check whether their arguments are ASCII characters.
1551 Previously, a character would only be considered alphabetic when it
1552 was also ASCII, for example.
1554 ** Previously deprecated Scheme functions have been removed:
1556 tag - no replacement.
1557 fseek - replaced by seek.
1558 list* - replaced by cons*.
1560 ** It's now possible to create modules with controlled environments
1564 (use-modules (ice-9 safe))
1565 (define m (make-safe-module))
1566 ;;; m will now be a module containing only a safe subset of R5RS
1567 (eval '(+ 1 2) m) --> 3
1568 (eval 'load m) --> ERROR: Unbound variable: load
1570 ** Evaluation of "()", the empty list, is now an error.
1572 Previously, the expression "()" evaluated to the empty list. This has
1573 been changed to signal a "missing expression" error. The correct way
1574 to write the empty list as a literal constant is to use quote: "'()".
1576 ** New concept of `Guile Extensions'.
1578 A Guile Extension is just a ordinary shared library that can be linked
1579 at run-time. We found it advantageous to give this simple concept a
1580 dedicated name to distinguish the issues related to shared libraries
1581 from the issues related to the module system.
1583 *** New function: load-extension
1585 Executing (load-extension lib init) is mostly equivalent to
1587 (dynamic-call init (dynamic-link lib))
1589 except when scm_register_extension has been called previously.
1590 Whenever appropriate, you should use `load-extension' instead of
1591 dynamic-link and dynamic-call.
1593 *** New C function: scm_c_register_extension
1595 This function registers a initialization function for use by
1596 `load-extension'. Use it when you don't want specific extensions to
1597 be loaded as shared libraries (for example on platforms that don't
1598 support dynamic linking).
1600 ** Auto-loading of compiled-code modules is deprecated.
1602 Guile used to be able to automatically find and link a shared
1603 library to satisfy requests for a module. For example, the module
1604 `(foo bar)' could be implemented by placing a shared library named
1605 "foo/libbar.so" (or with a different extension) in a directory on the
1608 This has been found to be too tricky, and is no longer supported. The
1609 shared libraries are now called "extensions". You should now write a
1610 small Scheme file that calls `load-extension' to load the shared
1611 library and initialize it explicitly.
1613 The shared libraries themselves should be installed in the usual
1614 places for shared libraries, with names like "libguile-foo-bar".
1616 For example, place this into a file "foo/bar.scm"
1618 (define-module (foo bar))
1620 (load-extension "libguile-foo-bar" "foobar_init")
1622 ** Backward incompatible change: eval EXP ENVIRONMENT-SPECIFIER
1624 `eval' is now R5RS, that is it takes two arguments.
1625 The second argument is an environment specifier, i.e. either
1627 (scheme-report-environment 5)
1628 (null-environment 5)
1629 (interaction-environment)
1635 ** The module system has been made more disciplined.
1637 The function `eval' will save and restore the current module around
1638 the evaluation of the specified expression. While this expression is
1639 evaluated, `(current-module)' will now return the right module, which
1640 is the module specified as the second argument to `eval'.
1642 A consequence of this change is that `eval' is not particularly
1643 useful when you want allow the evaluated code to change what module is
1644 designated as the current module and have this change persist from one
1645 call to `eval' to the next. The read-eval-print-loop is an example
1646 where `eval' is now inadequate. To compensate, there is a new
1647 function `primitive-eval' that does not take a module specifier and
1648 that does not save/restore the current module. You should use this
1649 function together with `set-current-module', `current-module', etc
1650 when you want to have more control over the state that is carried from
1651 one eval to the next.
1653 Additionally, it has been made sure that forms that are evaluated at
1654 the top level are always evaluated with respect to the current module.
1655 Previously, subforms of top-level forms such as `begin', `case',
1656 etc. did not respect changes to the current module although these
1657 subforms are at the top-level as well.
1659 To prevent strange behavior, the forms `define-module',
1660 `use-modules', `use-syntax', and `export' have been restricted to only
1661 work on the top level. The forms `define-public' and
1662 `defmacro-public' only export the new binding on the top level. They
1663 behave just like `define' and `defmacro', respectively, when they are
1664 used in a lexical environment.
1666 Also, `export' will no longer silently re-export bindings imported
1667 from a used module. It will emit a `deprecation' warning and will
1668 cease to perform any re-export in the next version. If you actually
1669 want to re-export bindings, use the new `re-export' in place of
1670 `export'. The new `re-export' will not make copies of variables when
1671 rexporting them, as `export' did wrongly.
1673 ** Module system now allows selection and renaming of imported bindings
1675 Previously, when using `use-modules' or the `#:use-module' clause in
1676 the `define-module' form, all the bindings (association of symbols to
1677 values) for imported modules were added to the "current module" on an
1678 as-is basis. This has been changed to allow finer control through two
1679 new facilities: selection and renaming.
1681 You can now select which of the imported module's bindings are to be
1682 visible in the current module by using the `:select' clause. This
1683 clause also can be used to rename individual bindings. For example:
1685 ;; import all bindings no questions asked
1686 (use-modules (ice-9 common-list))
1688 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them;
1689 ;; the current module sees: every some zonk-y zonk-n
1690 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1692 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1693 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))))
1695 You can also programmatically rename all selected bindings using the
1696 `:renamer' clause, which specifies a proc that takes a symbol and
1697 returns another symbol. Because it is common practice to use a prefix,
1698 we now provide the convenience procedure `symbol-prefix-proc'. For
1701 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
1702 ;; and all four w/ prefix "CL:";
1703 ;; the current module sees: CL:every CL:some CL:zonk-y CL:zonk-n
1704 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1706 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1707 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
1708 :renamer (symbol-prefix-proc 'CL:)))
1710 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
1711 ;; and all four by upcasing.
1712 ;; the current module sees: EVERY SOME ZONK-Y ZONK-N
1713 (define (upcase-symbol sym)
1714 (string->symbol (string-upcase (symbol->string sym))))
1716 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1718 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1719 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
1720 :renamer upcase-symbol))
1722 Note that programmatic renaming is done *after* individual renaming.
1723 Also, the above examples show `use-modules', but the same facilities are
1724 available for the `#:use-module' clause of `define-module'.
1726 See manual for more info.
1728 ** The semantics of guardians have changed.
1730 The changes are for the most part compatible. An important criterion
1731 was to keep the typical usage of guardians as simple as before, but to
1732 make the semantics safer and (as a result) more useful.
1734 *** All objects returned from guardians are now properly alive.
1736 It is now guaranteed that any object referenced by an object returned
1737 from a guardian is alive. It's now impossible for a guardian to
1738 return a "contained" object before its "containing" object.
1740 One incompatible (but probably not very important) change resulting
1741 from this is that it is no longer possible to guard objects that
1742 indirectly reference themselves (i.e. are parts of cycles). If you do
1743 so accidentally, you'll get a warning.
1745 *** There are now two types of guardians: greedy and sharing.
1747 If you call (make-guardian #t) or just (make-guardian), you'll get a
1748 greedy guardian, and for (make-guardian #f) a sharing guardian.
1750 Greedy guardians are the default because they are more "defensive".
1751 You can only greedily guard an object once. If you guard an object
1752 more than once, once in a greedy guardian and the rest of times in
1753 sharing guardians, then it is guaranteed that the object won't be
1754 returned from sharing guardians as long as it is greedily guarded
1757 Guardians returned by calls to `make-guardian' can now take one more
1758 optional parameter, which says whether to throw an error in case an
1759 attempt is made to greedily guard an object that is already greedily
1760 guarded. The default is true, i.e. throw an error. If the parameter
1761 is false, the guardian invocation returns #t if guarding was
1762 successful and #f if it wasn't.
1764 Also, since greedy guarding is, in effect, a side-effecting operation
1765 on objects, a new function is introduced: `destroy-guardian!'.
1766 Invoking this function on a guardian renders it unoperative and, if
1767 the guardian is greedy, clears the "greedily guarded" property of the
1768 objects that were guarded by it, thus undoing the side effect.
1770 Note that all this hair is hardly very important, since guardian
1771 objects are usually permanent.
1773 ** Continuations created by call-with-current-continuation now accept
1774 any number of arguments, as required by R5RS.
1776 ** New function `issue-deprecation-warning'
1778 This function is used to display the deprecation messages that are
1779 controlled by GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION as explained in the README.
1782 (issue-deprecation-warning "`id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.")
1786 ;; `id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.
1791 ** New syntax `begin-deprecated'
1793 When deprecated features are included (as determined by the configure
1794 option --enable-deprecated), `begin-deprecated' is identical to
1795 `begin'. When deprecated features are excluded, it always evaluates
1796 to `#f', ignoring the body forms.
1798 ** New function `make-object-property'
1800 This function returns a new `procedure with setter' P that can be used
1801 to attach a property to objects. When calling P as
1805 where `obj' is any kind of object, it attaches `val' to `obj' in such
1806 a way that it can be retrieved by calling P as
1810 This function will replace procedure properties, symbol properties and
1811 source properties eventually.
1813 ** Module (ice-9 optargs) now uses keywords instead of `#&'.
1815 Instead of #&optional, #&key, etc you should now use #:optional,
1816 #:key, etc. Since #:optional is a keyword, you can write it as just
1817 :optional when (read-set! keywords 'prefix) is active.
1819 The old reader syntax `#&' is still supported, but deprecated. It
1820 will be removed in the next release.
1822 ** New define-module option: pure
1824 Tells the module system not to include any bindings from the root
1829 (define-module (totally-empty-module)
1832 ** New define-module option: export NAME1 ...
1834 Export names NAME1 ...
1836 This option is required if you want to be able to export bindings from
1837 a module which doesn't import one of `define-public' or `export'.
1841 (define-module (foo)
1843 :use-module (ice-9 r5rs)
1846 ;;; Note that we're pure R5RS below this point!
1851 ** New function: object->string OBJ
1853 Return a Scheme string obtained by printing a given object.
1855 ** New function: port? X
1857 Returns a boolean indicating whether X is a port. Equivalent to
1858 `(or (input-port? X) (output-port? X))'.
1860 ** New function: file-port?
1862 Determines whether a given object is a port that is related to a file.
1864 ** New function: port-for-each proc
1866 Apply PROC to each port in the Guile port table in turn. The return
1867 value is unspecified. More specifically, PROC is applied exactly once
1868 to every port that exists in the system at the time PORT-FOR-EACH is
1869 invoked. Changes to the port table while PORT-FOR-EACH is running
1870 have no effect as far as PORT-FOR-EACH is concerned.
1872 ** New function: dup2 oldfd newfd
1874 A simple wrapper for the `dup2' system call. Copies the file
1875 descriptor OLDFD to descriptor number NEWFD, replacing the
1876 previous meaning of NEWFD. Both OLDFD and NEWFD must be integers.
1877 Unlike for dup->fdes or primitive-move->fdes, no attempt is made
1878 to move away ports which are using NEWFD. The return value is
1881 ** New function: close-fdes fd
1883 A simple wrapper for the `close' system call. Close file
1884 descriptor FD, which must be an integer. Unlike close (*note
1885 close: Ports and File Descriptors.), the file descriptor will be
1886 closed even if a port is using it. The return value is
1889 ** New function: crypt password salt
1891 Encrypts `password' using the standard unix password encryption
1894 ** New function: chroot path
1896 Change the root directory of the running process to `path'.
1898 ** New functions: getlogin, cuserid
1900 Return the login name or the user name of the current effective user
1903 ** New functions: getpriority which who, setpriority which who prio
1905 Get or set the priority of the running process.
1907 ** New function: getpass prompt
1909 Read a password from the terminal, first displaying `prompt' and
1912 ** New function: flock file operation
1914 Set/remove an advisory shared or exclusive lock on `file'.
1916 ** New functions: sethostname name, gethostname
1918 Set or get the hostname of the machine the current process is running
1921 ** New function: mkstemp! tmpl
1923 mkstemp creates a new unique file in the file system and returns a
1924 new buffered port open for reading and writing to the file. TMPL
1925 is a string specifying where the file should be created: it must
1926 end with `XXXXXX' and will be changed in place to return the name
1927 of the temporary file.
1929 ** New function: open-input-string string
1931 Return an input string port which delivers the characters from
1932 `string'. This procedure, together with `open-output-string' and
1933 `get-output-string' implements SRFI-6.
1935 ** New function: open-output-string
1937 Return an output string port which collects all data written to it.
1938 The data can then be retrieved by `get-output-string'.
1940 ** New function: get-output-string
1942 Return the contents of an output string port.
1944 ** New function: identity
1946 Return the argument.
1948 ** socket, connect, accept etc., now have support for IPv6. IPv6 addresses
1949 are represented in Scheme as integers with normal host byte ordering.
1951 ** New function: inet-pton family address
1953 Convert a printable string network address into an integer. Note that
1954 unlike the C version of this function, the result is an integer with
1955 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
1958 (inet-pton AF_INET "127.0.0.1") => 2130706433
1959 (inet-pton AF_INET6 "::1") => 1
1961 ** New function: inet-ntop family address
1963 Convert an integer network address into a printable string. Note that
1964 unlike the C version of this function, the input is an integer with
1965 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
1968 (inet-ntop AF_INET 2130706433) => "127.0.0.1"
1969 (inet-ntop AF_INET6 (- (expt 2 128) 1)) =>
1970 ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
1974 Use `identity' instead.
1980 ** Deprecated: return-it
1984 ** Deprecated: string-character-length
1986 Use `string-length' instead.
1988 ** Deprecated: flags
1990 Use `logior' instead.
1992 ** Deprecated: close-all-ports-except.
1994 This was intended for closing ports in a child process after a fork,
1995 but it has the undesirable side effect of flushing buffers.
1996 port-for-each is more flexible.
1998 ** The (ice-9 popen) module now attempts to set up file descriptors in
1999 the child process from the current Scheme ports, instead of using the
2000 current values of file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 in the parent process.
2002 ** Removed function: builtin-weak-bindings
2004 There is no such concept as a weak binding any more.
2006 ** Removed constants: bignum-radix, scm-line-incrementors
2008 ** define-method: New syntax mandatory.
2010 The new method syntax is now mandatory:
2012 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ...) BODY ...)
2013 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ... . REST-ARG) BODY ...)
2015 ARG-SPEC ::= ARG-NAME | (ARG-NAME TYPE)
2016 REST-ARG ::= ARG-NAME
2018 If you have old code using the old syntax, import
2019 (oop goops old-define-method) before (oop goops) as in:
2021 (use-modules (oop goops old-define-method) (oop goops))
2023 ** Deprecated function: builtin-variable
2024 Removed function: builtin-bindings
2026 There is no longer a distinction between builtin or other variables.
2027 Use module system operations for all variables.
2029 ** Lazy-catch handlers are no longer allowed to return.
2031 That is, a call to `throw', `error', etc is now guaranteed to not
2034 ** Bugfixes for (ice-9 getopt-long)
2036 This module is now tested using test-suite/tests/getopt-long.test.
2037 The following bugs have been fixed:
2039 *** Parsing for options that are specified to have `optional' args now checks
2040 if the next element is an option instead of unconditionally taking it as the
2043 *** An error is now thrown for `--opt=val' when the option description
2044 does not specify `(value #t)' or `(value optional)'. This condition used to
2045 be accepted w/o error, contrary to the documentation.
2047 *** The error message for unrecognized options is now more informative.
2048 It used to be "not a record", an artifact of the implementation.
2050 *** The error message for `--opt' terminating the arg list (no value), when
2051 `(value #t)' is specified, is now more informative. It used to be "not enough
2054 *** "Clumped" single-char args now preserve trailing string, use it as arg.
2055 The expansion used to be like so:
2057 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "--xyz")
2059 Note that the "5d" is dropped. Now it is like so:
2061 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "5d" "--xyz")
2063 This enables single-char options to have adjoining arguments as long as their
2064 constituent characters are not potential single-char options.
2066 ** (ice-9 session) procedure `arity' now works with (ice-9 optargs) `lambda*'
2068 The `lambda*' and derivative forms in (ice-9 optargs) now set a procedure
2069 property `arglist', which can be retrieved by `arity'. The result is that
2070 `arity' can give more detailed information than before:
2074 guile> (use-modules (ice-9 optargs))
2075 guile> (define* (foo #:optional a b c) a)
2077 0 or more arguments in `lambda*:G0'.
2082 3 optional arguments: `a', `b' and `c'.
2083 guile> (define* (bar a b #:key c d #:allow-other-keys) a)
2085 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 2 keyword arguments: `c'
2086 and `d', other keywords allowed.
2087 guile> (define* (baz a b #:optional c #:rest r) a)
2089 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 1 optional argument: `c',
2092 * Changes to the C interface
2094 ** Types have been renamed from scm_*_t to scm_t_*.
2096 This has been done for POSIX sake. It reserves identifiers ending
2097 with "_t". What a concept.
2099 The old names are still available with status `deprecated'.
2101 ** scm_t_bits (former scm_bits_t) is now a unsigned type.
2103 ** Deprecated features have been removed.
2107 SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP SCM_ICHRP, SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR
2108 SCM_SETJMPBUF SCM_NSTRINGP SCM_NRWSTRINGP SCM_NVECTORP SCM_DOUBLE_CELLP
2110 *** C Functions removed
2112 scm_sysmissing scm_tag scm_tc16_flo scm_tc_flo
2113 scm_fseek - replaced by scm_seek.
2114 gc-thunk - replaced by after-gc-hook.
2115 gh_int2scmb - replaced by gh_bool2scm.
2116 scm_tc_dblr - replaced by scm_tc16_real.
2117 scm_tc_dblc - replaced by scm_tc16_complex.
2118 scm_list_star - replaced by scm_cons_star.
2120 ** Deprecated: scm_makfromstr
2122 Use scm_mem2string instead.
2124 ** Deprecated: scm_make_shared_substring
2126 Explicit shared substrings will disappear from Guile.
2128 Instead, "normal" strings will be implemented using sharing
2129 internally, combined with a copy-on-write strategy.
2131 ** Deprecated: scm_read_only_string_p
2133 The concept of read-only strings will disappear in next release of
2136 ** Deprecated: scm_sloppy_memq, scm_sloppy_memv, scm_sloppy_member
2138 Instead, use scm_c_memq or scm_memq, scm_memv, scm_member.
2140 ** New functions: scm_call_0, scm_call_1, scm_call_2, scm_call_3
2142 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments. See "Fly
2143 Evaluation" in the manual.
2145 ** New functions: scm_apply_0, scm_apply_1, scm_apply_2, scm_apply_3
2147 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments and a list of
2148 further arguments. See "Fly Evaluation" in the manual.
2150 ** New functions: scm_list_1, scm_list_2, scm_list_3, scm_list_4, scm_list_5
2152 Create a list of the given number of elements. See "List
2153 Constructors" in the manual.
2155 ** Renamed function: scm_listify has been replaced by scm_list_n.
2157 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_LIST0, SCM_LIST1, SCM_LIST2, SCM_LIST3, SCM_LIST4,
2158 SCM_LIST5, SCM_LIST6, SCM_LIST7, SCM_LIST8, SCM_LIST9.
2160 Use functions scm_list_N instead.
2162 ** New function: scm_c_read (SCM port, void *buffer, scm_sizet size)
2164 Used by an application to read arbitrary number of bytes from a port.
2165 Same semantics as libc read, except that scm_c_read only returns less
2166 than SIZE bytes if at end-of-file.
2168 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
2170 ** New function: scm_c_write (SCM port, const void *ptr, scm_sizet size)
2172 Used by an application to write arbitrary number of bytes to an SCM
2173 port. Similar semantics as libc write. However, unlike libc
2174 write, scm_c_write writes the requested number of bytes and has no
2177 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
2179 ** New function: scm_init_guile ()
2181 In contrast to scm_boot_guile, scm_init_guile will return normally
2182 after initializing Guile. It is not available on all systems, tho.
2184 ** New functions: scm_str2symbol, scm_mem2symbol
2186 The function scm_str2symbol takes a const char* pointing to a zero-terminated
2187 field of characters and creates a scheme symbol object from that C string.
2188 The function scm_mem2symbol takes a const char* and a number of characters and
2189 creates a symbol from the characters in that memory area.
2191 ** New functions: scm_primitive_make_property
2192 scm_primitive_property_ref
2193 scm_primitive_property_set_x
2194 scm_primitive_property_del_x
2196 These functions implement a new way to deal with object properties.
2197 See libguile/properties.c for their documentation.
2199 ** New function: scm_done_free (long size)
2201 This function is the inverse of scm_done_malloc. Use it to report the
2202 amount of smob memory you free. The previous method, which involved
2203 calling scm_done_malloc with negative argument, was somewhat
2204 unintuitive (and is still available, of course).
2206 ** New function: scm_c_memq (SCM obj, SCM list)
2208 This function provides a fast C level alternative for scm_memq for the case
2209 that the list parameter is known to be a proper list. The function is a
2210 replacement for scm_sloppy_memq, but is stricter in its requirements on its
2211 list input parameter, since for anything else but a proper list the function's
2212 behaviour is undefined - it may even crash or loop endlessly. Further, for
2213 the case that the object is not found in the list, scm_c_memq returns #f which
2214 is similar to scm_memq, but different from scm_sloppy_memq's behaviour.
2216 ** New functions: scm_remember_upto_here_1, scm_remember_upto_here_2,
2217 scm_remember_upto_here
2219 These functions replace the function scm_remember.
2221 ** Deprecated function: scm_remember
2223 Use one of the new functions scm_remember_upto_here_1,
2224 scm_remember_upto_here_2 or scm_remember_upto_here instead.
2226 ** New function: scm_allocate_string
2228 This function replaces the function scm_makstr.
2230 ** Deprecated function: scm_makstr
2232 Use the new function scm_allocate_string instead.
2234 ** New global variable scm_gc_running_p introduced.
2236 Use this variable to find out if garbage collection is being executed. Up to
2237 now applications have used scm_gc_heap_lock to test if garbage collection was
2238 running, which also works because of the fact that up to know only the garbage
2239 collector has set this variable. But, this is an implementation detail that
2240 may change. Further, scm_gc_heap_lock is not set throughout gc, thus the use
2241 of this variable is (and has been) not fully safe anyway.
2243 ** New macros: SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH
2245 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
2247 ** New macros: SCM_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_CCLO_LENGTH, SCM_STACK_LENGTH,
2248 SCM_STRING_LENGTH, SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
2249 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH.
2251 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH.
2253 ** New macros: SCM_SET_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH,
2254 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
2255 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH
2257 Use these instead of SCM_SETLENGTH
2259 ** New macros: SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_CCLO_BASE,
2260 SCM_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_COMPLEX_MEM,
2263 Use these instead of SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS, SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS or
2266 ** New macros: SCM_SET_BIGNUM_BASE, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS,
2267 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE,
2270 Use these instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
2272 ** New macro: SCM_BITVECTOR_P
2274 ** New macro: SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X
2276 Use instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
2278 ** New macros: SCM_DIR_OPEN_P, SCM_DIR_FLAG_OPEN
2280 For directory objects, use these instead of SCM_OPDIRP and SCM_OPN.
2282 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_OUTOFRANGE, SCM_NALLOC, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL,
2283 SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL,
2284 SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD,
2285 SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS, SCM_SYMBOL_SLOTS, SCM_SLOTS, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
2286 SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_FREEP, SCM_NFREEP, SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS,
2287 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY,
2288 SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_HUGE_LENGTH,
2289 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
2290 SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_RWSTRINGP, SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, SCM_ROCHARS,
2291 SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_GC8MARKP,
2292 SCM_SETGC8MARK, SCM_CLRGC8MARK, SCM_GCTYP16, SCM_GCCDR, SCM_SUBR_DOC,
2293 SCM_OPDIRP, SCM_VALIDATE_OPDIR, SCM_WTA, RETURN_SCM_WTA, SCM_CONST_LONG,
2294 SCM_WNA, SCM_FUNC_NAME, SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_COPY,
2295 SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_DEF_COPY, SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP, SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP,
2296 SCM_SETAND_CDR, SCM_SETOR_CDR, SCM_SETAND_CAR, SCM_SETOR_CAR
2298 Use SCM_ASSERT_RANGE or SCM_VALIDATE_XXX_RANGE instead of SCM_OUTOFRANGE.
2299 Use scm_memory_error instead of SCM_NALLOC.
2300 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP.
2301 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR.
2302 Use SCM_FREE_CELL_P instead of SCM_FREEP/SCM_NFREEP
2303 Use a type specific accessor macro instead of SCM_CHARS/SCM_UCHARS.
2304 Use a type specific accessor instead of SCM(_|_RO|_HUGE_)LENGTH.
2305 Use SCM_VALIDATE_(SYMBOL|STRING) instead of SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING.
2306 Use SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
2307 Use SCM_STRINGP or SCM_SYMBOLP instead of SCM_ROSTRINGP.
2308 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_RWSTRINGP.
2309 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING.
2310 Use SCM_STRING_CHARS instead of SCM_ROCHARS.
2311 Use SCM_STRING_UCHARS instead of SCM_ROUCHARS.
2312 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETLENGTH.
2313 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
2314 Use a type specific length macro instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
2315 Use SCM_GCMARKP instead of SCM_GC8MARKP.
2316 Use SCM_SETGCMARK instead of SCM_SETGC8MARK.
2317 Use SCM_CLRGCMARK instead of SCM_CLRGC8MARK.
2318 Use SCM_TYP16 instead of SCM_GCTYP16.
2319 Use SCM_CDR instead of SCM_GCCDR.
2320 Use SCM_DIR_OPEN_P instead of SCM_OPDIRP.
2321 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of SCM_WTA.
2322 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of RETURN_SCM_WTA.
2323 Use SCM_VCELL_INIT instead of SCM_CONST_LONG.
2324 Use SCM_WRONG_NUM_ARGS instead of SCM_WNA.
2325 Use SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP.
2326 Use !SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP.
2328 ** Removed function: scm_struct_init
2330 ** Removed variable: scm_symhash_dim
2332 ** Renamed function: scm_make_cont has been replaced by
2333 scm_make_continuation, which has a different interface.
2335 ** Deprecated function: scm_call_catching_errors
2337 Use scm_catch or scm_lazy_catch from throw.[ch] instead.
2339 ** Deprecated function: scm_strhash
2341 Use scm_string_hash instead.
2343 ** Deprecated function: scm_vector_set_length_x
2345 Instead, create a fresh vector of the desired size and copy the contents.
2347 ** scm_gensym has changed prototype
2349 scm_gensym now only takes one argument.
2351 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc7_ssymbol, scm_tc7_msymbol, scm_tcs_symbols,
2354 There is now only a single symbol type scm_tc7_symbol.
2355 The tag scm_tc7_lvector was not used anyway.
2357 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe, scm_set_smob_mfpe.
2359 Use scm_make_smob_type and scm_set_smob_XXX instead.
2361 ** New function scm_set_smob_apply.
2363 This can be used to set an apply function to a smob type.
2365 ** Deprecated function: scm_strprint_obj
2367 Use scm_object_to_string instead.
2369 ** Deprecated function: scm_wta
2371 Use scm_wrong_type_arg, or another appropriate error signalling function
2374 ** Explicit support for obarrays has been deprecated.
2376 Use `scm_str2symbol' and the generic hashtable functions instead.
2378 ** The concept of `vcells' has been deprecated.
2380 The data type `variable' is now used exclusively. `Vcells' have been
2381 a low-level concept so you are likely not affected by this change.
2383 *** Deprecated functions: scm_sym2vcell, scm_sysintern,
2384 scm_sysintern0, scm_symbol_value0, scm_intern, scm_intern0.
2386 Use scm_c_define or scm_c_lookup instead, as appropriate.
2388 *** New functions: scm_c_module_lookup, scm_c_lookup,
2389 scm_c_module_define, scm_c_define, scm_module_lookup, scm_lookup,
2390 scm_module_define, scm_define.
2392 These functions work with variables instead of with vcells.
2394 ** New functions for creating and defining `subr's and `gsubr's.
2396 The new functions more clearly distinguish between creating a subr (or
2397 gsubr) object and adding it to the current module.
2399 These new functions are available: scm_c_make_subr, scm_c_define_subr,
2400 scm_c_make_subr_with_generic, scm_c_define_subr_with_generic,
2401 scm_c_make_gsubr, scm_c_define_gsubr, scm_c_make_gsubr_with_generic,
2402 scm_c_define_gsubr_with_generic.
2404 ** Deprecated functions: scm_make_subr, scm_make_subr_opt,
2405 scm_make_subr_with_generic, scm_make_gsubr,
2406 scm_make_gsubr_with_generic.
2408 Use the new ones from above instead.
2410 ** C interface to the module system has changed.
2412 While we suggest that you avoid as many explicit module system
2413 operations from C as possible for the time being, the C interface has
2414 been made more similar to the high-level Scheme module system.
2416 *** New functions: scm_c_define_module, scm_c_use_module,
2417 scm_c_export, scm_c_resolve_module.
2419 They mostly work like their Scheme namesakes. scm_c_define_module
2420 takes a function that is called a context where the new module is
2423 *** Deprecated functions: scm_the_root_module, scm_make_module,
2424 scm_ensure_user_module, scm_load_scheme_module.
2426 Use the new functions instead.
2428 ** Renamed function: scm_internal_with_fluids becomes
2431 scm_internal_with_fluids is available as a deprecated function.
2433 ** New function: scm_c_with_fluid.
2435 Just like scm_c_with_fluids, but takes one fluid and one value instead
2438 ** Deprecated typedefs: long_long, ulong_long.
2440 They are of questionable utility and they pollute the global
2443 ** Deprecated typedef: scm_sizet
2445 It is of questionable utility now that Guile requires ANSI C, and is
2448 ** Deprecated typedefs: scm_port_rw_active, scm_port,
2449 scm_ptob_descriptor, scm_debug_info, scm_debug_frame, scm_fport,
2450 scm_option, scm_rstate, scm_rng, scm_array, scm_array_dim.
2452 Made more compliant with the naming policy by adding a _t at the end.
2454 ** Deprecated functions: scm_mkbig, scm_big2num, scm_adjbig,
2455 scm_normbig, scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl
2457 With the exception of the mysterious scm_2ulong2big, they are still
2458 available under new names (scm_i_mkbig etc). These functions are not
2459 intended to be used in user code. You should avoid dealing with
2460 bignums directly, and should deal with numbers in general (which can
2463 ** Change in behavior: scm_num2long, scm_num2ulong
2465 The scm_num2[u]long functions don't any longer accept an inexact
2466 argument. This change in behavior is motivated by concordance with
2467 R5RS: It is more common that a primitive doesn't want to accept an
2468 inexact for an exact.
2470 ** New functions: scm_short2num, scm_ushort2num, scm_int2num,
2471 scm_uint2num, scm_size2num, scm_ptrdiff2num, scm_num2short,
2472 scm_num2ushort, scm_num2int, scm_num2uint, scm_num2ptrdiff,
2475 These are conversion functions between the various ANSI C integral
2476 types and Scheme numbers. NOTE: The scm_num2xxx functions don't
2477 accept an inexact argument.
2479 ** New functions: scm_float2num, scm_double2num,
2480 scm_num2float, scm_num2double.
2482 These are conversion functions between the two ANSI C float types and
2485 ** New number validation macros:
2486 SCM_NUM2{SIZE,PTRDIFF,SHORT,USHORT,INT,UINT}[_DEF]
2490 ** New functions: scm_gc_protect_object, scm_gc_unprotect_object
2492 These are just nicer-named old scm_protect_object and
2493 scm_unprotect_object.
2495 ** Deprecated functions: scm_protect_object, scm_unprotect_object
2497 ** New functions: scm_gc_[un]register_root, scm_gc_[un]register_roots
2499 These functions can be used to register pointers to locations that
2502 ** Deprecated function: scm_create_hook.
2504 Its sins are: misleading name, non-modularity and lack of general
2508 Changes since Guile 1.3.4:
2510 * Changes to the distribution
2512 ** Trees from nightly snapshots and CVS now require you to run autogen.sh.
2514 We've changed the way we handle generated files in the Guile source
2515 repository. As a result, the procedure for building trees obtained
2516 from the nightly FTP snapshots or via CVS has changed:
2517 - You must have appropriate versions of autoconf, automake, and
2518 libtool installed on your system. See README for info on how to
2519 obtain these programs.
2520 - Before configuring the tree, you must first run the script
2521 `autogen.sh' at the top of the source tree.
2523 The Guile repository used to contain not only source files, written by
2524 humans, but also some generated files, like configure scripts and
2525 Makefile.in files. Even though the contents of these files could be
2526 derived mechanically from other files present, we thought it would
2527 make the tree easier to build if we checked them into CVS.
2529 However, this approach means that minor differences between
2530 developer's installed tools and habits affected the whole team.
2531 So we have removed the generated files from the repository, and
2532 added the autogen.sh script, which will reconstruct them
2536 ** configure now has experimental options to remove support for certain
2539 --disable-arrays omit array and uniform array support
2540 --disable-posix omit posix interfaces
2541 --disable-networking omit networking interfaces
2542 --disable-regex omit regular expression interfaces
2544 These are likely to become separate modules some day.
2546 ** New configure option --enable-debug-freelist
2548 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
2549 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
2551 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
2552 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
2554 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
2555 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
2557 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
2558 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can
2559 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
2560 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
2562 ** New configure option --enable-debug-malloc
2564 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
2568 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
2569 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
2571 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
2573 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
2574 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
2576 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
2577 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
2578 number of objects of that kind.
2580 ** All includes are now referenced relative to the root directory
2582 Since some users have had problems with mixups between Guile and
2583 system headers, we have decided to always refer to Guile headers via
2584 their parent directories. This essentially creates a "private name
2585 space" for Guile headers. This means that the compiler only is given
2586 -I options for the root build and root source directory.
2588 ** Header files kw.h and genio.h have been removed.
2590 ** The module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) has been removed.
2592 ** New module (ice-9 documentation)
2594 Implements the interface to documentation strings associated with
2597 ** New module (ice-9 time)
2599 Provides a macro `time', which displays execution time of a given form.
2601 ** New module (ice-9 history)
2603 Loading this module enables value history in the repl.
2605 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2607 ** New command line option --debug
2609 Start Guile with debugging evaluator and backtraces enabled.
2611 This is useful when debugging your .guile init file or scripts.
2613 ** New help facility
2615 Usage: (help NAME) gives documentation about objects named NAME (a symbol)
2616 (help REGEXP) ditto for objects with names matching REGEXP (a string)
2617 (help 'NAME) gives documentation for NAME, even if it is not an object
2618 (help ,EXPR) gives documentation for object returned by EXPR
2619 (help (my module)) gives module commentary for `(my module)'
2620 (help) gives this text
2622 `help' searches among bindings exported from loaded modules, while
2623 `apropos' searches among bindings visible from the "current" module.
2625 Examples: (help help)
2627 (help "output-string")
2629 ** `help' and `apropos' now prints full module names
2631 ** Dynamic linking now uses libltdl from the libtool package.
2633 The old system dependent code for doing dynamic linking has been
2634 replaced with calls to the libltdl functions which do all the hairy
2637 The major improvement is that you can now directly pass libtool
2638 library names like "libfoo.la" to `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-link'
2639 will be able to do the best shared library job you can get, via
2642 The way dynamic libraries are found has changed and is not really
2643 portable across platforms, probably. It is therefore recommended to
2644 use absolute filenames when possible.
2646 If you pass a filename without an extension to `dynamic-link', it will
2647 try a few appropriate ones. Thus, the most platform ignorant way is
2648 to specify a name like "libfoo", without any directories and
2651 ** Guile COOP threads are now compatible with LinuxThreads
2653 Previously, COOP threading wasn't possible in applications linked with
2654 Linux POSIX threads due to their use of the stack pointer to find the
2655 thread context. This has now been fixed with a workaround which uses
2656 the pthreads to allocate the stack.
2658 ** New primitives: `pkgdata-dir', `site-dir', `library-dir'
2660 ** Positions of erring expression in scripts
2662 With version 1.3.4, the location of the erring expression in Guile
2663 scipts is no longer automatically reported. (This should have been
2664 documented before the 1.3.4 release.)
2666 You can get this information by enabling recording of positions of
2667 source expressions and running the debugging evaluator. Put this at
2668 the top of your script (or in your "site" file):
2670 (read-enable 'positions)
2671 (debug-enable 'debug)
2673 ** Backtraces in scripts
2675 It is now possible to get backtraces in scripts.
2679 (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
2681 at the top of the script.
2683 (The first options enables the debugging evaluator.
2684 The second enables backtraces.)
2686 ** Part of module system symbol lookup now implemented in C
2688 The eval closure of most modules is now implemented in C. Since this
2689 was one of the bottlenecks for loading speed, Guile now loads code
2690 substantially faster than before.
2692 ** Attempting to get the value of an unbound variable now produces
2693 an exception with a key of 'unbound-variable instead of 'misc-error.
2695 ** The initial default output port is now unbuffered if it's using a
2696 tty device. Previously in this situation it was line-buffered.
2698 ** New hook: after-gc-hook
2700 after-gc-hook takes over the role of gc-thunk. This hook is run at
2701 the first SCM_TICK after a GC. (Thus, the code is run at the same
2702 point during evaluation as signal handlers.)
2704 Note that this hook should be used only for diagnostic and debugging
2705 purposes. It is not certain that it will continue to be well-defined
2706 when this hook is run in the future.
2708 C programmers: Note the new C level hooks scm_before_gc_c_hook,
2709 scm_before_sweep_c_hook, scm_after_gc_c_hook.
2711 ** Improvements to garbage collector
2713 Guile 1.4 has a new policy for triggering heap allocation and
2714 determining the sizes of heap segments. It fixes a number of problems
2717 1. The new policy can handle two separate pools of cells
2718 (2-word/4-word) better. (The old policy would run wild, allocating
2719 more and more memory for certain programs.)
2721 2. The old code would sometimes allocate far too much heap so that the
2722 Guile process became gigantic. The new code avoids this.
2724 3. The old code would sometimes allocate too little so that few cells
2725 were freed at GC so that, in turn, too much time was spent in GC.
2727 4. The old code would often trigger heap allocation several times in a
2728 row. (The new scheme predicts how large the segments needs to be
2729 in order not to need further allocation.)
2731 All in all, the new GC policy will make larger applications more
2734 The new GC scheme also is prepared for POSIX threading. Threads can
2735 allocate private pools of cells ("clusters") with just a single
2736 function call. Allocation of single cells from such a cluster can
2737 then proceed without any need of inter-thread synchronization.
2739 ** New environment variables controlling GC parameters
2741 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE Maximal segment size
2744 Allocation of 2-word cell heaps:
2746 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1 Size of initial heap segment in bytes
2749 GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1 Minimum number of freed cells at each
2750 GC in percent of total heap size
2753 Allocation of 4-word cell heaps
2754 (used for real numbers and misc other objects):
2756 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2
2758 (See entry "Way for application to customize GC parameters" under
2759 section "Changes to the scm_ interface" below.)
2761 ** Guile now implements reals using 4-word cells
2763 This speeds up computation with reals. (They were earlier allocated
2764 with `malloc'.) There is still some room for optimizations, however.
2766 ** Some further steps toward POSIX thread support have been taken
2768 *** Guile's critical sections (SCM_DEFER/ALLOW_INTS)
2769 don't have much effect any longer, and many of them will be removed in
2773 are only handled at the top of the evaluator loop, immediately after
2774 I/O, and in scm_equalp.
2776 *** The GC can allocate thread private pools of pairs.
2778 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2780 ** close-input-port and close-output-port are now R5RS
2782 These procedures have been turned into primitives and have R5RS behaviour.
2784 ** New procedure: simple-format PORT MESSAGE ARG1 ...
2786 (ice-9 boot) makes `format' an alias for `simple-format' until possibly
2787 extended by the more sophisticated version in (ice-9 format)
2789 (simple-format port message . args)
2790 Write MESSAGE to DESTINATION, defaulting to `current-output-port'.
2791 MESSAGE can contain ~A (was %s) and ~S (was %S) escapes. When printed,
2792 the escapes are replaced with corresponding members of ARGS:
2793 ~A formats using `display' and ~S formats using `write'.
2794 If DESTINATION is #t, then use the `current-output-port',
2795 if DESTINATION is #f, then return a string containing the formatted text.
2796 Does not add a trailing newline."
2798 ** string-ref: the second argument is no longer optional.
2800 ** string, list->string: no longer accept strings in their arguments,
2801 only characters, for compatibility with R5RS.
2803 ** New procedure: port-closed? PORT
2804 Returns #t if PORT is closed or #f if it is open.
2806 ** Deprecated: list*
2808 The list* functionality is now provided by cons* (SRFI-1 compliant)
2810 ** New procedure: cons* ARG1 ARG2 ... ARGn
2812 Like `list', but the last arg provides the tail of the constructed list,
2813 returning (cons ARG1 (cons ARG2 (cons ... ARGn))).
2815 Requires at least one argument. If given one argument, that argument
2816 is returned as result.
2818 This function is called `list*' in some other Schemes and in Common LISP.
2820 ** Removed deprecated: serial-map, serial-array-copy!, serial-array-map!
2822 ** New procedure: object-documentation OBJECT
2824 Returns the documentation string associated with OBJECT. The
2825 procedure uses a caching mechanism so that subsequent lookups are
2828 Exported by (ice-9 documentation).
2830 ** module-name now returns full names of modules
2832 Previously, only the last part of the name was returned (`session' for
2833 `(ice-9 session)'). Ex: `(ice-9 session)'.
2835 * Changes to the gh_ interface
2837 ** Deprecated: gh_int2scmb
2839 Use gh_bool2scm instead.
2841 * Changes to the scm_ interface
2843 ** Guile primitives now carry docstrings!
2845 Thanks to Greg Badros!
2847 ** Guile primitives are defined in a new way: SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
2849 Now Guile primitives are defined using the SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
2850 macros and must contain a docstring that is extracted into foo.doc using a new
2851 guile-doc-snarf script (that uses guile-doc-snarf.awk).
2853 However, a major overhaul of these macros is scheduled for the next release of
2856 ** Guile primitives use a new technique for validation of arguments
2858 SCM_VALIDATE_* macros are defined to ease the redundancy and improve
2859 the readability of argument checking.
2861 ** All (nearly?) K&R prototypes for functions replaced with ANSI C equivalents.
2863 ** New macros: SCM_PACK, SCM_UNPACK
2865 Compose/decompose an SCM value.
2867 The SCM type is now treated as an abstract data type and may be defined as a
2868 long, a void* or as a struct, depending on the architecture and compile time
2869 options. This makes it easier to find several types of bugs, for example when
2870 SCM values are treated as integers without conversion. Values of the SCM type
2871 should be treated as "atomic" values. These macros are used when
2872 composing/decomposing an SCM value, either because you want to access
2873 individual bits, or because you want to treat it as an integer value.
2875 E.g., in order to set bit 7 in an SCM value x, use the expression
2877 SCM_PACK (SCM_UNPACK (x) | 0x80)
2879 ** The name property of hooks is deprecated.
2880 Thus, the use of SCM_HOOK_NAME and scm_make_hook_with_name is deprecated.
2882 You can emulate this feature by using object properties.
2884 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP, SCM_CRDY, SCM_ICHRP,
2885 SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR, SCM_SETJMPBUF, SCM_NSTRINGP, SCM_NRWSTRINGP,
2888 These macros will be removed in a future release of Guile.
2890 ** The following types, functions and macros from numbers.h are deprecated:
2891 scm_dblproc, SCM_UNEGFIXABLE, SCM_FLOBUFLEN, SCM_INEXP, SCM_CPLXP, SCM_REAL,
2892 SCM_IMAG, SCM_REALPART, scm_makdbl, SCM_SINGP, SCM_NUM2DBL, SCM_NO_BIGDIG
2894 ** Port internals: the rw_random variable in the scm_port structure
2895 must be set to non-zero in any random access port. In recent Guile
2896 releases it was only set for bidirectional random-access ports.
2898 ** Port internals: the seek ptob procedure is now responsible for
2899 resetting the buffers if required. The change was made so that in the
2900 special case of reading the current position (i.e., seek p 0 SEEK_CUR)
2901 the fport and strport ptobs can avoid resetting the buffers,
2902 in particular to avoid discarding unread chars. An existing port
2903 type can be fixed by adding something like the following to the
2904 beginning of the ptob seek procedure:
2906 if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_READ)
2907 scm_end_input (object);
2908 else if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_WRITE)
2909 ptob->flush (object);
2911 although to actually avoid resetting the buffers and discard unread
2912 chars requires further hacking that depends on the characteristics
2915 ** Deprecated functions: scm_fseek, scm_tag
2917 These functions are no longer used and will be removed in a future version.
2919 ** The scm_sysmissing procedure is no longer used in libguile.
2920 Unless it turns out to be unexpectedly useful to somebody, it will be
2921 removed in a future version.
2923 ** The format of error message strings has changed
2925 The two C procedures: scm_display_error and scm_error, as well as the
2926 primitive `scm-error', now use scm_simple_format to do their work.
2927 This means that the message strings of all code must be updated to use
2928 ~A where %s was used before, and ~S where %S was used before.
2930 During the period when there still are a lot of old Guiles out there,
2931 you might want to support both old and new versions of Guile.
2933 There are basically two methods to achieve this. Both methods use
2936 AC_CHECK_FUNCS(scm_simple_format)
2938 in your configure.in.
2940 Method 1: Use the string concatenation features of ANSI C's
2945 #ifdef HAVE_SCM_SIMPLE_FORMAT
2951 Then represent each of your error messages using a preprocessor macro:
2953 #define E_SPIDER_ERROR "There's a spider in your " ## FMT_S ## "!!!"
2957 (define fmt-s (if (defined? 'simple-format) "~S" "%S"))
2958 (define make-message string-append)
2960 (define e-spider-error (make-message "There's a spider in your " fmt-s "!!!"))
2962 Method 2: Use the oldfmt function found in doc/oldfmt.c.
2966 scm_misc_error ("picnic", scm_c_oldfmt0 ("There's a spider in your ~S!!!"),
2971 (scm-error 'misc-error "picnic" (oldfmt "There's a spider in your ~S!!!")
2975 ** Deprecated: coop_mutex_init, coop_condition_variable_init
2977 Don't use the functions coop_mutex_init and
2978 coop_condition_variable_init. They will change.
2980 Use scm_mutex_init and scm_cond_init instead.
2982 ** New function: int scm_cond_timedwait (scm_cond_t *COND, scm_mutex_t *MUTEX, const struct timespec *ABSTIME)
2983 `scm_cond_timedwait' atomically unlocks MUTEX and waits on
2984 COND, as `scm_cond_wait' does, but it also bounds the duration
2985 of the wait. If COND has not been signaled before time ABSTIME,
2986 the mutex MUTEX is re-acquired and `scm_cond_timedwait'
2987 returns the error code `ETIMEDOUT'.
2989 The ABSTIME parameter specifies an absolute time, with the same
2990 origin as `time' and `gettimeofday': an ABSTIME of 0 corresponds
2991 to 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970.
2993 ** New function: scm_cond_broadcast (scm_cond_t *COND)
2994 `scm_cond_broadcast' restarts all the threads that are waiting
2995 on the condition variable COND. Nothing happens if no threads are
2998 ** New function: scm_key_create (scm_key_t *KEY, void (*destr_function) (void *))
2999 `scm_key_create' allocates a new TSD key. The key is stored in
3000 the location pointed to by KEY. There is no limit on the number
3001 of keys allocated at a given time. The value initially associated
3002 with the returned key is `NULL' in all currently executing threads.
3004 The DESTR_FUNCTION argument, if not `NULL', specifies a destructor
3005 function associated with the key. When a thread terminates,
3006 DESTR_FUNCTION is called on the value associated with the key in
3007 that thread. The DESTR_FUNCTION is not called if a key is deleted
3008 with `scm_key_delete' or a value is changed with
3009 `scm_setspecific'. The order in which destructor functions are
3010 called at thread termination time is unspecified.
3012 Destructors are not yet implemented.
3014 ** New function: scm_setspecific (scm_key_t KEY, const void *POINTER)
3015 `scm_setspecific' changes the value associated with KEY in the
3016 calling thread, storing the given POINTER instead.
3018 ** New function: scm_getspecific (scm_key_t KEY)
3019 `scm_getspecific' returns the value currently associated with
3020 KEY in the calling thread.
3022 ** New function: scm_key_delete (scm_key_t KEY)
3023 `scm_key_delete' deallocates a TSD key. It does not check
3024 whether non-`NULL' values are associated with that key in the
3025 currently executing threads, nor call the destructor function
3026 associated with the key.
3028 ** New function: scm_c_hook_init (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *HOOK_DATA, scm_c_hook_type_t TYPE)
3030 Initialize a C level hook HOOK with associated HOOK_DATA and type
3031 TYPE. (See scm_c_hook_run ().)
3033 ** New function: scm_c_hook_add (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA, int APPENDP)
3035 Add hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA to HOOK. If APPENDP
3036 is true, add it last, otherwise first. The same FUNC can be added
3037 multiple times if FUNC_DATA differ and vice versa.
3039 ** New function: scm_c_hook_remove (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA)
3041 Remove hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA from HOOK. A
3042 function is only removed if both FUNC and FUNC_DATA matches.
3044 ** New function: void *scm_c_hook_run (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *DATA)
3046 Run hook HOOK passing DATA to the hook functions.
3048 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_NORMAL, all hook functions are run. The value
3049 returned is undefined.
3051 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_OR, hook functions are run until a function
3052 returns a non-NULL value. This value is returned as the result of
3053 scm_c_hook_run. If all functions return NULL, NULL is returned.
3055 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_AND, hook functions are run until a function
3056 returns a NULL value, and NULL is returned. If all functions returns
3057 a non-NULL value, the last value is returned.
3059 ** New C level GC hooks
3061 Five new C level hooks has been added to the garbage collector.
3063 scm_before_gc_c_hook
3066 are run before locking and after unlocking the heap. The system is
3067 thus in a mode where evaluation can take place. (Except that
3068 scm_before_gc_c_hook must not allocate new cells.)
3070 scm_before_mark_c_hook
3071 scm_before_sweep_c_hook
3072 scm_after_sweep_c_hook
3074 are run when the heap is locked. These are intended for extension of
3075 the GC in a modular fashion. Examples are the weaks and guardians
3078 ** Way for application to customize GC parameters
3080 The application can set up other default values for the GC heap
3081 allocation parameters
3083 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_1, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1,
3084 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2,
3085 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE,
3089 scm_default_init_heap_size_1, scm_default_min_yield_1,
3090 scm_default_init_heap_size_2, scm_default_min_yield_2,
3091 scm_default_max_segment_size
3093 respectively before callong scm_boot_guile.
3095 (See entry "New environment variables ..." in section
3096 "Changes to the stand-alone interpreter" above.)
3098 ** scm_protect_object/scm_unprotect_object now nest
3100 This means that you can call scm_protect_object multiple times on an
3101 object and count on the object being protected until
3102 scm_unprotect_object has been call the same number of times.
3104 The functions also have better time complexity.
3106 Still, it is usually possible to structure the application in a way
3107 that you don't need to use these functions. For example, if you use a
3108 protected standard Guile list to keep track of live objects rather
3109 than some custom data type, objects will die a natural death when they
3110 are no longer needed.
3112 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc16_flo, scm_tc_flo, scm_tc_dblr, scm_tc_dblc
3114 Guile does not provide the float representation for inexact real numbers any
3115 more. Now, only doubles are used to represent inexact real numbers. Further,
3116 the tag names scm_tc_dblr and scm_tc_dblc have been changed to scm_tc16_real
3117 and scm_tc16_complex, respectively.
3119 ** Removed deprecated type scm_smobfuns
3121 ** Removed deprecated function scm_newsmob
3123 ** Warning: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe might become deprecated in a future release
3125 There is an ongoing discussion among the developers whether to
3126 deprecate `scm_make_smob_type_mfpe' or not. Please use the current
3127 standard interface (scm_make_smob_type, scm_set_smob_XXX) in new code
3128 until this issue has been settled.
3130 ** Removed deprecated type tag scm_tc16_kw
3132 ** Added type tag scm_tc16_keyword
3134 (This was introduced already in release 1.3.4 but was not documented
3137 ** gdb_print now prints "*** Guile not initialized ***" until Guile initialized
3139 * Changes to system call interfaces:
3141 ** The "select" procedure now tests port buffers for the ability to
3142 provide input or accept output. Previously only the underlying file
3143 descriptors were checked.
3145 ** New variable PIPE_BUF: the maximum number of bytes that can be
3146 atomically written to a pipe.
3148 ** If a facility is not available on the system when Guile is
3149 compiled, the corresponding primitive procedure will not be defined.
3150 Previously it would have been defined but would throw a system-error
3151 exception if called. Exception handlers which catch this case may
3152 need minor modification: an error will be thrown with key
3153 'unbound-variable instead of 'system-error. Alternatively it's
3154 now possible to use `defined?' to check whether the facility is
3157 ** Procedures which depend on the timezone should now give the correct
3158 result on systems which cache the TZ environment variable, even if TZ
3159 is changed without calling tzset.
3161 * Changes to the networking interfaces:
3163 ** New functions: htons, ntohs, htonl, ntohl: for converting short and
3164 long integers between network and host format. For now, it's not
3165 particularly convenient to do this kind of thing, but consider:
3167 (define write-network-long
3168 (lambda (value port)
3169 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
3170 (uniform-vector-set! v 0 (htonl value))
3171 (uniform-vector-write v port))))
3173 (define read-network-long
3175 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
3176 (uniform-vector-read! v port)
3177 (ntohl (uniform-vector-ref v 0)))))
3179 ** If inet-aton fails, it now throws an error with key 'misc-error
3180 instead of 'system-error, since errno is not relevant.
3182 ** Certain gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr failures now throw errors with
3183 specific keys instead of 'system-error. The latter is inappropriate
3184 since errno will not have been set. The keys are:
3185 'host-not-found, 'try-again, 'no-recovery and 'no-data.
3187 ** sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent: now take an
3188 optional argument STAYOPEN, which specifies whether the database
3189 remains open after a database entry is accessed randomly (e.g., using
3190 gethostbyname for the hosts database.) The default is #f. Previously
3194 Changes since Guile 1.3.2:
3196 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3200 An initial version of the Guile debugger written by Chris Hanson has
3201 been added. The debugger is still under development but is included
3202 in the distribution anyway since it is already quite useful.
3208 after an error to enter the debugger. Type `help' inside the debugger
3209 for a description of available commands.
3211 If you prefer to have stack frames numbered and printed in
3212 anti-chronological order and prefer up in the stack to be down on the
3213 screen as is the case in gdb, you can put
3215 (debug-enable 'backwards)
3217 in your .guile startup file. (However, this means that Guile can't
3218 use indentation to indicate stack level.)
3220 The debugger is autoloaded into Guile at the first use.
3222 ** Further enhancements to backtraces
3224 There is a new debug option `width' which controls the maximum width
3225 on the screen of printed stack frames. Fancy printing parameters
3226 ("level" and "length" as in Common LISP) are adaptively adjusted for
3227 each stack frame to give maximum information while still fitting
3228 within the bounds. If the stack frame can't be made to fit by
3229 adjusting parameters, it is simply cut off at the end. This is marked
3232 ** Some modules are now only loaded when the repl is started
3234 The modules (ice-9 debug), (ice-9 session), (ice-9 threads) and (ice-9
3235 regex) are now loaded into (guile-user) only if the repl has been
3236 started. The effect is that the startup time for scripts has been
3237 reduced to 30% of what it was previously.
3239 Correctly written scripts load the modules they require at the top of
3240 the file and should not be affected by this change.
3242 ** Hooks are now represented as smobs
3244 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3246 ** Readline support has changed again.
3248 The old (readline-activator) module is gone. Use (ice-9 readline)
3249 instead, which now contains all readline functionality. So the code
3250 to activate readline is now
3252 (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
3255 This should work at any time, including from the guile prompt.
3257 To avoid confusion about the terms of Guile's license, please only
3258 enable readline for your personal use; please don't make it the
3259 default for others. Here is why we make this rather odd-sounding
3262 Guile is normally licensed under a weakened form of the GNU General
3263 Public License, which allows you to link code with Guile without
3264 placing that code under the GPL. This exception is important to some
3267 However, since readline is distributed under the GNU General Public
3268 License, when you link Guile with readline, either statically or
3269 dynamically, you effectively change Guile's license to the strict GPL.
3270 Whenever you link any strictly GPL'd code into Guile, uses of Guile
3271 which are normally permitted become forbidden. This is a rather
3272 non-obvious consequence of the licensing terms.
3274 So, to make sure things remain clear, please let people choose for
3275 themselves whether to link GPL'd libraries like readline with Guile.
3277 ** regexp-substitute/global has changed slightly, but incompatibly.
3279 If you include a function in the item list, the string of the match
3280 object it receives is the same string passed to
3281 regexp-substitute/global, not some suffix of that string.
3282 Correspondingly, the match's positions are relative to the entire
3283 string, not the suffix.
3285 If the regexp can match the empty string, the way matches are chosen
3286 from the string has changed. regexp-substitute/global recognizes the
3287 same set of matches that list-matches does; see below.
3289 ** New function: list-matches REGEXP STRING [FLAGS]
3291 Return a list of match objects, one for every non-overlapping, maximal
3292 match of REGEXP in STRING. The matches appear in left-to-right order.
3293 list-matches only reports matches of the empty string if there are no
3294 other matches which begin on, end at, or include the empty match's
3297 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
3299 ** New function: fold-matches REGEXP STRING INIT PROC [FLAGS]
3301 For each match of REGEXP in STRING, apply PROC to the match object,
3302 and the last value PROC returned, or INIT for the first call. Return
3303 the last value returned by PROC. We apply PROC to the matches as they
3304 appear from left to right.
3306 This function recognizes matches according to the same criteria as
3309 Thus, you could define list-matches like this:
3311 (define (list-matches regexp string . flags)
3312 (reverse! (apply fold-matches regexp string '() cons flags)))
3314 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
3318 *** New function: hook? OBJ
3320 Return #t if OBJ is a hook, otherwise #f.
3322 *** New function: make-hook-with-name NAME [ARITY]
3324 Return a hook with name NAME and arity ARITY. The default value for
3325 ARITY is 0. The only effect of NAME is that it will appear when the
3326 hook object is printed to ease debugging.
3328 *** New function: hook-empty? HOOK
3330 Return #t if HOOK doesn't contain any procedures, otherwise #f.
3332 *** New function: hook->list HOOK
3334 Return a list of the procedures that are called when run-hook is
3337 ** `map' signals an error if its argument lists are not all the same length.
3339 This is the behavior required by R5RS, so this change is really a bug
3340 fix. But it seems to affect a lot of people's code, so we're
3341 mentioning it here anyway.
3343 ** Print-state handling has been made more transparent
3345 Under certain circumstances, ports are represented as a port with an
3346 associated print state. Earlier, this pair was represented as a pair
3347 (see "Some magic has been added to the printer" below). It is now
3348 indistinguishable (almost; see `get-print-state') from a port on the
3351 *** New function: port-with-print-state OUTPUT-PORT PRINT-STATE
3353 Return a new port with the associated print state PRINT-STATE.
3355 *** New function: get-print-state OUTPUT-PORT
3357 Return the print state associated with this port if it exists,
3358 otherwise return #f.
3360 *** New function: directory-stream? OBJECT
3362 Returns true iff OBJECT is a directory stream --- the sort of object
3363 returned by `opendir'.
3365 ** New function: using-readline?
3367 Return #t if readline is in use in the current repl.
3369 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
3371 Structs will be replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into Guile
3372 and use GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
3374 * Changes to the scm_ interface
3376 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
3378 The entire current struct interface (struct.c, struct.h) will be
3379 replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into libguile and use
3380 GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
3382 ** The internal representation of subr's has changed
3384 Instead of giving a hint to the subr name, the CAR field of the subr
3385 now contains an index to a subr entry in scm_subr_table.
3387 *** New variable: scm_subr_table
3389 An array of subr entries. A subr entry contains the name, properties
3390 and documentation associated with the subr. The properties and
3391 documentation slots are not yet used.
3393 ** A new scheme for "forwarding" calls to a builtin to a generic function
3395 It is now possible to extend the functionality of some Guile
3396 primitives by letting them defer a call to a GOOPS generic function on
3397 argument mismatch. This means that there is no loss of efficiency in
3402 (use-modules (oop goops)) ; Must be GOOPS version 0.2.
3403 (define-method + ((x <string>) (y <string>))
3404 (string-append x y))
3406 + will still be as efficient as usual in numerical calculations, but
3407 can also be used for concatenating strings.
3409 Who will be the first one to extend Guile's numerical tower to
3410 rationals? :) [OK, there a few other things to fix before this can
3411 be made in a clean way.]
3413 *** New snarf macros for defining primitives: SCM_GPROC, SCM_GPROC1
3415 New macro: SCM_GPROC (CNAME, SNAME, REQ, OPT, VAR, CFUNC, GENERIC)
3417 New macro: SCM_GPROC1 (CNAME, SNAME, TYPE, CFUNC, GENERIC)
3419 These do the same job as SCM_PROC and SCM_PROC1, but they also define
3420 a variable GENERIC which can be used by the dispatch macros below.
3422 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3424 *** New macros for forwarding control to a generic on arg type error
3426 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_1 (GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
3428 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
3430 These correspond to the scm_wta function call, and have the same
3431 behaviour until the user has called the GOOPS primitive
3432 `enable-primitive-generic!'. After that, these macros will apply the
3433 generic function GENERIC to the argument(s) instead of calling
3436 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3438 *** New macros for argument testing with generic dispatch
3440 New macro: SCM_GASSERT1 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
3442 New macro: SCM_GASSERT2 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
3444 These correspond to the SCM_ASSERT macro, but will defer control to
3445 GENERIC on error after `enable-primitive-generic!' has been called.
3447 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3449 ** New function: SCM scm_eval_body (SCM body, SCM env)
3451 Evaluates the body of a special form.
3453 ** The internal representation of struct's has changed
3455 Previously, four slots were allocated for the procedure(s) of entities
3456 and operators. The motivation for this representation had to do with
3457 the structure of the evaluator, the wish to support tail-recursive
3458 generic functions, and efficiency. Since the generic function
3459 dispatch mechanism has changed, there is no longer a need for such an
3460 expensive representation, and the representation has been simplified.
3462 This should not make any difference for most users.
3464 ** GOOPS support has been cleaned up.
3466 Some code has been moved from eval.c to objects.c and code in both of
3467 these compilation units has been cleaned up and better structured.
3469 *** New functions for applying generic functions
3471 New function: SCM scm_apply_generic (GENERIC, ARGS)
3472 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_0 (GENERIC)
3473 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_1 (GENERIC, ARG1)
3474 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2)
3475 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_3 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, ARG3)
3477 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_named_hook
3479 It is now replaced by:
3481 ** New function: SCM scm_create_hook (const char *name, int arity)
3483 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
3484 binds a variable named NAME to it.
3486 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
3488 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module.
3489 This might change when we get the new module system.
3491 [The behaviour is identical to scm_make_named_hook.]
3495 Changes since Guile 1.3:
3497 * Changes to mailing lists
3499 ** Some of the Guile mailing lists have moved to sourceware.cygnus.com.
3501 See the README file to find current addresses for all the Guile
3504 * Changes to the distribution
3506 ** Readline support is no longer included with Guile by default.
3508 Based on the different license terms of Guile and Readline, we
3509 concluded that Guile should not *by default* cause the linking of
3510 Readline into an application program. Readline support is now offered
3511 as a separate module, which is linked into an application only when
3512 you explicitly specify it.
3514 Although Guile is GNU software, its distribution terms add a special
3515 exception to the usual GNU General Public License (GPL). Guile's
3516 license includes a clause that allows you to link Guile with non-free
3517 programs. We add this exception so as not to put Guile at a
3518 disadvantage vis-a-vis other extensibility packages that support other
3521 In contrast, the GNU Readline library is distributed under the GNU
3522 General Public License pure and simple. This means that you may not
3523 link Readline, even dynamically, into an application unless it is
3524 distributed under a free software license that is compatible the GPL.
3526 Because of this difference in distribution terms, an application that
3527 can use Guile may not be able to use Readline. Now users will be
3528 explicitly offered two independent decisions about the use of these
3531 You can activate the readline support by issuing
3533 (use-modules (readline-activator))
3536 from your ".guile" file, for example.
3538 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3540 ** All builtins now print as primitives.
3541 Previously builtin procedures not belonging to the fundamental subr
3542 types printed as #<compiled closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>.
3543 Now, they print as #<primitive-procedure NAME>.
3545 ** Backtraces slightly more intelligible.
3546 gsubr-apply and macro transformer application frames no longer appear
3549 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3551 ** Guile now correctly handles internal defines by rewriting them into
3552 their equivalent letrec. Previously, internal defines would
3553 incrementally add to the innermost environment, without checking
3554 whether the restrictions specified in RnRS were met. This lead to the
3555 correct behaviour when these restriction actually were met, but didn't
3556 catch all illegal uses. Such an illegal use could lead to crashes of
3557 the Guile interpreter or or other unwanted results. An example of
3558 incorrect internal defines that made Guile behave erratically:
3570 The problem with this example is that the definition of `c' uses the
3571 value of `b' directly. This confuses the meoization machine of Guile
3572 so that the second call of `b' (this time in a larger environment that
3573 also contains bindings for `c' and `d') refers to the binding of `c'
3574 instead of `a'. You could also make Guile crash with a variation on
3579 (define (b flag) (if flag a 1))
3580 (define c (1+ (b flag)))
3588 From now on, Guile will issue an `Unbound variable: b' error message
3593 A hook contains a list of functions which should be called on
3594 particular occasions in an existing program. Hooks are used for
3597 A window manager might have a hook before-window-map-hook. The window
3598 manager uses the function run-hooks to call all functions stored in
3599 before-window-map-hook each time a window is mapped. The user can
3600 store functions in the hook using add-hook!.
3602 In Guile, hooks are first class objects.
3604 *** New function: make-hook [N_ARGS]
3606 Return a hook for hook functions which can take N_ARGS arguments.
3607 The default value for N_ARGS is 0.
3609 (See also scm_make_named_hook below.)
3611 *** New function: add-hook! HOOK PROC [APPEND_P]
3613 Put PROC at the beginning of the list of functions stored in HOOK.
3614 If APPEND_P is supplied, and non-false, put PROC at the end instead.
3616 PROC must be able to take the number of arguments specified when the
3619 If PROC already exists in HOOK, then remove it first.
3621 *** New function: remove-hook! HOOK PROC
3623 Remove PROC from the list of functions in HOOK.
3625 *** New function: reset-hook! HOOK
3627 Clear the list of hook functions stored in HOOK.
3629 *** New function: run-hook HOOK ARG1 ...
3631 Run all hook functions stored in HOOK with arguments ARG1 ... .
3632 The number of arguments supplied must correspond to the number given
3633 when the hook was created.
3635 ** The function `dynamic-link' now takes optional keyword arguments.
3636 The only keyword argument that is currently defined is `:global
3637 BOOL'. With it, you can control whether the shared library will be
3638 linked in global mode or not. In global mode, the symbols from the
3639 linked library can be used to resolve references from other
3640 dynamically linked libraries. In non-global mode, the linked
3641 library is essentially invisible and can only be accessed via
3642 `dynamic-func', etc. The default is now to link in global mode.
3643 Previously, the default has been non-global mode.
3645 The `#:global' keyword is only effective on platforms that support
3646 the dlopen family of functions.
3648 ** New function `provided?'
3650 - Function: provided? FEATURE
3651 Return true iff FEATURE is supported by this installation of
3652 Guile. FEATURE must be a symbol naming a feature; the global
3653 variable `*features*' is a list of available features.
3655 ** Changes to the module (ice-9 expect):
3657 *** The expect-strings macro now matches `$' in a regular expression
3658 only at a line-break or end-of-file by default. Previously it would
3659 match the end of the string accumulated so far. The old behaviour
3660 can be obtained by setting the variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
3663 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
3664 for the regexp-exec flags. If `regexp/noteol' is included, then `$'
3665 in a regular expression will still match before a line-break or
3666 end-of-file. The default is `regexp/noteol'.
3668 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable
3669 `expect-strings-compile-flags' for the flags to be supplied to
3670 `make-regexp'. The default is `regexp/newline', which was previously
3673 *** The expect macro now supplies two arguments to a match procedure:
3674 the current accumulated string and a flag to indicate whether
3675 end-of-file has been reached. Previously only the string was supplied.
3676 If end-of-file is reached, the match procedure will be called an
3677 additional time with the same accumulated string as the previous call
3678 but with the flag set.
3680 ** New module (ice-9 format), implementing the Common Lisp `format' function.
3682 This code, and the documentation for it that appears here, was
3683 borrowed from SLIB, with minor adaptations for Guile.
3685 - Function: format DESTINATION FORMAT-STRING . ARGUMENTS
3686 An almost complete implementation of Common LISP format description
3687 according to the CL reference book `Common LISP' from Guy L.
3688 Steele, Digital Press. Backward compatible to most of the
3689 available Scheme format implementations.
3691 Returns `#t', `#f' or a string; has side effect of printing
3692 according to FORMAT-STRING. If DESTINATION is `#t', the output is
3693 to the current output port and `#t' is returned. If DESTINATION
3694 is `#f', a formatted string is returned as the result of the call.
3695 NEW: If DESTINATION is a string, DESTINATION is regarded as the
3696 format string; FORMAT-STRING is then the first argument and the
3697 output is returned as a string. If DESTINATION is a number, the
3698 output is to the current error port if available by the
3699 implementation. Otherwise DESTINATION must be an output port and
3702 FORMAT-STRING must be a string. In case of a formatting error
3703 format returns `#f' and prints a message on the current output or
3704 error port. Characters are output as if the string were output by
3705 the `display' function with the exception of those prefixed by a
3706 tilde (~). For a detailed description of the FORMAT-STRING syntax
3707 please consult a Common LISP format reference manual. For a test
3708 suite to verify this format implementation load `formatst.scm'.
3709 Please send bug reports to `lutzeb@cs.tu-berlin.de'.
3711 Note: `format' is not reentrant, i.e. only one `format'-call may
3712 be executed at a time.
3715 *** Format Specification (Format version 3.0)
3717 Please consult a Common LISP format reference manual for a detailed
3718 description of the format string syntax. For a demonstration of the
3719 implemented directives see `formatst.scm'.
3721 This implementation supports directive parameters and modifiers (`:'
3722 and `@' characters). Multiple parameters must be separated by a comma
3723 (`,'). Parameters can be numerical parameters (positive or negative),
3724 character parameters (prefixed by a quote character (`''), variable
3725 parameters (`v'), number of rest arguments parameter (`#'), empty and
3726 default parameters. Directive characters are case independent. The
3727 general form of a directive is:
3729 DIRECTIVE ::= ~{DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER,}[:][@]DIRECTIVE-CHARACTER
3731 DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER ::= [ [-|+]{0-9}+ | 'CHARACTER | v | # ]
3733 *** Implemented CL Format Control Directives
3735 Documentation syntax: Uppercase characters represent the
3736 corresponding control directive characters. Lowercase characters
3737 represent control directive parameter descriptions.
3740 Any (print as `display' does).
3744 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARA'
3748 S-expression (print as `write' does).
3752 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARS'
3758 print number sign always.
3761 print comma separated.
3763 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARD'
3769 print number sign always.
3772 print comma separated.
3774 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARX'
3780 print number sign always.
3783 print comma separated.
3785 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARO'
3791 print number sign always.
3794 print comma separated.
3796 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARB'
3801 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARR'
3805 print a number as a Roman numeral.
3808 print a number as an "old fashioned" Roman numeral.
3811 print a number as an ordinal English number.
3814 print a number as a cardinal English number.
3819 prints `y' and `ies'.
3822 as `~P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
3825 as `~@P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
3830 prints a character as the reader can understand it (i.e. `#\'
3834 prints a character as emacs does (eg. `^C' for ASCII 03).
3837 Fixed-format floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN).
3838 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHARF'
3840 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3843 Exponential floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN`E'EE).
3844 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARE'
3846 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3849 General floating-point (prints a flonum either fixed or
3851 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARG'
3853 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3856 Dollars floating-point (prints a flonum in fixed with signs
3858 `~DIGITS,SCALE,WIDTH,PADCHAR$'
3860 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3863 A sign is always printed and appears before the padding.
3866 The sign appears before the padding.
3874 print newline if not at the beginning of the output line.
3876 prints `~&' and then N-1 newlines.
3881 print N page separators.
3891 newline is ignored, white space left.
3894 newline is left, white space ignored.
3899 relative tabulation.
3905 Indirection (expects indirect arguments as a list).
3907 extracts indirect arguments from format arguments.
3910 Case conversion (converts by `string-downcase').
3912 converts by `string-capitalize'.
3915 converts by `string-capitalize-first'.
3918 converts by `string-upcase'.
3921 Argument Jumping (jumps 1 argument forward).
3923 jumps N arguments forward.
3926 jumps 1 argument backward.
3929 jumps N arguments backward.
3932 jumps to the 0th argument.
3935 jumps to the Nth argument (beginning from 0)
3937 `~[STR0~;STR1~;...~;STRN~]'
3938 Conditional Expression (numerical clause conditional).
3940 take argument from N.
3943 true test conditional.
3946 if-else-then conditional.
3952 default clause follows.
3955 Iteration (args come from the next argument (a list)).
3957 at most N iterations.
3960 args from next arg (a list of lists).
3963 args from the rest of arguments.
3966 args from the rest args (lists).
3977 aborts if N <= M <= K
3979 *** Not Implemented CL Format Control Directives
3982 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
3985 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
3991 (sorry I don't understand its semantics completely)
3993 *** Extended, Replaced and Additional Control Directives
3995 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHD'
3996 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHX'
3997 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHO'
3998 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHB'
3999 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHR'
4000 COMMAWIDTH is the number of characters between two comma
4004 print a R4RS complex number as `~F~@Fi' with passed parameters for
4008 Pretty print formatting of an argument for scheme code lists.
4014 Flushes the output if format DESTINATION is a port.
4017 Print a `#\space' character
4019 print N `#\space' characters.
4022 Print a `#\tab' character
4024 print N `#\tab' characters.
4027 Takes N as an integer representation for a character. No arguments
4028 are consumed. N is converted to a character by `integer->char'. N
4029 must be a positive decimal number.
4032 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
4033 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
4034 be processed by `read'.
4037 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
4038 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
4039 be processed by `read'.
4042 Prints information and a copyright notice on the format
4045 prints format version.
4048 may also print number strings, i.e. passing a number as a string
4049 and format it accordingly.
4051 *** Configuration Variables
4053 The format module exports some configuration variables to suit the
4054 systems and users needs. There should be no modification necessary for
4055 the configuration that comes with Guile. Format detects automatically
4056 if the running scheme system implements floating point numbers and
4059 format:symbol-case-conv
4060 Symbols are converted by `symbol->string' so the case type of the
4061 printed symbols is implementation dependent.
4062 `format:symbol-case-conv' is a one arg closure which is either
4063 `#f' (no conversion), `string-upcase', `string-downcase' or
4064 `string-capitalize'. (default `#f')
4066 format:iobj-case-conv
4067 As FORMAT:SYMBOL-CASE-CONV but applies for the representation of
4068 implementation internal objects. (default `#f')
4071 The character prefixing the exponent value in `~E' printing.
4074 *** Compatibility With Other Format Implementations
4080 Downward compatible except for padding support and `~A', `~S',
4081 `~P', `~X' uppercase printing. SLIB format 1.4 uses C-style
4082 `printf' padding support which is completely replaced by the CL
4083 `format' padding style.
4086 Downward compatible except for `~', which is not documented
4087 (ignores all characters inside the format string up to a newline
4088 character). (7.1 implements `~a', `~s', ~NEWLINE, `~~', `~%',
4089 numerical and variable parameters and `:/@' modifiers in the CL
4093 Downward compatible except for `~A' and `~S' which print in
4094 uppercase. (Elk implements `~a', `~s', `~~', and `~%' (no
4095 directive parameters or modifiers)).
4098 Downward compatible except for an optional destination parameter:
4099 S2C accepts a format call without a destination which returns a
4100 formatted string. This is equivalent to a #f destination in S2C.
4101 (S2C implements `~a', `~s', `~c', `~%', and `~~' (no directive
4102 parameters or modifiers)).
4105 ** Changes to string-handling functions.
4107 These functions were added to support the (ice-9 format) module, above.
4109 *** New function: string-upcase STRING
4110 *** New function: string-downcase STRING
4112 These are non-destructive versions of the existing string-upcase! and
4113 string-downcase! functions.
4115 *** New function: string-capitalize! STRING
4116 *** New function: string-capitalize STRING
4118 These functions convert the first letter of each word in the string to
4121 (string-capitalize "howdy there")
4124 As with the other functions, string-capitalize! modifies the string in
4125 place, while string-capitalize returns a modified copy of its argument.
4127 *** New function: string-ci->symbol STRING
4129 Return a symbol whose name is STRING, but having the same case as if
4130 the symbol had be read by `read'.
4132 Guile can be configured to be sensitive or insensitive to case
4133 differences in Scheme identifiers. If Guile is case-insensitive, all
4134 symbols are converted to lower case on input. The `string-ci->symbol'
4135 function returns a symbol whose name in STRING, transformed as Guile
4136 would if STRING were input.
4138 *** New function: substring-move! STRING1 START END STRING2 START
4140 Copy the substring of STRING1 from START (inclusive) to END
4141 (exclusive) to STRING2 at START. STRING1 and STRING2 may be the same
4142 string, and the source and destination areas may overlap; in all
4143 cases, the function behaves as if all the characters were copied
4146 *** Extended functions: substring-move-left! substring-move-right!
4148 These functions now correctly copy arbitrarily overlapping substrings;
4149 they are both synonyms for substring-move!.
4152 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-long), with the function `getopt-long'.
4154 getopt-long is a function for parsing command-line arguments in a
4155 manner consistent with other GNU programs.
4157 (getopt-long ARGS GRAMMAR)
4158 Parse the arguments ARGS according to the argument list grammar GRAMMAR.
4160 ARGS should be a list of strings. Its first element should be the
4161 name of the program; subsequent elements should be the arguments
4162 that were passed to the program on the command line. The
4163 `program-arguments' procedure returns a list of this form.
4165 GRAMMAR is a list of the form:
4166 ((OPTION (PROPERTY VALUE) ...) ...)
4168 Each OPTION should be a symbol. `getopt-long' will accept a
4169 command-line option named `--OPTION'.
4170 Each option can have the following (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs:
4172 (single-char CHAR) --- Accept `-CHAR' as a single-character
4173 equivalent to `--OPTION'. This is how to specify traditional
4175 (required? BOOL) --- If BOOL is true, the option is required.
4176 getopt-long will raise an error if it is not found in ARGS.
4177 (value BOOL) --- If BOOL is #t, the option accepts a value; if
4178 it is #f, it does not; and if it is the symbol
4179 `optional', the option may appear in ARGS with or
4181 (predicate FUNC) --- If the option accepts a value (i.e. you
4182 specified `(value #t)' for this option), then getopt
4183 will apply FUNC to the value, and throw an exception
4184 if it returns #f. FUNC should be a procedure which
4185 accepts a string and returns a boolean value; you may
4186 need to use quasiquotes to get it into GRAMMAR.
4188 The (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs may occur in any order, but each
4189 property may occur only once. By default, options do not have
4190 single-character equivalents, are not required, and do not take
4193 In ARGS, single-character options may be combined, in the usual
4194 Unix fashion: ("-x" "-y") is equivalent to ("-xy"). If an option
4195 accepts values, then it must be the last option in the
4196 combination; the value is the next argument. So, for example, using
4197 the following grammar:
4198 ((apples (single-char #\a))
4199 (blimps (single-char #\b) (value #t))
4200 (catalexis (single-char #\c) (value #t)))
4201 the following argument lists would be acceptable:
4202 ("-a" "-b" "bang" "-c" "couth") ("bang" and "couth" are the values
4203 for "blimps" and "catalexis")
4204 ("-ab" "bang" "-c" "couth") (same)
4205 ("-ac" "couth" "-b" "bang") (same)
4206 ("-abc" "couth" "bang") (an error, since `-b' is not the
4207 last option in its combination)
4209 If an option's value is optional, then `getopt-long' decides
4210 whether it has a value by looking at what follows it in ARGS. If
4211 the next element is a string, and it does not appear to be an
4212 option itself, then that string is the option's value.
4214 The value of a long option can appear as the next element in ARGS,
4215 or it can follow the option name, separated by an `=' character.
4216 Thus, using the same grammar as above, the following argument lists
4218 ("--apples" "Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
4219 ("--apples=Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
4220 ("--blimps" "Goodyear" "--apples=Braeburn")
4222 If the option "--" appears in ARGS, argument parsing stops there;
4223 subsequent arguments are returned as ordinary arguments, even if
4224 they resemble options. So, in the argument list:
4225 ("--apples" "Granny Smith" "--" "--blimp" "Goodyear")
4226 `getopt-long' will recognize the `apples' option as having the
4227 value "Granny Smith", but it will not recognize the `blimp'
4228 option; it will return the strings "--blimp" and "Goodyear" as
4229 ordinary argument strings.
4231 The `getopt-long' function returns the parsed argument list as an
4232 assocation list, mapping option names --- the symbols from GRAMMAR
4233 --- onto their values, or #t if the option does not accept a value.
4234 Unused options do not appear in the alist.
4236 All arguments that are not the value of any option are returned
4237 as a list, associated with the empty list.
4239 `getopt-long' throws an exception if:
4240 - it finds an unrecognized option in ARGS
4241 - a required option is omitted
4242 - an option that requires an argument doesn't get one
4243 - an option that doesn't accept an argument does get one (this can
4244 only happen using the long option `--opt=value' syntax)
4245 - an option predicate fails
4250 `((lockfile-dir (required? #t)
4253 (predicate ,file-is-directory?))
4254 (verbose (required? #f)
4257 (x-includes (single-char #\x))
4258 (rnet-server (single-char #\y)
4259 (predicate ,string?))))
4261 (getopt-long '("my-prog" "-vk" "/tmp" "foo1" "--x-includes=/usr/include"
4262 "--rnet-server=lamprod" "--" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
4264 => ((() "foo1" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
4265 (rnet-server . "lamprod")
4266 (x-includes . "/usr/include")
4267 (lockfile-dir . "/tmp")
4270 ** The (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) module is obsolete; use (ice-9 getopt-long).
4272 It will be removed in a few releases.
4274 ** New syntax: lambda*
4275 ** New syntax: define*
4276 ** New syntax: define*-public
4277 ** New syntax: defmacro*
4278 ** New syntax: defmacro*-public
4279 Guile now supports optional arguments.
4281 `lambda*', `define*', `define*-public', `defmacro*' and
4282 `defmacro*-public' are identical to the non-* versions except that
4283 they use an extended type of parameter list that has the following BNF
4284 syntax (parentheses are literal, square brackets indicate grouping,
4285 and `*', `+' and `?' have the usual meaning):
4287 ext-param-list ::= ( [identifier]* [#&optional [ext-var-decl]+]?
4288 [#&key [ext-var-decl]+ [#&allow-other-keys]?]?
4289 [[#&rest identifier]|[. identifier]]? ) | [identifier]
4291 ext-var-decl ::= identifier | ( identifier expression )
4293 The semantics are best illustrated with the following documentation
4294 and examples for `lambda*':
4297 lambda extended for optional and keyword arguments
4299 lambda* creates a procedure that takes optional arguments. These
4300 are specified by putting them inside brackets at the end of the
4301 paramater list, but before any dotted rest argument. For example,
4302 (lambda* (a b #&optional c d . e) '())
4303 creates a procedure with fixed arguments a and b, optional arguments c
4304 and d, and rest argument e. If the optional arguments are omitted
4305 in a call, the variables for them are unbound in the procedure. This
4306 can be checked with the bound? macro.
4308 lambda* can also take keyword arguments. For example, a procedure
4310 (lambda* (#&key xyzzy larch) '())
4311 can be called with any of the argument lists (#:xyzzy 11)
4312 (#:larch 13) (#:larch 42 #:xyzzy 19) (). Whichever arguments
4313 are given as keywords are bound to values.
4315 Optional and keyword arguments can also be given default values
4316 which they take on when they are not present in a call, by giving a
4317 two-item list in place of an optional argument, for example in:
4318 (lambda* (foo #&optional (bar 42) #&key (baz 73)) (list foo bar baz))
4319 foo is a fixed argument, bar is an optional argument with default
4320 value 42, and baz is a keyword argument with default value 73.
4321 Default value expressions are not evaluated unless they are needed
4322 and until the procedure is called.
4324 lambda* now supports two more special parameter list keywords.
4326 lambda*-defined procedures now throw an error by default if a
4327 keyword other than one of those specified is found in the actual
4328 passed arguments. However, specifying #&allow-other-keys
4329 immediately after the kyword argument declarations restores the
4330 previous behavior of ignoring unknown keywords. lambda* also now
4331 guarantees that if the same keyword is passed more than once, the
4332 last one passed is the one that takes effect. For example,
4333 ((lambda* (#&key (heads 0) (tails 0)) (display (list heads tails)))
4334 #:heads 37 #:tails 42 #:heads 99)
4335 would result in (99 47) being displayed.
4337 #&rest is also now provided as a synonym for the dotted syntax rest
4338 argument. The argument lists (a . b) and (a #&rest b) are equivalent in
4339 all respects to lambda*. This is provided for more similarity to DSSSL,
4340 MIT-Scheme and Kawa among others, as well as for refugees from other
4343 Further documentation may be found in the optargs.scm file itself.
4345 The optional argument module also exports the macros `let-optional',
4346 `let-optional*', `let-keywords', `let-keywords*' and `bound?'. These
4347 are not documented here because they may be removed in the future, but
4348 full documentation is still available in optargs.scm.
4350 ** New syntax: and-let*
4351 Guile now supports the `and-let*' form, described in the draft SRFI-2.
4353 Syntax: (land* (<clause> ...) <body> ...)
4354 Each <clause> should have one of the following forms:
4355 (<variable> <expression>)
4358 Each <variable> or <bound-variable> should be an identifier. Each
4359 <expression> should be a valid expression. The <body> should be a
4360 possibly empty sequence of expressions, like the <body> of a
4363 Semantics: A LAND* expression is evaluated by evaluating the
4364 <expression> or <bound-variable> of each of the <clause>s from
4365 left to right. The value of the first <expression> or
4366 <bound-variable> that evaluates to a false value is returned; the
4367 remaining <expression>s and <bound-variable>s are not evaluated.
4368 The <body> forms are evaluated iff all the <expression>s and
4369 <bound-variable>s evaluate to true values.
4371 The <expression>s and the <body> are evaluated in an environment
4372 binding each <variable> of the preceding (<variable> <expression>)
4373 clauses to the value of the <expression>. Later bindings
4374 shadow earlier bindings.
4376 Guile's and-let* macro was contributed by Michael Livshin.
4378 ** New sorting functions
4380 *** New function: sorted? SEQUENCE LESS?
4381 Returns `#t' when the sequence argument is in non-decreasing order
4382 according to LESS? (that is, there is no adjacent pair `... x y
4383 ...' for which `(less? y x)').
4385 Returns `#f' when the sequence contains at least one out-of-order
4386 pair. It is an error if the sequence is neither a list nor a
4389 *** New function: merge LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
4390 LIST1 and LIST2 are sorted lists.
4391 Returns the sorted list of all elements in LIST1 and LIST2.
4393 Assume that the elements a and b1 in LIST1 and b2 in LIST2 are "equal"
4394 in the sense that (LESS? x y) --> #f for x, y in {a, b1, b2},
4395 and that a < b1 in LIST1. Then a < b1 < b2 in the result.
4396 (Here "<" should read "comes before".)
4398 *** New procedure: merge! LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
4399 Merges two lists, re-using the pairs of LIST1 and LIST2 to build
4400 the result. If the code is compiled, and LESS? constructs no new
4401 pairs, no pairs at all will be allocated. The first pair of the
4402 result will be either the first pair of LIST1 or the first pair of
4405 *** New function: sort SEQUENCE LESS?
4406 Accepts either a list or a vector, and returns a new sequence
4407 which is sorted. The new sequence is the same type as the input.
4408 Always `(sorted? (sort sequence less?) less?)'. The original
4409 sequence is not altered in any way. The new sequence shares its
4410 elements with the old one; no elements are copied.
4412 *** New procedure: sort! SEQUENCE LESS
4413 Returns its sorted result in the original boxes. No new storage is
4414 allocated at all. Proper usage: (set! slist (sort! slist <))
4416 *** New function: stable-sort SEQUENCE LESS?
4417 Similar to `sort' but stable. That is, if "equal" elements are
4418 ordered a < b in the original sequence, they will have the same order
4421 *** New function: stable-sort! SEQUENCE LESS?
4422 Similar to `sort!' but stable.
4423 Uses temporary storage when sorting vectors.
4425 *** New functions: sort-list, sort-list!
4426 Added for compatibility with scsh.
4428 ** New built-in random number support
4430 *** New function: random N [STATE]
4431 Accepts a positive integer or real N and returns a number of the
4432 same type between zero (inclusive) and N (exclusive). The values
4433 returned have a uniform distribution.
4435 The optional argument STATE must be of the type produced by
4436 `copy-random-state' or `seed->random-state'. It defaults to the value
4437 of the variable `*random-state*'. This object is used to maintain the
4438 state of the pseudo-random-number generator and is altered as a side
4439 effect of the `random' operation.
4441 *** New variable: *random-state*
4442 Holds a data structure that encodes the internal state of the
4443 random-number generator that `random' uses by default. The nature
4444 of this data structure is implementation-dependent. It may be
4445 printed out and successfully read back in, but may or may not
4446 function correctly as a random-number state object in another
4449 *** New function: copy-random-state [STATE]
4450 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
4451 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
4452 If argument STATE is given, a copy of it is returned. Otherwise a
4453 copy of `*random-state*' is returned.
4455 *** New function: seed->random-state SEED
4456 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
4457 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
4458 SEED is a string or a number. A new state is generated and
4459 initialized using SEED.
4461 *** New function: random:uniform [STATE]
4462 Returns an uniformly distributed inexact real random number in the
4463 range between 0 and 1.
4465 *** New procedure: random:solid-sphere! VECT [STATE]
4466 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose
4467 squares is less than 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in
4468 space of dimension N = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are
4469 uniformly distributed within the unit N-shere. The sum of the
4470 squares of the numbers is returned. VECT can be either a vector
4471 or a uniform vector of doubles.
4473 *** New procedure: random:hollow-sphere! VECT [STATE]
4474 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose squares
4475 is equal to 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in space of
4476 dimension n = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are uniformly
4477 distributed over the surface of the unit n-shere. VECT can be either
4478 a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
4480 *** New function: random:normal [STATE]
4481 Returns an inexact real in a normal distribution with mean 0 and
4482 standard deviation 1. For a normal distribution with mean M and
4483 standard deviation D use `(+ M (* D (random:normal)))'.
4485 *** New procedure: random:normal-vector! VECT [STATE]
4486 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers which are independent and
4487 standard normally distributed (i.e., with mean 0 and variance 1).
4488 VECT can be either a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
4490 *** New function: random:exp STATE
4491 Returns an inexact real in an exponential distribution with mean 1.
4492 For an exponential distribution with mean U use (* U (random:exp)).
4494 ** The range of logand, logior, logxor, logtest, and logbit? have changed.
4496 These functions now operate on numbers in the range of a C unsigned
4499 These functions used to operate on numbers in the range of a C signed
4500 long; however, this seems inappropriate, because Guile integers don't
4503 ** New function: make-guardian
4504 This is an implementation of guardians as described in
4505 R. Kent Dybvig, Carl Bruggeman, and David Eby (1993) "Guardians in a
4506 Generation-Based Garbage Collector" ACM SIGPLAN Conference on
4507 Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1993
4508 ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/guardians.ps.gz
4510 ** New functions: delq1!, delv1!, delete1!
4511 These procedures behave similar to delq! and friends but delete only
4512 one object if at all.
4514 ** New function: unread-string STRING PORT
4515 Unread STRING to PORT, that is, push it back onto the port so that
4516 next read operation will work on the pushed back characters.
4518 ** unread-char can now be called multiple times
4519 If unread-char is called multiple times, the unread characters will be
4520 read again in last-in first-out order.
4522 ** the procedures uniform-array-read! and uniform-array-write! now
4523 work on any kind of port, not just ports which are open on a file.
4525 ** Now 'l' in a port mode requests line buffering.
4527 ** The procedure truncate-file now works on string ports as well
4528 as file ports. If the size argument is omitted, the current
4529 file position is used.
4531 ** new procedure: seek PORT/FDES OFFSET WHENCE
4532 The arguments are the same as for the old fseek procedure, but it
4533 works on string ports as well as random-access file ports.
4535 ** the fseek procedure now works on string ports, since it has been
4536 redefined using seek.
4538 ** the setvbuf procedure now uses a default size if mode is _IOFBF and
4539 size is not supplied.
4541 ** the newline procedure no longer flushes the port if it's not
4542 line-buffered: previously it did if it was the current output port.
4544 ** open-pipe and close-pipe are no longer primitive procedures, but
4545 an emulation can be obtained using `(use-modules (ice-9 popen))'.
4547 ** the freopen procedure has been removed.
4549 ** new procedure: drain-input PORT
4550 Drains PORT's read buffers (including any pushed-back characters)
4551 and returns the contents as a single string.
4553 ** New function: map-in-order PROC LIST1 LIST2 ...
4554 Version of `map' which guarantees that the procedure is applied to the
4555 lists in serial order.
4557 ** Renamed `serial-array-copy!' and `serial-array-map!' to
4558 `array-copy-in-order!' and `array-map-in-order!'. The old names are
4559 now obsolete and will go away in release 1.5.
4561 ** New syntax: collect BODY1 ...
4562 Version of `begin' which returns a list of the results of the body
4563 forms instead of the result of the last body form. In contrast to
4564 `begin', `collect' allows an empty body.
4566 ** New functions: read-history FILENAME, write-history FILENAME
4567 Read/write command line history from/to file. Returns #t on success
4568 and #f if an error occured.
4570 ** `ls' and `lls' in module (ice-9 ls) now handle no arguments.
4572 These procedures return a list of definitions available in the specified
4573 argument, a relative module reference. In the case of no argument,
4574 `(current-module)' is now consulted for definitions to return, instead
4575 of simply returning #f, the former behavior.
4577 ** The #/ syntax for lists is no longer supported.
4579 Earlier versions of Scheme accepted this syntax, but printed a
4582 ** Guile no longer consults the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable.
4584 Instead, you should set GUILE_LOAD_PATH to tell Guile where to find
4587 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4591 Now takes a second argument which is the result array. If this
4592 pointer is NULL, a new array is malloced (the old behaviour).
4594 ** gh_chars2byvect, gh_shorts2svect, gh_floats2fvect, gh_scm2chars,
4595 gh_scm2shorts, gh_scm2longs, gh_scm2floats
4599 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4601 ** Function: scm_make_named_hook (char* name, int n_args)
4603 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
4604 binds a variable named NAME to it.
4606 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
4608 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module. This
4609 might change when we get the new module system.
4611 ** The smob interface
4613 The interface for creating smobs has changed. For documentation, see
4614 data-rep.info (made from guile-core/doc/data-rep.texi).
4616 *** Deprecated function: SCM scm_newsmob (scm_smobfuns *)
4618 >>> This function will be removed in 1.3.4. <<<
4622 *** Function: SCM scm_make_smob_type (const char *name, scm_sizet size)
4623 This function adds a new smob type, named NAME, with instance size
4624 SIZE to the system. The return value is a tag that is used in
4625 creating instances of the type. If SIZE is 0, then no memory will
4626 be allocated when instances of the smob are created, and nothing
4627 will be freed by the default free function.
4629 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_mark (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
4630 This function sets the smob marking procedure for the smob type
4631 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4632 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4634 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_free (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
4635 This function sets the smob freeing procedure for the smob type
4636 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4637 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4639 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_print (tc, print)
4641 - Function: void scm_set_smob_print (long tc,
4642 scm_sizet (*print) (SCM,
4646 This function sets the smob printing procedure for the smob type
4647 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4648 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4650 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_equalp (long tc, SCM (*equalp) (SCM, SCM))
4651 This function sets the smob equality-testing predicate for the
4652 smob type specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4653 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4655 *** Macro: void SCM_NEWSMOB (SCM var, long tc, void *data)
4656 Make VALUE contain a smob instance of the type with type code TC and
4657 smob data DATA. VALUE must be previously declared as C type `SCM'.
4659 *** Macro: fn_returns SCM_RETURN_NEWSMOB (long tc, void *data)
4660 This macro expands to a block of code that creates a smob instance
4661 of the type with type code TC and smob data DATA, and returns that
4662 `SCM' value. It should be the last piece of code in a block.
4664 ** The interfaces for using I/O ports and implementing port types
4665 (ptobs) have changed significantly. The new interface is based on
4666 shared access to buffers and a new set of ptob procedures.
4668 *** scm_newptob has been removed
4672 *** Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (type_name, fill_buffer, write_flush)
4674 - Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (char *type_name,
4675 int (*fill_buffer) (SCM port),
4676 void (*write_flush) (SCM port));
4678 Similarly to the new smob interface, there is a set of function
4679 setters by which the user can customize the behaviour of his port
4680 type. See ports.h (scm_set_port_XXX).
4682 ** scm_strport_to_string: New function: creates a new string from
4683 a string port's buffer.
4685 ** Plug in interface for random number generators
4686 The variable `scm_the_rng' in random.c contains a value and three
4687 function pointers which together define the current random number
4688 generator being used by the Scheme level interface and the random
4689 number library functions.
4691 The user is free to replace the default generator with the generator
4694 *** Variable: size_t scm_the_rng.rstate_size
4695 The size of the random state type used by the current RNG
4698 *** Function: unsigned long scm_the_rng.random_bits (scm_rstate *STATE)
4699 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
4701 *** Function: void scm_the_rng.init_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE, chars *S, int N)
4702 Seed random state STATE using string S of length N.
4704 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_the_rng.copy_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE)
4705 Given random state STATE, return a malloced copy.
4708 The default RNG is the MWC (Multiply With Carry) random number
4709 generator described by George Marsaglia at the Department of
4710 Statistics and Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The
4711 Florida State University (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo).
4713 It uses 64 bits, has a period of 4578426017172946943 (4.6e18), and
4714 passes all tests in the DIEHARD test suite
4715 (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo/diehard.html). The generation of 32 bits
4716 costs one multiply and one add on platforms which either supports long
4717 longs (gcc does this on most systems) or have 64 bit longs. The cost
4718 is four multiply on other systems but this can be optimized by writing
4719 scm_i_uniform32 in assembler.
4721 These functions are provided through the scm_the_rng interface for use
4722 by libguile and the application.
4724 *** Function: unsigned long scm_i_uniform32 (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
4725 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
4726 Don't use this function directly. Instead go through the plugin
4727 interface (see "Plug in interface" above).
4729 *** Function: void scm_i_init_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE, char *SEED, int N)
4730 Initialize STATE using SEED of length N.
4732 *** Function: scm_i_rstate *scm_i_copy_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
4733 Return a malloc:ed copy of STATE. This function can easily be re-used
4734 in the interfaces to other RNGs.
4736 ** Random number library functions
4737 These functions use the current RNG through the scm_the_rng interface.
4738 It might be a good idea to use these functions from your C code so
4739 that only one random generator is used by all code in your program.
4741 The default random state is stored in:
4743 *** Variable: SCM scm_var_random_state
4744 Contains the vcell of the Scheme variable "*random-state*" which is
4745 used as default state by all random number functions in the Scheme
4750 double x = scm_c_uniform01 (SCM_RSTATE (SCM_CDR (scm_var_random_state)));
4752 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_default_rstate (void)
4753 This is a convenience function which returns the value of
4754 scm_var_random_state. An error message is generated if this value
4755 isn't a random state.
4757 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_make_rstate (char *SEED, int LENGTH)
4758 Make a new random state from the string SEED of length LENGTH.
4760 It is generally not a good idea to use multiple random states in a
4761 program. While subsequent random numbers generated from one random
4762 state are guaranteed to be reasonably independent, there is no such
4763 guarantee for numbers generated from different random states.
4765 *** Macro: unsigned long scm_c_uniform32 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4766 Return 32 random bits.
4768 *** Function: double scm_c_uniform01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4769 Return a sample from the uniform(0,1) distribution.
4771 *** Function: double scm_c_normal01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4772 Return a sample from the normal(0,1) distribution.
4774 *** Function: double scm_c_exp1 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4775 Return a sample from the exp(1) distribution.
4777 *** Function: unsigned long scm_c_random (scm_rstate *STATE, unsigned long M)
4778 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
4780 *** Function: SCM scm_c_random_bignum (scm_rstate *STATE, SCM M)
4781 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
4782 M must be a bignum object. The returned value may be an INUM.
4786 Changes in Guile 1.3 (released Monday, October 19, 1998):
4788 * Changes to the distribution
4790 ** We renamed the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable to GUILE_LOAD_PATH.
4791 To avoid conflicts, programs should name environment variables after
4792 themselves, except when there's a common practice establishing some
4795 For now, Guile supports both GUILE_LOAD_PATH and SCHEME_LOAD_PATH,
4796 giving the former precedence, and printing a warning message if the
4797 latter is set. Guile 1.4 will not recognize SCHEME_LOAD_PATH at all.
4799 ** The header files related to multi-byte characters have been removed.
4800 They were: libguile/extchrs.h and libguile/mbstrings.h. Any C code
4801 which referred to these explicitly will probably need to be rewritten,
4802 since the support for the variant string types has been removed; see
4805 ** The header files append.h and sequences.h have been removed. These
4806 files implemented non-R4RS operations which would encourage
4807 non-portable programming style and less easy-to-read code.
4809 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
4811 ** New procedures have been added to implement a "batch mode":
4813 *** Function: batch-mode?
4815 Returns a boolean indicating whether the interpreter is in batch
4818 *** Function: set-batch-mode?! ARG
4820 If ARG is true, switches the interpreter to batch mode. The `#f'
4821 case has not been implemented.
4823 ** Guile now provides full command-line editing, when run interactively.
4824 To use this feature, you must have the readline library installed.
4825 The Guile build process will notice it, and automatically include
4828 The readline library is available via anonymous FTP from any GNU
4829 mirror site; the canonical location is "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
4831 ** the-last-stack is now a fluid.
4833 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
4835 ** You can now use the `guile-config' utility to build programs that use Guile.
4837 Guile now includes a command-line utility called `guile-config', which
4838 can provide information about how to compile and link programs that
4841 *** `guile-config compile' prints any C compiler flags needed to use Guile.
4842 You should include this command's output on the command line you use
4843 to compile C or C++ code that #includes the Guile header files. It's
4844 usually just a `-I' flag to help the compiler find the Guile headers.
4847 *** `guile-config link' prints any linker flags necessary to link with Guile.
4849 This command writes to its standard output a list of flags which you
4850 must pass to the linker to link your code against the Guile library.
4851 The flags include '-lguile' itself, any other libraries the Guile
4852 library depends upon, and any `-L' flags needed to help the linker
4853 find those libraries.
4855 For example, here is a Makefile rule that builds a program named 'foo'
4856 from the object files ${FOO_OBJECTS}, and links them against Guile:
4859 ${CC} ${CFLAGS} ${FOO_OBJECTS} `guile-config link` -o foo
4861 Previous Guile releases recommended that you use autoconf to detect
4862 which of a predefined set of libraries were present on your system.
4863 It is more robust to use `guile-config', since it records exactly which
4864 libraries the installed Guile library requires.
4866 This was originally called `build-guile', but was renamed to
4867 `guile-config' before Guile 1.3 was released, to be consistent with
4868 the analogous script for the GTK+ GUI toolkit, which is called
4872 ** Use the GUILE_FLAGS macro in your configure.in file to find Guile.
4874 If you are using the GNU autoconf package to configure your program,
4875 you can use the GUILE_FLAGS autoconf macro to call `guile-config'
4876 (described above) and gather the necessary values for use in your
4879 The GUILE_FLAGS macro expands to configure script code which runs the
4880 `guile-config' script, to find out where Guile's header files and
4881 libraries are installed. It sets two variables, marked for
4882 substitution, as by AC_SUBST.
4884 GUILE_CFLAGS --- flags to pass to a C or C++ compiler to build
4885 code that uses Guile header files. This is almost always just a
4888 GUILE_LDFLAGS --- flags to pass to the linker to link a
4889 program against Guile. This includes `-lguile' for the Guile
4890 library itself, any libraries that Guile itself requires (like
4891 -lqthreads), and so on. It may also include a -L flag to tell the
4892 compiler where to find the libraries.
4894 GUILE_FLAGS is defined in the file guile.m4, in the top-level
4895 directory of the Guile distribution. You can copy it into your
4896 package's aclocal.m4 file, and then use it in your configure.in file.
4898 If you are using the `aclocal' program, distributed with GNU automake,
4899 to maintain your aclocal.m4 file, the Guile installation process
4900 installs guile.m4 where aclocal will find it. All you need to do is
4901 use GUILE_FLAGS in your configure.in file, and then run `aclocal';
4902 this will copy the definition of GUILE_FLAGS into your aclocal.m4
4906 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
4908 ** Multi-byte strings have been removed, as have multi-byte and wide
4909 ports. We felt that these were the wrong approach to
4910 internationalization support.
4912 ** New function: readline [PROMPT]
4913 Read a line from the terminal, and allow the user to edit it,
4914 prompting with PROMPT. READLINE provides a large set of Emacs-like
4915 editing commands, lets the user recall previously typed lines, and
4916 works on almost every kind of terminal, including dumb terminals.
4918 READLINE assumes that the cursor is at the beginning of the line when
4919 it is invoked. Thus, you can't print a prompt yourself, and then call
4920 READLINE; you need to package up your prompt as a string, pass it to
4921 the function, and let READLINE print the prompt itself. This is
4922 because READLINE needs to know the prompt's screen width.
4924 For Guile to provide this function, you must have the readline
4925 library, version 2.1 or later, installed on your system. Readline is
4926 available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in pub/gnu, or from
4927 any GNU mirror site.
4929 See also ADD-HISTORY function.
4931 ** New function: add-history STRING
4932 Add STRING as the most recent line in the history used by the READLINE
4933 command. READLINE does not add lines to the history itself; you must
4934 call ADD-HISTORY to make previous input available to the user.
4936 ** The behavior of the read-line function has changed.
4938 This function now uses standard C library functions to read the line,
4939 for speed. This means that it doesn not respect the value of
4940 scm-line-incrementors; it assumes that lines are delimited with
4943 (Note that this is read-line, the function that reads a line of text
4944 from a port, not readline, the function that reads a line from a
4945 terminal, providing full editing capabilities.)
4947 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style): Parse command-line arguments.
4949 This module provides some simple argument parsing. It exports one
4952 Function: getopt-gnu-style ARG-LS
4953 Parse a list of program arguments into an alist of option
4956 Each item in the list of program arguments is examined to see if
4957 it meets the syntax of a GNU long-named option. An argument like
4958 `--MUMBLE' produces an element of the form (MUMBLE . #t) in the
4959 returned alist, where MUMBLE is a keyword object with the same
4960 name as the argument. An argument like `--MUMBLE=FROB' produces
4961 an element of the form (MUMBLE . FROB), where FROB is a string.
4963 As a special case, the returned alist also contains a pair whose
4964 car is the symbol `rest'. The cdr of this pair is a list
4965 containing all the items in the argument list that are not options
4966 of the form mentioned above.
4968 The argument `--' is treated specially: all items in the argument
4969 list appearing after such an argument are not examined, and are
4970 returned in the special `rest' list.
4972 This function does not parse normal single-character switches.
4973 You will need to parse them out of the `rest' list yourself.
4975 ** The read syntax for byte vectors and short vectors has changed.
4977 Instead of #bytes(...), write #y(...).
4979 Instead of #short(...), write #h(...).
4981 This may seem nutty, but, like the other uniform vectors, byte vectors
4982 and short vectors want to have the same print and read syntax (and,
4983 more basic, want to have read syntax!). Changing the read syntax to
4984 use multiple characters after the hash sign breaks with the
4985 conventions used in R5RS and the conventions used for the other
4986 uniform vectors. It also introduces complexity in the current reader,
4987 both on the C and Scheme levels. (The Right solution is probably to
4988 change the syntax and prototypes for uniform vectors entirely.)
4991 ** The new module (ice-9 session) provides useful interactive functions.
4993 *** New procedure: (apropos REGEXP OPTION ...)
4995 Display a list of top-level variables whose names match REGEXP, and
4996 the modules they are imported from. Each OPTION should be one of the
4999 value --- Show the value of each matching variable.
5000 shadow --- Show bindings shadowed by subsequently imported modules.
5001 full --- Same as both `shadow' and `value'.
5005 guile> (apropos "trace" 'full)
5006 debug: trace #<procedure trace args>
5007 debug: untrace #<procedure untrace args>
5008 the-scm-module: display-backtrace #<compiled-closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>
5009 the-scm-module: before-backtrace-hook ()
5010 the-scm-module: backtrace #<primitive-procedure backtrace>
5011 the-scm-module: after-backtrace-hook ()
5012 the-scm-module: has-shown-backtrace-hint? #f
5015 ** There are new functions and syntax for working with macros.
5017 Guile implements macros as a special object type. Any variable whose
5018 top-level binding is a macro object acts as a macro. The macro object
5019 specifies how the expression should be transformed before evaluation.
5021 *** Macro objects now print in a reasonable way, resembling procedures.
5023 *** New function: (macro? OBJ)
5024 True iff OBJ is a macro object.
5026 *** New function: (primitive-macro? OBJ)
5027 Like (macro? OBJ), but true only if OBJ is one of the Guile primitive
5028 macro transformers, implemented in eval.c rather than Scheme code.
5030 Why do we have this function?
5031 - For symmetry with procedure? and primitive-procedure?,
5032 - to allow custom print procedures to tell whether a macro is
5033 primitive, and display it differently, and
5034 - to allow compilers and user-written evaluators to distinguish
5035 builtin special forms from user-defined ones, which could be
5038 *** New function: (macro-type OBJ)
5039 Return a value indicating what kind of macro OBJ is. Possible return
5042 The symbol `syntax' --- a macro created by procedure->syntax.
5043 The symbol `macro' --- a macro created by procedure->macro.
5044 The symbol `macro!' --- a macro created by procedure->memoizing-macro.
5045 The boolean #f --- if OBJ is not a macro object.
5047 *** New function: (macro-name MACRO)
5048 Return the name of the macro object MACRO's procedure, as returned by
5051 *** New function: (macro-transformer MACRO)
5052 Return the transformer procedure for MACRO.
5054 *** New syntax: (use-syntax MODULE ... TRANSFORMER)
5056 Specify a new macro expander to use in the current module. Each
5057 MODULE is a module name, with the same meaning as in the `use-modules'
5058 form; each named module's exported bindings are added to the current
5059 top-level environment. TRANSFORMER is an expression evaluated in the
5060 resulting environment which must yield a procedure to use as the
5061 module's eval transformer: every expression evaluated in this module
5062 is passed to this function, and the result passed to the Guile
5065 *** macro-eval! is removed. Use local-eval instead.
5067 ** Some magic has been added to the printer to better handle user
5068 written printing routines (like record printers, closure printers).
5070 The problem is that these user written routines must have access to
5071 the current `print-state' to be able to handle fancy things like
5072 detection of circular references. These print-states have to be
5073 passed to the builtin printing routines (display, write, etc) to
5074 properly continue the print chain.
5076 We didn't want to change all existing print code so that it
5077 explicitly passes thru a print state in addition to a port. Instead,
5078 we extented the possible values that the builtin printing routines
5079 accept as a `port'. In addition to a normal port, they now also take
5080 a pair of a normal port and a print-state. Printing will go to the
5081 port and the print-state will be used to control the detection of
5082 circular references, etc. If the builtin function does not care for a
5083 print-state, it is simply ignored.
5085 User written callbacks are now called with such a pair as their
5086 `port', but because every function now accepts this pair as a PORT
5087 argument, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, it is probably
5088 safest to not check for these pairs.
5090 However, it is sometimes necessary to continue a print chain on a
5091 different port, for example to get a intermediate string
5092 representation of the printed value, mangle that string somehow, and
5093 then to finally print the mangled string. Use the new function
5095 inherit-print-state OLD-PORT NEW-PORT
5097 for this. It constructs a new `port' that prints to NEW-PORT but
5098 inherits the print-state of OLD-PORT.
5100 ** struct-vtable-offset renamed to vtable-offset-user
5102 ** New constants: vtable-index-layout, vtable-index-vtable, vtable-index-printer
5104 ** There is now a third optional argument to make-vtable-vtable
5105 (and fourth to make-struct) when constructing new types (vtables).
5106 This argument initializes field vtable-index-printer of the vtable.
5108 ** The detection of circular references has been extended to structs.
5109 That is, a structure that -- in the process of being printed -- prints
5110 itself does not lead to infinite recursion.
5112 ** There is now some basic support for fluids. Please read
5113 "libguile/fluid.h" to find out more. It is accessible from Scheme with
5114 the following functions and macros:
5116 Function: make-fluid
5118 Create a new fluid object. Fluids are not special variables or
5119 some other extension to the semantics of Scheme, but rather
5120 ordinary Scheme objects. You can store them into variables (that
5121 are still lexically scoped, of course) or into any other place you
5122 like. Every fluid has a initial value of `#f'.
5124 Function: fluid? OBJ
5126 Test whether OBJ is a fluid.
5128 Function: fluid-ref FLUID
5129 Function: fluid-set! FLUID VAL
5131 Access/modify the fluid FLUID. Modifications are only visible
5132 within the current dynamic root (that includes threads).
5134 Function: with-fluids* FLUIDS VALUES THUNK
5136 FLUIDS is a list of fluids and VALUES a corresponding list of
5137 values for these fluids. Before THUNK gets called the values are
5138 installed in the fluids and the old values of the fluids are
5139 saved in the VALUES list. When the flow of control leaves THUNK
5140 or reenters it, the values get swapped again. You might think of
5141 this as a `safe-fluid-excursion'. Note that the VALUES list is
5142 modified by `with-fluids*'.
5144 Macro: with-fluids ((FLUID VALUE) ...) FORM ...
5146 The same as `with-fluids*' but with a different syntax. It looks
5147 just like `let', but both FLUID and VALUE are evaluated. Remember,
5148 fluids are not special variables but ordinary objects. FLUID
5149 should evaluate to a fluid.
5151 ** Changes to system call interfaces:
5153 *** close-port, close-input-port and close-output-port now return a
5154 boolean instead of an `unspecified' object. #t means that the port
5155 was successfully closed, while #f means it was already closed. It is
5156 also now possible for these procedures to raise an exception if an
5157 error occurs (some errors from write can be delayed until close.)
5159 *** the first argument to chmod, fcntl, ftell and fseek can now be a
5162 *** the third argument to fcntl is now optional.
5164 *** the first argument to chown can now be a file descriptor or a port.
5166 *** the argument to stat can now be a port.
5168 *** The following new procedures have been added (most use scsh
5171 *** procedure: close PORT/FD
5172 Similar to close-port (*note close-port: Closing Ports.), but also
5173 works on file descriptors. A side effect of closing a file
5174 descriptor is that any ports using that file descriptor are moved
5175 to a different file descriptor and have their revealed counts set
5178 *** procedure: port->fdes PORT
5179 Returns the integer file descriptor underlying PORT. As a side
5180 effect the revealed count of PORT is incremented.
5182 *** procedure: fdes->ports FDES
5183 Returns a list of existing ports which have FDES as an underlying
5184 file descriptor, without changing their revealed counts.
5186 *** procedure: fdes->inport FDES
5187 Returns an existing input port which has FDES as its underlying
5188 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
5189 Otherwise, returns a new input port with a revealed count of 1.
5191 *** procedure: fdes->outport FDES
5192 Returns an existing output port which has FDES as its underlying
5193 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
5194 Otherwise, returns a new output port with a revealed count of 1.
5196 The next group of procedures perform a `dup2' system call, if NEWFD
5197 (an integer) is supplied, otherwise a `dup'. The file descriptor to be
5198 duplicated can be supplied as an integer or contained in a port. The
5199 type of value returned varies depending on which procedure is used.
5201 All procedures also have the side effect when performing `dup2' that
5202 any ports using NEWFD are moved to a different file descriptor and have
5203 their revealed counts set to zero.
5205 *** procedure: dup->fdes PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5206 Returns an integer file descriptor.
5208 *** procedure: dup->inport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5209 Returns a new input port using the new file descriptor.
5211 *** procedure: dup->outport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5212 Returns a new output port using the new file descriptor.
5214 *** procedure: dup PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5215 Returns a new port if PORT/FD is a port, with the same mode as the
5216 supplied port, otherwise returns an integer file descriptor.
5218 *** procedure: dup->port PORT/FD MODE [NEWFD]
5219 Returns a new port using the new file descriptor. MODE supplies a
5220 mode string for the port (*note open-file: File Ports.).
5222 *** procedure: setenv NAME VALUE
5223 Modifies the environment of the current process, which is also the
5224 default environment inherited by child processes.
5226 If VALUE is `#f', then NAME is removed from the environment.
5227 Otherwise, the string NAME=VALUE is added to the environment,
5228 replacing any existing string with name matching NAME.
5230 The return value is unspecified.
5232 *** procedure: truncate-file OBJ SIZE
5233 Truncates the file referred to by OBJ to at most SIZE bytes. OBJ
5234 can be a string containing a file name or an integer file
5235 descriptor or port open for output on the file. The underlying
5236 system calls are `truncate' and `ftruncate'.
5238 The return value is unspecified.
5240 *** procedure: setvbuf PORT MODE [SIZE]
5241 Set the buffering mode for PORT. MODE can be:
5249 block buffered, using a newly allocated buffer of SIZE bytes.
5250 However if SIZE is zero or unspecified, the port will be made
5253 This procedure should not be used after I/O has been performed with
5256 Ports are usually block buffered by default, with a default buffer
5257 size. Procedures e.g., *Note open-file: File Ports, which accept a
5258 mode string allow `0' to be added to request an unbuffered port.
5260 *** procedure: fsync PORT/FD
5261 Copies any unwritten data for the specified output file descriptor
5262 to disk. If PORT/FD is a port, its buffer is flushed before the
5263 underlying file descriptor is fsync'd. The return value is
5266 *** procedure: open-fdes PATH FLAGS [MODES]
5267 Similar to `open' but returns a file descriptor instead of a port.
5269 *** procedure: execle PATH ENV [ARG] ...
5270 Similar to `execl', but the environment of the new process is
5271 specified by ENV, which must be a list of strings as returned by
5272 the `environ' procedure.
5274 This procedure is currently implemented using the `execve' system
5275 call, but we call it `execle' because of its Scheme calling
5278 *** procedure: strerror ERRNO
5279 Returns the Unix error message corresponding to ERRNO, an integer.
5281 *** procedure: primitive-exit [STATUS]
5282 Terminate the current process without unwinding the Scheme stack.
5283 This is would typically be useful after a fork. The exit status
5284 is STATUS if supplied, otherwise zero.
5286 *** procedure: times
5287 Returns an object with information about real and processor time.
5288 The following procedures accept such an object as an argument and
5289 return a selected component:
5292 The current real time, expressed as time units relative to an
5296 The CPU time units used by the calling process.
5299 The CPU time units used by the system on behalf of the
5303 The CPU time units used by terminated child processes of the
5304 calling process, whose status has been collected (e.g., using
5308 Similarly, the CPU times units used by the system on behalf of
5309 terminated child processes.
5311 ** Removed: list-length
5312 ** Removed: list-append, list-append!
5313 ** Removed: list-reverse, list-reverse!
5315 ** array-map renamed to array-map!
5317 ** serial-array-map renamed to serial-array-map!
5319 ** catch doesn't take #f as first argument any longer
5321 Previously, it was possible to pass #f instead of a key to `catch'.
5322 That would cause `catch' to pass a jump buffer object to the procedure
5323 passed as second argument. The procedure could then use this jump
5324 buffer objekt as an argument to throw.
5326 This mechanism has been removed since its utility doesn't motivate the
5327 extra complexity it introduces.
5329 ** The `#/' notation for lists now provokes a warning message from Guile.
5330 This syntax will be removed from Guile in the near future.
5332 To disable the warning message, set the GUILE_HUSH environment
5333 variable to any non-empty value.
5335 ** The newline character now prints as `#\newline', following the
5336 normal Scheme notation, not `#\nl'.
5338 * Changes to the gh_ interface
5340 ** The gh_enter function now takes care of loading the Guile startup files.
5341 gh_enter works by calling scm_boot_guile; see the remarks below.
5343 ** Function: void gh_write (SCM x)
5345 Write the printed representation of the scheme object x to the current
5346 output port. Corresponds to the scheme level `write'.
5348 ** gh_list_length renamed to gh_length.
5350 ** vector handling routines
5352 Several major changes. In particular, gh_vector() now resembles
5353 (vector ...) (with a caveat -- see manual), and gh_make_vector() now
5354 exists and behaves like (make-vector ...). gh_vset() and gh_vref()
5355 have been renamed gh_vector_set_x() and gh_vector_ref(). Some missing
5356 vector-related gh_ functions have been implemented.
5358 ** pair and list routines
5360 Implemented several of the R4RS pair and list functions that were
5363 ** gh_scm2doubles, gh_doubles2scm, gh_doubles2dvect
5365 New function. Converts double arrays back and forth between Scheme
5368 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5370 ** The function scm_boot_guile now takes care of loading the startup files.
5372 Guile's primary initialization function, scm_boot_guile, now takes
5373 care of loading `boot-9.scm', in the `ice-9' module, to initialize
5374 Guile, define the module system, and put together some standard
5375 bindings. It also loads `init.scm', which is intended to hold
5376 site-specific initialization code.
5378 Since Guile cannot operate properly until boot-9.scm is loaded, there
5379 is no reason to separate loading boot-9.scm from Guile's other
5380 initialization processes.
5382 This job used to be done by scm_compile_shell_switches, which didn't
5383 make much sense; in particular, it meant that people using Guile for
5384 non-shell-like applications had to jump through hoops to get Guile
5385 initialized properly.
5387 ** The function scm_compile_shell_switches no longer loads the startup files.
5388 Now, Guile always loads the startup files, whenever it is initialized;
5389 see the notes above for scm_boot_guile and scm_load_startup_files.
5391 ** Function: scm_load_startup_files
5392 This new function takes care of loading Guile's initialization file
5393 (`boot-9.scm'), and the site initialization file, `init.scm'. Since
5394 this is always called by the Guile initialization process, it's
5395 probably not too useful to call this yourself, but it's there anyway.
5397 ** The semantics of smob marking have changed slightly.
5399 The smob marking function (the `mark' member of the scm_smobfuns
5400 structure) is no longer responsible for setting the mark bit on the
5401 smob. The generic smob handling code in the garbage collector will
5402 set this bit. The mark function need only ensure that any other
5403 objects the smob refers to get marked.
5405 Note that this change means that the smob's GC8MARK bit is typically
5406 already set upon entry to the mark function. Thus, marking functions
5407 which look like this:
5410 if (SCM_GC8MARKP (ptr))
5412 SCM_SETGC8MARK (ptr);
5413 ... mark objects to which the smob refers ...
5416 are now incorrect, since they will return early, and fail to mark any
5417 other objects the smob refers to. Some code in the Guile library used
5420 ** The semantics of the I/O port functions in scm_ptobfuns have changed.
5422 If you have implemented your own I/O port type, by writing the
5423 functions required by the scm_ptobfuns and then calling scm_newptob,
5424 you will need to change your functions slightly.
5426 The functions in a scm_ptobfuns structure now expect the port itself
5427 as their argument; they used to expect the `stream' member of the
5428 port's scm_port_table structure. This allows functions in an
5429 scm_ptobfuns structure to easily access the port's cell (and any flags
5430 it its CAR), and the port's scm_port_table structure.
5432 Guile now passes the I/O port itself as the `port' argument in the
5433 following scm_ptobfuns functions:
5435 int (*free) (SCM port);
5436 int (*fputc) (int, SCM port);
5437 int (*fputs) (char *, SCM port);
5438 scm_sizet (*fwrite) SCM_P ((char *ptr,
5442 int (*fflush) (SCM port);
5443 int (*fgetc) (SCM port);
5444 int (*fclose) (SCM port);
5446 The interfaces to the `mark', `print', `equalp', and `fgets' methods
5449 If you have existing code which defines its own port types, it is easy
5450 to convert your code to the new interface; simply apply SCM_STREAM to
5451 the port argument to yield the value you code used to expect.
5453 Note that since both the port and the stream have the same type in the
5454 C code --- they are both SCM values --- the C compiler will not remind
5455 you if you forget to update your scm_ptobfuns functions.
5458 ** Function: int scm_internal_select (int fds,
5462 struct timeval *timeout);
5464 This is a replacement for the `select' function provided by the OS.
5465 It enables I/O blocking and sleeping to happen for one cooperative
5466 thread without blocking other threads. It also avoids busy-loops in
5467 these situations. It is intended that all I/O blocking and sleeping
5468 will finally go through this function. Currently, this function is
5469 only available on systems providing `gettimeofday' and `select'.
5471 ** Function: SCM scm_internal_stack_catch (SCM tag,
5472 scm_catch_body_t body,
5474 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
5477 A new sibling to the other two C level `catch' functions
5478 scm_internal_catch and scm_internal_lazy_catch. Use it if you want
5479 the stack to be saved automatically into the variable `the-last-stack'
5480 (scm_the_last_stack_var) on error. This is necessary if you want to
5481 use advanced error reporting, such as calling scm_display_error and
5482 scm_display_backtrace. (They both take a stack object as argument.)
5484 ** Function: SCM scm_spawn_thread (scm_catch_body_t body,
5486 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
5489 Spawns a new thread. It does a job similar to
5490 scm_call_with_new_thread but takes arguments more suitable when
5491 spawning threads from application C code.
5493 ** The hook scm_error_callback has been removed. It was originally
5494 intended as a way for the user to install his own error handler. But
5495 that method works badly since it intervenes between throw and catch,
5496 thereby changing the semantics of expressions like (catch #t ...).
5497 The correct way to do it is to use one of the C level catch functions
5498 in throw.c: scm_internal_catch/lazy_catch/stack_catch.
5500 ** Removed functions:
5502 scm_obj_length, scm_list_length, scm_list_append, scm_list_append_x,
5503 scm_list_reverse, scm_list_reverse_x
5505 ** New macros: SCM_LISTn where n is one of the integers 0-9.
5507 These can be used for pretty list creation from C. The idea is taken
5508 from Erick Gallesio's STk.
5510 ** scm_array_map renamed to scm_array_map_x
5512 ** mbstrings are now removed
5514 This means that the type codes scm_tc7_mb_string and
5515 scm_tc7_mb_substring has been removed.
5517 ** scm_gen_putc, scm_gen_puts, scm_gen_write, and scm_gen_getc have changed.
5519 Since we no longer support multi-byte strings, these I/O functions
5520 have been simplified, and renamed. Here are their old names, and
5521 their new names and arguments:
5523 scm_gen_putc -> void scm_putc (int c, SCM port);
5524 scm_gen_puts -> void scm_puts (char *s, SCM port);
5525 scm_gen_write -> void scm_lfwrite (char *ptr, scm_sizet size, SCM port);
5526 scm_gen_getc -> void scm_getc (SCM port);
5529 ** The macros SCM_TYP7D and SCM_TYP7SD has been removed.
5531 ** The macro SCM_TYP7S has taken the role of the old SCM_TYP7D
5533 SCM_TYP7S now masks away the bit which distinguishes substrings from
5536 ** scm_catch_body_t: Backward incompatible change!
5538 Body functions to scm_internal_catch and friends do not any longer
5539 take a second argument. This is because it is no longer possible to
5540 pass a #f arg to catch.
5542 ** Calls to scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect now nest properly.
5544 The function scm_protect_object protects its argument from being freed
5545 by the garbage collector. scm_unprotect_object removes that
5548 These functions now nest properly. That is, for every object O, there
5549 is a counter which scm_protect_object(O) increments and
5550 scm_unprotect_object(O) decrements, if the counter is greater than
5551 zero. Every object's counter is zero when it is first created. If an
5552 object's counter is greater than zero, the garbage collector will not
5553 reclaim its storage.
5555 This allows you to use scm_protect_object in your code without
5556 worrying that some other function you call will call
5557 scm_unprotect_object, and allow it to be freed. Assuming that the
5558 functions you call are well-behaved, and unprotect only those objects
5559 they protect, you can follow the same rule and have confidence that
5560 objects will be freed only at appropriate times.
5563 Changes in Guile 1.2 (released Tuesday, June 24 1997):
5565 * Changes to the distribution
5567 ** Nightly snapshots are now available from ftp.red-bean.com.
5568 The old server, ftp.cyclic.com, has been relinquished to its rightful
5571 Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are now available via
5572 anonymous FTP from ftp.red-bean.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.
5574 Via the web, that's: ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
5575 For getit, that's: ftp.red-bean.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
5577 ** To run Guile without installing it, the procedure has changed a bit.
5579 If you used a separate build directory to compile Guile, you'll need
5580 to include the build directory in SCHEME_LOAD_PATH, as well as the
5581 source directory. See the `INSTALL' file for examples.
5583 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
5585 ** The standard Guile load path for Scheme code now includes
5586 $(datadir)/guile (usually /usr/local/share/guile). This means that
5587 you can install your own Scheme files there, and Guile will find them.
5588 (Previous versions of Guile only checked a directory whose name
5589 contained the Guile version number, so you had to re-install or move
5590 your Scheme sources each time you installed a fresh version of Guile.)
5592 The load path also includes $(datadir)/guile/site; we recommend
5593 putting individual Scheme files there. If you want to install a
5594 package with multiple source files, create a directory for them under
5597 ** Guile 1.2 will now use the Rx regular expression library, if it is
5598 installed on your system. When you are linking libguile into your own
5599 programs, this means you will have to link against -lguile, -lqt (if
5600 you configured Guile with thread support), and -lrx.
5602 If you are using autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your
5603 application, the following lines should suffice to add the appropriate
5604 libraries to your link command:
5606 ### Find Rx, quickthreads and libguile.
5607 AC_CHECK_LIB(rx, main)
5608 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
5609 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
5611 The Guile 1.2 distribution does not contain sources for the Rx
5612 library, as Guile 1.0 did. If you want to use Rx, you'll need to
5613 retrieve it from a GNU FTP site and install it separately.
5615 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
5617 ** The dynamic linking features of Guile are now enabled by default.
5618 You can disable them by giving the `--disable-dynamic-linking' option
5621 (dynamic-link FILENAME)
5623 Find the object file denoted by FILENAME (a string) and link it
5624 into the running Guile application. When everything works out,
5625 return a Scheme object suitable for representing the linked object
5626 file. Otherwise an error is thrown. How object files are
5627 searched is system dependent.
5629 (dynamic-object? VAL)
5631 Determine whether VAL represents a dynamically linked object file.
5633 (dynamic-unlink DYNOBJ)
5635 Unlink the indicated object file from the application. DYNOBJ
5636 should be one of the values returned by `dynamic-link'.
5638 (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
5640 Search the C function indicated by FUNCTION (a string or symbol)
5641 in DYNOBJ and return some Scheme object that can later be used
5642 with `dynamic-call' to actually call this function. Right now,
5643 these Scheme objects are formed by casting the address of the
5644 function to `long' and converting this number to its Scheme
5647 (dynamic-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
5649 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ. The
5650 function is passed no arguments and its return value is ignored.
5651 When FUNCTION is something returned by `dynamic-func', call that
5652 function and ignore DYNOBJ. When FUNCTION is a string (or symbol,
5653 etc.), look it up in DYNOBJ; this is equivalent to
5655 (dynamic-call (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ) #f)
5657 Interrupts are deferred while the C function is executing (with
5658 SCM_DEFER_INTS/SCM_ALLOW_INTS).
5660 (dynamic-args-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ ARGS)
5662 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ, but pass it
5663 some arguments and return its return value. The C function is
5664 expected to take two arguments and return an `int', just like
5667 int c_func (int argc, char **argv);
5669 ARGS must be a list of strings and is converted into an array of
5670 `char *'. The array is passed in ARGV and its size in ARGC. The
5671 return value is converted to a Scheme number and returned from the
5672 call to `dynamic-args-call'.
5674 When dynamic linking is disabled or not supported on your system,
5675 the above functions throw errors, but they are still available.
5677 Here is a small example that works on GNU/Linux:
5679 (define libc-obj (dynamic-link "libc.so"))
5680 (dynamic-args-call 'rand libc-obj '())
5682 See the file `libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING' for additional comments.
5684 ** The #/ syntax for module names is depreciated, and will be removed
5685 in a future version of Guile. Instead of
5693 The latter syntax is more consistent with existing Lisp practice.
5695 ** Guile now does fancier printing of structures. Structures are the
5696 underlying implementation for records, which in turn are used to
5697 implement modules, so all of these object now print differently and in
5698 a more informative way.
5700 The Scheme printer will examine the builtin variable *struct-printer*
5701 whenever it needs to print a structure object. When this variable is
5702 not `#f' it is deemed to be a procedure and will be applied to the
5703 structure object and the output port. When *struct-printer* is `#f'
5704 or the procedure return `#f' the structure object will be printed in
5705 the boring #<struct 80458270> form.
5707 This hook is used by some routines in ice-9/boot-9.scm to implement
5708 type specific printing routines. Please read the comments there about
5711 One of the more specific uses of structs are records. The printing
5712 procedure that could be passed to MAKE-RECORD-TYPE is now actually
5713 called. It should behave like a *struct-printer* procedure (described
5716 ** Guile now supports a new R4RS-compliant syntax for keywords. A
5717 token of the form #:NAME, where NAME has the same syntax as a Scheme
5718 symbol, is the external representation of the keyword named NAME.
5719 Keyword objects print using this syntax as well, so values containing
5720 keyword objects can be read back into Guile. When used in an
5721 expression, keywords are self-quoting objects.
5723 Guile suports this read syntax, and uses this print syntax, regardless
5724 of the current setting of the `keyword' read option. The `keyword'
5725 read option only controls whether Guile recognizes the `:NAME' syntax,
5726 which is incompatible with R4RS. (R4RS says such token represent
5729 ** Guile has regular expression support again. Guile 1.0 included
5730 functions for matching regular expressions, based on the Rx library.
5731 In Guile 1.1, the Guile/Rx interface was removed to simplify the
5732 distribution, and thus Guile had no regular expression support. Guile
5733 1.2 again supports the most commonly used functions, and supports all
5734 of SCSH's regular expression functions.
5736 If your system does not include a POSIX regular expression library,
5737 and you have not linked Guile with a third-party regexp library such as
5738 Rx, these functions will not be available. You can tell whether your
5739 Guile installation includes regular expression support by checking
5740 whether the `*features*' list includes the `regex' symbol.
5742 *** regexp functions
5744 By default, Guile supports POSIX extended regular expressions. That
5745 means that the characters `(', `)', `+' and `?' are special, and must
5746 be escaped if you wish to match the literal characters.
5748 This regular expression interface was modeled after that implemented
5749 by SCSH, the Scheme Shell. It is intended to be upwardly compatible
5750 with SCSH regular expressions.
5752 **** Function: string-match PATTERN STR [START]
5753 Compile the string PATTERN into a regular expression and compare
5754 it with STR. The optional numeric argument START specifies the
5755 position of STR at which to begin matching.
5757 `string-match' returns a "match structure" which describes what,
5758 if anything, was matched by the regular expression. *Note Match
5759 Structures::. If STR does not match PATTERN at all,
5760 `string-match' returns `#f'.
5762 Each time `string-match' is called, it must compile its PATTERN
5763 argument into a regular expression structure. This operation is
5764 expensive, which makes `string-match' inefficient if the same regular
5765 expression is used several times (for example, in a loop). For better
5766 performance, you can compile a regular expression in advance and then
5767 match strings against the compiled regexp.
5769 **** Function: make-regexp STR [FLAGS]
5770 Compile the regular expression described by STR, and return the
5771 compiled regexp structure. If STR does not describe a legal
5772 regular expression, `make-regexp' throws a
5773 `regular-expression-syntax' error.
5775 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
5777 **** Constant: regexp/extended
5778 Use POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting
5779 STR. If not set, POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used.
5780 If the FLAGS argument is omitted, we assume regexp/extended.
5782 **** Constant: regexp/icase
5783 Do not differentiate case. Subsequent searches using the
5784 returned regular expression will be case insensitive.
5786 **** Constant: regexp/newline
5787 Match-any-character operators don't match a newline.
5789 A non-matching list ([^...]) not containing a newline matches a
5792 Match-beginning-of-line operator (^) matches the empty string
5793 immediately after a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
5794 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/notbol.
5796 Match-end-of-line operator ($) matches the empty string
5797 immediately before a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
5798 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/noteol.
5800 **** Function: regexp-exec REGEXP STR [START [FLAGS]]
5801 Match the compiled regular expression REGEXP against `str'. If
5802 the optional integer START argument is provided, begin matching
5803 from that position in the string. Return a match structure
5804 describing the results of the match, or `#f' if no match could be
5807 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
5809 **** Constant: regexp/notbol
5810 The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but
5811 see the compilation flag regexp/newline above) This flag may be
5812 used when different portions of a string are passed to
5813 regexp-exec and the beginning of the string should not be
5814 interpreted as the beginning of the line.
5816 **** Constant: regexp/noteol
5817 The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the
5818 compilation flag regexp/newline above)
5820 **** Function: regexp? OBJ
5821 Return `#t' if OBJ is a compiled regular expression, or `#f'
5824 Regular expressions are commonly used to find patterns in one string
5825 and replace them with the contents of another string.
5827 **** Function: regexp-substitute PORT MATCH [ITEM...]
5828 Write to the output port PORT selected contents of the match
5829 structure MATCH. Each ITEM specifies what should be written, and
5830 may be one of the following arguments:
5832 * A string. String arguments are written out verbatim.
5834 * An integer. The submatch with that number is written.
5836 * The symbol `pre'. The portion of the matched string preceding
5837 the regexp match is written.
5839 * The symbol `post'. The portion of the matched string
5840 following the regexp match is written.
5842 PORT may be `#f', in which case nothing is written; instead,
5843 `regexp-substitute' constructs a string from the specified ITEMs
5846 **** Function: regexp-substitute/global PORT REGEXP TARGET [ITEM...]
5847 Similar to `regexp-substitute', but can be used to perform global
5848 substitutions on STR. Instead of taking a match structure as an
5849 argument, `regexp-substitute/global' takes two string arguments: a
5850 REGEXP string describing a regular expression, and a TARGET string
5851 which should be matched against this regular expression.
5853 Each ITEM behaves as in REGEXP-SUBSTITUTE, with the following
5856 * A function may be supplied. When this function is called, it
5857 will be passed one argument: a match structure for a given
5858 regular expression match. It should return a string to be
5859 written out to PORT.
5861 * The `post' symbol causes `regexp-substitute/global' to recurse
5862 on the unmatched portion of STR. This *must* be supplied in
5863 order to perform global search-and-replace on STR; if it is
5864 not present among the ITEMs, then `regexp-substitute/global'
5865 will return after processing a single match.
5867 *** Match Structures
5869 A "match structure" is the object returned by `string-match' and
5870 `regexp-exec'. It describes which portion of a string, if any, matched
5871 the given regular expression. Match structures include: a reference to
5872 the string that was checked for matches; the starting and ending
5873 positions of the regexp match; and, if the regexp included any
5874 parenthesized subexpressions, the starting and ending positions of each
5877 In each of the regexp match functions described below, the `match'
5878 argument must be a match structure returned by a previous call to
5879 `string-match' or `regexp-exec'. Most of these functions return some
5880 information about the original target string that was matched against a
5881 regular expression; we will call that string TARGET for easy reference.
5883 **** Function: regexp-match? OBJ
5884 Return `#t' if OBJ is a match structure returned by a previous
5885 call to `regexp-exec', or `#f' otherwise.
5887 **** Function: match:substring MATCH [N]
5888 Return the portion of TARGET matched by subexpression number N.
5889 Submatch 0 (the default) represents the entire regexp match. If
5890 the regular expression as a whole matched, but the subexpression
5891 number N did not match, return `#f'.
5893 **** Function: match:start MATCH [N]
5894 Return the starting position of submatch number N.
5896 **** Function: match:end MATCH [N]
5897 Return the ending position of submatch number N.
5899 **** Function: match:prefix MATCH
5900 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET preceding the regexp match.
5902 **** Function: match:suffix MATCH
5903 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET following the regexp match.
5905 **** Function: match:count MATCH
5906 Return the number of parenthesized subexpressions from MATCH.
5907 Note that the entire regular expression match itself counts as a
5908 subexpression, and failed submatches are included in the count.
5910 **** Function: match:string MATCH
5911 Return the original TARGET string.
5913 *** Backslash Escapes
5915 Sometimes you will want a regexp to match characters like `*' or `$'
5916 exactly. For example, to check whether a particular string represents
5917 a menu entry from an Info node, it would be useful to match it against
5918 a regexp like `^* [^:]*::'. However, this won't work; because the
5919 asterisk is a metacharacter, it won't match the `*' at the beginning of
5920 the string. In this case, we want to make the first asterisk un-magic.
5922 You can do this by preceding the metacharacter with a backslash
5923 character `\'. (This is also called "quoting" the metacharacter, and
5924 is known as a "backslash escape".) When Guile sees a backslash in a
5925 regular expression, it considers the following glyph to be an ordinary
5926 character, no matter what special meaning it would ordinarily have.
5927 Therefore, we can make the above example work by changing the regexp to
5928 `^\* [^:]*::'. The `\*' sequence tells the regular expression engine
5929 to match only a single asterisk in the target string.
5931 Since the backslash is itself a metacharacter, you may force a
5932 regexp to match a backslash in the target string by preceding the
5933 backslash with itself. For example, to find variable references in a
5934 TeX program, you might want to find occurrences of the string `\let\'
5935 followed by any number of alphabetic characters. The regular expression
5936 `\\let\\[A-Za-z]*' would do this: the double backslashes in the regexp
5937 each match a single backslash in the target string.
5939 **** Function: regexp-quote STR
5940 Quote each special character found in STR with a backslash, and
5941 return the resulting string.
5943 *Very important:* Using backslash escapes in Guile source code (as
5944 in Emacs Lisp or C) can be tricky, because the backslash character has
5945 special meaning for the Guile reader. For example, if Guile encounters
5946 the character sequence `\n' in the middle of a string while processing
5947 Scheme code, it replaces those characters with a newline character.
5948 Similarly, the character sequence `\t' is replaced by a horizontal tab.
5949 Several of these "escape sequences" are processed by the Guile reader
5950 before your code is executed. Unrecognized escape sequences are
5951 ignored: if the characters `\*' appear in a string, they will be
5952 translated to the single character `*'.
5954 This translation is obviously undesirable for regular expressions,
5955 since we want to be able to include backslashes in a string in order to
5956 escape regexp metacharacters. Therefore, to make sure that a backslash
5957 is preserved in a string in your Guile program, you must use *two*
5958 consecutive backslashes:
5960 (define Info-menu-entry-pattern (make-regexp "^\\* [^:]*"))
5962 The string in this example is preprocessed by the Guile reader before
5963 any code is executed. The resulting argument to `make-regexp' is the
5964 string `^\* [^:]*', which is what we really want.
5966 This also means that in order to write a regular expression that
5967 matches a single backslash character, the regular expression string in
5968 the source code must include *four* backslashes. Each consecutive pair
5969 of backslashes gets translated by the Guile reader to a single
5970 backslash, and the resulting double-backslash is interpreted by the
5971 regexp engine as matching a single backslash character. Hence:
5973 (define tex-variable-pattern (make-regexp "\\\\let\\\\=[A-Za-z]*"))
5975 The reason for the unwieldiness of this syntax is historical. Both
5976 regular expression pattern matchers and Unix string processing systems
5977 have traditionally used backslashes with the special meanings described
5978 above. The POSIX regular expression specification and ANSI C standard
5979 both require these semantics. Attempting to abandon either convention
5980 would cause other kinds of compatibility problems, possibly more severe
5981 ones. Therefore, without extending the Scheme reader to support
5982 strings with different quoting conventions (an ungainly and confusing
5983 extension when implemented in other languages), we must adhere to this
5984 cumbersome escape syntax.
5986 * Changes to the gh_ interface
5988 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5990 * Changes to system call interfaces:
5992 ** The value returned by `raise' is now unspecified. It throws an exception
5995 *** A new procedure `sigaction' can be used to install signal handlers
5997 (sigaction signum [action] [flags])
5999 signum is the signal number, which can be specified using the value
6002 If action is omitted, sigaction returns a pair: the CAR is the current
6003 signal hander, which will be either an integer with the value SIG_DFL
6004 (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or the Scheme procedure which
6005 handles the signal, or #f if a non-Scheme procedure handles the
6006 signal. The CDR contains the current sigaction flags for the handler.
6008 If action is provided, it is installed as the new handler for signum.
6009 action can be a Scheme procedure taking one argument, or the value of
6010 SIG_DFL (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or #f to restore
6011 whatever signal handler was installed before sigaction was first used.
6012 Flags can optionally be specified for the new handler (SA_RESTART is
6013 always used if the system provides it, so need not be specified.) The
6014 return value is a pair with information about the old handler as
6017 This interface does not provide access to the "signal blocking"
6018 facility. Maybe this is not needed, since the thread support may
6019 provide solutions to the problem of consistent access to data
6022 *** A new procedure `flush-all-ports' is equivalent to running
6023 `force-output' on every port open for output.
6025 ** Guile now provides information on how it was built, via the new
6026 global variable, %guile-build-info. This variable records the values
6027 of the standard GNU makefile directory variables as an assocation
6028 list, mapping variable names (symbols) onto directory paths (strings).
6029 For example, to find out where the Guile link libraries were
6030 installed, you can say:
6032 guile -c "(display (assq-ref %guile-build-info 'libdir)) (newline)"
6035 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6037 ** The new function scm_handle_by_message_noexit is just like the
6038 existing scm_handle_by_message function, except that it doesn't call
6039 exit to terminate the process. Instead, it prints a message and just
6040 returns #f. This might be a more appropriate catch-all handler for
6041 new dynamic roots and threads.
6044 Changes in Guile 1.1 (released Friday, May 16 1997):
6046 * Changes to the distribution.
6048 The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
6050 guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
6051 guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
6052 Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
6053 is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
6054 guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
6055 expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
6056 programming language. These are packaged together because the
6057 Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
6059 This NEWS file describes the changes made to guile-core since the 1.0
6062 We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
6063 date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
6068 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
6070 ** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
6071 Shivers' Scheme Shell.
6073 In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
6074 exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
6075 stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
6076 the (command-line) function.
6077 -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
6078 -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
6079 -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
6081 The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
6082 -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
6083 -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
6084 command line arguments
6085 -ds do -s script at this point
6086 --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
6087 -h, --help display this help and exit
6088 -v, --version display version information and exit
6089 \ read arguments from following script lines
6091 So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
6092 which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
6094 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6097 (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
6101 (main (command-line))
6103 Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
6105 ekko a speckled gecko
6107 Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
6108 token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
6109 following list of command-line arguments:
6111 ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
6113 Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
6114 the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
6115 with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
6116 defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
6117 remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
6119 In Unix, the first line of a script file must take the following form:
6121 #!INTERPRETER ARGUMENT
6123 where INTERPRETER is the absolute filename of the interpreter
6124 executable, and ARGUMENT is a single command-line argument to pass to
6127 You may only pass one argument to the interpreter, and its length is
6128 limited. These restrictions can be annoying to work around, so Guile
6129 provides a general mechanism (borrowed from, and compatible with,
6130 SCSH) for circumventing them.
6132 If the ARGUMENT in a Guile script is a single backslash character,
6133 `\', Guile will open the script file, parse arguments from its second
6134 and subsequent lines, and replace the `\' with them. So, for example,
6135 here is another implementation of the `ekko' script:
6137 #!/usr/local/bin/guile \
6141 (for-each (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
6145 If the user invokes this script as follows:
6147 ekko a speckled gecko
6149 Unix expands this into
6151 /usr/local/bin/guile \ ekko a speckled gecko
6153 When Guile sees the `\' argument, it replaces it with the arguments
6154 read from the second line of the script, producing:
6156 /usr/local/bin/guile -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
6158 This tells Guile to load the `ekko' script, and apply the function
6159 `main' to the argument list ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
6161 Here is how Guile parses the command-line arguments:
6162 - Each space character terminates an argument. This means that two
6163 spaces in a row introduce an empty-string argument.
6164 - The tab character is not permitted (unless you quote it with the
6165 backslash character, as described below), to avoid confusion.
6166 - The newline character terminates the sequence of arguments, and will
6167 also terminate a final non-empty argument. (However, a newline
6168 following a space will not introduce a final empty-string argument;
6169 it only terminates the argument list.)
6170 - The backslash character is the escape character. It escapes
6171 backslash, space, tab, and newline. The ANSI C escape sequences
6172 like \n and \t are also supported. These produce argument
6173 constituents; the two-character combination \n doesn't act like a
6174 terminating newline. The escape sequence \NNN for exactly three
6175 octal digits reads as the character whose ASCII code is NNN. As
6176 above, characters produced this way are argument constituents.
6177 Backslash followed by other characters is not allowed.
6179 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
6181 ** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
6182 system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
6183 all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
6184 supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
6185 libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
6187 Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
6188 it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
6189 independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
6191 ** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
6193 To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
6194 -lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
6195 autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
6196 following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
6199 ### Find quickthreads and libguile.
6200 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
6201 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
6203 * Changes to Scheme functions
6205 ** Guile Scheme's special syntax for keyword objects is now optional,
6206 and disabled by default.
6208 The syntax variation from R4RS made it difficult to port some
6209 interesting packages to Guile. The routines which accepted keyword
6210 arguments (mostly in the module system) have been modified to also
6211 accept symbols whose names begin with `:'.
6213 To change the keyword syntax, you must first import the (ice-9 debug)
6215 (use-modules (ice-9 debug))
6217 Then you can enable the keyword syntax as follows:
6218 (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
6220 To disable keyword syntax, do this:
6221 (read-set! keywords #f)
6223 ** Many more primitive functions accept shared substrings as
6224 arguments. In the past, these functions required normal, mutable
6225 strings as arguments, although they never made use of this
6228 ** The uniform array functions now operate on byte vectors. These
6229 functions are `array-fill!', `serial-array-copy!', `array-copy!',
6230 `serial-array-map', `array-map', `array-for-each', and
6233 ** The new functions `trace' and `untrace' implement simple debugging
6234 support for Scheme functions.
6236 The `trace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
6237 and tells the Guile interpreter to display each procedure's name and
6238 arguments each time the procedure is invoked. When invoked with no
6239 arguments, `trace' returns the list of procedures currently being
6242 The `untrace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
6243 and tells the Guile interpreter not to trace them any more. When
6244 invoked with no arguments, `untrace' untraces all curretly traced
6247 The tracing in Guile has an advantage over most other systems: we
6248 don't create new procedure objects, but mark the procedure objects
6249 themselves. This means that anonymous and internal procedures can be
6252 ** The function `assert-repl-prompt' has been renamed to
6253 `set-repl-prompt!'. It takes one argument, PROMPT.
6254 - If PROMPT is #f, the Guile read-eval-print loop will not prompt.
6255 - If PROMPT is a string, we use it as a prompt.
6256 - If PROMPT is a procedure accepting no arguments, we call it, and
6257 display the result as a prompt.
6258 - Otherwise, we display "> ".
6260 ** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
6261 string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
6262 in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
6265 ** The new function `thunk?' returns true iff its argument is a
6266 procedure of zero arguments.
6268 ** `defined?' is now a builtin function, instead of syntax. This
6269 means that its argument should be quoted. It returns #t iff its
6270 argument is bound in the current module.
6272 ** The new syntax `use-modules' allows you to add new modules to your
6273 environment without re-typing a complete `define-module' form. It
6274 accepts any number of module names as arguments, and imports their
6275 public bindings into the current module.
6277 ** The new function (module-defined? NAME MODULE) returns true iff
6278 NAME, a symbol, is defined in MODULE, a module object.
6280 ** The new function `builtin-bindings' creates and returns a hash
6281 table containing copies of all the root module's bindings.
6283 ** The new function `builtin-weak-bindings' does the same as
6284 `builtin-bindings', but creates a doubly-weak hash table.
6286 ** The `equal?' function now considers variable objects to be
6287 equivalent if they have the same name and the same value.
6289 ** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
6290 given to Guile, as a list of strings.
6292 When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
6293 script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
6294 `-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
6295 behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
6296 command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
6298 ** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
6299 in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
6300 mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
6301 but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
6303 ** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
6306 ** Changes to I/O functions
6308 *** The functions `read', `primitive-load', `read-and-eval!', and
6309 `primitive-load-path' no longer take optional arguments controlling
6310 case insensitivity and a `#' parser.
6312 Case sensitivity is now controlled by a read option called
6313 `case-insensitive'. The user can add new `#' syntaxes with the
6314 `read-hash-extend' function (see below).
6316 *** The new function `read-hash-extend' allows the user to change the
6317 syntax of Guile Scheme in a somewhat controlled way.
6319 (read-hash-extend CHAR PROC)
6320 When parsing S-expressions, if we read a `#' character followed by
6321 the character CHAR, use PROC to parse an object from the stream.
6322 If PROC is #f, remove any parsing procedure registered for CHAR.
6324 The reader applies PROC to two arguments: CHAR and an input port.
6326 *** The new functions read-delimited and read-delimited! provide a
6327 general mechanism for doing delimited input on streams.
6329 (read-delimited DELIMS [PORT HANDLE-DELIM])
6330 Read until we encounter one of the characters in DELIMS (a string),
6331 or end-of-file. PORT is the input port to read from; it defaults to
6332 the current input port. The HANDLE-DELIM parameter determines how
6333 the terminating character is handled; it should be one of the
6336 'trim omit delimiter from result
6337 'peek leave delimiter character in input stream
6338 'concat append delimiter character to returned value
6339 'split return a pair: (RESULT . TERMINATOR)
6341 HANDLE-DELIM defaults to 'peek.
6343 (read-delimited! DELIMS BUF [PORT HANDLE-DELIM START END])
6344 A side-effecting variant of `read-delimited'.
6346 The data is written into the string BUF at the indices in the
6347 half-open interval [START, END); the default interval is the whole
6348 string: START = 0 and END = (string-length BUF). The values of
6349 START and END must specify a well-defined interval in BUF, i.e.
6350 0 <= START <= END <= (string-length BUF).
6352 It returns NBYTES, the number of bytes read. If the buffer filled
6353 up without a delimiter character being found, it returns #f. If the
6354 port is at EOF when the read starts, it returns the EOF object.
6356 If an integer is returned (i.e., the read is successfully terminated
6357 by reading a delimiter character), then the HANDLE-DELIM parameter
6358 determines how to handle the terminating character. It is described
6359 above, and defaults to 'peek.
6361 (The descriptions of these functions were borrowed from the SCSH
6362 manual, by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
6364 *** The `%read-delimited!' function is the primitive used to implement
6365 `read-delimited' and `read-delimited!'.
6367 (%read-delimited! DELIMS BUF GOBBLE? [PORT START END])
6369 This returns a pair of values: (TERMINATOR . NUM-READ).
6370 - TERMINATOR describes why the read was terminated. If it is a
6371 character or the eof object, then that is the value that terminated
6372 the read. If it is #f, the function filled the buffer without finding
6373 a delimiting character.
6374 - NUM-READ is the number of characters read into BUF.
6376 If the read is successfully terminated by reading a delimiter
6377 character, then the gobble? parameter determines what to do with the
6378 terminating character. If true, the character is removed from the
6379 input stream; if false, the character is left in the input stream
6380 where a subsequent read operation will retrieve it. In either case,
6381 the character is also the first value returned by the procedure call.
6383 (The descriptions of this function was borrowed from the SCSH manual,
6384 by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
6386 *** The `read-line' and `read-line!' functions have changed; they now
6387 trim the terminator by default; previously they appended it to the
6388 returned string. For the old behavior, use (read-line PORT 'concat).
6390 *** The functions `uniform-array-read!' and `uniform-array-write!' now
6391 take new optional START and END arguments, specifying the region of
6392 the array to read and write.
6394 *** The `ungetc-char-ready?' function has been removed. We feel it's
6395 inappropriate for an interface to expose implementation details this
6398 ** Changes to the Unix library and system call interface
6400 *** The new fcntl function provides access to the Unix `fcntl' system
6403 (fcntl PORT COMMAND VALUE)
6404 Apply COMMAND to PORT's file descriptor, with VALUE as an argument.
6405 Values for COMMAND are:
6407 F_DUPFD duplicate a file descriptor
6408 F_GETFD read the descriptor's close-on-exec flag
6409 F_SETFD set the descriptor's close-on-exec flag to VALUE
6410 F_GETFL read the descriptor's flags, as set on open
6411 F_SETFL set the descriptor's flags, as set on open to VALUE
6412 F_GETOWN return the process ID of a socket's owner, for SIGIO
6413 F_SETOWN set the process that owns a socket to VALUE, for SIGIO
6414 FD_CLOEXEC not sure what this is
6416 For details, see the documentation for the fcntl system call.
6418 *** The arguments to `select' have changed, for compatibility with
6419 SCSH. The TIMEOUT parameter may now be non-integral, yielding the
6420 expected behavior. The MILLISECONDS parameter has been changed to
6421 MICROSECONDS, to more closely resemble the underlying system call.
6422 The RVEC, WVEC, and EVEC arguments can now be vectors; the type of the
6423 corresponding return set will be the same.
6425 *** The arguments to the `mknod' system call have changed. They are
6428 (mknod PATH TYPE PERMS DEV)
6429 Create a new file (`node') in the file system. PATH is the name of
6430 the file to create. TYPE is the kind of file to create; it should
6431 be 'fifo, 'block-special, or 'char-special. PERMS specifies the
6432 permission bits to give the newly created file. If TYPE is
6433 'block-special or 'char-special, DEV specifies which device the
6434 special file refers to; its interpretation depends on the kind of
6435 special file being created.
6437 *** The `fork' function has been renamed to `primitive-fork', to avoid
6438 clashing with various SCSH forks.
6440 *** The `recv' and `recvfrom' functions have been renamed to `recv!'
6441 and `recvfrom!'. They no longer accept a size for a second argument;
6442 you must pass a string to hold the received value. They no longer
6443 return the buffer. Instead, `recv' returns the length of the message
6444 received, and `recvfrom' returns a pair containing the packet's length
6445 and originating address.
6447 *** The file descriptor datatype has been removed, as have the
6448 `read-fd', `write-fd', `close', `lseek', and `dup' functions.
6449 We plan to replace these functions with a SCSH-compatible interface.
6451 *** The `create' function has been removed; it's just a special case
6454 *** There are new functions to break down process termination status
6455 values. In the descriptions below, STATUS is a value returned by
6458 (status:exit-val STATUS)
6459 If the child process exited normally, this function returns the exit
6460 code for the child process (i.e., the value passed to exit, or
6461 returned from main). If the child process did not exit normally,
6462 this function returns #f.
6464 (status:stop-sig STATUS)
6465 If the child process was suspended by a signal, this function
6466 returns the signal that suspended the child. Otherwise, it returns
6469 (status:term-sig STATUS)
6470 If the child process terminated abnormally, this function returns
6471 the signal that terminated the child. Otherwise, this function
6474 POSIX promises that exactly one of these functions will return true on
6475 a valid STATUS value.
6477 These functions are compatible with SCSH.
6479 *** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
6480 returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
6482 Component Accessor Setter
6483 ========================= ============ ============
6484 seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
6485 minutes tm:min set-tm:min
6486 hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
6487 day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
6488 month tm:mon set-tm:mon
6489 year tm:year set-tm:year
6490 day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
6491 day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
6492 daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
6493 GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
6494 name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
6496 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname',
6497 describing the host system:
6500 ============================================== ================
6501 name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
6502 network name of this machine utsname:nodename
6503 release level of the operating system utsname:release
6504 version level of the operating system utsname:version
6505 machine hardware platform utsname:machine
6507 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getpw',
6508 `getpwnam', `getpwuid', and `getpwent', describing entries from the
6509 system's user database:
6512 ====================== =================
6513 user name passwd:name
6514 user password passwd:passwd
6517 real name passwd:gecos
6518 home directory passwd:dir
6519 shell program passwd:shell
6521 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getgr',
6522 `getgrnam', `getgrgid', and `getgrent', describing entries from the
6523 system's group database:
6526 ======================= ============
6527 group name group:name
6528 group password group:passwd
6530 group members group:mem
6532 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `gethost',
6533 `gethostbyaddr', `gethostbyname', and `gethostent', describing
6537 ========================= ===============
6538 official name of host hostent:name
6539 alias list hostent:aliases
6540 host address type hostent:addrtype
6541 length of address hostent:length
6542 list of addresses hostent:addr-list
6544 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getnet',
6545 `getnetbyaddr', `getnetbyname', and `getnetent', describing internet
6549 ========================= ===============
6550 official name of net netent:name
6551 alias list netent:aliases
6552 net number type netent:addrtype
6553 net number netent:net
6555 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getproto',
6556 `getprotobyname', `getprotobynumber', and `getprotoent', describing
6560 ========================= ===============
6561 official protocol name protoent:name
6562 alias list protoent:aliases
6563 protocol number protoent:proto
6565 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getserv',
6566 `getservbyname', `getservbyport', and `getservent', describing
6570 ========================= ===============
6571 official service name servent:name
6572 alias list servent:aliases
6573 port number servent:port
6574 protocol to use servent:proto
6576 *** There are new accessors for the sockaddr structures returned by
6577 `accept', `getsockname', `getpeername', `recvfrom!':
6580 ======================================== ===============
6581 address format (`family') sockaddr:fam
6582 path, for file domain addresses sockaddr:path
6583 address, for internet domain addresses sockaddr:addr
6584 TCP or UDP port, for internet sockaddr:port
6586 *** The `getpwent', `getgrent', `gethostent', `getnetent',
6587 `getprotoent', and `getservent' functions now return #f at the end of
6588 the user database. (They used to throw an exception.)
6590 Note that calling MUMBLEent function is equivalent to calling the
6591 corresponding MUMBLE function with no arguments.
6593 *** The `setpwent', `setgrent', `sethostent', `setnetent',
6594 `setprotoent', and `setservent' routines now take no arguments.
6596 *** The `gethost', `getproto', `getnet', and `getserv' functions now
6597 provide more useful information when they throw an exception.
6599 *** The `lnaof' function has been renamed to `inet-lnaof'.
6601 *** Guile now claims to have the `current-time' feature.
6603 *** The `mktime' function now takes an optional second argument ZONE,
6604 giving the time zone to use for the conversion. ZONE should be a
6605 string, in the same format as expected for the "TZ" environment variable.
6607 *** The `strptime' function now returns a pair (TIME . COUNT), where
6608 TIME is the parsed time as a vector, and COUNT is the number of
6609 characters from the string left unparsed. This function used to
6610 return the remaining characters as a string.
6612 *** The `gettimeofday' function has replaced the old `time+ticks' function.
6613 The return value is now (SECONDS . MICROSECONDS); the fractional
6614 component is no longer expressed in "ticks".
6616 *** The `ticks/sec' constant has been removed, in light of the above change.
6618 * Changes to the gh_ interface
6620 ** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
6623 ** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
6626 ** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
6627 and returns the array
6629 ** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
6630 null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
6631 the user to interpret the data both ways.
6633 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6635 ** The new function scm_symbol_value0 provides an easy way to get a
6636 symbol's value from C code:
6638 SCM scm_symbol_value0 (char *NAME)
6639 Return the value of the symbol named by the null-terminated string
6640 NAME in the current module. If the symbol named NAME is unbound in
6641 the current module, return SCM_UNDEFINED.
6643 ** The new function scm_sysintern0 creates new top-level variables,
6644 without assigning them a value.
6646 SCM scm_sysintern0 (char *NAME)
6647 Create a new Scheme top-level variable named NAME. NAME is a
6648 null-terminated string. Return the variable's value cell.
6650 ** The function scm_internal_catch is the guts of catch. It handles
6651 all the mechanics of setting up a catch target, invoking the catch
6652 body, and perhaps invoking the handler if the body does a throw.
6654 The function is designed to be usable from C code, but is general
6655 enough to implement all the semantics Guile Scheme expects from throw.
6657 TAG is the catch tag. Typically, this is a symbol, but this function
6658 doesn't actually care about that.
6660 BODY is a pointer to a C function which runs the body of the catch;
6661 this is the code you can throw from. We call it like this:
6662 BODY (BODY_DATA, JMPBUF)
6664 BODY_DATA is just the BODY_DATA argument we received; we pass it
6665 through to BODY as its first argument. The caller can make
6666 BODY_DATA point to anything useful that BODY might need.
6667 JMPBUF is the Scheme jmpbuf object corresponding to this catch,
6668 which we have just created and initialized.
6670 HANDLER is a pointer to a C function to deal with a throw to TAG,
6671 should one occur. We call it like this:
6672 HANDLER (HANDLER_DATA, THROWN_TAG, THROW_ARGS)
6674 HANDLER_DATA is the HANDLER_DATA argument we recevied; it's the
6675 same idea as BODY_DATA above.
6676 THROWN_TAG is the tag that the user threw to; usually this is
6677 TAG, but it could be something else if TAG was #t (i.e., a
6678 catch-all), or the user threw to a jmpbuf.
6679 THROW_ARGS is the list of arguments the user passed to the THROW
6682 BODY_DATA is just a pointer we pass through to BODY. HANDLER_DATA
6683 is just a pointer we pass through to HANDLER. We don't actually
6684 use either of those pointers otherwise ourselves. The idea is
6685 that, if our caller wants to communicate something to BODY or
6686 HANDLER, it can pass a pointer to it as MUMBLE_DATA, which BODY and
6687 HANDLER can then use. Think of it as a way to make BODY and
6688 HANDLER closures, not just functions; MUMBLE_DATA points to the
6691 Of course, it's up to the caller to make sure that any data a
6692 MUMBLE_DATA needs is protected from GC. A common way to do this is
6693 to make MUMBLE_DATA a pointer to data stored in an automatic
6694 structure variable; since the collector must scan the stack for
6695 references anyway, this assures that any references in MUMBLE_DATA
6698 ** The new function scm_internal_lazy_catch is exactly like
6699 scm_internal_catch, except:
6701 - It does not unwind the stack (this is the major difference).
6702 - If handler returns, its value is returned from the throw.
6703 - BODY always receives #f as its JMPBUF argument (since there's no
6704 jmpbuf associated with a lazy catch, because we don't unwind the
6707 ** scm_body_thunk is a new body function you can pass to
6708 scm_internal_catch if you want the body to be like Scheme's `catch'
6709 --- a thunk, or a function of one argument if the tag is #f.
6711 BODY_DATA is a pointer to a scm_body_thunk_data structure, which
6712 contains the Scheme procedure to invoke as the body, and the tag
6713 we're catching. If the tag is #f, then we pass JMPBUF (created by
6714 scm_internal_catch) to the body procedure; otherwise, the body gets
6717 ** scm_handle_by_proc is a new handler function you can pass to
6718 scm_internal_catch if you want the handler to act like Scheme's catch
6719 --- call a procedure with the tag and the throw arguments.
6721 If the user does a throw to this catch, this function runs a handler
6722 procedure written in Scheme. HANDLER_DATA is a pointer to an SCM
6723 variable holding the Scheme procedure object to invoke. It ought to
6724 be a pointer to an automatic variable (i.e., one living on the stack),
6725 or the procedure object should be otherwise protected from GC.
6727 ** scm_handle_by_message is a new handler function to use with
6728 `scm_internal_catch' if you want Guile to print a message and die.
6729 It's useful for dealing with throws to uncaught keys at the top level.
6731 HANDLER_DATA, if non-zero, is assumed to be a char * pointing to a
6732 message header to print; if zero, we use "guile" instead. That
6733 text is followed by a colon, then the message described by ARGS.
6735 ** The return type of scm_boot_guile is now void; the function does
6736 not return a value, and indeed, never returns at all.
6738 ** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
6739 process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
6740 stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
6743 To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
6744 linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
6745 of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will add
6746 any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
6747 argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
6748 generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
6749 command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
6752 ** The new functions scm_get_meta_args and scm_count_argv help you
6753 implement the SCSH-style meta-argument, `\'.
6755 char **scm_get_meta_args (int ARGC, char **ARGV)
6756 If the second element of ARGV is a string consisting of a single
6757 backslash character (i.e. "\\" in Scheme notation), open the file
6758 named by the following argument, parse arguments from it, and return
6759 the spliced command line. The returned array is terminated by a
6762 For details of argument parsing, see above, under "guile now accepts
6763 command-line arguments compatible with SCSH..."
6765 int scm_count_argv (char **ARGV)
6766 Count the arguments in ARGV, assuming it is terminated by a null
6769 For an example of how these functions might be used, see the source
6770 code for the function scm_shell in libguile/script.c.
6772 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6775 ** The new function scm_compile_shell_switches turns an array of
6776 command-line arguments into Scheme code to carry out the actions they
6777 describe. Given ARGC and ARGV, it returns a Scheme expression to
6778 evaluate, and calls scm_set_program_arguments to make any remaining
6779 command-line arguments available to the Scheme code. For example,
6780 given the following arguments:
6782 -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
6784 scm_set_program_arguments will return the following expression:
6786 (begin (load "ekko") (main (command-line)) (quit))
6788 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6791 ** The function scm_shell_usage prints a usage message appropriate for
6792 an interpreter that uses scm_compile_shell_switches to handle its
6793 command-line arguments.
6795 void scm_shell_usage (int FATAL, char *MESSAGE)
6796 Print a usage message to the standard error output. If MESSAGE is
6797 non-zero, write it before the usage message, followed by a newline.
6798 If FATAL is non-zero, exit the process, using FATAL as the
6799 termination status. (If you want to be compatible with Guile,
6800 always use 1 as the exit status when terminating due to command-line
6803 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6806 ** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
6807 expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL. Earth-shattering.
6809 ** The macros for declaring scheme objects in C code have been
6810 rearranged slightly. They are now:
6812 SCM_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6813 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
6814 point to the Scheme symbol whose name is SCHEME_NAME. C_NAME should
6815 be a C identifier, and SCHEME_NAME should be a C string.
6817 SCM_GLOBAL_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6818 Just like SCM_SYMBOL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
6820 SCM_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6821 Create a global variable at the Scheme level named SCHEME_NAME.
6822 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
6823 point to the Scheme variable's value cell.
6825 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6826 Just like SCM_VCELL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
6828 The `guile-snarf' script writes initialization code for these macros
6829 to its standard output, given C source code as input.
6831 The SCM_GLOBAL macro is gone.
6833 ** The scm_read_line and scm_read_line_x functions have been replaced
6834 by Scheme code based on the %read-delimited! procedure (known to C
6835 code as scm_read_delimited_x). See its description above for more
6838 ** The function scm_sys_open has been renamed to scm_open. It now
6839 returns a port instead of an FD object.
6841 * The dynamic linking support has changed. For more information, see
6842 libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING.
6847 User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
6850 * Changes to the 'guile' program:
6852 ** Guile now loads some new files when it starts up. Guile first
6853 searches the load path for init.scm, and loads it if found. Then, if
6854 Guile is not being used to execute a script, and the user's home
6855 directory contains a file named `.guile', Guile loads that.
6857 ** You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
6859 To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
6861 When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
6862 characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
6863 be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
6864 to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
6865 specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
6866 the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
6867 and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
6868 filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
6869 following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
6870 for more information.
6872 Now you can use Guile as an interpreter, using a mechanism which is a
6873 compatible subset of that provided by SCSH.
6875 Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
6876 name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
6877 characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
6878 to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
6879 following two lines at the top of the file:
6881 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6884 Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
6885 of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
6886 start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
6888 For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
6890 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6892 (let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
6895 (display (car args))
6896 (if (pair? (cdr args))
6898 (loop (cdr args)))))
6901 Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
6902 end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
6903 don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
6904 we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
6905 scripts once we do. Furthermore, if the path to Guile on your system
6906 is too long for your kernel, you can start the script with this
6910 exec /really/long/path/to/guile -s "$0" ${1+"$@"}
6913 Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
6916 ** You can now run Guile without installing it.
6918 Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
6919 couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
6920 they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
6921 later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
6922 itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
6925 To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
6926 then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
6927 colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
6928 of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
6929 full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
6932 export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
6935 ** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
6936 results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
6937 expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
6940 ** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
6941 however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
6942 request that they be displayed by default. After an error, evaluate
6944 to see a backtrace, and
6945 (debug-enable 'backtrace)
6946 to see them by default.
6950 * Changes to Guile Scheme:
6952 ** Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
6954 This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
6955 upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
6958 Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
6959 type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
6960 caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
6961 way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
6964 ** Guile's delq, delv, delete functions, and their destructive
6965 counterparts, delq!, delv!, and delete!, now remove all matching
6966 elements from the list, not just the first. This matches the behavior
6967 of the corresponding Emacs Lisp functions, and (I believe) the Maclisp
6968 functions which inspired them.
6970 I recognize that this change may break code in subtle ways, but it
6971 seems best to make the change before the FSF's first Guile release,
6975 ** The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
6977 ** The facilities for loading Scheme source files have changed.
6979 *** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
6980 for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
6983 *** The variable %load-extensions now tells Guile which extensions to
6984 try appending to a filename when searching the load path. Its value
6985 is a list of strings. Its default value is ("" ".scm").
6987 *** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
6988 value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME,
6989 with all the extensions listed in %load-extensions. If it finds a
6990 match, then it returns its full filename. If FILENAME is absolute, it
6991 returns it unchanged. Otherwise, it returns #f.
6993 %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to directories.
6995 *** (primitive-load FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
6996 uses %seach-load-path to find a file named FILENAME, and loads it if
6997 it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for any reason, it throws an
7000 The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
7003 *** load uses the same searching semantics as primitive-load.
7005 *** The functions %try-load, try-load-with-path, %load, load-with-path,
7006 basic-try-load-with-path, basic-load-with-path, try-load-module-with-
7007 path, and load-module-with-path have been deleted. The functions
7008 above should serve their purposes.
7010 *** If the value of the variable %load-hook is a procedure,
7011 `primitive-load' applies its value to the name of the file being
7012 loaded (without the load path directory name prepended). If its value
7013 is #f, it is ignored. Otherwise, an error occurs.
7015 This is mostly useful for printing load notification messages.
7018 ** The function `eval!' is no longer accessible from the scheme level.
7019 We can't allow operations which introduce glocs into the scheme level,
7020 because Guile's type system can't handle these as data. Use `eval' or
7021 `read-and-eval!' (see below) as replacement.
7023 ** The new function read-and-eval! reads an expression from PORT,
7024 evaluates it, and returns the result. This is more efficient than
7025 simply calling `read' and `eval', since it is not necessary to make a
7026 copy of the expression for the evaluator to munge.
7028 Its optional arguments CASE_INSENSITIVE_P and SHARP are interpreted as
7029 for the `read' function.
7032 ** The function `int?' has been removed; its definition was identical
7033 to that of `integer?'.
7035 ** The functions `<?', `<?', `<=?', `=?', `>?', and `>=?'. Code should
7036 use the R4RS names for these functions.
7038 ** The function object-properties no longer returns the hash handle;
7039 it simply returns the object's property list.
7041 ** Many functions have been changed to throw errors, instead of
7042 returning #f on failure. The point of providing exception handling in
7043 the language is to simplify the logic of user code, but this is less
7044 useful if Guile's primitives don't throw exceptions.
7046 ** The function `fileno' has been renamed from `%fileno'.
7048 ** The function primitive-mode->fdes returns #t or #f now, not 1 or 0.
7051 * Changes to Guile's C interface:
7053 ** The library's initialization procedure has been simplified.
7054 scm_boot_guile now has the prototype:
7056 void scm_boot_guile (int ARGC,
7058 void (*main_func) (),
7061 scm_boot_guile calls MAIN_FUNC, passing it CLOSURE, ARGC, and ARGV.
7062 MAIN_FUNC should do all the work of the program (initializing other
7063 packages, reading user input, etc.) before returning. When MAIN_FUNC
7064 returns, call exit (0); this function never returns. If you want some
7065 other exit value, MAIN_FUNC may call exit itself.
7067 scm_boot_guile arranges for program-arguments to return the strings
7068 given by ARGC and ARGV. If MAIN_FUNC modifies ARGC/ARGV, should call
7069 scm_set_program_arguments with the final list, so Scheme code will
7070 know which arguments have been processed.
7072 scm_boot_guile establishes a catch-all catch handler which prints an
7073 error message and exits the process. This means that Guile exits in a
7074 coherent way when system errors occur and the user isn't prepared to
7075 handle it. If the user doesn't like this behavior, they can establish
7076 their own universal catcher in MAIN_FUNC to shadow this one.
7078 Why must the caller do all the real work from MAIN_FUNC? The garbage
7079 collector assumes that all local variables of type SCM will be above
7080 scm_boot_guile's stack frame on the stack. If you try to manipulate
7081 SCM values after this function returns, it's the luck of the draw
7082 whether the GC will be able to find the objects you allocate. So,
7083 scm_boot_guile function exits, rather than returning, to discourage
7084 people from making that mistake.
7086 The IN, OUT, and ERR arguments were removed; there are other
7087 convenient ways to override these when desired.
7089 The RESULT argument was deleted; this function should never return.
7091 The BOOT_CMD argument was deleted; the MAIN_FUNC argument is more
7095 ** Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
7098 In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
7099 versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
7100 Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
7101 Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
7104 Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
7105 refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
7106 Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
7107 the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
7110 ** Two new C functions, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object,
7111 have been added to the Guile library.
7113 scm_protect_object (OBJ) protects OBJ from the garbage collector.
7114 OBJ will not be freed, even if all other references are dropped,
7115 until someone does scm_unprotect_object (OBJ). Both functions
7118 Note that calls to scm_protect_object do not nest. You can call
7119 scm_protect_object any number of times on a given object, and the
7120 next call to scm_unprotect_object will unprotect it completely.
7122 Basically, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object just
7123 maintain a list of references to things. Since the GC knows about
7124 this list, all objects it mentions stay alive. scm_protect_object
7125 adds its argument to the list; scm_unprotect_object remove its
7126 argument from the list.
7129 ** scm_eval_0str now returns the value of the last expression
7132 ** The new function scm_read_0str reads an s-expression from a
7133 null-terminated string, and returns it.
7135 ** The new function `scm_stdio_to_port' converts a STDIO file pointer
7136 to a Scheme port object.
7138 ** The new function `scm_set_program_arguments' allows C code to set
7139 the value returned by the Scheme `program-arguments' function.
7144 * Guile no longer includes sophisticated Tcl/Tk support.
7146 The old Tcl/Tk support was unsatisfying to us, because it required the
7147 user to link against the Tcl library, as well as Tk and Guile. The
7148 interface was also un-lispy, in that it preserved Tcl/Tk's practice of
7149 referring to widgets by names, rather than exporting widgets to Scheme
7150 code as a special datatype.
7152 In the Usenix Tk Developer's Workshop held in July 1996, the Tcl/Tk
7153 maintainers described some very interesting changes in progress to the
7154 Tcl/Tk internals, which would facilitate clean interfaces between lone
7155 Tk and other interpreters --- even for garbage-collected languages
7156 like Scheme. They expected the new Tk to be publicly available in the
7159 Since it seems that Guile might soon have a new, cleaner interface to
7160 lone Tk, and that the old Guile/Tk glue code would probably need to be
7161 completely rewritten, we (Jim Blandy and Richard Stallman) have
7162 decided not to support the old code. We'll spend the time instead on
7163 a good interface to the newer Tk, as soon as it is available.
7165 Until then, gtcltk-lib provides trivial, low-maintenance functionality.
7168 Copyright information:
7170 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
7172 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
7173 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
7174 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
7175 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
7177 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
7178 of this document, or of portions of it,
7179 under the above conditions, provided also that they
7180 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
7185 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"