Copyright (C) 1996 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
See the end for copying conditions.
-Please send Emacs bug reports to bug-guile@prep.ai.mit.edu.
+Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@prep.ai.mit.edu.
\f
Guile 1.0b3
+Changes since Thursday, September 5:
+
+
+* Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
+
+This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
+upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
+implementations.
+
+Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
+type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
+caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
+way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
+
+
+* You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
+
+To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
+
+ When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
+ characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
+ be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
+ to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
+ specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
+ the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
+ and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
+ filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
+ following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
+ for more information.
+
+Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
+name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
+characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
+to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
+following two lines at the top of the file:
+
+#!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
+!#
+
+Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
+of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
+start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
+
+For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
+
+#!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
+!#
+(let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
+ (if (pair? args)
+ (begin
+ (display (car args))
+ (if (pair? (cdr args))
+ (display " "))
+ (loop (cdr args)))))
+(newline)
+
+Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
+end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
+don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
+we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
+scripts once we do.
+
+Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
+
+
+* You can now run Guile without installing it.
+
+Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
+couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
+they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
+later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
+itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
+code.
+
+To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
+then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
+colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
+of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
+full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
+you might say
+
+ export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
+
+* Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
+header files.
+
+In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
+versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
+Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
+Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
+header files.
+
+Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
+refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
+Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
+the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
+
+* The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
+
+* A variable and two new functions have been added to libguile:
+
+** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
+for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
+a directory.
+
+** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
+value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME. If
+it finds a match, then it returns its full filename. Otherwise, it
+returns #f. %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to
+directories.
+
+** (%try-load-path FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
+searches the directories listed in %load-path for a file named
+FILENAME, and loads it if it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for
+any reason, it throws an error.
+
+The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
+%try-load function.
+
+
+\f
This is the beginning of recorded history.
\f
HCoop / bpt / guile.git / blobdiff