1 Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes.
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
9 * ,x of failing computation
13 (During the 1.9 series, we will keep an incremental NEWS for the latest
14 prerelease, and a full NEWS corresponding to 1.8 -> 2.0.)
16 Changes in 1.9.12 (since the 1.9.11 prerelease):
20 `(rnrs bytevectors)' and `(rnrs io ports)' now have version information,
21 like the rest of the modules. The `(rnrs unicode)' module is now
22 re-exported by `(rnrs)'. Top-level `import' forms may have more than one
23 clause. Warnings about duplicate bindings have been fixed, along with
24 some typos in the modules. There were a number of other bugfixes as well.
26 For the current list of known R6RS incompatibilities, see "R6RS
27 Incompatibilities" in the manual.
29 ** Documentation for standard R6RS libraries
31 See "R6RS Standard Libraries" in the manual, for more details.
33 ** Support for `letrec*'
35 Guile now supports letrec*, a form of letrec in which the identifiers
36 are bound in order. See "Local Bindings" in the manual, for more
39 ** Internal definitions now expand to `letrec*'
41 Following the R6RS, internal definitions now expand to letrec* instead
42 of letrec. The following program is invalid for R5RS, but valid for
47 (define baz (+ bar 20))
50 ;; R5RS and Guile <= 1.8:
51 (foo) => Unbound variable: bar
52 ;; R6RS and Guile >= 2.0:
55 This change should not affect correct R5RS programs, or programs written
56 in earlier Guile dialects.
58 ** Recursive debugging REPL on error
60 When Guile sees an error, instead of dropping into a special debugging
61 prompt, it will enter a recursive REPL in the dynamic context of the
62 error. See "Error Handling" in the manual, for more information.
64 A recursive REPL is the same as any other REPL, except that it
65 has been augmented with debugging information, so that one can inspect
66 the context of the error. The debugger has been integrated with the REPL
67 via a set of debugging meta-commands.
69 For example, one may access a backtrace with `,backtrace' (or
70 `,bt'). See "Interactive Debugging" in the manual, for more
73 ** Readline tab completion for arguments
75 When readline is enabled, tab completion works for arguments too, not
76 just for the operator position.
78 ** Various REPL robustness fixes
80 The REPL no longer enters the debugger when an error occurs at read-time
81 and compile-time, or when executing meta-commands. Additionally, the
82 REPL is more strict about the ports that it uses, saving the current
83 input and output ports at startup and using those ports when entering
84 recursive prompts. This allows debugging of an error within
85 e.g. `call-with-input-port'.
87 Finally, Ctrl-d can now be used to exit a recursive REPL, dropping the
88 user back to the parent REPL.
90 ** Better procedure name and source location propagation
92 There was a bug in 1.9.11 which would leave most procedures un-named;
93 this and other previous deficiencies have been fixed.
95 ** New macro: `current-source-location'
97 See FIXME in the manual, for more information.
99 ** module-filename field and accessor
101 Modules now record the file in which they are defined. This field may be
102 accessed with the new `module-filename' procedure.
104 ** call-with-error-handling / with-error-handling
108 ** Deprecate the old scm-style-repl
110 The following bindings from boot-9 are now found in `(ice-9
111 scm-style-repl)': `scm-style-repl', `error-catching-loop',
112 `error-catching-repl', `bad-throw', `scm-repl-silent'
113 `assert-repl-silence', `repl-print-unspecified',
114 `assert-repl-print-unspecified', `scm-repl-verbose',
115 `assert-repl-verbosity', `scm-repl-prompt', `set-repl-prompt!', `repl',
116 `default-pre-unwind-handler', `handle-system-error',
118 The following bindings have been deprecated, with no replacement:
119 `pre-unwind-handler-dispatch'.
121 The following bindings have been totally removed:
122 `before-signal-stack'.
124 Deprecated forwarding shims have been installed so that users that
125 expect these bindings in the main namespace will still work, but receive
126 a deprecation warning.
128 ** Miscellaneous other deprecations
130 `apply-to-args', `has-suffix?', `scheme-file-suffix'
131 `get-option', `for-next-option', `display-usage-report',
132 `transform-usage-lambda', `collect', `set-batch-mode?!'
134 ** All core defmacros reimplemented hygienically
136 All macros present in the default environment are now implemented with
137 syntax-case. This should not have practical ramifications, beyond those
138 listed below in "Lexical bindings introduced by hygienic macros may not
139 be referenced by nonhygienic macros".
141 ** Random generator state may be serialized to a datum
143 `random-state->datum' will serialize a random state to a datum, which
144 may be written out, read back in later, and revivified using
145 `datum->random-state'. See "Random" in the manual, for more details.
147 ** New primitive: `tmpfile'.
149 See "File System" in the manual.
151 ** Modules load within a known environment
153 It takes a few procedure calls to define a module, and those procedure
154 calls need to be in scope. Now we ensure that the current module when
155 loading a module is one that has the needed bindings, instead of relying
158 ** Remove encoding of versions into the file system
160 It used to be that, when loading a module, if the user specified a
161 version, Guile would grovel about in the filesystem to find the
162 module. This process was slow and not robust. This support has been
163 removed: modules are once more always loaded via `primitive-load-path'.
165 Module versions in the filesystem may be added again in the future, in
166 an extensible way. Contact bug-guile@gnu.org with patches.
168 ** Alex Shinn's pattern matcher for (ice-9 match).
170 Guile's copy of Andrew K. Wright's `match' library has been replaced by
171 a compatible hygienic implementation by Alex Shinn.
173 Compared to Andrew K. Wright's `match', the new `match' lacks
174 `match-define', `match:error-control', `match:set-error-control',
175 `match:error', `match:set-error', and all structure-related procedures.
177 ** Better debugging for psyntax
179 We now build psyntax-pp.go directly from psyntax.scm, which allows us to
180 preserve the original source locations and variable names. Git users
181 will also be please to note that psyntax-pp.scm is no longer
182 automatically regenerated from a normal `make' invocation.
186 Guile's build is visually quieter, due to the use of Automake 1.11's
187 AM_SILENT_RULES. Build as `make V=1' to see all of the output.
189 ** Better REPL options interface
191 The set of REPL options is now fixed and typechecked -- you can't
192 mistakenly set an option that doesn't exist, or set an value with an
193 incorrect type. The following options have been added: `prompt',
194 `compile-options', and `value-history'.
196 The new `repl-default-option-set!' procedure from `(system repl common)'
197 can set default options for future REPLs. `repl-default-prompt-set!' is
198 a convenience procedure to set default prompts.
200 ** `*unspecified*' is identifier syntax
202 `*unspecified*' is no longer a variable, so it is optimized properly by
203 the compiler, and is not `set!'-able.
205 ** `set-batch-mode?!' replaced by `ensure-batch-mode!'
207 "Batch mode" is a flag used to tell a program that it is not running
208 interactively. One usually turns it on after a fork. It may not be
209 turned off. `ensure-batch-mode!' deprecates the old `set-batch-mode?!',
210 because it is a better interface, as it can only turn on batch mode, not
213 ** `(debug)' gone (fix?)
215 * module/system/vm/debug.scm (debug): Change to debug the current stack
216 instead of the last stack.
218 ** Support for settable identifier syntax
220 Following the R6RS, "variable transformers" are settable
221 identifier-syntax. See "Identifier macros" in the manual, for more
224 ** Deprecate `save-stack', `the-last-stack'
226 It used to be that the way to debug programs in Guile was to capture the
227 stack at the time of error, drop back to the REPL, then debug that
228 stack. But this approach didn't compose, was tricky to get right in the
229 presence of threads, and was not very powerful.
231 So `save-stack', `stack-saved?', and `the-last-stack' have been moved to
232 `(ice-9 save-stack)', with deprecated bindings left in the root module.
234 ** Compilation warnings at the REPL
236 By default, Guile now prints compile-time warnings for code entered at
237 the REPL. Current warnings are for unbound variables and mismatched
240 ** syntax-case treats `_' as a placeholder
242 Following R6RS, a `_' in a syntax-rules or syntax-case pattern matches
243 anything, and binds no pattern variables. Unlike the R6RS, Guile also
244 permits `_' to be in the literals list for a pattern.
246 ** Remove old Emacs interface
248 Guile had an unused `--emacs' command line argument that was supposed to
249 help when running Guile inside Emacs. This option has been removed, and
250 the helper functions `named-module-use!' and `load-emacs-interface' have
253 ** `top-repl' has its own module
255 The `top-repl' binding, called with Guile is run interactively, is now
256 is its own module, `(ice-9 top-repl)'. A deprecated forwarding shim was
257 left in the default environment.
259 ** Value history in the REPL on by default
261 By default, the REPL will save computed values in variables like `$1',
262 `$2', and the like. There are programmatic and interactive interfaces to
263 control this. See "Value History" in the manual, for more information.
265 ** New threads are in `(guile-user)' by default, not `(guile)'
267 It used to be that a new thread entering Guile would do so in the
268 `(guile)' module, unless this was the first time Guile was initialized,
269 in which case it was `(guile-user)'. This has been fixed to have all
270 new threads unknown to Guile default to `(guile-user)'.
272 ** Backtrace improvements
274 It used to be that backtraces showed a couple of extra frames, from the
275 implementation of prompts. This has been fixed. Also, backtraces now
276 print column numbers in addition to line numbers, if possible.
278 ** `display-error' takes a frame
280 The `display-error' / `scm_display_error' helper now takes a frame as an
281 argument instead of a stack. Stacks are still supported in deprecated
282 builds. Additionally, `display-error' will again source location
283 information for the error.
285 ** Better error reporting from the VM
287 If a value of the wrong type is passed to `car', `cdr', `set-car!',
288 `set-cdr!', `apply', a struct accessor, or a bytevector accessors, the
289 error from the VM now indicates which procedure failed, instead of
290 lumping them all into the non-helpful "VM error". In addition, unbound
291 variable reporting is now more helpful.
293 ** No more `(ice-9 debug)'
295 This module had some debugging helpers that are no longer applicable to
296 the current debugging model. Importing this module will produce a
297 deprecation warning. Users should contact bug-guile for support.
299 ** No more `(system vm debug)'
301 This module is replaced by the recursive debugging REPL.
303 ** File ports handle binary mode and coding declarations
305 Binary file ports are supported again, by opening files in the
306 ISO-8859-1 encoding. If an encoding is not specified for textual ports,
307 Guile now grovels the file for a "coding:" directive, and uses that if
308 possible. See the documentation for `open-file', for more information.
310 ** R6RS character hex escapes on by default
312 However, R6RS character escapes within strings are incompatible with
313 older Guile escape sequences, so they still need the reader option
314 turned on. See "Reader Options" in the manual, for more information.
316 ** Fix random number generator on 64-bit platforms
318 There was a nasty bug on 64-bit platforms in which asking for a random
319 integer with a range between 2**32 and 2**64 caused a segfault. After
320 many embarrassing iterations, this was fixed.
322 ** Add `vhash-fold*' in `(ice-9 vlist)'.
324 See "VLists" in the manual, for more information.
326 ** Timestamps on autocompiled files checked for freshness, not equality
328 It used to be that to load a `.go' file instead of a `.scm' file, we
329 required that the timestamp of the `.go' file be equal to that of the
330 `.scm'. This has been relaxed to accept newer `.go' files, to integrate
331 better with `make' tools.
333 ** Simplifications to the `(system foreign)' API.
335 Guile's foreign function interface was simplified a great
336 deal. Interested users should see the documentation for
338 ** User Scheme code may be placed in a version-specific path
340 Before, there was only one way to install user Scheme code to a
341 version-specific Guile directory: install to Guile's own path,
342 e.g. /usr/share/guile/2.0. The site directory,
343 e.g. /usr/share/guile/site, was unversioned. This has been changed to
344 add a version-specific site directory, e.g. /usr/share/guile/site/2.0,
345 searched before the global site directory.
347 ** And of course, the usual collection of bugfixes
349 Interested users should see the ChangeLog for more information.
353 Changes in 1.9.x (since the 1.8.x series):
355 * New modules (see the manual for details)
357 ** `(srfi srfi-18)', more sophisticated multithreading support
358 ** `(ice-9 i18n)', internationalization support
359 ** `(rnrs bytevectors)', the R6RS bytevector API
360 ** `(rnrs io ports)', a subset of the R6RS I/O port API
361 ** `(system xref)', a cross-referencing facility (FIXME undocumented)
362 ** `(ice-9 vlist)', lists with constant-time random access; hash lists
363 ** `(system foreign)', foreign function interface
364 ** `(sxml match)', a pattern matcher for SXML
365 ** `(srfi srfi-9 gnu)', extensions to the SRFI-9 record library
366 ** `(system vm coverage)', a line-by-line code coverage library
368 ** Imported statprof, SSAX, and texinfo modules from Guile-Lib
370 The statprof statistical profiler, the SSAX XML toolkit, and the texinfo
371 toolkit from Guile-Lib have been imported into Guile proper. See
372 "Standard Library" in the manual for more details.
374 ** Integration of lalr-scm, a parser generator
376 Guile has included Dominique Boucher's fine `lalr-scm' parser generator
377 as `(system base lalr)'. See "LALR(1) Parsing" in the manual, for more
380 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
382 ** Guile now can compile Scheme to bytecode for a custom virtual machine.
384 Compiled code loads much faster than Scheme source code, and runs around
385 3 or 4 times as fast, generating much less garbage in the process.
387 ** Evaluating Scheme code does not use the C stack.
389 Besides when compiling Guile itself, Guile no longer uses a recursive C
390 function as an evaluator. This obviates the need to check the C stack
391 pointer for overflow. Continuations still capture the C stack, however.
393 ** New environment variables: GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH,
394 GUILE_SYSTEM_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH
396 GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH is for compiled files what GUILE_LOAD_PATH is
397 for source files. It is a different path, however, because compiled
398 files are architecture-specific. GUILE_SYSTEM_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH is like
401 ** New read-eval-print loop (REPL) implementation
403 Running Guile with no arguments drops the user into the new REPL. While
404 it is self-documenting to an extent, the new REPL has not yet been
405 documented in the manual. This will be fixed before 2.0.
407 ** New reader options: `square-brackets' and `r6rs-hex-escapes'
409 The reader supports a new option (changeable via `read-options'),
410 `square-brackets', which instructs it to interpret square brackets as
411 parentheses. This option is on by default.
413 When the new `r6rs-hex-escapes' reader option is enabled, the reader
414 will recognize string escape sequences as defined in R6RS.
416 ** Function profiling and tracing at the REPL
418 The `,profile FORM' REPL meta-command can now be used to statistically
419 profile execution of a form, to see which functions are taking the most
420 time. See `,help profile' for more information.
422 Similarly, `,trace FORM' traces all function applications that occur
423 during the execution of `FORM'. See `,help trace' for more information.
427 By default, if an exception is raised at the REPL and not caught by user
428 code, Guile will drop the user into a debugger. The user may request a
429 backtrace, inspect frames, or continue raising the exception. Full
430 documentation is available from within the debugger.
432 ** New `guile-tools' commands: `compile', `disassemble'
434 Pass the `--help' command-line option to these commands for more
437 ** Guile now adds its install prefix to the LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH
439 Users may now install Guile to nonstandard prefixes and just run
440 `/path/to/bin/guile', instead of also having to set LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH to
441 include `/path/to/lib'.
443 ** Guile's Emacs integration is now more keyboard-friendly
445 Backtraces may now be disclosed with the keyboard in addition to the
448 ** Load path change: search in version-specific paths before site paths
450 When looking for a module, Guile now searches first in Guile's
451 version-specific path (the library path), *then* in the site dir. This
452 allows Guile's copy of SSAX to override any Guile-Lib copy the user has
453 installed. Also it should cut the number of `stat' system calls by half,
456 ** Interactive Guile follows GNU conventions
458 As recommended by the GPL, Guile now shows a brief copyright and
459 warranty disclaimer on startup, along with pointers to more information.
461 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
463 ** Support for R6RS libraries
465 The `library' and `import' forms from the latest Scheme report have been
466 added to Guile, in such a way that R6RS libraries share a namespace with
467 Guile modules. R6RS modules may import Guile modules, and are available
468 for Guile modules to import via use-modules and all the rest. See "R6RS
469 Libraries" in the manual for more information.
471 ** Implementations of R6RS libraries
473 Guile now has implementations for all of the libraries defined in the
474 R6RS. Thanks to Julian Graham for this excellent hack. See "R6RS
475 Standard Libraries" in the manual for a full list of libraries.
477 ** Partial R6RS compatibility
479 Guile now has enough support for R6RS to run a reasonably large subset
482 Guile is not fully R6RS compatible. Many incompatibilities are simply
483 bugs, though some parts of Guile will remain R6RS-incompatible for the
484 foreseeable future. See "R6RS Incompatibilities" in the manual, for more
487 Please contact bug-guile@gnu.org if you have found an issue not
488 mentioned in that compatibility list.
490 ** New implementation of `primitive-eval'
492 Guile's `primitive-eval' is now implemented in Scheme. Actually there is
493 still a C evaluator, used when building a fresh Guile to interpret the
494 compiler, so we can compile eval.scm. Thereafter all calls to
495 primitive-eval are implemented by VM-compiled code.
497 This allows all of Guile's procedures, be they interpreted or compiled,
498 to execute on the same stack, unifying multiple-value return semantics,
499 providing for proper tail recursion between interpreted and compiled
500 code, and simplifying debugging.
502 As part of this change, the evaluator no longer mutates the internal
503 representation of the code being evaluated in a thread-unsafe manner.
505 There are two negative aspects of this change, however. First, Guile
506 takes a lot longer to compile now. Also, there is less debugging
507 information available for debugging interpreted code. We hope to improve
508 both of these situations.
510 There are many changes to the internal C evalator interface, but all
511 public interfaces should be the same. See the ChangeLog for details. If
512 we have inadvertantly changed an interface that you were using, please
513 contact bug-guile@gnu.org.
515 ** Procedure removed: `the-environment'
517 This procedure was part of the interpreter's execution model, and does
518 not apply to the compiler.
520 ** No more `local-eval'
522 `local-eval' used to exist so that one could evaluate code in the
523 lexical context of a function. Since there is no way to get the lexical
524 environment any more, as that concept has no meaning for the compiler,
525 and a different meaning for the interpreter, we have removed the
528 If you think you need `local-eval', you should probably implement your
529 own metacircular evaluator. It will probably be as fast as Guile's
532 ** Scheme source files will now be compiled automatically.
534 If a compiled .go file corresponding to a .scm file is not found or is
535 not fresh, the .scm file will be compiled on the fly, and the resulting
536 .go file stored away. An advisory note will be printed on the console.
538 Note that this mechanism depends on preservation of the .scm and .go
539 modification times; if the .scm or .go files are moved after
540 installation, care should be taken to preserve their original
543 Autocompiled files will be stored in the $XDG_CACHE_HOME/guile/ccache
544 directory, where $XDG_CACHE_HOME defaults to ~/.cache. This directory
545 will be created if needed.
547 To inhibit autocompilation, set the GUILE_AUTO_COMPILE environment
548 variable to 0, or pass --no-autocompile on the Guile command line.
550 ** New POSIX procedures: `getrlimit' and `setrlimit'
552 Note however that the interface of these functions is likely to change
553 in the next prerelease.
555 ** New POSIX procedure: `getsid'
557 Scheme binding for the `getsid' C library call.
559 ** New POSIX procedure: `getaddrinfo'
561 Scheme binding for the `getaddrinfo' C library function.
563 ** New procedure in `(oops goops)': `method-formals'
565 ** New procedures in (ice-9 session): `add-value-help-handler!',
566 `remove-value-help-handler!', `add-name-help-handler!'
567 `remove-name-help-handler!', `procedure-arguments'
569 The value and name help handlers provide some minimal extensibility to
570 the help interface. Guile-lib's `(texinfo reflection)' uses them, for
571 example, to make stexinfo help documentation available. See those
572 procedures' docstrings for more information.
574 `procedure-arguments' describes the arguments that a procedure can take,
575 combining arity and formals. For example:
577 (procedure-arguments resolve-interface)
578 => ((required . (name)) (rest . args))
580 Additionally, `module-commentary' is now publically exported from
583 ** Removed: `procedure->memoizing-macro', `procedure->syntax'
585 These procedures created primitive fexprs for the old evaluator, and are
586 no longer supported. If you feel that you need these functions, you
587 probably need to write your own metacircular evaluator (which will
588 probably be as fast as Guile's, anyway).
590 ** New language: ECMAScript
592 Guile now ships with one other high-level language supported,
593 ECMAScript. The goal is to support all of version 3.1 of the standard,
594 but not all of the libraries are there yet. This support is not yet
595 documented; ask on the mailing list if you are interested.
597 ** New language: Brainfuck
599 Brainfuck is a toy language that closely models Turing machines. Guile's
600 brainfuck compiler is meant to be an example of implementing other
601 languages. See the manual for details, or
602 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck for more information about the
603 Brainfuck language itself.
605 ** New language: Elisp
607 Guile now has an experimental Emacs Lisp compiler and runtime. You can
608 now switch to Elisp at the repl: `,language elisp'. All kudos to Daniel
609 Kraft, and all bugs to bug-guile@gnu.org.
611 ** Better documentation infrastructure for macros
613 It is now possible to introspect on the type of a macro, e.g.
614 syntax-rules, identifier-syntax, etc, and extract information about that
615 macro, such as the syntax-rules patterns or the defmacro arguments.
616 `(texinfo reflection)' takes advantage of this to give better macro
619 ** Support for arbitrary procedure metadata
621 Building on its support for docstrings, Guile now supports multiple
622 docstrings, adding them to the tail of a compiled procedure's
623 properties. For example:
629 (procedure-properties foo)
630 => ((name . foo) (documentation . "one") (documentation . "two"))
632 Also, vectors of pairs are now treated as additional metadata entries:
635 #((quz . #f) (docstring . "xyzzy"))
637 (procedure-properties bar)
638 => ((name . bar) (quz . #f) (docstring . "xyzzy"))
640 This allows arbitrary literals to be embedded as metadata in a compiled
643 ** The psyntax expander now knows how to interpret the @ and @@ special
646 ** The psyntax expander is now hygienic with respect to modules.
648 Free variables in a macro are scoped in the module that the macro was
649 defined in, not in the module the macro is used in. For example, code
652 (define-module (foo) #:export (bar))
653 (define (helper x) ...)
655 (syntax-rules () ((_ x) (helper x))))
657 (define-module (baz) #:use-module (foo))
660 It used to be you had to export `helper' from `(foo)' as well.
661 Thankfully, this has been fixed.
663 ** Complete support for version information in Guile's `module' form
665 Guile modules now have a `#:version' field. They may be loaded by
666 version as well. See "R6RS Version References", "General Information
667 about Modules", "Using Guile Modules", and "Creating Guile Modules" in
668 the manual for more information.
670 ** Support for renaming bindings on module export
672 Wherever Guile accepts a symbol as an argument to specify a binding to
673 export, it now also accepts a pair of symbols, indicating that a binding
674 should be renamed on export. See "Creating Guile Modules" in the manual
675 for more information.
677 ** New procedure: `module-export-all!'
679 This procedure exports all current and future bindings from a module.
680 Use as `(module-export-all! (current-module))'.
682 ** `eval-case' has been deprecated, and replaced by `eval-when'.
684 The semantics of `eval-when' are easier to understand. See "Eval When"
685 in the manual, for more information.
687 ** Guile is now more strict about prohibiting definitions in expression
690 Although previous versions of Guile accepted it, the following
691 expression is not valid, in R5RS or R6RS:
693 (if test (define foo 'bar) (define foo 'baz))
695 In this specific case, it would be better to do:
697 (define foo (if test 'bar 'baz))
699 It is certainly possible to circumvent this resriction with e.g.
700 `(module-define! (current-module) 'foo 'baz)'. We would appreciate
701 feedback about this change (a consequence of using psyntax as the
702 default expander), and may choose to revisit this situation before 2.0
703 in response to user feedback.
705 ** Macro expansion produces structures instead of s-expressions
707 In the olden days, macroexpanding an s-expression would yield another
708 s-expression. Though the lexical variables were renamed, expansions of
709 core forms like `if' and `begin' were still non-hygienic, as they relied
710 on the toplevel definitions of `if' et al being the conventional ones.
712 The solution is to expand to structures instead of s-expressions. There
713 is an `if' structure, a `begin' structure, a `toplevel-ref' structure,
714 etc. The expander already did this for compilation, producing Tree-IL
715 directly; it has been changed now to do so when expanding for the
718 ** Defmacros must now produce valid Scheme expressions.
720 It used to be that defmacros could unquote in Scheme values, as a way of
721 supporting partial evaluation, and avoiding some hygiene issues. For
724 (define (helper x) ...)
725 (define-macro (foo bar)
728 Assuming this macro is in the `(baz)' module, the direct translation of
731 (define (helper x) ...)
732 (define-macro (foo bar)
733 `((@@ (baz) helper) ,bar))
735 Of course, one could just use a hygienic macro instead:
739 ((_ bar) (helper bar))))
741 ** Guile's psyntax now supports docstrings and internal definitions.
743 The following Scheme is not strictly legal:
750 However its intent is fairly clear. Guile interprets "bar" to be the
751 docstring of `foo', and the definition of `baz' is still in definition
754 ** Macros need to be defined before their first use.
756 It used to be that with lazy memoization, this might work:
760 (define-macro (ref x) x)
763 But now, the body of `foo' is interpreted to mean a call to the toplevel
764 `ref' function, instead of a macro expansion. The solution is to define
765 macros before code that uses them.
767 ** Functions needed by macros at expand-time need to be present at
770 For example, this code will work at the REPL:
772 (define (double-helper x) (* x x))
773 (define-macro (double-literal x) (double-helper x))
774 (double-literal 2) => 4
776 But it will not work when a file is compiled, because the definition of
777 `double-helper' is not present at expand-time. The solution is to wrap
778 the definition of `double-helper' in `eval-when':
780 (eval-when (load compile eval)
781 (define (double-helper x) (* x x)))
782 (define-macro (double-literal x) (double-helper x))
783 (double-literal 2) => 4
785 See the documentation for eval-when for more information.
787 ** `macroexpand' produces structures, not S-expressions.
789 Given the need to maintain referential transparency, both lexically and
790 modular, the result of expanding Scheme expressions is no longer itself
791 an s-expression. If you want a human-readable approximation of the
792 result of `macroexpand', call `tree-il->scheme' from `(language
795 ** Removed function: `macroexpand-1'
797 It is unclear how to implement `macroexpand-1' with syntax-case, though
798 PLT Scheme does prove that it is possible.
800 ** New reader macros: #' #` #, #,@
802 These macros translate, respectively, to `syntax', `quasisyntax',
803 `unsyntax', and `unsyntax-splicing'. See the R6RS for more information.
804 These reader macros may be overridden by `read-hash-extend'.
806 ** Incompatible change to #'
808 Guile did have a #' hash-extension, by default, which just returned the
809 subsequent datum: #'foo => foo. In the unlikely event that anyone
810 actually used this, this behavior may be reinstated via the
811 `read-hash-extend' mechanism.
813 ** Scheme expresssions may be commented out with #;
815 #; comments out an entire expression. See SRFI-62 or the R6RS for more
818 ** Prompts: Delimited, composable continuations
820 Guile now has prompts as part of its primitive language. See "Prompts"
821 in the manual, for more information.
823 Expressions entered in at the REPL, or from the command line, are
824 surrounded by a prompt with the default prompt tag.
826 ** `make-stack' with a tail-called procedural narrowing argument no longer
827 works (with compiled procedures)
829 It used to be the case that a captured stack could be narrowed to select
830 calls only up to or from a certain procedure, even if that procedure
831 already tail-called another procedure. This was because the debug
832 information from the original procedure was kept on the stack.
834 Now with the new compiler, the stack only contains active frames from
835 the current continuation. A narrow to a procedure that is not in the
836 stack will result in an empty stack. To fix this, narrow to a procedure
837 that is active in the current continuation, or narrow to a specific
838 number of stack frames.
840 ** Backtraces through compiled procedures only show procedures that are
841 active in the current continuation
843 Similarly to the previous issue, backtraces in compiled code may be
844 different from backtraces in interpreted code. There are no semantic
845 differences, however. Please mail bug-guile@gnu.org if you see any
846 deficiencies with Guile's backtraces.
848 ** syntax-rules and syntax-case macros now propagate source information
849 through to the expanded code
851 This should result in better backtraces.
853 ** The currying behavior of `define' has been removed.
855 Before, `(define ((f a) b) (* a b))' would translate to
857 (define f (lambda (a) (lambda (b) (* a b))))
859 Now a syntax error is signaled, as this syntax is not supported by
860 default. Use the `(ice-9 curried-definitions)' module to get back the
863 ** New procedure, `define!'
865 `define!' is a procedure that takes two arguments, a symbol and a value,
866 and binds the value to the symbol in the current module. It's useful to
867 programmatically make definitions in the current module, and is slightly
868 less verbose than `module-define!'.
870 ** All modules have names now
872 Before, you could have anonymous modules: modules without names. Now,
873 because of hygiene and macros, all modules have names. If a module was
874 created without a name, the first time `module-name' is called on it, a
875 fresh name will be lazily generated for it.
877 ** The module namespace is now separate from the value namespace
879 It was a little-known implementation detail of Guile's module system
880 that it was built on a single hierarchical namespace of values -- that
881 if there was a module named `(foo bar)', then in the module named
882 `(foo)' there was a binding from `bar' to the `(foo bar)' module.
884 This was a neat trick, but presented a number of problems. One problem
885 was that the bindings in a module were not apparent from the module
886 itself; perhaps the `(foo)' module had a private binding for `bar', and
887 then an external contributor defined `(foo bar)'. In the end there can
888 be only one binding, so one of the two will see the wrong thing, and
889 produce an obtuse error of unclear provenance.
891 Also, the public interface of a module was also bound in the value
892 namespace, as `%module-public-interface'. This was a hack from the early
893 days of Guile's modules.
895 Both of these warts have been fixed by the addition of fields in the
896 `module' data type. Access to modules and their interfaces from the
897 value namespace has been deprecated, and all accessors use the new
898 record accessors appropriately.
900 When Guile is built with support for deprecated code, as is the default,
901 the value namespace is still searched for modules and public interfaces,
902 and a deprecation warning is raised as appropriate.
904 Finally, to support lazy loading of modules as one used to be able to do
905 with module binder procedures, Guile now has submodule binders, called
906 if a given submodule is not found. See boot-9.scm for more information.
908 ** New procedures: module-ref-submodule, module-define-submodule,
909 nested-ref-module, nested-define-module!, local-ref-module,
912 These new accessors are like their bare variants, but operate on
913 namespaces instead of values.
915 ** The (app modules) module tree is officially deprecated
917 It used to be that one could access a module named `(foo bar)' via
918 `(nested-ref the-root-module '(app modules foo bar))'. The `(app
919 modules)' bit was a never-used and never-documented abstraction, and has
920 been deprecated. See the following mail for a full discussion:
922 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2010-04/msg00168.html
924 The `%app' binding is also deprecated.
926 ** Many syntax errors have different texts now
928 Syntax errors still throw to the `syntax-error' key, but the arguments
929 are often different now. Perhaps in the future, Guile will switch to
930 using standard SRFI-35 conditions.
932 ** Returning multiple values to compiled code will silently truncate the
933 values to the expected number
935 For example, the interpreter would raise an error evaluating the form,
936 `(+ (values 1 2) (values 3 4))', because it would see the operands as
937 being two compound "values" objects, to which `+' does not apply.
939 The compiler, on the other hand, receives multiple values on the stack,
940 not as a compound object. Given that it must check the number of values
941 anyway, if too many values are provided for a continuation, it chooses
942 to truncate those values, effectively evaluating `(+ 1 3)' instead.
944 The idea is that the semantics that the compiler implements is more
945 intuitive, and the use of the interpreter will fade out with time.
946 This behavior is allowed both by the R5RS and the R6RS.
948 ** Multiple values in compiled code are not represented by compound
951 This change may manifest itself in the following situation:
953 (let ((val (foo))) (do-something) val)
955 In the interpreter, if `foo' returns multiple values, multiple values
956 are produced from the `let' expression. In the compiler, those values
957 are truncated to the first value, and that first value is returned. In
958 the compiler, if `foo' returns no values, an error will be raised, while
959 the interpreter would proceed.
961 Both of these behaviors are allowed by R5RS and R6RS. The compiler's
962 behavior is more correct, however. If you wish to preserve a potentially
963 multiply-valued return, you will need to set up a multiple-value
964 continuation, using `call-with-values'.
966 ** Defmacros are now implemented in terms of syntax-case.
968 The practical ramification of this is that the `defmacro?' predicate has
969 been removed, along with `defmacro-transformer', `macro-table',
970 `xformer-table', `assert-defmacro?!', `set-defmacro-transformer!' and
971 `defmacro:transformer'. This is because defmacros are simply macros. If
972 any of these procedures provided useful facilities to you, we encourage
973 you to contact the Guile developers.
975 ** Hygienic macros documented as the primary syntactic extension mechanism.
977 The macro documentation was finally fleshed out with some documentation
978 on `syntax-rules' and `syntax-case' macros, and other parts of the macro
979 expansion process. See "Macros" in the manual, for details.
981 ** psyntax is now the default expander
983 Scheme code is now expanded by default by the psyntax hygienic macro
984 expander. Expansion is performed completely before compilation or
987 Notably, syntax errors will be signalled before interpretation begins.
988 In the past, many syntax errors were only detected at runtime if the
989 code in question was memoized.
991 As part of its expansion, psyntax renames all lexically-bound
992 identifiers. Original identifier names are preserved and given to the
993 compiler, but the interpreter will see the renamed variables, e.g.,
994 `x432' instead of `x'.
996 Note that the psyntax that Guile uses is a fork, as Guile already had
997 modules before incompatible modules were added to psyntax -- about 10
998 years ago! Thus there are surely a number of bugs that have been fixed
999 in psyntax since then. If you find one, please notify bug-guile@gnu.org.
1001 ** syntax-rules and syntax-case are available by default.
1003 There is no longer any need to import the `(ice-9 syncase)' module
1004 (which is now deprecated). The expander may be invoked directly via
1005 `macroexpand', though it is normally searched for via the current module
1008 Also, the helper routines for syntax-case are available in the default
1009 environment as well: `syntax->datum', `datum->syntax',
1010 `bound-identifier=?', `free-identifier=?', `generate-temporaries',
1011 `identifier?', and `syntax-violation'. See the R6RS for documentation.
1013 ** Tail patterns in syntax-case
1015 Guile has pulled in some more recent changes from the psyntax portable
1016 syntax expander, to implement support for "tail patterns". Such patterns
1017 are supported by syntax-rules and syntax-case. This allows a syntax-case
1018 match clause to have ellipses, then a pattern at the end. For example:
1021 (syntax-rules (else)
1022 ((_ val match-clause ... (else e e* ...))
1025 Note how there is MATCH-CLAUSE, which is ellipsized, then there is a
1026 tail pattern for the else clause. Thanks to Andreas Rottmann for the
1027 patch, and Kent Dybvig for the code.
1029 ** Lexical bindings introduced by hygienic macros may not be referenced
1030 by nonhygienic macros.
1032 If a lexical binding is introduced by a hygienic macro, it may not be
1033 referenced by a nonhygienic macro. For example, this works:
1036 (define-macro (bind-x val body)
1037 `(let ((x ,val)) ,body))
1038 (define-macro (ref x)
1040 (bind-x 10 (ref x)))
1045 (define-syntax bind-x
1047 ((_ val body) (let ((x val)) body))))
1048 (define-macro (ref x)
1050 (bind-x 10 (ref x)))
1052 It is not normal to run into this situation with existing code. However,
1053 as code is ported over from defmacros to syntax-case, it is possible to
1054 run into situations like this. For example, if you have a defmacro that
1055 generates a `while' expression, the `break' bound by the `while' may not
1056 be visible within other parts of your defmacro. The solution is to port
1057 from defmacros to syntax-rules or syntax-case.
1059 ** Macros may no longer be referenced as first-class values.
1061 In the past, you could evaluate e.g. `if', and get its macro value. Now,
1062 expanding this form raises a syntax error.
1064 Macros still /exist/ as first-class values, but they must be
1065 /referenced/ via the module system, e.g. `(module-ref (current-module)
1068 ** Macros may now have docstrings.
1070 `object-documentation' from `(ice-9 documentation)' may be used to
1071 retrieve the docstring, once you have a macro value -- but see the above
1072 note about first-class macros. Docstrings are associated with the syntax
1073 transformer procedures.
1075 ** `case-lambda' is now available in the default environment.
1077 The binding in the default environment is equivalent to the one from the
1078 `(srfi srfi-16)' module. Use the srfi-16 module explicitly if you wish
1079 to maintain compatibility with Guile 1.8 and earlier.
1081 ** Procedures may now have more than one arity.
1083 This can be the case, for example, in case-lambda procedures. The
1084 arities of compiled procedures may be accessed via procedures from the
1085 `(system vm program)' module; see "Compiled Procedures", "Optional
1086 Arguments", and "Case-lambda" in the manual.
1088 ** Deprecate arity access via (procedure-properties proc 'arity)
1090 Instead of accessing a procedure's arity as a property, use the new
1091 `procedure-minimum-arity' function, which gives the most permissive
1092 arity that the the function has, in the same format as the old arity
1095 ** `lambda*' and `define*' are now available in the default environment
1097 As with `case-lambda', `(ice-9 optargs)' continues to be supported, for
1098 compatibility purposes. No semantic change has been made (we hope).
1099 Optional and keyword arguments now dispatch via special VM operations,
1100 without the need to cons rest arguments, making them very fast.
1102 ** New function, `truncated-print', with `format' support
1104 `(ice-9 pretty-print)' now exports `truncated-print', a printer that
1105 will ensure that the output stays within a certain width, truncating the
1106 output in what is hopefully an intelligent manner. See the manual for
1109 There is a new `format' specifier, `~@y', for doing a truncated
1110 print (as opposed to `~y', which does a pretty-print). See the `format'
1111 documentation for more details.
1113 ** SRFI-4 vectors reimplemented in terms of R6RS bytevectors
1115 Guile now implements SRFI-4 vectors using bytevectors. Often when you
1116 have a numeric vector, you end up wanting to write its bytes somewhere,
1117 or have access to the underlying bytes, or read in bytes from somewhere
1118 else. Bytevectors are very good at this sort of thing. But the SRFI-4
1119 APIs are nicer to use when doing number-crunching, because they are
1120 addressed by element and not by byte.
1122 So as a compromise, Guile allows all bytevector functions to operate on
1123 numeric vectors. They address the underlying bytes in the native
1124 endianness, as one would expect.
1126 Following the same reasoning, that it's just bytes underneath, Guile
1127 also allows uniform vectors of a given type to be accessed as if they
1128 were of any type. One can fill a u32vector, and access its elements with
1129 u8vector-ref. One can use f64vector-ref on bytevectors. It's all the
1132 In this way, uniform numeric vectors may be written to and read from
1133 input/output ports using the procedures that operate on bytevectors.
1135 Calls to SRFI-4 accessors (ref and set functions) from Scheme are now
1136 inlined to the VM instructions for bytevector access.
1138 See "SRFI-4" in the manual, for more information.
1140 ** Nonstandard SRFI-4 procedures now available from `(srfi srfi-4 gnu)'
1142 Guile's `(srfi srfi-4)' now only exports those srfi-4 procedures that
1143 are part of the standard. Complex uniform vectors and the
1144 `any->FOOvector' family are now available only from `(srfi srfi-4 gnu)'.
1146 Guile's default environment imports `(srfi srfi-4)', and probably should
1147 import `(srfi srfi-4 gnu)' as well.
1149 See "SRFI-4 Extensions" in the manual, for more information.
1151 ** New syntax: include-from-path.
1153 `include-from-path' is like `include', except it looks for its file in
1154 the load path. It can be used to compile other files into a file.
1156 ** New syntax: quasisyntax.
1158 `quasisyntax' is to `syntax' as `quasiquote' is to `quote'. See the R6RS
1159 documentation for more information. Thanks to Andre van Tonder for the
1162 ** Unicode characters
1164 Unicode characters may be entered in octal format via e.g. `#\454', or
1165 created via (integer->char 300). A hex external representation will
1166 probably be introduced at some point.
1170 Internally, strings are now represented either in the `latin-1'
1171 encoding, one byte per character, or in UTF-32, with four bytes per
1172 character. Strings manage their own allocation, switching if needed.
1174 Extended characters may be written in a literal string using the
1175 hexadecimal escapes `\xXX', `\uXXXX', or `\UXXXXXX', for 8-bit, 16-bit,
1176 or 24-bit codepoints, respectively, or entered directly in the native
1177 encoding of the port on which the string is read.
1181 One may now use U+03BB (GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMBDA) as an identifier.
1183 ** Support for non-ASCII source code files
1185 The default reader now handles source code files for some of the
1186 non-ASCII character encodings, such as UTF-8. A non-ASCII source file
1187 should have an encoding declaration near the top of the file. Also,
1188 there is a new function, `file-encoding', that scans a port for a coding
1189 declaration. See the section of the manual entitled, "Character Encoding
1192 The pre-1.9.3 reader handled 8-bit clean but otherwise unspecified source
1193 code. This use is now discouraged.
1195 ** Support for locale transcoding when reading from and writing to ports
1197 Ports now have an associated character encoding, and port read and write
1198 operations do conversion to and from locales automatically. Ports also
1199 have an associated strategy for how to deal with locale conversion
1202 See the documentation in the manual for the four new support functions,
1203 `set-port-encoding!', `port-encoding', `set-port-conversion-strategy!',
1204 and `port-conversion-strategy'.
1206 ** String and SRFI-13 functions can operate on Unicode strings
1208 ** Unicode support for SRFI-14 character sets
1210 The default character sets are no longer locale dependent and contain
1211 characters from the whole Unicode range. There is a new predefined
1212 character set, `char-set:designated', which contains all assigned
1213 Unicode characters. There is a new debugging function, `%char-set-dump'.
1215 ** Character functions operate on Unicode characters
1217 `char-upcase' and `char-downcase' use default Unicode casing rules.
1218 Character comparisons such as `char<?' and `char-ci<?' now sort based on
1219 Unicode code points.
1221 ** Global variables `scm_charnames' and `scm_charnums' are removed
1223 These variables contained the names of control characters and were
1224 used when writing characters. While these were global, they were
1225 never intended to be public API. They have been replaced with private
1228 ** EBCDIC support is removed
1230 There was an EBCDIC compile flag that altered some of the character
1231 processing. It appeared that full EBCDIC support was never completed
1232 and was unmaintained.
1234 ** Compile-time warnings
1236 Guile can warn about potentially unbound free variables. Pass the
1237 -Wunbound-variable on the `guile-tools compile' command line, or add
1238 `#:warnings '(unbound-variable)' to your `compile' or `compile-file'
1241 Guile can also warn when you pass the wrong number of arguments to a
1242 procedure, with -Warity-mismatch, or `arity-mismatch' in the
1243 `#:warnings' as above.
1245 Other warnings include `-Wunused-variable' and `-Wunused-toplevel', to
1246 warn about unused local or global (top-level) variables.
1248 ** A new `memoize-symbol' evaluator trap has been added.
1250 This trap can be used for efficiently implementing a Scheme code
1253 ** Duplicate bindings among used modules are resolved lazily.
1255 This slightly improves program startup times.
1257 ** New thread cancellation and thread cleanup API
1259 See `cancel-thread', `set-thread-cleanup!', and `thread-cleanup'.
1261 ** GOOPS dispatch in scheme
1263 As an implementation detail, GOOPS dispatch is no longer implemented by
1264 special evaluator bytecodes, but rather directly via a Scheme function
1265 associated with an applicable struct. There is some VM support for the
1266 underlying primitives, like `class-of'.
1268 This change will in the future allow users to customize generic function
1269 dispatch without incurring a performance penalty, and allow us to
1270 implement method combinations.
1272 ** Applicable struct support
1274 One may now make structs from Scheme that may be applied as procedures.
1275 To do so, make a struct whose vtable is `<applicable-struct-vtable>'.
1276 That struct will be the vtable of your applicable structs; instances of
1277 that new struct are assumed to have the procedure in their first slot.
1278 `<applicable-struct-vtable>' is like Common Lisp's
1279 `funcallable-standard-class'. Likewise there is
1280 `<applicable-struct-with-setter-vtable>', which looks for the setter in
1281 the second slot. This needs to be better documented.
1285 GOOPS had a number of concepts that were relevant to the days of Tcl,
1286 but not any more: operators and entities, mainly. These objects were
1287 never documented, and it is unlikely that they were ever used. Operators
1288 were a kind of generic specific to the Tcl support. Entities were
1289 replaced by applicable structs, mentioned above.
1291 ** New struct slot allocation: "hidden"
1293 A hidden slot is readable and writable, but will not be initialized by a
1294 call to make-struct. For example in your layout you would say "ph"
1295 instead of "pw". Hidden slots are useful for adding new slots to a
1296 vtable without breaking existing invocations to make-struct.
1298 ** eqv? not a generic
1300 One used to be able to extend `eqv?' as a primitive-generic, but no
1301 more. Because `eqv?' is in the expansion of `case' (via `memv'), which
1302 should be able to compile to static dispatch tables, it doesn't make
1303 sense to allow extensions that would subvert this optimization.
1305 ** `inet-ntop' and `inet-pton' are always available.
1307 Guile now use a portable implementation of `inet_pton'/`inet_ntop', so
1308 there is no more need to use `inet-aton'/`inet-ntoa'. The latter
1309 functions are deprecated.
1311 ** Fast bit operations.
1313 The bit-twiddling operations `ash', `logand', `logior', and `logxor' now
1314 have dedicated bytecodes. Guile is not just for symbolic computation,
1315 it's for number crunching too.
1317 ** Faster SRFI-9 record access
1319 SRFI-9 records are now implemented directly on top of Guile's structs,
1320 and their accessors are defined in such a way that normal call-sites
1321 inline to special VM opcodes, while still allowing for the general case
1322 (e.g. passing a record accessor to `apply').
1324 ** R6RS block comment support
1326 Guile now supports R6RS nested block comments. The start of a comment is
1327 marked with `#|', and the end with `|#'.
1329 ** `guile-2' cond-expand feature
1331 To test if your code is running under Guile 2.0 (or its alpha releases),
1332 test for the `guile-2' cond-expand feature. Like this:
1334 (cond-expand (guile-2 (eval-when (compile)
1335 ;; This must be evaluated at compile time.
1336 (fluid-set! current-reader my-reader)))
1338 ;; Earlier versions of Guile do not have a
1339 ;; separate compilation phase.
1340 (fluid-set! current-reader my-reader)))
1342 ** Fix bad interaction between `false-if-exception' and stack-call.
1344 Exceptions thrown by `false-if-exception' were erronously causing the
1345 stack to be saved, causing later errors to show the incorrectly-saved
1346 backtrace. This has been fixed.
1348 ** New global variables: %load-compiled-path, %load-compiled-extensions
1350 These are analogous to %load-path and %load-extensions.
1352 ** New fluid: `%file-port-name-canonicalization'
1354 This fluid parameterizes the file names that are associated with file
1355 ports. If %file-port-name-canonicalization is 'absolute, then file names
1356 are canonicalized to be absolute paths. If it is 'relative, then the
1357 name is canonicalized, but any prefix corresponding to a member of
1358 `%load-path' is stripped off. Otherwise the names are passed through
1361 In addition, the `compile-file' and `compile-and-load' procedures bind
1362 %file-port-name-canonicalization to their `#:canonicalization' keyword
1363 argument, which defaults to 'relative. In this way, one might compile
1364 "../module/ice-9/boot-9.scm", but the path that gets residualized into
1365 the .go is "ice-9/boot-9.scm".
1367 ** New procedure, `make-promise'
1369 `(make-promise (lambda () foo))' is equivalent to `(delay foo)'.
1371 ** `defined?' may accept a module as its second argument
1373 Previously it only accepted internal structures from the evaluator.
1375 ** New entry into %guile-build-info: `ccachedir'
1377 ** Fix bug in `module-bound?'.
1379 `module-bound?' was returning true if a module did have a local
1380 variable, but one that was unbound, but another imported module bound
1381 the variable. This was an error, and was fixed.
1383 ** `(ice-9 syncase)' has been deprecated.
1385 As syntax-case is available by default, importing `(ice-9 syncase)' has
1386 no effect, and will trigger a deprecation warning.
1388 ** New readline history functions
1390 The (ice-9 readline) module now provides add-history, read-history,
1391 write-history and clear-history, which wrap the corresponding GNU
1392 History library functions.
1394 ** Removed deprecated uniform array procedures:
1395 dimensions->uniform-array, list->uniform-array, array-prototype
1397 Instead, use make-typed-array, list->typed-array, or array-type,
1400 ** Deprecated: `lazy-catch'
1402 `lazy-catch' was a form that captured the stack at the point of a
1403 `throw', but the dynamic state at the point of the `catch'. It was a bit
1404 crazy. Please change to use `catch', possibly with a throw-handler, or
1405 `with-throw-handler'.
1407 ** Deprecated `@bind' syntax
1409 `@bind' was part of an older implementation of the Emacs Lisp language,
1410 and is no longer used.
1412 ** Last but not least, the `λ' macro can be used in lieu of `lambda'
1414 * Changes to the C interface
1416 ** Guile now uses libgc, the Boehm-Demers-Weiser garbage collector
1418 The semantics of `scm_gc_malloc ()' have been changed, in a
1419 backward-compatible way. A new allocation routine,
1420 `scm_gc_malloc_pointerless ()', was added.
1422 Libgc is a conservative GC, which we hope will make interaction with C
1423 code easier and less error-prone.
1425 ** New type definitions for `scm_t_intptr' and friends.
1427 `SCM_T_UINTPTR_MAX', `SCM_T_INTPTR_MIN', `SCM_T_INTPTR_MAX',
1428 `SIZEOF_SCM_T_BITS', `scm_t_intptr' and `scm_t_uintptr' are now
1429 available to C. Have fun!
1431 ** The GH interface (deprecated in version 1.6, 2001) was removed.
1433 ** Internal `scm_i_' functions now have "hidden" linkage with GCC/ELF
1435 This makes these internal functions technically not callable from
1438 ** Functions for handling `scm_option' now no longer require an argument
1439 indicating length of the `scm_t_option' array.
1441 ** Procedures-with-setters are now implemented using applicable structs
1443 From a user's perspective this doesn't mean very much. But if, for some
1444 odd reason, you used the SCM_PROCEDURE_WITH_SETTER_P, SCM_PROCEDURE, or
1445 SCM_SETTER macros, know that they're deprecated now. Also, scm_tc7_pws
1448 ** Remove old evaluator closures
1450 There used to be ranges of typecodes allocated to interpreted data
1451 structures, but that it no longer the case, given that interpreted
1452 procedure are now just regular VM closures. As a result, there is a
1453 newly free tc3, and a number of removed macros. See the ChangeLog for
1456 ** Primitive procedures are now VM trampoline procedures
1458 It used to be that there were something like 12 different typecodes
1459 allocated to primitive procedures, each with its own calling convention.
1460 Now there is only one, the gsubr. This may affect user code if you were
1461 defining a procedure using scm_c_make_subr rather scm_c_make_gsubr. The
1462 solution is to switch to use scm_c_make_gsubr. This solution works well
1463 both with the old 1.8 and and with the current 1.9 branch.
1465 Guile's old evaluator used to have special cases for applying "gsubrs",
1466 primitive procedures with specified numbers of required, optional, and
1467 rest arguments. Now, however, Guile represents gsubrs as normal VM
1468 procedures, with appropriate bytecode to parse out the correct number of
1469 arguments, including optional and rest arguments, and then with a
1470 special bytecode to apply the gsubr.
1472 This allows primitive procedures to appear on the VM stack, allowing
1473 them to be accurately counted in profiles. Also they now have more
1474 debugging information attached to them -- their number of arguments, for
1475 example. In addition, the VM can completely inline the application
1476 mechanics, allowing for faster primitive calls.
1478 However there are some changes on the C level. There is no more
1479 `scm_tc7_gsubr' or `scm_tcs_subrs' typecode for primitive procedures, as
1480 they are just VM procedures. Likewise the macros `SCM_GSUBR_TYPE',
1481 `SCM_GSUBR_MAKTYPE', `SCM_GSUBR_REQ', `SCM_GSUBR_OPT', and
1482 `SCM_GSUBR_REST' are gone, as are `SCM_SUBR_META_INFO', `SCM_SUBR_PROPS'
1483 `SCM_SET_SUBR_GENERIC_LOC', and `SCM_SUBR_ARITY_TO_TYPE'.
1485 Perhaps more significantly, `scm_c_make_subr',
1486 `scm_c_make_subr_with_generic', `scm_c_define_subr', and
1487 `scm_c_define_subr_with_generic'. They all operated on subr typecodes,
1488 and there are no more subr typecodes. Use the scm_c_make_gsubr family
1491 Normal users of gsubrs should not be affected, though, as the
1492 scm_c_make_gsubr family still is the correct way to create primitive
1495 ** Remove deprecated array C interfaces
1497 Removed the deprecated array functions `scm_i_arrayp',
1498 `scm_i_array_ndim', `scm_i_array_mem', `scm_i_array_v',
1499 `scm_i_array_base', `scm_i_array_dims', and the deprecated macros
1500 `SCM_ARRAYP', `SCM_ARRAY_NDIM', `SCM_ARRAY_CONTP', `SCM_ARRAY_MEM',
1501 `SCM_ARRAY_V', `SCM_ARRAY_BASE', and `SCM_ARRAY_DIMS'.
1503 ** Remove unused snarf macros
1505 `SCM_DEFINE1', `SCM_PRIMITIVE_GENERIC_1', `SCM_PROC1, and `SCM_GPROC1'
1506 are no more. Use SCM_DEFINE or SCM_PRIMITIVE_GENERIC instead.
1508 ** New functions: `scm_call_n', `scm_c_run_hookn'
1510 `scm_call_n' applies to apply a function to an array of arguments.
1511 `scm_c_run_hookn' runs a hook with an array of arguments.
1513 ** Some SMOB types changed to have static typecodes
1515 Fluids, dynamic states, and hash tables used to be SMOB objects, but now
1516 they have statically allocated tc7 typecodes.
1518 ** Preparations for changing SMOB representation
1520 If things go right, we'll be changing the SMOB representation soon. To
1521 that end, we did a lot of cleanups to calls to e.g. SCM_CELL_WORD_2(x) when
1522 the code meant SCM_SMOB_DATA_2(x); user code will need similar changes
1523 in the future. Code accessing SMOBs using SCM_CELL macros was never
1524 correct, but until now things still worked. Users should be aware of
1527 ** Changed invocation mechanics of applicable SMOBs
1529 Guile's old evaluator used to have special cases for applying SMOB
1530 objects. Now, with the VM, when Guile sees a SMOB, it looks up a VM
1531 trampoline procedure for it, and use the normal mechanics to apply the
1532 trampoline. This simplifies procedure application in the normal,
1535 The upshot is that the mechanics used to apply a SMOB are different from
1536 1.8. Descriptors no longer have `apply_0', `apply_1', `apply_2', and
1537 `apply_3' functions, and the macros SCM_SMOB_APPLY_0 and friends are now
1538 deprecated. Just use the scm_call_0 family of procedures.
1540 ** New C function: scm_module_public_interface
1542 This procedure corresponds to Scheme's `module-public-interface'.
1544 ** Undeprecate `scm_the_root_module ()'
1546 It's useful to be able to get the root module from C without doing a
1549 ** Inline vector allocation
1551 Instead of having vectors point out into the heap for their data, their
1552 data is now allocated inline to the vector object itself. The same is
1553 true for bytevectors, by default, though there is an indirection
1554 available which should allow for making a bytevector from an existing
1557 ** New struct constructors that don't involve making lists
1559 `scm_c_make_struct' and `scm_c_make_structv' are new varargs and array
1560 constructors, respectively, for structs. You might find them useful.
1564 In Guile 1.8, there were debugging frames on the C stack. Now there is
1565 no more need to explicitly mark the stack in this way, because Guile has
1566 a VM stack that it knows how to walk, which simplifies the C API
1567 considerably. See the ChangeLog for details; the relevant interface is
1568 in libguile/stacks.h. The Scheme API has not been changed significantly.
1570 ** Removal of Guile's primitive object system.
1572 There were a number of pieces in `objects.[ch]' that tried to be a
1573 minimal object system, but were never documented, and were quickly
1574 obseleted by GOOPS' merge into Guile proper. So `scm_make_class_object',
1575 `scm_make_subclass_object', `scm_metaclass_standard', and like symbols
1576 from objects.h are no more. In the very unlikely case in which these
1577 were useful to you, we urge you to contact guile-devel.
1581 Actually the future is still in the state that it was, is, and ever
1582 shall be, Amen, except that `futures.c' and `futures.h' are no longer a
1583 part of it. These files were experimental, never compiled, and would be
1584 better implemented in Scheme anyway. In the future, that is.
1586 ** Deprecate trampolines
1588 There used to be C functions `scm_trampoline_0', `scm_trampoline_1', and
1589 so on. The point was to do some precomputation on the type of the
1590 procedure, then return a specialized "call" procedure. However this
1591 optimization wasn't actually an optimization, so it is now deprecated.
1592 Just use `scm_call_0', etc instead.
1594 ** Deprecated `scm_badargsp'
1596 This function is unused in Guile, but was part of its API.
1598 ** Better support for Lisp `nil'.
1600 The bit representation of `nil' has been tweaked so that it is now very
1601 efficient to check e.g. if a value is equal to Scheme's end-of-list or
1602 Lisp's nil. Additionally there are a heap of new, specific predicates
1603 like scm_is_null_or_nil.
1605 ** Better integration of Lisp `nil'.
1607 `scm_is_boolean', `scm_is_false', and `scm_is_null' all return true now
1608 for Lisp's `nil'. This shouldn't affect any Scheme code at this point,
1609 but when we start to integrate more with Emacs, it is possible that we
1610 break code that assumes that, for example, `(not x)' implies that `x' is
1611 `eq?' to `#f'. This is not a common assumption. Refactoring affected
1612 code to rely on properties instead of identities will improve code
1613 correctness. See "Nil" in the manual, for more details.
1615 ** Support for static allocation of strings, symbols, and subrs.
1617 Calls to snarfing CPP macros like SCM_DEFINE macro will now allocate
1618 much of their associated data as static variables, reducing Guile's
1621 ** `scm_stat' has an additional argument, `exception_on_error'
1622 ** `scm_primitive_load_path' has an additional argument `exception_on_not_found'
1624 ** `scm_set_port_seek' and `scm_set_port_truncate' use the `scm_t_off' type
1626 Previously they would use the `off_t' type, which is fragile since its
1627 definition depends on the application's value for `_FILE_OFFSET_BITS'.
1629 ** The `long_long' C type, deprecated in 1.8, has been removed
1631 ** Removed deprecated uniform array procedures: scm_make_uve,
1632 scm_array_prototype, scm_list_to_uniform_array,
1633 scm_dimensions_to_uniform_array, scm_make_ra, scm_shap2ra, scm_cvref,
1634 scm_ra_set_contp, scm_aind, scm_raprin1
1636 These functions have been deprecated since early 2005.
1638 * Changes to the distribution
1640 ** Guile's license is now LGPLv3+
1642 In other words the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 3 or
1643 later (at the discretion of each person that chooses to redistribute
1646 ** GOOPS documentation folded into Guile reference manual
1648 GOOPS, Guile's object system, used to be documented in separate manuals.
1649 This content is now included in Guile's manual directly.
1651 ** `guile-config' will be deprecated in favor of `pkg-config'
1653 `guile-config' has been rewritten to get its information from
1654 `pkg-config', so this should be a transparent change. Note however that
1655 guile.m4 has yet to be modified to call pkg-config instead of
1658 ** Guile now provides `guile-2.0.pc' instead of `guile-1.8.pc'
1660 Programs that use `pkg-config' to find Guile or one of its Autoconf
1661 macros should now require `guile-2.0' instead of `guile-1.8'.
1663 ** New installation directory: $(pkglibdir)/1.9/ccache
1665 If $(libdir) is /usr/lib, for example, Guile will install its .go files
1666 to /usr/lib/guile/1.9/ccache. These files are architecture-specific.
1668 ** Parallel installability fixes
1670 Guile now installs its header files to a effective-version-specific
1671 directory, and includes the effective version (e.g. 2.0) in the library
1672 name (e.g. libguile-2.0.so).
1674 This change should be transparent to users, who should detect Guile via
1675 the guile.m4 macro, or the guile-2.0.pc pkg-config file. It will allow
1676 parallel installs for multiple versions of Guile development
1679 ** Dynamically loadable extensions may be placed in a Guile-specific path
1681 Before, Guile only searched the system library paths for extensions
1682 (e.g. /usr/lib), which meant that the names of Guile extensions had to
1683 be globally unique. Installing them to a Guile-specific extensions
1684 directory is cleaner. Use `pkg-config --variable=extensiondir
1685 guile-2.0' to get the location of the extensions directory.
1687 ** New dependency: libgc
1689 See http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/, for more information.
1691 ** New dependency: GNU libunistring
1693 See http://www.gnu.org/software/libunistring/, for more information. Our
1694 Unicode support uses routines from libunistring.
1696 ** New dependency: libffi
1698 See http://sourceware.org/libffi/, for more information.
1702 Changes in 1.8.8 (since 1.8.7)
1706 ** Fix possible buffer overruns when parsing numbers
1707 ** Avoid clash with system setjmp/longjmp on IA64
1708 ** Fix `wrong type arg' exceptions with IPv6 addresses
1711 Changes in 1.8.7 (since 1.8.6)
1713 * New modules (see the manual for details)
1715 ** `(srfi srfi-98)', an interface to access environment variables
1719 ** Fix compilation with `--disable-deprecated'
1720 ** Fix %fast-slot-ref/set!, to avoid possible segmentation fault
1721 ** Fix MinGW build problem caused by HAVE_STRUCT_TIMESPEC confusion
1722 ** Fix build problem when scm_t_timespec is different from struct timespec
1723 ** Fix build when compiled with -Wundef -Werror
1724 ** More build fixes for `alphaev56-dec-osf5.1b' (Tru64)
1725 ** Build fixes for `powerpc-ibm-aix5.3.0.0' (AIX 5.3)
1726 ** With GCC, always compile with `-mieee' on `alpha*' and `sh*'
1727 ** Better diagnose broken `(strftime "%z" ...)' in `time.test' (bug #24130)
1728 ** Fix parsing of SRFI-88/postfix keywords longer than 128 characters
1729 ** Fix reading of complex numbers where both parts are inexact decimals
1731 ** Allow @ macro to work with (ice-9 syncase)
1733 Previously, use of the @ macro in a module whose code is being
1734 transformed by (ice-9 syncase) would cause an "Invalid syntax" error.
1735 Now it works as you would expect (giving the value of the specified
1738 ** Have `scm_take_locale_symbol ()' return an interned symbol (bug #25865)
1741 Changes in 1.8.6 (since 1.8.5)
1743 * New features (see the manual for details)
1745 ** New convenience function `scm_c_symbol_length ()'
1747 ** Single stepping through code from Emacs
1749 When you use GDS to evaluate Scheme code from Emacs, you can now use
1750 `C-u' to indicate that you want to single step through that code. See
1751 `Evaluating Scheme Code' in the manual for more details.
1753 ** New "guile(1)" man page!
1755 * Changes to the distribution
1757 ** Automake's `AM_MAINTAINER_MODE' is no longer used
1759 Thus, the `--enable-maintainer-mode' configure option is no longer
1760 available: Guile is now always configured in "maintainer mode".
1762 ** `ChangeLog' files are no longer updated
1764 Instead, changes are detailed in the version control system's logs. See
1765 the top-level `ChangeLog' files for details.
1770 ** `symbol->string' now returns a read-only string, as per R5RS
1771 ** Fix incorrect handling of the FLAGS argument of `fold-matches'
1772 ** `guile-config link' now prints `-L$libdir' before `-lguile'
1773 ** Fix memory corruption involving GOOPS' `class-redefinition'
1774 ** Fix possible deadlock in `mutex-lock'
1775 ** Fix build issue on Tru64 and ia64-hp-hpux11.23 (`SCM_UNPACK' macro)
1776 ** Fix build issue on mips, mipsel, powerpc and ia64 (stack direction)
1777 ** Fix build issue on hppa2.0w-hp-hpux11.11 (`dirent64' and `readdir64_r')
1778 ** Fix build issue on i386-unknown-freebsd7.0 ("break strict-aliasing rules")
1779 ** Fix misleading output from `(help rationalize)'
1780 ** Fix build failure on Debian hppa architecture (bad stack growth detection)
1781 ** Fix `gcd' when called with a single, negative argument.
1782 ** Fix `Stack overflow' errors seen when building on some platforms
1783 ** Fix bug when `scm_with_guile ()' was called several times from the
1785 ** The handler of SRFI-34 `with-exception-handler' is now invoked in the
1786 dynamic environment of the call to `raise'
1787 ** Fix potential deadlock in `make-struct'
1788 ** Fix compilation problem with libltdl from Libtool 2.2.x
1789 ** Fix sloppy bound checking in `string-{ref,set!}' with the empty string
1792 Changes in 1.8.5 (since 1.8.4)
1794 * Infrastructure changes
1796 ** Guile repository switched from CVS to Git
1798 The new repository can be accessed using
1799 "git-clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/guile.git", or can be browsed on-line at
1800 http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=guile.git . See `README' for details.
1802 ** Add support for `pkg-config'
1804 See "Autoconf Support" in the manual for details.
1806 * New modules (see the manual for details)
1810 * New features (see the manual for details)
1812 ** New `postfix' read option, for SRFI-88 keyword syntax
1813 ** Some I/O primitives have been inlined, which improves I/O performance
1814 ** New object-based traps infrastructure
1816 This is a GOOPS-based infrastructure that builds on Guile's low-level
1817 evaluator trap calls and facilitates the development of debugging
1818 features like single-stepping, breakpoints, tracing and profiling.
1819 See the `Traps' node of the manual for details.
1821 ** New support for working on Guile code from within Emacs
1823 Guile now incorporates the `GDS' library (previously distributed
1824 separately) for working on Guile code from within Emacs. See the
1825 `Using Guile In Emacs' node of the manual for details.
1829 ** `scm_add_slot ()' no longer segfaults (fixes bug #22369)
1830 ** Fixed `(ice-9 match)' for patterns like `((_ ...) ...)'
1832 Previously, expressions like `(match '((foo) (bar)) (((_ ...) ...) #t))'
1833 would trigger an unbound variable error for `match:andmap'.
1835 ** `(oop goops describe)' now properly provides the `describe' feature
1836 ** Fixed `args-fold' from `(srfi srfi-37)'
1838 Previously, parsing short option names of argument-less options would
1839 lead to a stack overflow.
1841 ** `(srfi srfi-35)' is now visible through `cond-expand'
1842 ** Fixed type-checking for the second argument of `eval'
1843 ** Fixed type-checking for SRFI-1 `partition'
1844 ** Fixed `struct-ref' and `struct-set!' on "light structs"
1845 ** Honor struct field access rights in GOOPS
1846 ** Changed the storage strategy of source properties, which fixes a deadlock
1847 ** Allow compilation of Guile-using programs in C99 mode with GCC 4.3 and later
1848 ** Fixed build issue for GNU/Linux on IA64
1849 ** Fixed build issues on NetBSD 1.6
1850 ** Fixed build issue on Solaris 2.10 x86_64
1851 ** Fixed build issue with DEC/Compaq/HP's compiler
1852 ** Fixed `scm_from_complex_double' build issue on FreeBSD
1853 ** Fixed `alloca' build issue on FreeBSD 6
1854 ** Removed use of non-portable makefile constructs
1855 ** Fixed shadowing of libc's <random.h> on Tru64, which broke compilation
1856 ** Make sure all tests honor `$TMPDIR'
1859 Changes in 1.8.4 (since 1.8.3)
1863 ** CR (ASCII 0x0d) is (again) recognized as a token delimiter by the reader
1864 ** Fixed a segmentation fault which occurred when displaying the
1865 backtrace of a stack with a promise object (made by `delay') in it.
1866 ** Make `accept' leave guile mode while blocking
1867 ** `scm_c_read ()' and `scm_c_write ()' now type-check their port argument
1868 ** Fixed a build problem on AIX (use of func_data identifier)
1869 ** Fixed a segmentation fault which occurred when hashx-ref or hashx-set! was
1870 called with an associator proc that returns neither a pair nor #f.
1871 ** Secondary threads now always return a valid module for (current-module).
1872 ** Avoid MacOS build problems caused by incorrect combination of "64"
1873 system and library calls.
1874 ** `guile-snarf' now honors `$TMPDIR'
1875 ** `guile-config compile' now reports CPPFLAGS used at compile-time
1876 ** Fixed build with Sun Studio (Solaris 9)
1877 ** Fixed wrong-type-arg errors when creating zero length SRFI-4
1878 uniform vectors on AIX.
1879 ** Fixed a deadlock that occurs upon GC with multiple threads.
1880 ** Fixed compile problem with GCC on Solaris and AIX (use of _Complex_I)
1881 ** Fixed autotool-derived build problems on AIX 6.1.
1882 ** Fixed NetBSD/alpha support
1883 ** Fixed MacOS build problem caused by use of rl_get_keymap(_name)
1885 * New modules (see the manual for details)
1889 * Documentation fixes and improvements
1891 ** Removed premature breakpoint documentation
1893 The features described are not available in the series of 1.8.x
1894 releases, so the documentation was misleading and has been removed.
1896 ** More about Guile's default *random-state* variable
1898 ** GOOPS: more about how to use `next-method'
1900 * Changes to the distribution
1902 ** Corrected a few files that referred incorrectly to the old GPL + special exception licence
1904 In fact Guile since 1.8.0 has been licensed with the GNU Lesser
1905 General Public License, and the few incorrect files have now been
1906 fixed to agree with the rest of the Guile distribution.
1908 ** Removed unnecessary extra copies of COPYING*
1910 The distribution now contains a single COPYING.LESSER at its top level.
1913 Changes in 1.8.3 (since 1.8.2)
1915 * New modules (see the manual for details)
1922 ** The `(ice-9 slib)' module now works as expected
1923 ** Expressions like "(set! 'x #t)" no longer yield a crash
1924 ** Warnings about duplicate bindings now go to stderr
1925 ** A memory leak in `make-socket-address' was fixed
1926 ** Alignment issues (e.g., on SPARC) in network routines were fixed
1927 ** A threading issue that showed up at least on NetBSD was fixed
1928 ** Build problems on Solaris and IRIX fixed
1930 * Implementation improvements
1932 ** The reader is now faster, which reduces startup time
1933 ** Procedures returned by `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' are faster
1936 Changes in 1.8.2 (since 1.8.1):
1938 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
1940 ** set-program-arguments
1943 * Incompatible changes
1945 ** The body of a top-level `define' no longer sees the binding being created
1947 In a top-level `define', the binding being created is no longer visible
1948 from the `define' body. This breaks code like
1949 "(define foo (begin (set! foo 1) (+ foo 1)))", where `foo' is now
1950 unbound in the body. However, such code was not R5RS-compliant anyway,
1955 ** Fractions were not `equal?' if stored in unreduced form.
1956 (A subtle problem, since printing a value reduced it, making it work.)
1957 ** srfi-60 `copy-bit' failed on 64-bit systems
1958 ** "guile --use-srfi" option at the REPL can replace core functions
1959 (Programs run with that option were ok, but in the interactive REPL
1960 the core bindings got priority, preventing SRFI replacements or
1962 ** `regexp-exec' doesn't abort() on #\nul in the input or bad flags arg
1963 ** `kill' on mingw throws an error for a PID other than oneself
1964 ** Procedure names are attached to procedure-with-setters
1965 ** Array read syntax works with negative lower bound
1966 ** `array-in-bounds?' fix if an array has different lower bounds on each index
1967 ** `*' returns exact 0 for "(* inexact 0)"
1968 This follows what it always did for "(* 0 inexact)".
1969 ** SRFI-19: Value returned by `(current-time time-process)' was incorrect
1970 ** SRFI-19: `date->julian-day' did not account for timezone offset
1971 ** `ttyname' no longer crashes when passed a non-tty argument
1972 ** `inet-ntop' no longer crashes on SPARC when passed an `AF_INET' address
1973 ** Small memory leaks have been fixed in `make-fluid' and `add-history'
1974 ** GOOPS: Fixed a bug in `method-more-specific?'
1975 ** Build problems on Solaris fixed
1976 ** Build problems on HP-UX IA64 fixed
1977 ** Build problems on MinGW fixed
1980 Changes in 1.8.1 (since 1.8.0):
1982 * LFS functions are now used to access 64-bit files on 32-bit systems.
1984 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
1986 ** primitive-_exit - [Scheme] the-root-module
1987 ** scm_primitive__exit - [C]
1988 ** make-completion-function - [Scheme] (ice-9 readline)
1989 ** scm_c_locale_stringn_to_number - [C]
1990 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse [C]
1991 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse_x [C]
1999 ** Build problems have been fixed on MacOS, SunOS, and QNX.
2001 ** `strftime' fix sign of %z timezone offset.
2003 ** A one-dimensional array can now be 'equal?' to a vector.
2005 ** Structures, records, and SRFI-9 records can now be compared with `equal?'.
2007 ** SRFI-14 standard char sets are recomputed upon a successful `setlocale'.
2009 ** `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' now have strict type checks.
2011 Record accessor and modifier procedures now throw an error if the
2012 record type of the record they're given is not the type expected.
2013 (Previously accessors returned #f and modifiers silently did nothing).
2015 ** It is now OK to use both autoload and use-modules on a given module.
2017 ** `apply' checks the number of arguments more carefully on "0 or 1" funcs.
2019 Previously there was no checking on primatives like make-vector that
2020 accept "one or two" arguments. Now there is.
2022 ** The srfi-1 assoc function now calls its equality predicate properly.
2024 Previously srfi-1 assoc would call the equality predicate with the key
2025 last. According to the SRFI, the key should be first.
2027 ** A bug in n-par-for-each and n-for-each-par-map has been fixed.
2029 ** The array-set! procedure no longer segfaults when given a bit vector.
2031 ** Bugs in make-shared-array have been fixed.
2033 ** string<? and friends now follow char<? etc order on 8-bit chars.
2035 ** The format procedure now handles inf and nan values for ~f correctly.
2037 ** exact->inexact should no longer overflow when given certain large fractions.
2039 ** srfi-9 accessor and modifier procedures now have strict record type checks.
2041 This matches the srfi-9 specification.
2043 ** (ice-9 ftw) procedures won't ignore different files with same inode number.
2045 Previously the (ice-9 ftw) procedures would ignore any file that had
2046 the same inode number as a file they had already seen, even if that
2047 file was on a different device.
2050 Changes in 1.8.0 (changes since the 1.6.x series):
2052 * Changes to the distribution
2054 ** Guile is now licensed with the GNU Lesser General Public License.
2056 ** The manual is now licensed with the GNU Free Documentation License.
2058 ** Guile now requires GNU MP (http://swox.com/gmp).
2060 Guile now uses the GNU MP library for arbitrary precision arithmetic.
2062 ** Guile now has separate private and public configuration headers.
2064 That is, things like HAVE_STRING_H no longer leak from Guile's
2067 ** Guile now provides and uses an "effective" version number.
2069 Guile now provides scm_effective_version and effective-version
2070 functions which return the "effective" version number. This is just
2071 the normal full version string without the final micro-version number,
2072 so the current effective-version is "1.8". The effective version
2073 should remain unchanged during a stable series, and should be used for
2074 items like the versioned share directory name
2075 i.e. /usr/share/guile/1.8.
2077 Providing an unchanging version number during a stable release for
2078 things like the versioned share directory can be particularly
2079 important for Guile "add-on" packages, since it provides a directory
2080 that they can install to that won't be changed out from under them
2081 with each micro release during a stable series.
2083 ** Thread implementation has changed.
2085 When you configure "--with-threads=null", you will get the usual
2086 threading API (call-with-new-thread, make-mutex, etc), but you can't
2087 actually create new threads. Also, "--with-threads=no" is now
2088 equivalent to "--with-threads=null". This means that the thread API
2089 is always present, although you might not be able to create new
2092 When you configure "--with-threads=pthreads" or "--with-threads=yes",
2093 you will get threads that are implemented with the portable POSIX
2094 threads. These threads can run concurrently (unlike the previous
2095 "coop" thread implementation), but need to cooperate for things like
2098 The default is "pthreads", unless your platform doesn't have pthreads,
2099 in which case "null" threads are used.
2101 See the manual for details, nodes "Initialization", "Multi-Threading",
2102 "Blocking", and others.
2104 ** There is the new notion of 'discouraged' features.
2106 This is a milder form of deprecation.
2108 Things that are discouraged should not be used in new code, but it is
2109 OK to leave them in old code for now. When a discouraged feature is
2110 used, no warning message is printed like there is for 'deprecated'
2111 features. Also, things that are merely discouraged are nevertheless
2112 implemented efficiently, while deprecated features can be very slow.
2114 You can omit discouraged features from libguile by configuring it with
2115 the '--disable-discouraged' option.
2117 ** Deprecation warnings can be controlled at run-time.
2119 (debug-enable 'warn-deprecated) switches them on and (debug-disable
2120 'warn-deprecated) switches them off.
2122 ** Support for SRFI 61, extended cond syntax for multiple values has
2125 This SRFI is always available.
2127 ** Support for require-extension, SRFI-55, has been added.
2129 The SRFI-55 special form `require-extension' has been added. It is
2130 available at startup, and provides a portable way to load Scheme
2131 extensions. SRFI-55 only requires support for one type of extension,
2132 "srfi"; so a set of SRFIs may be loaded via (require-extension (srfi 1
2135 ** New module (srfi srfi-26) provides support for `cut' and `cute'.
2137 The (srfi srfi-26) module is an implementation of SRFI-26 which
2138 provides the `cut' and `cute' syntax. These may be used to specialize
2139 parameters without currying.
2141 ** New module (srfi srfi-31)
2143 This is an implementation of SRFI-31 which provides a special form
2144 `rec' for recursive evaluation.
2146 ** The modules (srfi srfi-13), (srfi srfi-14) and (srfi srfi-4) have
2147 been merged with the core, making their functionality always
2150 The modules are still available, tho, and you could use them together
2151 with a renaming import, for example.
2153 ** Guile no longer includes its own version of libltdl.
2155 The official version is good enough now.
2157 ** The --enable-htmldoc option has been removed from 'configure'.
2159 Support for translating the documentation into HTML is now always
2160 provided. Use 'make html'.
2162 ** New module (ice-9 serialize):
2164 (serialize FORM1 ...) and (parallelize FORM1 ...) are useful when you
2165 don't trust the thread safety of most of your program, but where you
2166 have some section(s) of code which you consider can run in parallel to
2167 other sections. See ice-9/serialize.scm for more information.
2169 ** The configure option '--disable-arrays' has been removed.
2171 Support for arrays and uniform numeric arrays is now always included
2174 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2176 ** New command line option `-L'.
2178 This option adds a directory to the front of the load path.
2180 ** New command line option `--no-debug'.
2182 Specifying `--no-debug' on the command line will keep the debugging
2183 evaluator turned off, even for interactive sessions.
2185 ** User-init file ~/.guile is now loaded with the debugging evaluator.
2187 Previously, the normal evaluator would have been used. Using the
2188 debugging evaluator gives better error messages.
2190 ** The '-e' option now 'read's its argument.
2192 This is to allow the new '(@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)' construct to
2193 be used with '-e'. For example, you can now write a script like
2196 exec guile -e '(@ (demo) main)' -s "$0" "$@"
2199 (define-module (demo)
2203 (format #t "Demo: ~a~%" args))
2206 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2208 ** Guardians have changed back to their original semantics
2210 Guardians now behave like described in the paper by Dybvig et al. In
2211 particular, they no longer make guarantees about the order in which
2212 they return objects, and they can no longer be greedy.
2214 They no longer drop cyclic data structures.
2216 The C function scm_make_guardian has been changed incompatibly and no
2217 longer takes the 'greedy_p' argument.
2219 ** New function hashx-remove!
2221 This function completes the set of 'hashx' functions.
2223 ** The concept of dynamic roots has been factored into continuation
2224 barriers and dynamic states.
2226 Each thread has a current dynamic state that carries the values of the
2227 fluids. You can create and copy dynamic states and use them as the
2228 second argument for 'eval'. See "Fluids and Dynamic States" in the
2231 To restrict the influence that captured continuations can have on the
2232 control flow, you can errect continuation barriers. See "Continuation
2233 Barriers" in the manual.
2235 The function call-with-dynamic-root now essentially temporarily
2236 installs a new dynamic state and errects a continuation barrier.
2238 ** The default load path no longer includes "." at the end.
2240 Automatically loading modules from the current directory should not
2241 happen by default. If you want to allow it in a more controlled
2242 manner, set the environment variable GUILE_LOAD_PATH or the Scheme
2243 variable %load-path.
2245 ** The uniform vector and array support has been overhauled.
2247 It now complies with SRFI-4 and the weird prototype based uniform
2248 array creation has been deprecated. See the manual for more details.
2250 Some non-compatible changes have been made:
2251 - characters can no longer be stored into byte arrays.
2252 - strings and bit vectors are no longer considered to be uniform numeric
2254 - array-rank throws an error for non-arrays instead of returning zero.
2255 - array-ref does no longer accept non-arrays when no indices are given.
2257 There is the new notion of 'generalized vectors' and corresponding
2258 procedures like 'generalized-vector-ref'. Generalized vectors include
2259 strings, bitvectors, ordinary vectors, and uniform numeric vectors.
2261 Arrays use generalized vectors as their storage, so that you still
2262 have arrays of characters, bits, etc. However, uniform-array-read!
2263 and uniform-array-write can no longer read/write strings and
2266 ** There is now support for copy-on-write substrings, mutation-sharing
2267 substrings and read-only strings.
2269 Three new procedures are related to this: substring/shared,
2270 substring/copy, and substring/read-only. See the manual for more
2273 ** Backtraces will now highlight the value that caused the error.
2275 By default, these values are enclosed in "{...}", such as in this
2284 <unnamed port>:1:1: In procedure car in expression (car (quote a)):
2285 <unnamed port>:1:1: Wrong type (expecting pair): a
2286 ABORT: (wrong-type-arg)
2288 The prefix and suffix used for highlighting can be set via the two new
2289 printer options 'highlight-prefix' and 'highlight-suffix'. For
2290 example, putting this into ~/.guile will output the bad value in bold
2291 on an ANSI terminal:
2293 (print-set! highlight-prefix "\x1b[1m")
2294 (print-set! highlight-suffix "\x1b[22m")
2297 ** 'gettext' support for internationalization has been added.
2299 See the manual for details.
2301 ** New syntax '@' and '@@':
2303 You can now directly refer to variables exported from a module by
2306 (@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)
2308 For example (@ (ice-9 pretty-print) pretty-print) will directly access
2309 the pretty-print variable exported from the (ice-9 pretty-print)
2310 module. You don't need to 'use' that module first. You can also use
2311 '@' as a target of 'set!', as in (set! (@ mod var) val).
2313 The related syntax (@@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME) works just like '@',
2314 but it can also access variables that have not been exported. It is
2315 intended only for kluges and temporary fixes and for debugging, not
2318 ** Keyword syntax has been made more disciplined.
2320 Previously, the name of a keyword was read as a 'token' but printed as
2321 a symbol. Now, it is read as a general Scheme datum which must be a
2332 ERROR: In expression (a b c):
2336 ERROR: Unbound variable: foo
2341 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): 12
2345 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): (a b c)
2349 ** The printing of symbols that might look like keywords can be
2352 The new printer option 'quote-keywordish-symbols' controls how symbols
2353 are printed that have a colon as their first or last character. The
2354 default now is to only quote a symbol with #{...}# when the read
2355 option 'keywords' is not '#f'. Thus:
2357 guile> (define foo (string->symbol ":foo"))
2358 guile> (read-set! keywords #f)
2361 guile> (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
2364 guile> (print-set! quote-keywordish-symbols #f)
2368 ** 'while' now provides 'break' and 'continue'
2370 break and continue were previously bound in a while loop, but not
2371 documented, and continue didn't quite work properly. The undocumented
2372 parameter to break which gave a return value for the while has been
2375 ** 'call-with-current-continuation' is now also available under the name
2378 ** The module system now checks for duplicate bindings.
2380 The module system now can check for name conflicts among imported
2383 The behavior can be controlled by specifying one or more 'duplicates'
2384 handlers. For example, to make Guile return an error for every name
2387 (define-module (foo)
2392 The new default behavior of the module system when a name collision
2393 has been detected is to
2395 1. Give priority to bindings marked as a replacement.
2396 2. Issue a warning (different warning if overriding core binding).
2397 3. Give priority to the last encountered binding (this corresponds to
2400 If you want the old behavior back without replacements or warnings you
2403 (default-duplicate-binding-handler 'last)
2405 to your .guile init file.
2407 ** New define-module option: :replace
2409 :replace works as :export, but, in addition, marks the binding as a
2412 A typical example is `format' in (ice-9 format) which is a replacement
2413 for the core binding `format'.
2415 ** Adding prefixes to imported bindings in the module system
2417 There is now a new :use-module option :prefix. It can be used to add
2418 a prefix to all imported bindings.
2420 (define-module (foo)
2421 :use-module ((bar) :prefix bar:))
2423 will import all bindings exported from bar, but rename them by adding
2426 ** Conflicting generic functions can be automatically merged.
2428 When two imported bindings conflict and they are both generic
2429 functions, the two functions can now be merged automatically. This is
2430 activated with the 'duplicates' handler 'merge-generics'.
2432 ** New function: effective-version
2434 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
2435 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
2436 to the distribution" above.
2438 ** New threading functions: parallel, letpar, par-map, and friends
2440 These are convenient ways to run calculations in parallel in new
2441 threads. See "Parallel forms" in the manual for details.
2443 ** New function 'try-mutex'.
2445 This function will attempt to lock a mutex but will return immediately
2446 instead of blocking and indicate failure.
2448 ** Waiting on a condition variable can have a timeout.
2450 The function 'wait-condition-variable' now takes a third, optional
2451 argument that specifies the point in time where the waiting should be
2454 ** New function 'broadcast-condition-variable'.
2456 ** New functions 'all-threads' and 'current-thread'.
2458 ** Signals and system asyncs work better with threads.
2460 The function 'sigaction' now takes a fourth, optional, argument that
2461 specifies the thread that the handler should run in. When the
2462 argument is omitted, the handler will run in the thread that called
2465 Likewise, 'system-async-mark' takes a second, optional, argument that
2466 specifies the thread that the async should run in. When it is
2467 omitted, the async will run in the thread that called
2468 'system-async-mark'.
2470 C code can use the new functions scm_sigaction_for_thread and
2471 scm_system_async_mark_for_thread to pass the new thread argument.
2473 When a thread blocks on a mutex, a condition variable or is waiting
2474 for IO to be possible, it will still execute system asyncs. This can
2475 be used to interrupt such a thread by making it execute a 'throw', for
2478 ** The function 'system-async' is deprecated.
2480 You can now pass any zero-argument procedure to 'system-async-mark'.
2481 The function 'system-async' will just return its argument unchanged
2484 ** New functions 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' and
2485 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
2487 The expression (call-with-blocked-asyncs PROC) will call PROC and will
2488 block execution of system asyncs for the current thread by one level
2489 while PROC runs. Likewise, call-with-unblocked-asyncs will call a
2490 procedure and will unblock the execution of system asyncs by one
2491 level for the current thread.
2493 Only system asyncs are affected by these functions.
2495 ** The functions 'mask-signals' and 'unmask-signals' are deprecated.
2497 Use 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' or 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
2498 instead. Those functions are easier to use correctly and can be
2501 ** New function 'unsetenv'.
2503 ** New macro 'define-syntax-public'.
2505 It works like 'define-syntax' and also exports the defined macro (but
2508 ** There is support for Infinity and NaNs.
2510 Following PLT Scheme, Guile can now work with infinite numbers, and
2513 There is new syntax for numbers: "+inf.0" (infinity), "-inf.0"
2514 (negative infinity), "+nan.0" (not-a-number), and "-nan.0" (same as
2515 "+nan.0"). These numbers are inexact and have no exact counterpart.
2517 Dividing by an inexact zero returns +inf.0 or -inf.0, depending on the
2518 sign of the dividend. The infinities are integers, and they answer #t
2519 for both 'even?' and 'odd?'. The +nan.0 value is not an integer and is
2520 not '=' to itself, but '+nan.0' is 'eqv?' to itself.
2531 ERROR: Numerical overflow
2533 Two new predicates 'inf?' and 'nan?' can be used to test for the
2536 ** Inexact zero can have a sign.
2538 Guile can now distinguish between plus and minus inexact zero, if your
2539 platform supports this, too. The two zeros are equal according to
2540 '=', but not according to 'eqv?'. For example
2551 ** Guile now has exact rationals.
2553 Guile can now represent fractions such as 1/3 exactly. Computing with
2554 them is also done exactly, of course:
2559 ** 'floor', 'ceiling', 'round' and 'truncate' now return exact numbers
2560 for exact arguments.
2562 For example: (floor 2) now returns an exact 2 where in the past it
2563 returned an inexact 2.0. Likewise, (floor 5/4) returns an exact 1.
2565 ** inexact->exact no longer returns only integers.
2567 Without exact rationals, the closest exact number was always an
2568 integer, but now inexact->exact returns the fraction that is exactly
2569 equal to a floating point number. For example:
2571 (inexact->exact 1.234)
2572 => 694680242521899/562949953421312
2574 When you want the old behavior, use 'round' explicitly:
2576 (inexact->exact (round 1.234))
2579 ** New function 'rationalize'.
2581 This function finds a simple fraction that is close to a given real
2582 number. For example (and compare with inexact->exact above):
2584 (rationalize (inexact->exact 1.234) 1/2000)
2587 Note that, as required by R5RS, rationalize returns only then an exact
2588 result when both its arguments are exact.
2590 ** 'odd?' and 'even?' work also for inexact integers.
2592 Previously, (odd? 1.0) would signal an error since only exact integers
2593 were recognized as integers. Now (odd? 1.0) returns #t, (odd? 2.0)
2594 returns #f and (odd? 1.5) signals an error.
2596 ** Guile now has uninterned symbols.
2598 The new function 'make-symbol' will return an uninterned symbol. This
2599 is a symbol that is unique and is guaranteed to remain unique.
2600 However, uninterned symbols can not yet be read back in.
2602 Use the new function 'symbol-interned?' to check whether a symbol is
2605 ** pretty-print has more options.
2607 The function pretty-print from the (ice-9 pretty-print) module can now
2608 also be invoked with keyword arguments that control things like
2609 maximum output width. See the manual for details.
2611 ** Variables have no longer a special behavior for `equal?'.
2613 Previously, comparing two variables with `equal?' would recursivly
2614 compare their values. This is no longer done. Variables are now only
2615 `equal?' if they are `eq?'.
2617 ** `(begin)' is now valid.
2619 You can now use an empty `begin' form. It will yield #<unspecified>
2620 when evaluated and simply be ignored in a definition context.
2622 ** Deprecated: procedure->macro
2624 Change your code to use 'define-macro' or r5rs macros. Also, be aware
2625 that macro expansion will not be done during evaluation, but prior to
2628 ** Soft ports now allow a `char-ready?' procedure
2630 The vector argument to `make-soft-port' can now have a length of
2631 either 5 or 6. (Previously the length had to be 5.) The optional 6th
2632 element is interpreted as an `input-waiting' thunk -- i.e. a thunk
2633 that returns the number of characters that can be read immediately
2634 without the soft port blocking.
2636 ** Deprecated: undefine
2638 There is no replacement for undefine.
2640 ** The functions make-keyword-from-dash-symbol and keyword-dash-symbol
2641 have been discouraged.
2643 They are relics from a time where a keyword like #:foo was used
2644 directly as a Tcl option "-foo" and thus keywords were internally
2645 stored as a symbol with a starting dash. We now store a symbol
2648 Use symbol->keyword and keyword->symbol instead.
2650 ** The `cheap' debug option is now obsolete
2652 Evaluator trap calls are now unconditionally "cheap" - in other words,
2653 they pass a debug object to the trap handler rather than a full
2654 continuation. The trap handler code can capture a full continuation
2655 by using `call-with-current-continuation' in the usual way, if it so
2658 The `cheap' option is retained for now so as not to break existing
2659 code which gets or sets it, but setting it now has no effect. It will
2660 be removed in the next major Guile release.
2662 ** Evaluator trap calls now support `tweaking'
2664 `Tweaking' means that the trap handler code can modify the Scheme
2665 expression that is about to be evaluated (in the case of an
2666 enter-frame trap) or the value that is being returned (in the case of
2667 an exit-frame trap). The trap handler code indicates that it wants to
2668 do this by returning a pair whose car is the symbol 'instead and whose
2669 cdr is the modified expression or return value.
2671 * Changes to the C interface
2673 ** The functions scm_hash_fn_remove_x and scm_hashx_remove_x no longer
2674 take a 'delete' function argument.
2676 This argument makes no sense since the delete function is used to
2677 remove a pair from an alist, and this must not be configurable.
2679 This is an incompatible change.
2681 ** The GH interface is now subject to the deprecation mechanism
2683 The GH interface has been deprecated for quite some time but now it is
2684 actually removed from Guile when it is configured with
2685 --disable-deprecated.
2687 See the manual "Transitioning away from GH" for more information.
2689 ** A new family of functions for converting between C values and
2690 Scheme values has been added.
2692 These functions follow a common naming scheme and are designed to be
2693 easier to use, thread-safe and more future-proof than the older
2696 - int scm_is_* (...)
2698 These are predicates that return a C boolean: 1 or 0. Instead of
2699 SCM_NFALSEP, you can now use scm_is_true, for example.
2701 - <type> scm_to_<type> (SCM val, ...)
2703 These are functions that convert a Scheme value into an appropriate
2704 C value. For example, you can use scm_to_int to safely convert from
2707 - SCM scm_from_<type> (<type> val, ...)
2709 These functions convert from a C type to a SCM value; for example,
2710 scm_from_int for ints.
2712 There is a huge number of these functions, for numbers, strings,
2713 symbols, vectors, etc. They are documented in the reference manual in
2714 the API section together with the types that they apply to.
2716 ** New functions for dealing with complex numbers in C have been added.
2718 The new functions are scm_c_make_rectangular, scm_c_make_polar,
2719 scm_c_real_part, scm_c_imag_part, scm_c_magnitude and scm_c_angle.
2720 They work like scm_make_rectangular etc but take or return doubles
2723 ** The function scm_make_complex has been discouraged.
2725 Use scm_c_make_rectangular instead.
2727 ** The INUM macros have been deprecated.
2729 A lot of code uses these macros to do general integer conversions,
2730 although the macros only work correctly with fixnums. Use the
2731 following alternatives.
2733 SCM_INUMP -> scm_is_integer or similar
2734 SCM_NINUMP -> !scm_is_integer or similar
2735 SCM_MAKINUM -> scm_from_int or similar
2736 SCM_INUM -> scm_to_int or similar
2738 SCM_VALIDATE_INUM_* -> Do not use these; scm_to_int, etc. will
2739 do the validating for you.
2741 ** The scm_num2<type> and scm_<type>2num functions and scm_make_real
2742 have been discouraged.
2744 Use the newer scm_to_<type> and scm_from_<type> functions instead for
2745 new code. The functions have been discouraged since they don't fit
2748 ** The 'boolean' macros SCM_FALSEP etc have been discouraged.
2750 They have strange names, especially SCM_NFALSEP, and SCM_BOOLP
2751 evaluates its argument twice. Use scm_is_true, etc. instead for new
2754 ** The macro SCM_EQ_P has been discouraged.
2756 Use scm_is_eq for new code, which fits better into the naming
2759 ** The macros SCM_CONSP, SCM_NCONSP, SCM_NULLP, and SCM_NNULLP have
2762 Use the function scm_is_pair or scm_is_null instead.
2764 ** The functions scm_round and scm_truncate have been deprecated and
2765 are now available as scm_c_round and scm_c_truncate, respectively.
2767 These functions occupy the names that scm_round_number and
2768 scm_truncate_number should have.
2770 ** The functions scm_c_string2str, scm_c_substring2str, and
2771 scm_c_symbol2str have been deprecated.
2773 Use scm_to_locale_stringbuf or similar instead, maybe together with
2776 ** New functions scm_c_make_string, scm_c_string_length,
2777 scm_c_string_ref, scm_c_string_set_x, scm_c_substring,
2778 scm_c_substring_shared, scm_c_substring_copy.
2780 These are like scm_make_string, scm_length, etc. but are slightly
2781 easier to use from C.
2783 ** The macros SCM_STRINGP, SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_STRING_LENGTH,
2784 SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, and SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH have been deprecated.
2786 They export too many assumptions about the implementation of strings
2787 and symbols that are no longer true in the presence of
2788 mutation-sharing substrings and when Guile switches to some form of
2791 When working with strings, it is often best to use the normal string
2792 functions provided by Guile, such as scm_c_string_ref,
2793 scm_c_string_set_x, scm_string_append, etc. Be sure to look in the
2794 manual since many more such functions are now provided than
2797 When you want to convert a SCM string to a C string, use the
2798 scm_to_locale_string function or similar instead. For symbols, use
2799 scm_symbol_to_string and then work with that string. Because of the
2800 new string representation, scm_symbol_to_string does not need to copy
2801 and is thus quite efficient.
2803 ** Some string, symbol and keyword functions have been discouraged.
2805 They don't fit into the uniform naming scheme and are not explicit
2806 about the character encoding.
2808 Replace according to the following table:
2810 scm_allocate_string -> scm_c_make_string
2811 scm_take_str -> scm_take_locale_stringn
2812 scm_take0str -> scm_take_locale_string
2813 scm_mem2string -> scm_from_locale_stringn
2814 scm_str2string -> scm_from_locale_string
2815 scm_makfrom0str -> scm_from_locale_string
2816 scm_mem2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symboln
2817 scm_mem2uninterned_symbol -> scm_from_locale_stringn + scm_make_symbol
2818 scm_str2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symbol
2820 SCM_SYMBOL_HASH -> scm_hashq
2821 SCM_SYMBOL_INTERNED_P -> scm_symbol_interned_p
2823 scm_c_make_keyword -> scm_from_locale_keyword
2825 ** The functions scm_keyword_to_symbol and sym_symbol_to_keyword are
2826 now also available to C code.
2828 ** SCM_KEYWORDP and SCM_KEYWORDSYM have been deprecated.
2830 Use scm_is_keyword and scm_keyword_to_symbol instead, but note that
2831 the latter returns the true name of the keyword, not the 'dash name',
2832 as SCM_KEYWORDSYM used to do.
2834 ** A new way to access arrays in a thread-safe and efficient way has
2837 See the manual, node "Accessing Arrays From C".
2839 ** The old uniform vector and bitvector implementations have been
2840 unceremoniously removed.
2842 This implementation exposed the details of the tagging system of
2843 Guile. Use the new C API explained in the manual in node "Uniform
2844 Numeric Vectors" and "Bit Vectors", respectively.
2846 The following macros are gone: SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE,
2847 SCM_UVECTOR_MAXLENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_UVECTOR_TAG,
2848 SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVECTOR_P, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE,
2849 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
2850 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_BITVECTOR_TAG,
2851 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVEC_REF, SCM_BITVEC_SET,
2854 ** The macros dealing with vectors have been deprecated.
2856 Use the new functions scm_is_vector, scm_vector_elements,
2857 scm_vector_writable_elements, etc, or scm_is_simple_vector,
2858 SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_REF, SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_SET, etc instead. See the
2859 manual for more details.
2861 Deprecated are SCM_VECTORP, SCM_VELTS, SCM_VECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
2862 SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_REF, SCM_VECTOR_SET, SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS.
2864 The following macros have been removed: SCM_VECTOR_BASE,
2865 SCM_SET_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_MAKE_VECTOR_TAG, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH,
2866 SCM_VELTS_AS_STACKITEMS, SCM_SETVELTS, SCM_GC_WRITABLE_VELTS.
2868 ** Some C functions and macros related to arrays have been deprecated.
2870 Migrate according to the following table:
2872 scm_make_uve -> scm_make_typed_array, scm_make_u8vector etc.
2873 scm_make_ra -> scm_make_array
2874 scm_shap2ra -> scm_make_array
2875 scm_cvref -> scm_c_generalized_vector_ref
2876 scm_ra_set_contp -> do not use
2877 scm_aind -> scm_array_handle_pos
2878 scm_raprin1 -> scm_display or scm_write
2880 SCM_ARRAYP -> scm_is_array
2881 SCM_ARRAY_NDIM -> scm_c_array_rank
2882 SCM_ARRAY_DIMS -> scm_array_handle_dims
2883 SCM_ARRAY_CONTP -> do not use
2884 SCM_ARRAY_MEM -> do not use
2885 SCM_ARRAY_V -> scm_array_handle_elements or similar
2886 SCM_ARRAY_BASE -> do not use
2888 ** SCM_CELL_WORD_LOC has been deprecated.
2890 Use the new macro SCM_CELL_OBJECT_LOC instead, which returns a pointer
2891 to a SCM, as opposed to a pointer to a scm_t_bits.
2893 This was done to allow the correct use of pointers into the Scheme
2894 heap. Previously, the heap words were of type scm_t_bits and local
2895 variables and function arguments were of type SCM, making it
2896 non-standards-conformant to have a pointer that can point to both.
2898 ** New macros SCM_SMOB_DATA_2, SCM_SMOB_DATA_3, etc.
2900 These macros should be used instead of SCM_CELL_WORD_2/3 to access the
2901 second and third words of double smobs. Likewise for
2902 SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_2 and SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_3.
2904 Also, there is SCM_SMOB_FLAGS and SCM_SET_SMOB_FLAGS that should be
2905 used to get and set the 16 exra bits in the zeroth word of a smob.
2907 And finally, there is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT and SCM_SMOB_SET_OBJECT for
2908 accesing the first immediate word of a smob as a SCM value, and there
2909 is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_LOC for getting a pointer to the first immediate
2910 smob word. Like wise for SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_2, etc.
2912 ** New way to deal with non-local exits and re-entries.
2914 There is a new set of functions that essentially do what
2915 scm_internal_dynamic_wind does, but in a way that is more convenient
2916 for C code in some situations. Here is a quick example of how to
2917 prevent a potential memory leak:
2924 scm_dynwind_begin (0);
2926 mem = scm_malloc (100);
2927 scm_dynwind_unwind_handler (free, mem, SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY);
2929 /* MEM would leak if BAR throws an error.
2930 SCM_DYNWIND_UNWIND_HANDLER frees it nevertheless.
2937 /* Because of SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY, MEM will be freed by
2938 SCM_DYNWIND_END as well.
2942 For full documentation, see the node "Dynamic Wind" in the manual.
2944 ** New function scm_dynwind_free
2946 This function calls 'free' on a given pointer when a dynwind context
2947 is left. Thus the call to scm_dynwind_unwind_handler above could be
2948 replaced with simply scm_dynwind_free (mem).
2950 ** New functions scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
2951 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs
2953 Like scm_call_with_blocked_asyncs etc. but for C functions.
2955 ** New functions scm_dynwind_block_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs
2957 In addition to scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs you can now also use
2958 scm_dynwind_block_asyncs in a 'dynwind context' (see above). Likewise for
2959 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs.
2961 ** The macros SCM_DEFER_INTS, SCM_ALLOW_INTS, SCM_REDEFER_INTS,
2962 SCM_REALLOW_INTS have been deprecated.
2964 They do no longer fulfill their original role of blocking signal
2965 delivery. Depending on what you want to achieve, replace a pair of
2966 SCM_DEFER_INTS and SCM_ALLOW_INTS with a dynwind context that locks a
2967 mutex, blocks asyncs, or both. See node "Critical Sections" in the
2970 ** The value 'scm_mask_ints' is no longer writable.
2972 Previously, you could set scm_mask_ints directly. This is no longer
2973 possible. Use scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
2974 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs instead.
2976 ** New way to temporarily set the current input, output or error ports
2978 C code can now use scm_dynwind_current_<foo>_port in a 'dynwind
2979 context' (see above). <foo> is one of "input", "output" or "error".
2981 ** New way to temporarily set fluids
2983 C code can now use scm_dynwind_fluid in a 'dynwind context' (see
2984 above) to temporarily set the value of a fluid.
2986 ** New types scm_t_intmax and scm_t_uintmax.
2988 On platforms that have them, these types are identical to intmax_t and
2989 uintmax_t, respectively. On other platforms, they are identical to
2990 the largest integer types that Guile knows about.
2992 ** The functions scm_unmemocopy and scm_unmemoize have been removed.
2994 You should not have used them.
2996 ** Many public #defines with generic names have been made private.
2998 #defines with generic names like HAVE_FOO or SIZEOF_FOO have been made
2999 private or renamed with a more suitable public name.
3001 ** The macro SCM_TYP16S has been deprecated.
3003 This macro is not intended for public use.
3005 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_INEXACTP has been deprecated.
3007 Use scm_is_true (scm_inexact_p (...)) instead.
3009 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_REALP has been deprecated.
3011 Use scm_is_real instead.
3013 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_COMPLEXP has been deprecated.
3015 Use scm_is_complex instead.
3017 ** Some preprocessor defines have been deprecated.
3019 These defines indicated whether a certain feature was present in Guile
3020 or not. Going forward, assume that the features are always present.
3022 The macros are: USE_THREADS, GUILE_ISELECT, READER_EXTENSIONS,
3023 DEBUG_EXTENSIONS, DYNAMIC_LINKING.
3025 The following macros have been removed completely: MEMOIZE_LOCALS,
3026 SCM_RECKLESS, SCM_CAUTIOUS.
3028 ** The preprocessor define STACK_DIRECTION has been deprecated.
3030 There should be no need to know about the stack direction for ordinary
3033 ** New function: scm_effective_version
3035 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
3036 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
3037 to the distribution" above.
3039 ** The function scm_call_with_new_thread has a new prototype.
3041 Instead of taking a list with the thunk and handler, these two
3042 arguments are now passed directly:
3044 SCM scm_call_with_new_thread (SCM thunk, SCM handler);
3046 This is an incompatible change.
3048 ** New snarfer macro SCM_DEFINE_PUBLIC.
3050 This is like SCM_DEFINE, but also calls scm_c_export for the defined
3051 function in the init section.
3053 ** The snarfer macro SCM_SNARF_INIT is now officially supported.
3055 ** Garbage collector rewrite.
3057 The garbage collector is cleaned up a lot, and now uses lazy
3058 sweeping. This is reflected in the output of (gc-stats); since cells
3059 are being freed when they are allocated, the cells-allocated field
3060 stays roughly constant.
3062 For malloc related triggers, the behavior is changed. It uses the same
3063 heuristic as the cell-triggered collections. It may be tuned with the
3064 environment variables GUILE_MIN_YIELD_MALLOC. This is the percentage
3065 for minimum yield of malloc related triggers. The default is 40.
3066 GUILE_INIT_MALLOC_LIMIT sets the initial trigger for doing a GC. The
3069 Debugging operations for the freelist have been deprecated, along with
3070 the C variables that control garbage collection. The environment
3071 variables GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE, GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2,
3072 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1, and GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2 should be used.
3074 For understanding the memory usage of a GUILE program, the routine
3075 gc-live-object-stats returns an alist containing the number of live
3076 objects for every type.
3079 ** The function scm_definedp has been renamed to scm_defined_p
3081 The name scm_definedp is deprecated.
3083 ** The struct scm_cell type has been renamed to scm_t_cell
3085 This is in accordance to Guile's naming scheme for types. Note that
3086 the name scm_cell is now used for a function that allocates and
3087 initializes a new cell (see below).
3089 ** New functions for memory management
3091 A new set of functions for memory management has been added since the
3092 old way (scm_must_malloc, scm_must_free, etc) was error prone and
3093 indeed, Guile itself contained some long standing bugs that could
3094 cause aborts in long running programs.
3096 The new functions are more symmetrical and do not need cooperation
3097 from smob free routines, among other improvements.
3099 The new functions are scm_malloc, scm_realloc, scm_calloc, scm_strdup,
3100 scm_strndup, scm_gc_malloc, scm_gc_calloc, scm_gc_realloc,
3101 scm_gc_free, scm_gc_register_collectable_memory, and
3102 scm_gc_unregister_collectable_memory. Refer to the manual for more
3103 details and for upgrading instructions.
3105 The old functions for memory management have been deprecated. They
3106 are: scm_must_malloc, scm_must_realloc, scm_must_free,
3107 scm_must_strdup, scm_must_strndup, scm_done_malloc, scm_done_free.
3109 ** Declarations of exported features are marked with SCM_API.
3111 Every declaration of a feature that belongs to the exported Guile API
3112 has been marked by adding the macro "SCM_API" to the start of the
3113 declaration. This macro can expand into different things, the most
3114 common of which is just "extern" for Unix platforms. On Win32, it can
3115 be used to control which symbols are exported from a DLL.
3117 If you `#define SCM_IMPORT' before including <libguile.h>, SCM_API
3118 will expand into "__declspec (dllimport) extern", which is needed for
3119 linking to the Guile DLL in Windows.
3121 There are also SCM_RL_IMPORT, SCM_SRFI1314_IMPORT, and
3122 SCM_SRFI4_IMPORT, for the corresponding libraries.
3124 ** SCM_NEWCELL and SCM_NEWCELL2 have been deprecated.
3126 Use the new functions scm_cell and scm_double_cell instead. The old
3127 macros had problems because with them allocation and initialization
3128 was separated and the GC could sometimes observe half initialized
3129 cells. Only careful coding by the user of SCM_NEWCELL and
3130 SCM_NEWCELL2 could make this safe and efficient.
3132 ** CHECK_ENTRY, CHECK_APPLY and CHECK_EXIT have been deprecated.
3134 Use the variables scm_check_entry_p, scm_check_apply_p and scm_check_exit_p
3137 ** SRCBRKP has been deprecated.
3139 Use scm_c_source_property_breakpoint_p instead.
3141 ** Deprecated: scm_makmacro
3143 Change your code to use either scm_makmmacro or to define macros in
3144 Scheme, using 'define-macro'.
3146 ** New function scm_c_port_for_each.
3148 This function is like scm_port_for_each but takes a pointer to a C
3149 function as the callback instead of a SCM value.
3151 ** The names scm_internal_select, scm_thread_sleep, and
3152 scm_thread_usleep have been discouraged.
3154 Use scm_std_select, scm_std_sleep, scm_std_usleep instead.
3156 ** The GC can no longer be blocked.
3158 The global flags scm_gc_heap_lock and scm_block_gc have been removed.
3159 The GC can now run (partially) concurrently with other code and thus
3160 blocking it is not well defined.
3162 ** Many definitions have been removed that were previously deprecated.
3164 scm_lisp_nil, scm_lisp_t, s_nil_ify, scm_m_nil_ify, s_t_ify,
3165 scm_m_t_ify, s_0_cond, scm_m_0_cond, s_0_ify, scm_m_0_ify, s_1_ify,
3166 scm_m_1_ify, scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2,
3167 scm_tc16_allocated, SCM_SET_SYMBOL_HASH, SCM_IM_NIL_IFY, SCM_IM_T_IFY,
3168 SCM_IM_0_COND, SCM_IM_0_IFY, SCM_IM_1_IFY, SCM_GC_SET_ALLOCATED,
3169 scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL, SCM_INT_SIGNAL,
3170 SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL, SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL,
3171 SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD, SCM_ORD_SIG,
3172 SCM_NUM_SIGS, scm_top_level_lookup_closure_var,
3173 *top-level-lookup-closure*, scm_system_transformer, scm_eval_3,
3174 scm_eval2, root_module_lookup_closure, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
3175 SCM_RWSTRINGP, scm_read_only_string_p, scm_make_shared_substring,
3176 scm_tc7_substring, sym_huh, SCM_VARVCELL, SCM_UDVARIABLEP,
3177 SCM_DEFVARIABLEP, scm_mkbig, scm_big2inum, scm_adjbig, scm_normbig,
3178 scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl, SCM_FIXNUM_BIT,
3179 SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_SLOPPY_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET,
3180 SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_ROLENGTH,
3181 SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
3182 scm_sym2vcell, scm_intern, scm_intern0, scm_sysintern, scm_sysintern0,
3183 scm_sysintern0_no_module_lookup, scm_init_symbols_deprecated,
3184 scm_vector_set_length_x, scm_contregs, scm_debug_info,
3185 scm_debug_frame, SCM_DSIDEVAL, SCM_CONST_LONG, SCM_VCELL,
3186 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL, SCM_VCELL_INIT, SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL_INIT,
3187 SCM_HUGE_LENGTH, SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING,
3188 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY, SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY,
3189 SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, DIGITS, scm_small_istr2int, scm_istr2int,
3190 scm_istr2flo, scm_istring2number, scm_istr2int, scm_istr2flo,
3191 scm_istring2number, scm_vtable_index_vcell, scm_si_vcell, SCM_ECONSP,
3192 SCM_NECONSP, SCM_GLOC_VAR, SCM_GLOC_VAL, SCM_GLOC_SET_VAL,
3193 SCM_GLOC_VAL_LOC, scm_make_gloc, scm_gloc_p, scm_tc16_variable,
3194 SCM_CHARS, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH.
3196 * Changes to bundled modules
3200 Using the (ice-9 debug) module no longer automatically switches Guile
3201 to use the debugging evaluator. If you want to switch to the
3202 debugging evaluator (which is needed for backtrace information if you
3203 hit an error), please add an explicit "(debug-enable 'debug)" to your
3204 code just after the code to use (ice-9 debug).
3207 Changes since Guile 1.4:
3209 * Changes to the distribution
3211 ** A top-level TODO file is included.
3213 ** Guile now uses a versioning scheme similar to that of the Linux kernel.
3215 Guile now always uses three numbers to represent the version,
3216 i.e. "1.6.5". The first number, 1, is the major version number, the
3217 second number, 6, is the minor version number, and the third number,
3218 5, is the micro version number. Changes in major version number
3219 indicate major changes in Guile.
3221 Minor version numbers that are even denote stable releases, and odd
3222 minor version numbers denote development versions (which may be
3223 unstable). The micro version number indicates a minor sub-revision of
3224 a given MAJOR.MINOR release.
3226 In keeping with the new scheme, (minor-version) and scm_minor_version
3227 no longer return everything but the major version number. They now
3228 just return the minor version number. Two new functions
3229 (micro-version) and scm_micro_version have been added to report the
3230 micro version number.
3232 In addition, ./GUILE-VERSION now defines GUILE_MICRO_VERSION.
3234 ** New preprocessor definitions are available for checking versions.
3236 version.h now #defines SCM_MAJOR_VERSION, SCM_MINOR_VERSION, and
3237 SCM_MICRO_VERSION to the appropriate integer values.
3239 ** Guile now actively warns about deprecated features.
3241 The new configure option `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' and the
3242 environment variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED control this mechanism.
3243 See INSTALL and README for more information.
3245 ** Guile is much more likely to work on 64-bit architectures.
3247 Guile now compiles and passes "make check" with only two UNRESOLVED GC
3248 cases on Alpha and ia64 based machines now. Thanks to John Goerzen
3249 for the use of a test machine, and thanks to Stefan Jahn for ia64
3252 ** New functions: setitimer and getitimer.
3254 These implement a fairly direct interface to the libc functions of the
3257 ** The #. reader extension is now disabled by default.
3259 For safety reasons, #. evaluation is disabled by default. To
3260 re-enable it, set the fluid read-eval? to #t. For example:
3262 (fluid-set! read-eval? #t)
3264 but make sure you realize the potential security risks involved. With
3265 read-eval? enabled, reading a data file from an untrusted source can
3268 ** New SRFI modules have been added:
3270 SRFI-0 `cond-expand' is now supported in Guile, without requiring
3273 (srfi srfi-1) is a library containing many useful pair- and list-processing
3276 (srfi srfi-2) exports and-let*.
3278 (srfi srfi-4) implements homogeneous numeric vector datatypes.
3280 (srfi srfi-6) is a dummy module for now, since guile already provides
3281 all of the srfi-6 procedures by default: open-input-string,
3282 open-output-string, get-output-string.
3284 (srfi srfi-8) exports receive.
3286 (srfi srfi-9) exports define-record-type.
3288 (srfi srfi-10) exports define-reader-ctor and implements the reader
3291 (srfi srfi-11) exports let-values and let*-values.
3293 (srfi srfi-13) implements the SRFI String Library.
3295 (srfi srfi-14) implements the SRFI Character-Set Library.
3297 (srfi srfi-17) implements setter and getter-with-setter and redefines
3298 some accessor procedures as procedures with getters. (such as car,
3299 cdr, vector-ref etc.)
3301 (srfi srfi-19) implements the SRFI Time/Date Library.
3303 ** New scripts / "executable modules"
3305 Subdirectory "scripts" contains Scheme modules that are packaged to
3306 also be executable as scripts. At this time, these scripts are available:
3315 See README there for more info.
3317 These scripts can be invoked from the shell with the new program
3318 "guile-tools", which keeps track of installation directory for you.
3321 $ guile-tools display-commentary srfi/*.scm
3323 guile-tools is copied to the standard $bindir on "make install".
3325 ** New module (ice-9 stack-catch):
3327 stack-catch is like catch, but saves the current state of the stack in
3328 the fluid the-last-stack. This fluid can be useful when using the
3329 debugger and when re-throwing an error.
3331 ** The module (ice-9 and-let*) has been renamed to (ice-9 and-let-star)
3333 This has been done to prevent problems on lesser operating systems
3334 that can't tolerate `*'s in file names. The exported macro continues
3335 to be named `and-let*', of course.
3337 On systems that support it, there is also a compatibility module named
3338 (ice-9 and-let*). It will go away in the next release.
3340 ** New modules (oop goops) etc.:
3343 (oop goops describe)
3345 (oop goops active-slot)
3346 (oop goops composite-slot)
3348 The Guile Object Oriented Programming System (GOOPS) has been
3349 integrated into Guile. For further information, consult the GOOPS
3350 manual and tutorial in the `doc' directory.
3352 ** New module (ice-9 rdelim).
3354 This exports the following procedures which were previously defined
3355 in the default environment:
3357 read-line read-line! read-delimited read-delimited! %read-delimited!
3358 %read-line write-line
3360 For backwards compatibility the definitions are still imported into the
3361 default environment in this version of Guile. However you should add:
3363 (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim))
3365 to any program which uses the definitions, since this may change in
3368 Alternatively, if guile-scsh is installed, the (scsh rdelim) module
3369 can be used for similar functionality.
3371 ** New module (ice-9 rw)
3373 This is a subset of the (scsh rw) module from guile-scsh. Currently
3374 it defines two procedures:
3376 *** New function: read-string!/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
3378 Read characters from a port or file descriptor into a string STR.
3379 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
3380 fport. This procedure is scsh-compatible and can efficiently read
3383 *** New function: write-string/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
3385 Write characters from a string STR to a port or file descriptor.
3386 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
3387 fport. This procedure is mostly compatible and can efficiently
3388 write large strings.
3390 ** New module (ice-9 match)
3392 This module includes Andrew K. Wright's pattern matcher. See
3393 ice-9/match.scm for brief description or
3395 http://www.star-lab.com/wright/code.html
3397 for complete documentation.
3399 ** New module (ice-9 buffered-input)
3401 This module provides procedures to construct an input port from an
3402 underlying source of input that reads and returns its input in chunks.
3403 The underlying input source is a Scheme procedure, specified by the
3404 caller, which the port invokes whenever it needs more input.
3406 This is useful when building an input port whose back end is Readline
3407 or a UI element such as the GtkEntry widget.
3411 The reference and tutorial documentation that was previously
3412 distributed separately, as `guile-doc', is now included in the core
3413 Guile distribution. The documentation consists of the following
3416 - The Guile Tutorial (guile-tut.texi) contains a tutorial introduction
3419 - The Guile Reference Manual (guile.texi) contains (or is intended to
3420 contain) reference documentation on all aspects of Guile.
3422 - The GOOPS Manual (goops.texi) contains both tutorial-style and
3423 reference documentation for using GOOPS, Guile's Object Oriented
3426 - The Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
3429 See the README file in the `doc' directory for more details.
3431 ** There are a couple of examples in the examples/ directory now.
3433 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3435 ** New command line option `--use-srfi'
3437 Using this option, SRFI modules can be loaded on startup and be
3438 available right from the beginning. This makes programming portable
3439 Scheme programs easier.
3441 The option `--use-srfi' expects a comma-separated list of numbers,
3442 each representing a SRFI number to be loaded into the interpreter
3443 before starting evaluating a script file or the REPL. Additionally,
3444 the feature identifier for the loaded SRFIs is recognized by
3445 `cond-expand' when using this option.
3448 $ guile --use-srfi=8,13
3449 guile> (receive (x z) (values 1 2) (+ 1 2))
3451 guile> (string-pad "bla" 20)
3454 ** Guile now always starts up in the `(guile-user)' module.
3456 Previously, scripts executed via the `-s' option would run in the
3457 `(guile)' module and the repl would run in the `(guile-user)' module.
3458 Now every user action takes place in the `(guile-user)' module by
3461 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3463 ** Character classifiers work for non-ASCII characters.
3465 The predicates `char-alphabetic?', `char-numeric?',
3466 `char-whitespace?', `char-lower?', `char-upper?' and `char-is-both?'
3467 no longer check whether their arguments are ASCII characters.
3468 Previously, a character would only be considered alphabetic when it
3469 was also ASCII, for example.
3471 ** Previously deprecated Scheme functions have been removed:
3473 tag - no replacement.
3474 fseek - replaced by seek.
3475 list* - replaced by cons*.
3477 ** It's now possible to create modules with controlled environments
3481 (use-modules (ice-9 safe))
3482 (define m (make-safe-module))
3483 ;;; m will now be a module containing only a safe subset of R5RS
3484 (eval '(+ 1 2) m) --> 3
3485 (eval 'load m) --> ERROR: Unbound variable: load
3487 ** Evaluation of "()", the empty list, is now an error.
3489 Previously, the expression "()" evaluated to the empty list. This has
3490 been changed to signal a "missing expression" error. The correct way
3491 to write the empty list as a literal constant is to use quote: "'()".
3493 ** New concept of `Guile Extensions'.
3495 A Guile Extension is just a ordinary shared library that can be linked
3496 at run-time. We found it advantageous to give this simple concept a
3497 dedicated name to distinguish the issues related to shared libraries
3498 from the issues related to the module system.
3500 *** New function: load-extension
3502 Executing (load-extension lib init) is mostly equivalent to
3504 (dynamic-call init (dynamic-link lib))
3506 except when scm_register_extension has been called previously.
3507 Whenever appropriate, you should use `load-extension' instead of
3508 dynamic-link and dynamic-call.
3510 *** New C function: scm_c_register_extension
3512 This function registers a initialization function for use by
3513 `load-extension'. Use it when you don't want specific extensions to
3514 be loaded as shared libraries (for example on platforms that don't
3515 support dynamic linking).
3517 ** Auto-loading of compiled-code modules is deprecated.
3519 Guile used to be able to automatically find and link a shared
3520 library to satisfy requests for a module. For example, the module
3521 `(foo bar)' could be implemented by placing a shared library named
3522 "foo/libbar.so" (or with a different extension) in a directory on the
3525 This has been found to be too tricky, and is no longer supported. The
3526 shared libraries are now called "extensions". You should now write a
3527 small Scheme file that calls `load-extension' to load the shared
3528 library and initialize it explicitly.
3530 The shared libraries themselves should be installed in the usual
3531 places for shared libraries, with names like "libguile-foo-bar".
3533 For example, place this into a file "foo/bar.scm"
3535 (define-module (foo bar))
3537 (load-extension "libguile-foo-bar" "foobar_init")
3539 ** Backward incompatible change: eval EXP ENVIRONMENT-SPECIFIER
3541 `eval' is now R5RS, that is it takes two arguments.
3542 The second argument is an environment specifier, i.e. either
3544 (scheme-report-environment 5)
3545 (null-environment 5)
3546 (interaction-environment)
3552 ** The module system has been made more disciplined.
3554 The function `eval' will save and restore the current module around
3555 the evaluation of the specified expression. While this expression is
3556 evaluated, `(current-module)' will now return the right module, which
3557 is the module specified as the second argument to `eval'.
3559 A consequence of this change is that `eval' is not particularly
3560 useful when you want allow the evaluated code to change what module is
3561 designated as the current module and have this change persist from one
3562 call to `eval' to the next. The read-eval-print-loop is an example
3563 where `eval' is now inadequate. To compensate, there is a new
3564 function `primitive-eval' that does not take a module specifier and
3565 that does not save/restore the current module. You should use this
3566 function together with `set-current-module', `current-module', etc
3567 when you want to have more control over the state that is carried from
3568 one eval to the next.
3570 Additionally, it has been made sure that forms that are evaluated at
3571 the top level are always evaluated with respect to the current module.
3572 Previously, subforms of top-level forms such as `begin', `case',
3573 etc. did not respect changes to the current module although these
3574 subforms are at the top-level as well.
3576 To prevent strange behavior, the forms `define-module',
3577 `use-modules', `use-syntax', and `export' have been restricted to only
3578 work on the top level. The forms `define-public' and
3579 `defmacro-public' only export the new binding on the top level. They
3580 behave just like `define' and `defmacro', respectively, when they are
3581 used in a lexical environment.
3583 Also, `export' will no longer silently re-export bindings imported
3584 from a used module. It will emit a `deprecation' warning and will
3585 cease to perform any re-export in the next version. If you actually
3586 want to re-export bindings, use the new `re-export' in place of
3587 `export'. The new `re-export' will not make copies of variables when
3588 rexporting them, as `export' did wrongly.
3590 ** Module system now allows selection and renaming of imported bindings
3592 Previously, when using `use-modules' or the `#:use-module' clause in
3593 the `define-module' form, all the bindings (association of symbols to
3594 values) for imported modules were added to the "current module" on an
3595 as-is basis. This has been changed to allow finer control through two
3596 new facilities: selection and renaming.
3598 You can now select which of the imported module's bindings are to be
3599 visible in the current module by using the `:select' clause. This
3600 clause also can be used to rename individual bindings. For example:
3602 ;; import all bindings no questions asked
3603 (use-modules (ice-9 common-list))
3605 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them;
3606 ;; the current module sees: every some zonk-y zonk-n
3607 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
3609 (remove-if . zonk-y)
3610 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))))
3612 You can also programmatically rename all selected bindings using the
3613 `:renamer' clause, which specifies a proc that takes a symbol and
3614 returns another symbol. Because it is common practice to use a prefix,
3615 we now provide the convenience procedure `symbol-prefix-proc'. For
3618 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
3619 ;; and all four w/ prefix "CL:";
3620 ;; the current module sees: CL:every CL:some CL:zonk-y CL:zonk-n
3621 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
3623 (remove-if . zonk-y)
3624 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
3625 :renamer (symbol-prefix-proc 'CL:)))
3627 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
3628 ;; and all four by upcasing.
3629 ;; the current module sees: EVERY SOME ZONK-Y ZONK-N
3630 (define (upcase-symbol sym)
3631 (string->symbol (string-upcase (symbol->string sym))))
3633 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
3635 (remove-if . zonk-y)
3636 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
3637 :renamer upcase-symbol))
3639 Note that programmatic renaming is done *after* individual renaming.
3640 Also, the above examples show `use-modules', but the same facilities are
3641 available for the `#:use-module' clause of `define-module'.
3643 See manual for more info.
3645 ** The semantics of guardians have changed.
3647 The changes are for the most part compatible. An important criterion
3648 was to keep the typical usage of guardians as simple as before, but to
3649 make the semantics safer and (as a result) more useful.
3651 *** All objects returned from guardians are now properly alive.
3653 It is now guaranteed that any object referenced by an object returned
3654 from a guardian is alive. It's now impossible for a guardian to
3655 return a "contained" object before its "containing" object.
3657 One incompatible (but probably not very important) change resulting
3658 from this is that it is no longer possible to guard objects that
3659 indirectly reference themselves (i.e. are parts of cycles). If you do
3660 so accidentally, you'll get a warning.
3662 *** There are now two types of guardians: greedy and sharing.
3664 If you call (make-guardian #t) or just (make-guardian), you'll get a
3665 greedy guardian, and for (make-guardian #f) a sharing guardian.
3667 Greedy guardians are the default because they are more "defensive".
3668 You can only greedily guard an object once. If you guard an object
3669 more than once, once in a greedy guardian and the rest of times in
3670 sharing guardians, then it is guaranteed that the object won't be
3671 returned from sharing guardians as long as it is greedily guarded
3674 Guardians returned by calls to `make-guardian' can now take one more
3675 optional parameter, which says whether to throw an error in case an
3676 attempt is made to greedily guard an object that is already greedily
3677 guarded. The default is true, i.e. throw an error. If the parameter
3678 is false, the guardian invocation returns #t if guarding was
3679 successful and #f if it wasn't.
3681 Also, since greedy guarding is, in effect, a side-effecting operation
3682 on objects, a new function is introduced: `destroy-guardian!'.
3683 Invoking this function on a guardian renders it unoperative and, if
3684 the guardian is greedy, clears the "greedily guarded" property of the
3685 objects that were guarded by it, thus undoing the side effect.
3687 Note that all this hair is hardly very important, since guardian
3688 objects are usually permanent.
3690 ** Continuations created by call-with-current-continuation now accept
3691 any number of arguments, as required by R5RS.
3693 ** New function `issue-deprecation-warning'
3695 This function is used to display the deprecation messages that are
3696 controlled by GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION as explained in the README.
3699 (issue-deprecation-warning "`id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.")
3703 ;; `id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.
3708 ** New syntax `begin-deprecated'
3710 When deprecated features are included (as determined by the configure
3711 option --enable-deprecated), `begin-deprecated' is identical to
3712 `begin'. When deprecated features are excluded, it always evaluates
3713 to `#f', ignoring the body forms.
3715 ** New function `make-object-property'
3717 This function returns a new `procedure with setter' P that can be used
3718 to attach a property to objects. When calling P as
3722 where `obj' is any kind of object, it attaches `val' to `obj' in such
3723 a way that it can be retrieved by calling P as
3727 This function will replace procedure properties, symbol properties and
3728 source properties eventually.
3730 ** Module (ice-9 optargs) now uses keywords instead of `#&'.
3732 Instead of #&optional, #&key, etc you should now use #:optional,
3733 #:key, etc. Since #:optional is a keyword, you can write it as just
3734 :optional when (read-set! keywords 'prefix) is active.
3736 The old reader syntax `#&' is still supported, but deprecated. It
3737 will be removed in the next release.
3739 ** New define-module option: pure
3741 Tells the module system not to include any bindings from the root
3746 (define-module (totally-empty-module)
3749 ** New define-module option: export NAME1 ...
3751 Export names NAME1 ...
3753 This option is required if you want to be able to export bindings from
3754 a module which doesn't import one of `define-public' or `export'.
3758 (define-module (foo)
3760 :use-module (ice-9 r5rs)
3763 ;;; Note that we're pure R5RS below this point!
3768 ** New function: object->string OBJ
3770 Return a Scheme string obtained by printing a given object.
3772 ** New function: port? X
3774 Returns a boolean indicating whether X is a port. Equivalent to
3775 `(or (input-port? X) (output-port? X))'.
3777 ** New function: file-port?
3779 Determines whether a given object is a port that is related to a file.
3781 ** New function: port-for-each proc
3783 Apply PROC to each port in the Guile port table in turn. The return
3784 value is unspecified. More specifically, PROC is applied exactly once
3785 to every port that exists in the system at the time PORT-FOR-EACH is
3786 invoked. Changes to the port table while PORT-FOR-EACH is running
3787 have no effect as far as PORT-FOR-EACH is concerned.
3789 ** New function: dup2 oldfd newfd
3791 A simple wrapper for the `dup2' system call. Copies the file
3792 descriptor OLDFD to descriptor number NEWFD, replacing the
3793 previous meaning of NEWFD. Both OLDFD and NEWFD must be integers.
3794 Unlike for dup->fdes or primitive-move->fdes, no attempt is made
3795 to move away ports which are using NEWFD. The return value is
3798 ** New function: close-fdes fd
3800 A simple wrapper for the `close' system call. Close file
3801 descriptor FD, which must be an integer. Unlike close (*note
3802 close: Ports and File Descriptors.), the file descriptor will be
3803 closed even if a port is using it. The return value is
3806 ** New function: crypt password salt
3808 Encrypts `password' using the standard unix password encryption
3811 ** New function: chroot path
3813 Change the root directory of the running process to `path'.
3815 ** New functions: getlogin, cuserid
3817 Return the login name or the user name of the current effective user
3820 ** New functions: getpriority which who, setpriority which who prio
3822 Get or set the priority of the running process.
3824 ** New function: getpass prompt
3826 Read a password from the terminal, first displaying `prompt' and
3829 ** New function: flock file operation
3831 Set/remove an advisory shared or exclusive lock on `file'.
3833 ** New functions: sethostname name, gethostname
3835 Set or get the hostname of the machine the current process is running
3838 ** New function: mkstemp! tmpl
3840 mkstemp creates a new unique file in the file system and returns a
3841 new buffered port open for reading and writing to the file. TMPL
3842 is a string specifying where the file should be created: it must
3843 end with `XXXXXX' and will be changed in place to return the name
3844 of the temporary file.
3846 ** New function: open-input-string string
3848 Return an input string port which delivers the characters from
3849 `string'. This procedure, together with `open-output-string' and
3850 `get-output-string' implements SRFI-6.
3852 ** New function: open-output-string
3854 Return an output string port which collects all data written to it.
3855 The data can then be retrieved by `get-output-string'.
3857 ** New function: get-output-string
3859 Return the contents of an output string port.
3861 ** New function: identity
3863 Return the argument.
3865 ** socket, connect, accept etc., now have support for IPv6. IPv6 addresses
3866 are represented in Scheme as integers with normal host byte ordering.
3868 ** New function: inet-pton family address
3870 Convert a printable string network address into an integer. Note that
3871 unlike the C version of this function, the result is an integer with
3872 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
3875 (inet-pton AF_INET "127.0.0.1") => 2130706433
3876 (inet-pton AF_INET6 "::1") => 1
3878 ** New function: inet-ntop family address
3880 Convert an integer network address into a printable string. Note that
3881 unlike the C version of this function, the input is an integer with
3882 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
3885 (inet-ntop AF_INET 2130706433) => "127.0.0.1"
3886 (inet-ntop AF_INET6 (- (expt 2 128) 1)) =>
3887 ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
3891 Use `identity' instead.
3897 ** Deprecated: return-it
3901 ** Deprecated: string-character-length
3903 Use `string-length' instead.
3905 ** Deprecated: flags
3907 Use `logior' instead.
3909 ** Deprecated: close-all-ports-except.
3911 This was intended for closing ports in a child process after a fork,
3912 but it has the undesirable side effect of flushing buffers.
3913 port-for-each is more flexible.
3915 ** The (ice-9 popen) module now attempts to set up file descriptors in
3916 the child process from the current Scheme ports, instead of using the
3917 current values of file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 in the parent process.
3919 ** Removed function: builtin-weak-bindings
3921 There is no such concept as a weak binding any more.
3923 ** Removed constants: bignum-radix, scm-line-incrementors
3925 ** define-method: New syntax mandatory.
3927 The new method syntax is now mandatory:
3929 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ...) BODY ...)
3930 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ... . REST-ARG) BODY ...)
3932 ARG-SPEC ::= ARG-NAME | (ARG-NAME TYPE)
3933 REST-ARG ::= ARG-NAME
3935 If you have old code using the old syntax, import
3936 (oop goops old-define-method) before (oop goops) as in:
3938 (use-modules (oop goops old-define-method) (oop goops))
3940 ** Deprecated function: builtin-variable
3941 Removed function: builtin-bindings
3943 There is no longer a distinction between builtin or other variables.
3944 Use module system operations for all variables.
3946 ** Lazy-catch handlers are no longer allowed to return.
3948 That is, a call to `throw', `error', etc is now guaranteed to not
3951 ** Bugfixes for (ice-9 getopt-long)
3953 This module is now tested using test-suite/tests/getopt-long.test.
3954 The following bugs have been fixed:
3956 *** Parsing for options that are specified to have `optional' args now checks
3957 if the next element is an option instead of unconditionally taking it as the
3960 *** An error is now thrown for `--opt=val' when the option description
3961 does not specify `(value #t)' or `(value optional)'. This condition used to
3962 be accepted w/o error, contrary to the documentation.
3964 *** The error message for unrecognized options is now more informative.
3965 It used to be "not a record", an artifact of the implementation.
3967 *** The error message for `--opt' terminating the arg list (no value), when
3968 `(value #t)' is specified, is now more informative. It used to be "not enough
3971 *** "Clumped" single-char args now preserve trailing string, use it as arg.
3972 The expansion used to be like so:
3974 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "--xyz")
3976 Note that the "5d" is dropped. Now it is like so:
3978 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "5d" "--xyz")
3980 This enables single-char options to have adjoining arguments as long as their
3981 constituent characters are not potential single-char options.
3983 ** (ice-9 session) procedure `arity' now works with (ice-9 optargs) `lambda*'
3985 The `lambda*' and derivative forms in (ice-9 optargs) now set a procedure
3986 property `arglist', which can be retrieved by `arity'. The result is that
3987 `arity' can give more detailed information than before:
3991 guile> (use-modules (ice-9 optargs))
3992 guile> (define* (foo #:optional a b c) a)
3994 0 or more arguments in `lambda*:G0'.
3999 3 optional arguments: `a', `b' and `c'.
4000 guile> (define* (bar a b #:key c d #:allow-other-keys) a)
4002 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 2 keyword arguments: `c'
4003 and `d', other keywords allowed.
4004 guile> (define* (baz a b #:optional c #:rest r) a)
4006 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 1 optional argument: `c',
4009 * Changes to the C interface
4011 ** Types have been renamed from scm_*_t to scm_t_*.
4013 This has been done for POSIX sake. It reserves identifiers ending
4014 with "_t". What a concept.
4016 The old names are still available with status `deprecated'.
4018 ** scm_t_bits (former scm_bits_t) is now a unsigned type.
4020 ** Deprecated features have been removed.
4024 SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP SCM_ICHRP, SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR
4025 SCM_SETJMPBUF SCM_NSTRINGP SCM_NRWSTRINGP SCM_NVECTORP SCM_DOUBLE_CELLP
4027 *** C Functions removed
4029 scm_sysmissing scm_tag scm_tc16_flo scm_tc_flo
4030 scm_fseek - replaced by scm_seek.
4031 gc-thunk - replaced by after-gc-hook.
4032 gh_int2scmb - replaced by gh_bool2scm.
4033 scm_tc_dblr - replaced by scm_tc16_real.
4034 scm_tc_dblc - replaced by scm_tc16_complex.
4035 scm_list_star - replaced by scm_cons_star.
4037 ** Deprecated: scm_makfromstr
4039 Use scm_mem2string instead.
4041 ** Deprecated: scm_make_shared_substring
4043 Explicit shared substrings will disappear from Guile.
4045 Instead, "normal" strings will be implemented using sharing
4046 internally, combined with a copy-on-write strategy.
4048 ** Deprecated: scm_read_only_string_p
4050 The concept of read-only strings will disappear in next release of
4053 ** Deprecated: scm_sloppy_memq, scm_sloppy_memv, scm_sloppy_member
4055 Instead, use scm_c_memq or scm_memq, scm_memv, scm_member.
4057 ** New functions: scm_call_0, scm_call_1, scm_call_2, scm_call_3
4059 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments. See "Fly
4060 Evaluation" in the manual.
4062 ** New functions: scm_apply_0, scm_apply_1, scm_apply_2, scm_apply_3
4064 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments and a list of
4065 further arguments. See "Fly Evaluation" in the manual.
4067 ** New functions: scm_list_1, scm_list_2, scm_list_3, scm_list_4, scm_list_5
4069 Create a list of the given number of elements. See "List
4070 Constructors" in the manual.
4072 ** Renamed function: scm_listify has been replaced by scm_list_n.
4074 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_LIST0, SCM_LIST1, SCM_LIST2, SCM_LIST3, SCM_LIST4,
4075 SCM_LIST5, SCM_LIST6, SCM_LIST7, SCM_LIST8, SCM_LIST9.
4077 Use functions scm_list_N instead.
4079 ** New function: scm_c_read (SCM port, void *buffer, scm_sizet size)
4081 Used by an application to read arbitrary number of bytes from a port.
4082 Same semantics as libc read, except that scm_c_read only returns less
4083 than SIZE bytes if at end-of-file.
4085 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
4087 ** New function: scm_c_write (SCM port, const void *ptr, scm_sizet size)
4089 Used by an application to write arbitrary number of bytes to an SCM
4090 port. Similar semantics as libc write. However, unlike libc
4091 write, scm_c_write writes the requested number of bytes and has no
4094 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
4096 ** New function: scm_init_guile ()
4098 In contrast to scm_boot_guile, scm_init_guile will return normally
4099 after initializing Guile. It is not available on all systems, tho.
4101 ** New functions: scm_str2symbol, scm_mem2symbol
4103 The function scm_str2symbol takes a const char* pointing to a zero-terminated
4104 field of characters and creates a scheme symbol object from that C string.
4105 The function scm_mem2symbol takes a const char* and a number of characters and
4106 creates a symbol from the characters in that memory area.
4108 ** New functions: scm_primitive_make_property
4109 scm_primitive_property_ref
4110 scm_primitive_property_set_x
4111 scm_primitive_property_del_x
4113 These functions implement a new way to deal with object properties.
4114 See libguile/properties.c for their documentation.
4116 ** New function: scm_done_free (long size)
4118 This function is the inverse of scm_done_malloc. Use it to report the
4119 amount of smob memory you free. The previous method, which involved
4120 calling scm_done_malloc with negative argument, was somewhat
4121 unintuitive (and is still available, of course).
4123 ** New function: scm_c_memq (SCM obj, SCM list)
4125 This function provides a fast C level alternative for scm_memq for the case
4126 that the list parameter is known to be a proper list. The function is a
4127 replacement for scm_sloppy_memq, but is stricter in its requirements on its
4128 list input parameter, since for anything else but a proper list the function's
4129 behaviour is undefined - it may even crash or loop endlessly. Further, for
4130 the case that the object is not found in the list, scm_c_memq returns #f which
4131 is similar to scm_memq, but different from scm_sloppy_memq's behaviour.
4133 ** New functions: scm_remember_upto_here_1, scm_remember_upto_here_2,
4134 scm_remember_upto_here
4136 These functions replace the function scm_remember.
4138 ** Deprecated function: scm_remember
4140 Use one of the new functions scm_remember_upto_here_1,
4141 scm_remember_upto_here_2 or scm_remember_upto_here instead.
4143 ** New function: scm_allocate_string
4145 This function replaces the function scm_makstr.
4147 ** Deprecated function: scm_makstr
4149 Use the new function scm_allocate_string instead.
4151 ** New global variable scm_gc_running_p introduced.
4153 Use this variable to find out if garbage collection is being executed. Up to
4154 now applications have used scm_gc_heap_lock to test if garbage collection was
4155 running, which also works because of the fact that up to know only the garbage
4156 collector has set this variable. But, this is an implementation detail that
4157 may change. Further, scm_gc_heap_lock is not set throughout gc, thus the use
4158 of this variable is (and has been) not fully safe anyway.
4160 ** New macros: SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH
4162 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
4164 ** New macros: SCM_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_CCLO_LENGTH, SCM_STACK_LENGTH,
4165 SCM_STRING_LENGTH, SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
4166 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH.
4168 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH.
4170 ** New macros: SCM_SET_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH,
4171 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
4172 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH
4174 Use these instead of SCM_SETLENGTH
4176 ** New macros: SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_CCLO_BASE,
4177 SCM_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_COMPLEX_MEM,
4180 Use these instead of SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS, SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS or
4183 ** New macros: SCM_SET_BIGNUM_BASE, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS,
4184 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE,
4187 Use these instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
4189 ** New macro: SCM_BITVECTOR_P
4191 ** New macro: SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X
4193 Use instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
4195 ** New macros: SCM_DIR_OPEN_P, SCM_DIR_FLAG_OPEN
4197 For directory objects, use these instead of SCM_OPDIRP and SCM_OPN.
4199 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_OUTOFRANGE, SCM_NALLOC, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL,
4200 SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL,
4201 SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD,
4202 SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS, SCM_SYMBOL_SLOTS, SCM_SLOTS, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
4203 SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_FREEP, SCM_NFREEP, SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS,
4204 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY,
4205 SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_HUGE_LENGTH,
4206 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
4207 SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_RWSTRINGP, SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, SCM_ROCHARS,
4208 SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_GC8MARKP,
4209 SCM_SETGC8MARK, SCM_CLRGC8MARK, SCM_GCTYP16, SCM_GCCDR, SCM_SUBR_DOC,
4210 SCM_OPDIRP, SCM_VALIDATE_OPDIR, SCM_WTA, RETURN_SCM_WTA, SCM_CONST_LONG,
4211 SCM_WNA, SCM_FUNC_NAME, SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_COPY,
4212 SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_DEF_COPY, SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP, SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP,
4213 SCM_SETAND_CDR, SCM_SETOR_CDR, SCM_SETAND_CAR, SCM_SETOR_CAR
4215 Use SCM_ASSERT_RANGE or SCM_VALIDATE_XXX_RANGE instead of SCM_OUTOFRANGE.
4216 Use scm_memory_error instead of SCM_NALLOC.
4217 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP.
4218 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR.
4219 Use SCM_FREE_CELL_P instead of SCM_FREEP/SCM_NFREEP
4220 Use a type specific accessor macro instead of SCM_CHARS/SCM_UCHARS.
4221 Use a type specific accessor instead of SCM(_|_RO|_HUGE_)LENGTH.
4222 Use SCM_VALIDATE_(SYMBOL|STRING) instead of SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING.
4223 Use SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
4224 Use SCM_STRINGP or SCM_SYMBOLP instead of SCM_ROSTRINGP.
4225 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_RWSTRINGP.
4226 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING.
4227 Use SCM_STRING_CHARS instead of SCM_ROCHARS.
4228 Use SCM_STRING_UCHARS instead of SCM_ROUCHARS.
4229 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETLENGTH.
4230 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
4231 Use a type specific length macro instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
4232 Use SCM_GCMARKP instead of SCM_GC8MARKP.
4233 Use SCM_SETGCMARK instead of SCM_SETGC8MARK.
4234 Use SCM_CLRGCMARK instead of SCM_CLRGC8MARK.
4235 Use SCM_TYP16 instead of SCM_GCTYP16.
4236 Use SCM_CDR instead of SCM_GCCDR.
4237 Use SCM_DIR_OPEN_P instead of SCM_OPDIRP.
4238 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of SCM_WTA.
4239 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of RETURN_SCM_WTA.
4240 Use SCM_VCELL_INIT instead of SCM_CONST_LONG.
4241 Use SCM_WRONG_NUM_ARGS instead of SCM_WNA.
4242 Use SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP.
4243 Use !SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP.
4245 ** Removed function: scm_struct_init
4247 ** Removed variable: scm_symhash_dim
4249 ** Renamed function: scm_make_cont has been replaced by
4250 scm_make_continuation, which has a different interface.
4252 ** Deprecated function: scm_call_catching_errors
4254 Use scm_catch or scm_lazy_catch from throw.[ch] instead.
4256 ** Deprecated function: scm_strhash
4258 Use scm_string_hash instead.
4260 ** Deprecated function: scm_vector_set_length_x
4262 Instead, create a fresh vector of the desired size and copy the contents.
4264 ** scm_gensym has changed prototype
4266 scm_gensym now only takes one argument.
4268 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc7_ssymbol, scm_tc7_msymbol, scm_tcs_symbols,
4271 There is now only a single symbol type scm_tc7_symbol.
4272 The tag scm_tc7_lvector was not used anyway.
4274 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe, scm_set_smob_mfpe.
4276 Use scm_make_smob_type and scm_set_smob_XXX instead.
4278 ** New function scm_set_smob_apply.
4280 This can be used to set an apply function to a smob type.
4282 ** Deprecated function: scm_strprint_obj
4284 Use scm_object_to_string instead.
4286 ** Deprecated function: scm_wta
4288 Use scm_wrong_type_arg, or another appropriate error signalling function
4291 ** Explicit support for obarrays has been deprecated.
4293 Use `scm_str2symbol' and the generic hashtable functions instead.
4295 ** The concept of `vcells' has been deprecated.
4297 The data type `variable' is now used exclusively. `Vcells' have been
4298 a low-level concept so you are likely not affected by this change.
4300 *** Deprecated functions: scm_sym2vcell, scm_sysintern,
4301 scm_sysintern0, scm_symbol_value0, scm_intern, scm_intern0.
4303 Use scm_c_define or scm_c_lookup instead, as appropriate.
4305 *** New functions: scm_c_module_lookup, scm_c_lookup,
4306 scm_c_module_define, scm_c_define, scm_module_lookup, scm_lookup,
4307 scm_module_define, scm_define.
4309 These functions work with variables instead of with vcells.
4311 ** New functions for creating and defining `subr's and `gsubr's.
4313 The new functions more clearly distinguish between creating a subr (or
4314 gsubr) object and adding it to the current module.
4316 These new functions are available: scm_c_make_subr, scm_c_define_subr,
4317 scm_c_make_subr_with_generic, scm_c_define_subr_with_generic,
4318 scm_c_make_gsubr, scm_c_define_gsubr, scm_c_make_gsubr_with_generic,
4319 scm_c_define_gsubr_with_generic.
4321 ** Deprecated functions: scm_make_subr, scm_make_subr_opt,
4322 scm_make_subr_with_generic, scm_make_gsubr,
4323 scm_make_gsubr_with_generic.
4325 Use the new ones from above instead.
4327 ** C interface to the module system has changed.
4329 While we suggest that you avoid as many explicit module system
4330 operations from C as possible for the time being, the C interface has
4331 been made more similar to the high-level Scheme module system.
4333 *** New functions: scm_c_define_module, scm_c_use_module,
4334 scm_c_export, scm_c_resolve_module.
4336 They mostly work like their Scheme namesakes. scm_c_define_module
4337 takes a function that is called a context where the new module is
4340 *** Deprecated functions: scm_the_root_module, scm_make_module,
4341 scm_ensure_user_module, scm_load_scheme_module.
4343 Use the new functions instead.
4345 ** Renamed function: scm_internal_with_fluids becomes
4348 scm_internal_with_fluids is available as a deprecated function.
4350 ** New function: scm_c_with_fluid.
4352 Just like scm_c_with_fluids, but takes one fluid and one value instead
4355 ** Deprecated typedefs: long_long, ulong_long.
4357 They are of questionable utility and they pollute the global
4360 ** Deprecated typedef: scm_sizet
4362 It is of questionable utility now that Guile requires ANSI C, and is
4365 ** Deprecated typedefs: scm_port_rw_active, scm_port,
4366 scm_ptob_descriptor, scm_debug_info, scm_debug_frame, scm_fport,
4367 scm_option, scm_rstate, scm_rng, scm_array, scm_array_dim.
4369 Made more compliant with the naming policy by adding a _t at the end.
4371 ** Deprecated functions: scm_mkbig, scm_big2num, scm_adjbig,
4372 scm_normbig, scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl
4374 With the exception of the mysterious scm_2ulong2big, they are still
4375 available under new names (scm_i_mkbig etc). These functions are not
4376 intended to be used in user code. You should avoid dealing with
4377 bignums directly, and should deal with numbers in general (which can
4380 ** Change in behavior: scm_num2long, scm_num2ulong
4382 The scm_num2[u]long functions don't any longer accept an inexact
4383 argument. This change in behavior is motivated by concordance with
4384 R5RS: It is more common that a primitive doesn't want to accept an
4385 inexact for an exact.
4387 ** New functions: scm_short2num, scm_ushort2num, scm_int2num,
4388 scm_uint2num, scm_size2num, scm_ptrdiff2num, scm_num2short,
4389 scm_num2ushort, scm_num2int, scm_num2uint, scm_num2ptrdiff,
4392 These are conversion functions between the various ANSI C integral
4393 types and Scheme numbers. NOTE: The scm_num2xxx functions don't
4394 accept an inexact argument.
4396 ** New functions: scm_float2num, scm_double2num,
4397 scm_num2float, scm_num2double.
4399 These are conversion functions between the two ANSI C float types and
4402 ** New number validation macros:
4403 SCM_NUM2{SIZE,PTRDIFF,SHORT,USHORT,INT,UINT}[_DEF]
4407 ** New functions: scm_gc_protect_object, scm_gc_unprotect_object
4409 These are just nicer-named old scm_protect_object and
4410 scm_unprotect_object.
4412 ** Deprecated functions: scm_protect_object, scm_unprotect_object
4414 ** New functions: scm_gc_[un]register_root, scm_gc_[un]register_roots
4416 These functions can be used to register pointers to locations that
4419 ** Deprecated function: scm_create_hook.
4421 Its sins are: misleading name, non-modularity and lack of general
4425 Changes since Guile 1.3.4:
4427 * Changes to the distribution
4429 ** Trees from nightly snapshots and CVS now require you to run autogen.sh.
4431 We've changed the way we handle generated files in the Guile source
4432 repository. As a result, the procedure for building trees obtained
4433 from the nightly FTP snapshots or via CVS has changed:
4434 - You must have appropriate versions of autoconf, automake, and
4435 libtool installed on your system. See README for info on how to
4436 obtain these programs.
4437 - Before configuring the tree, you must first run the script
4438 `autogen.sh' at the top of the source tree.
4440 The Guile repository used to contain not only source files, written by
4441 humans, but also some generated files, like configure scripts and
4442 Makefile.in files. Even though the contents of these files could be
4443 derived mechanically from other files present, we thought it would
4444 make the tree easier to build if we checked them into CVS.
4446 However, this approach means that minor differences between
4447 developer's installed tools and habits affected the whole team.
4448 So we have removed the generated files from the repository, and
4449 added the autogen.sh script, which will reconstruct them
4453 ** configure now has experimental options to remove support for certain
4456 --disable-arrays omit array and uniform array support
4457 --disable-posix omit posix interfaces
4458 --disable-networking omit networking interfaces
4459 --disable-regex omit regular expression interfaces
4461 These are likely to become separate modules some day.
4463 ** New configure option --enable-debug-freelist
4465 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
4466 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
4468 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
4469 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
4471 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
4472 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
4474 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
4475 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can
4476 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
4477 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
4479 ** New configure option --enable-debug-malloc
4481 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
4485 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
4486 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
4488 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
4490 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
4491 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
4493 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
4494 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
4495 number of objects of that kind.
4497 ** All includes are now referenced relative to the root directory
4499 Since some users have had problems with mixups between Guile and
4500 system headers, we have decided to always refer to Guile headers via
4501 their parent directories. This essentially creates a "private name
4502 space" for Guile headers. This means that the compiler only is given
4503 -I options for the root build and root source directory.
4505 ** Header files kw.h and genio.h have been removed.
4507 ** The module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) has been removed.
4509 ** New module (ice-9 documentation)
4511 Implements the interface to documentation strings associated with
4514 ** New module (ice-9 time)
4516 Provides a macro `time', which displays execution time of a given form.
4518 ** New module (ice-9 history)
4520 Loading this module enables value history in the repl.
4522 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
4524 ** New command line option --debug
4526 Start Guile with debugging evaluator and backtraces enabled.
4528 This is useful when debugging your .guile init file or scripts.
4530 ** New help facility
4532 Usage: (help NAME) gives documentation about objects named NAME (a symbol)
4533 (help REGEXP) ditto for objects with names matching REGEXP (a string)
4534 (help 'NAME) gives documentation for NAME, even if it is not an object
4535 (help ,EXPR) gives documentation for object returned by EXPR
4536 (help (my module)) gives module commentary for `(my module)'
4537 (help) gives this text
4539 `help' searches among bindings exported from loaded modules, while
4540 `apropos' searches among bindings visible from the "current" module.
4542 Examples: (help help)
4544 (help "output-string")
4546 ** `help' and `apropos' now prints full module names
4548 ** Dynamic linking now uses libltdl from the libtool package.
4550 The old system dependent code for doing dynamic linking has been
4551 replaced with calls to the libltdl functions which do all the hairy
4554 The major improvement is that you can now directly pass libtool
4555 library names like "libfoo.la" to `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-link'
4556 will be able to do the best shared library job you can get, via
4559 The way dynamic libraries are found has changed and is not really
4560 portable across platforms, probably. It is therefore recommended to
4561 use absolute filenames when possible.
4563 If you pass a filename without an extension to `dynamic-link', it will
4564 try a few appropriate ones. Thus, the most platform ignorant way is
4565 to specify a name like "libfoo", without any directories and
4568 ** Guile COOP threads are now compatible with LinuxThreads
4570 Previously, COOP threading wasn't possible in applications linked with
4571 Linux POSIX threads due to their use of the stack pointer to find the
4572 thread context. This has now been fixed with a workaround which uses
4573 the pthreads to allocate the stack.
4575 ** New primitives: `pkgdata-dir', `site-dir', `library-dir'
4577 ** Positions of erring expression in scripts
4579 With version 1.3.4, the location of the erring expression in Guile
4580 scipts is no longer automatically reported. (This should have been
4581 documented before the 1.3.4 release.)
4583 You can get this information by enabling recording of positions of
4584 source expressions and running the debugging evaluator. Put this at
4585 the top of your script (or in your "site" file):
4587 (read-enable 'positions)
4588 (debug-enable 'debug)
4590 ** Backtraces in scripts
4592 It is now possible to get backtraces in scripts.
4596 (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
4598 at the top of the script.
4600 (The first options enables the debugging evaluator.
4601 The second enables backtraces.)
4603 ** Part of module system symbol lookup now implemented in C
4605 The eval closure of most modules is now implemented in C. Since this
4606 was one of the bottlenecks for loading speed, Guile now loads code
4607 substantially faster than before.
4609 ** Attempting to get the value of an unbound variable now produces
4610 an exception with a key of 'unbound-variable instead of 'misc-error.
4612 ** The initial default output port is now unbuffered if it's using a
4613 tty device. Previously in this situation it was line-buffered.
4615 ** New hook: after-gc-hook
4617 after-gc-hook takes over the role of gc-thunk. This hook is run at
4618 the first SCM_TICK after a GC. (Thus, the code is run at the same
4619 point during evaluation as signal handlers.)
4621 Note that this hook should be used only for diagnostic and debugging
4622 purposes. It is not certain that it will continue to be well-defined
4623 when this hook is run in the future.
4625 C programmers: Note the new C level hooks scm_before_gc_c_hook,
4626 scm_before_sweep_c_hook, scm_after_gc_c_hook.
4628 ** Improvements to garbage collector
4630 Guile 1.4 has a new policy for triggering heap allocation and
4631 determining the sizes of heap segments. It fixes a number of problems
4634 1. The new policy can handle two separate pools of cells
4635 (2-word/4-word) better. (The old policy would run wild, allocating
4636 more and more memory for certain programs.)
4638 2. The old code would sometimes allocate far too much heap so that the
4639 Guile process became gigantic. The new code avoids this.
4641 3. The old code would sometimes allocate too little so that few cells
4642 were freed at GC so that, in turn, too much time was spent in GC.
4644 4. The old code would often trigger heap allocation several times in a
4645 row. (The new scheme predicts how large the segments needs to be
4646 in order not to need further allocation.)
4648 All in all, the new GC policy will make larger applications more
4651 The new GC scheme also is prepared for POSIX threading. Threads can
4652 allocate private pools of cells ("clusters") with just a single
4653 function call. Allocation of single cells from such a cluster can
4654 then proceed without any need of inter-thread synchronization.
4656 ** New environment variables controlling GC parameters
4658 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE Maximal segment size
4661 Allocation of 2-word cell heaps:
4663 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1 Size of initial heap segment in bytes
4666 GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1 Minimum number of freed cells at each
4667 GC in percent of total heap size
4670 Allocation of 4-word cell heaps
4671 (used for real numbers and misc other objects):
4673 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2
4675 (See entry "Way for application to customize GC parameters" under
4676 section "Changes to the scm_ interface" below.)
4678 ** Guile now implements reals using 4-word cells
4680 This speeds up computation with reals. (They were earlier allocated
4681 with `malloc'.) There is still some room for optimizations, however.
4683 ** Some further steps toward POSIX thread support have been taken
4685 *** Guile's critical sections (SCM_DEFER/ALLOW_INTS)
4686 don't have much effect any longer, and many of them will be removed in
4690 are only handled at the top of the evaluator loop, immediately after
4691 I/O, and in scm_equalp.
4693 *** The GC can allocate thread private pools of pairs.
4695 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
4697 ** close-input-port and close-output-port are now R5RS
4699 These procedures have been turned into primitives and have R5RS behaviour.
4701 ** New procedure: simple-format PORT MESSAGE ARG1 ...
4703 (ice-9 boot) makes `format' an alias for `simple-format' until possibly
4704 extended by the more sophisticated version in (ice-9 format)
4706 (simple-format port message . args)
4707 Write MESSAGE to DESTINATION, defaulting to `current-output-port'.
4708 MESSAGE can contain ~A (was %s) and ~S (was %S) escapes. When printed,
4709 the escapes are replaced with corresponding members of ARGS:
4710 ~A formats using `display' and ~S formats using `write'.
4711 If DESTINATION is #t, then use the `current-output-port',
4712 if DESTINATION is #f, then return a string containing the formatted text.
4713 Does not add a trailing newline."
4715 ** string-ref: the second argument is no longer optional.
4717 ** string, list->string: no longer accept strings in their arguments,
4718 only characters, for compatibility with R5RS.
4720 ** New procedure: port-closed? PORT
4721 Returns #t if PORT is closed or #f if it is open.
4723 ** Deprecated: list*
4725 The list* functionality is now provided by cons* (SRFI-1 compliant)
4727 ** New procedure: cons* ARG1 ARG2 ... ARGn
4729 Like `list', but the last arg provides the tail of the constructed list,
4730 returning (cons ARG1 (cons ARG2 (cons ... ARGn))).
4732 Requires at least one argument. If given one argument, that argument
4733 is returned as result.
4735 This function is called `list*' in some other Schemes and in Common LISP.
4737 ** Removed deprecated: serial-map, serial-array-copy!, serial-array-map!
4739 ** New procedure: object-documentation OBJECT
4741 Returns the documentation string associated with OBJECT. The
4742 procedure uses a caching mechanism so that subsequent lookups are
4745 Exported by (ice-9 documentation).
4747 ** module-name now returns full names of modules
4749 Previously, only the last part of the name was returned (`session' for
4750 `(ice-9 session)'). Ex: `(ice-9 session)'.
4752 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4754 ** Deprecated: gh_int2scmb
4756 Use gh_bool2scm instead.
4758 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4760 ** Guile primitives now carry docstrings!
4762 Thanks to Greg Badros!
4764 ** Guile primitives are defined in a new way: SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
4766 Now Guile primitives are defined using the SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
4767 macros and must contain a docstring that is extracted into foo.doc using a new
4768 guile-doc-snarf script (that uses guile-doc-snarf.awk).
4770 However, a major overhaul of these macros is scheduled for the next release of
4773 ** Guile primitives use a new technique for validation of arguments
4775 SCM_VALIDATE_* macros are defined to ease the redundancy and improve
4776 the readability of argument checking.
4778 ** All (nearly?) K&R prototypes for functions replaced with ANSI C equivalents.
4780 ** New macros: SCM_PACK, SCM_UNPACK
4782 Compose/decompose an SCM value.
4784 The SCM type is now treated as an abstract data type and may be defined as a
4785 long, a void* or as a struct, depending on the architecture and compile time
4786 options. This makes it easier to find several types of bugs, for example when
4787 SCM values are treated as integers without conversion. Values of the SCM type
4788 should be treated as "atomic" values. These macros are used when
4789 composing/decomposing an SCM value, either because you want to access
4790 individual bits, or because you want to treat it as an integer value.
4792 E.g., in order to set bit 7 in an SCM value x, use the expression
4794 SCM_PACK (SCM_UNPACK (x) | 0x80)
4796 ** The name property of hooks is deprecated.
4797 Thus, the use of SCM_HOOK_NAME and scm_make_hook_with_name is deprecated.
4799 You can emulate this feature by using object properties.
4801 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP, SCM_CRDY, SCM_ICHRP,
4802 SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR, SCM_SETJMPBUF, SCM_NSTRINGP, SCM_NRWSTRINGP,
4805 These macros will be removed in a future release of Guile.
4807 ** The following types, functions and macros from numbers.h are deprecated:
4808 scm_dblproc, SCM_UNEGFIXABLE, SCM_FLOBUFLEN, SCM_INEXP, SCM_CPLXP, SCM_REAL,
4809 SCM_IMAG, SCM_REALPART, scm_makdbl, SCM_SINGP, SCM_NUM2DBL, SCM_NO_BIGDIG
4811 ** Port internals: the rw_random variable in the scm_port structure
4812 must be set to non-zero in any random access port. In recent Guile
4813 releases it was only set for bidirectional random-access ports.
4815 ** Port internals: the seek ptob procedure is now responsible for
4816 resetting the buffers if required. The change was made so that in the
4817 special case of reading the current position (i.e., seek p 0 SEEK_CUR)
4818 the fport and strport ptobs can avoid resetting the buffers,
4819 in particular to avoid discarding unread chars. An existing port
4820 type can be fixed by adding something like the following to the
4821 beginning of the ptob seek procedure:
4823 if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_READ)
4824 scm_end_input (object);
4825 else if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_WRITE)
4826 ptob->flush (object);
4828 although to actually avoid resetting the buffers and discard unread
4829 chars requires further hacking that depends on the characteristics
4832 ** Deprecated functions: scm_fseek, scm_tag
4834 These functions are no longer used and will be removed in a future version.
4836 ** The scm_sysmissing procedure is no longer used in libguile.
4837 Unless it turns out to be unexpectedly useful to somebody, it will be
4838 removed in a future version.
4840 ** The format of error message strings has changed
4842 The two C procedures: scm_display_error and scm_error, as well as the
4843 primitive `scm-error', now use scm_simple_format to do their work.
4844 This means that the message strings of all code must be updated to use
4845 ~A where %s was used before, and ~S where %S was used before.
4847 During the period when there still are a lot of old Guiles out there,
4848 you might want to support both old and new versions of Guile.
4850 There are basically two methods to achieve this. Both methods use
4853 AC_CHECK_FUNCS(scm_simple_format)
4855 in your configure.in.
4857 Method 1: Use the string concatenation features of ANSI C's
4862 #ifdef HAVE_SCM_SIMPLE_FORMAT
4868 Then represent each of your error messages using a preprocessor macro:
4870 #define E_SPIDER_ERROR "There's a spider in your " ## FMT_S ## "!!!"
4874 (define fmt-s (if (defined? 'simple-format) "~S" "%S"))
4875 (define make-message string-append)
4877 (define e-spider-error (make-message "There's a spider in your " fmt-s "!!!"))
4879 Method 2: Use the oldfmt function found in doc/oldfmt.c.
4883 scm_misc_error ("picnic", scm_c_oldfmt0 ("There's a spider in your ~S!!!"),
4888 (scm-error 'misc-error "picnic" (oldfmt "There's a spider in your ~S!!!")
4892 ** Deprecated: coop_mutex_init, coop_condition_variable_init
4894 Don't use the functions coop_mutex_init and
4895 coop_condition_variable_init. They will change.
4897 Use scm_mutex_init and scm_cond_init instead.
4899 ** New function: int scm_cond_timedwait (scm_cond_t *COND, scm_mutex_t *MUTEX, const struct timespec *ABSTIME)
4900 `scm_cond_timedwait' atomically unlocks MUTEX and waits on
4901 COND, as `scm_cond_wait' does, but it also bounds the duration
4902 of the wait. If COND has not been signaled before time ABSTIME,
4903 the mutex MUTEX is re-acquired and `scm_cond_timedwait'
4904 returns the error code `ETIMEDOUT'.
4906 The ABSTIME parameter specifies an absolute time, with the same
4907 origin as `time' and `gettimeofday': an ABSTIME of 0 corresponds
4908 to 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970.
4910 ** New function: scm_cond_broadcast (scm_cond_t *COND)
4911 `scm_cond_broadcast' restarts all the threads that are waiting
4912 on the condition variable COND. Nothing happens if no threads are
4915 ** New function: scm_key_create (scm_key_t *KEY, void (*destr_function) (void *))
4916 `scm_key_create' allocates a new TSD key. The key is stored in
4917 the location pointed to by KEY. There is no limit on the number
4918 of keys allocated at a given time. The value initially associated
4919 with the returned key is `NULL' in all currently executing threads.
4921 The DESTR_FUNCTION argument, if not `NULL', specifies a destructor
4922 function associated with the key. When a thread terminates,
4923 DESTR_FUNCTION is called on the value associated with the key in
4924 that thread. The DESTR_FUNCTION is not called if a key is deleted
4925 with `scm_key_delete' or a value is changed with
4926 `scm_setspecific'. The order in which destructor functions are
4927 called at thread termination time is unspecified.
4929 Destructors are not yet implemented.
4931 ** New function: scm_setspecific (scm_key_t KEY, const void *POINTER)
4932 `scm_setspecific' changes the value associated with KEY in the
4933 calling thread, storing the given POINTER instead.
4935 ** New function: scm_getspecific (scm_key_t KEY)
4936 `scm_getspecific' returns the value currently associated with
4937 KEY in the calling thread.
4939 ** New function: scm_key_delete (scm_key_t KEY)
4940 `scm_key_delete' deallocates a TSD key. It does not check
4941 whether non-`NULL' values are associated with that key in the
4942 currently executing threads, nor call the destructor function
4943 associated with the key.
4945 ** New function: scm_c_hook_init (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *HOOK_DATA, scm_c_hook_type_t TYPE)
4947 Initialize a C level hook HOOK with associated HOOK_DATA and type
4948 TYPE. (See scm_c_hook_run ().)
4950 ** New function: scm_c_hook_add (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA, int APPENDP)
4952 Add hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA to HOOK. If APPENDP
4953 is true, add it last, otherwise first. The same FUNC can be added
4954 multiple times if FUNC_DATA differ and vice versa.
4956 ** New function: scm_c_hook_remove (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA)
4958 Remove hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA from HOOK. A
4959 function is only removed if both FUNC and FUNC_DATA matches.
4961 ** New function: void *scm_c_hook_run (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *DATA)
4963 Run hook HOOK passing DATA to the hook functions.
4965 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_NORMAL, all hook functions are run. The value
4966 returned is undefined.
4968 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_OR, hook functions are run until a function
4969 returns a non-NULL value. This value is returned as the result of
4970 scm_c_hook_run. If all functions return NULL, NULL is returned.
4972 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_AND, hook functions are run until a function
4973 returns a NULL value, and NULL is returned. If all functions returns
4974 a non-NULL value, the last value is returned.
4976 ** New C level GC hooks
4978 Five new C level hooks has been added to the garbage collector.
4980 scm_before_gc_c_hook
4983 are run before locking and after unlocking the heap. The system is
4984 thus in a mode where evaluation can take place. (Except that
4985 scm_before_gc_c_hook must not allocate new cells.)
4987 scm_before_mark_c_hook
4988 scm_before_sweep_c_hook
4989 scm_after_sweep_c_hook
4991 are run when the heap is locked. These are intended for extension of
4992 the GC in a modular fashion. Examples are the weaks and guardians
4995 ** Way for application to customize GC parameters
4997 The application can set up other default values for the GC heap
4998 allocation parameters
5000 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_1, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1,
5001 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2,
5002 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE,
5006 scm_default_init_heap_size_1, scm_default_min_yield_1,
5007 scm_default_init_heap_size_2, scm_default_min_yield_2,
5008 scm_default_max_segment_size
5010 respectively before callong scm_boot_guile.
5012 (See entry "New environment variables ..." in section
5013 "Changes to the stand-alone interpreter" above.)
5015 ** scm_protect_object/scm_unprotect_object now nest
5017 This means that you can call scm_protect_object multiple times on an
5018 object and count on the object being protected until
5019 scm_unprotect_object has been call the same number of times.
5021 The functions also have better time complexity.
5023 Still, it is usually possible to structure the application in a way
5024 that you don't need to use these functions. For example, if you use a
5025 protected standard Guile list to keep track of live objects rather
5026 than some custom data type, objects will die a natural death when they
5027 are no longer needed.
5029 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc16_flo, scm_tc_flo, scm_tc_dblr, scm_tc_dblc
5031 Guile does not provide the float representation for inexact real numbers any
5032 more. Now, only doubles are used to represent inexact real numbers. Further,
5033 the tag names scm_tc_dblr and scm_tc_dblc have been changed to scm_tc16_real
5034 and scm_tc16_complex, respectively.
5036 ** Removed deprecated type scm_smobfuns
5038 ** Removed deprecated function scm_newsmob
5040 ** Warning: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe might become deprecated in a future release
5042 There is an ongoing discussion among the developers whether to
5043 deprecate `scm_make_smob_type_mfpe' or not. Please use the current
5044 standard interface (scm_make_smob_type, scm_set_smob_XXX) in new code
5045 until this issue has been settled.
5047 ** Removed deprecated type tag scm_tc16_kw
5049 ** Added type tag scm_tc16_keyword
5051 (This was introduced already in release 1.3.4 but was not documented
5054 ** gdb_print now prints "*** Guile not initialized ***" until Guile initialized
5056 * Changes to system call interfaces:
5058 ** The "select" procedure now tests port buffers for the ability to
5059 provide input or accept output. Previously only the underlying file
5060 descriptors were checked.
5062 ** New variable PIPE_BUF: the maximum number of bytes that can be
5063 atomically written to a pipe.
5065 ** If a facility is not available on the system when Guile is
5066 compiled, the corresponding primitive procedure will not be defined.
5067 Previously it would have been defined but would throw a system-error
5068 exception if called. Exception handlers which catch this case may
5069 need minor modification: an error will be thrown with key
5070 'unbound-variable instead of 'system-error. Alternatively it's
5071 now possible to use `defined?' to check whether the facility is
5074 ** Procedures which depend on the timezone should now give the correct
5075 result on systems which cache the TZ environment variable, even if TZ
5076 is changed without calling tzset.
5078 * Changes to the networking interfaces:
5080 ** New functions: htons, ntohs, htonl, ntohl: for converting short and
5081 long integers between network and host format. For now, it's not
5082 particularly convenient to do this kind of thing, but consider:
5084 (define write-network-long
5085 (lambda (value port)
5086 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
5087 (uniform-vector-set! v 0 (htonl value))
5088 (uniform-vector-write v port))))
5090 (define read-network-long
5092 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
5093 (uniform-vector-read! v port)
5094 (ntohl (uniform-vector-ref v 0)))))
5096 ** If inet-aton fails, it now throws an error with key 'misc-error
5097 instead of 'system-error, since errno is not relevant.
5099 ** Certain gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr failures now throw errors with
5100 specific keys instead of 'system-error. The latter is inappropriate
5101 since errno will not have been set. The keys are:
5102 'host-not-found, 'try-again, 'no-recovery and 'no-data.
5104 ** sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent: now take an
5105 optional argument STAYOPEN, which specifies whether the database
5106 remains open after a database entry is accessed randomly (e.g., using
5107 gethostbyname for the hosts database.) The default is #f. Previously
5111 Changes since Guile 1.3.2:
5113 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
5117 An initial version of the Guile debugger written by Chris Hanson has
5118 been added. The debugger is still under development but is included
5119 in the distribution anyway since it is already quite useful.
5125 after an error to enter the debugger. Type `help' inside the debugger
5126 for a description of available commands.
5128 If you prefer to have stack frames numbered and printed in
5129 anti-chronological order and prefer up in the stack to be down on the
5130 screen as is the case in gdb, you can put
5132 (debug-enable 'backwards)
5134 in your .guile startup file. (However, this means that Guile can't
5135 use indentation to indicate stack level.)
5137 The debugger is autoloaded into Guile at the first use.
5139 ** Further enhancements to backtraces
5141 There is a new debug option `width' which controls the maximum width
5142 on the screen of printed stack frames. Fancy printing parameters
5143 ("level" and "length" as in Common LISP) are adaptively adjusted for
5144 each stack frame to give maximum information while still fitting
5145 within the bounds. If the stack frame can't be made to fit by
5146 adjusting parameters, it is simply cut off at the end. This is marked
5149 ** Some modules are now only loaded when the repl is started
5151 The modules (ice-9 debug), (ice-9 session), (ice-9 threads) and (ice-9
5152 regex) are now loaded into (guile-user) only if the repl has been
5153 started. The effect is that the startup time for scripts has been
5154 reduced to 30% of what it was previously.
5156 Correctly written scripts load the modules they require at the top of
5157 the file and should not be affected by this change.
5159 ** Hooks are now represented as smobs
5161 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
5163 ** Readline support has changed again.
5165 The old (readline-activator) module is gone. Use (ice-9 readline)
5166 instead, which now contains all readline functionality. So the code
5167 to activate readline is now
5169 (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
5172 This should work at any time, including from the guile prompt.
5174 To avoid confusion about the terms of Guile's license, please only
5175 enable readline for your personal use; please don't make it the
5176 default for others. Here is why we make this rather odd-sounding
5179 Guile is normally licensed under a weakened form of the GNU General
5180 Public License, which allows you to link code with Guile without
5181 placing that code under the GPL. This exception is important to some
5184 However, since readline is distributed under the GNU General Public
5185 License, when you link Guile with readline, either statically or
5186 dynamically, you effectively change Guile's license to the strict GPL.
5187 Whenever you link any strictly GPL'd code into Guile, uses of Guile
5188 which are normally permitted become forbidden. This is a rather
5189 non-obvious consequence of the licensing terms.
5191 So, to make sure things remain clear, please let people choose for
5192 themselves whether to link GPL'd libraries like readline with Guile.
5194 ** regexp-substitute/global has changed slightly, but incompatibly.
5196 If you include a function in the item list, the string of the match
5197 object it receives is the same string passed to
5198 regexp-substitute/global, not some suffix of that string.
5199 Correspondingly, the match's positions are relative to the entire
5200 string, not the suffix.
5202 If the regexp can match the empty string, the way matches are chosen
5203 from the string has changed. regexp-substitute/global recognizes the
5204 same set of matches that list-matches does; see below.
5206 ** New function: list-matches REGEXP STRING [FLAGS]
5208 Return a list of match objects, one for every non-overlapping, maximal
5209 match of REGEXP in STRING. The matches appear in left-to-right order.
5210 list-matches only reports matches of the empty string if there are no
5211 other matches which begin on, end at, or include the empty match's
5214 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
5216 ** New function: fold-matches REGEXP STRING INIT PROC [FLAGS]
5218 For each match of REGEXP in STRING, apply PROC to the match object,
5219 and the last value PROC returned, or INIT for the first call. Return
5220 the last value returned by PROC. We apply PROC to the matches as they
5221 appear from left to right.
5223 This function recognizes matches according to the same criteria as
5226 Thus, you could define list-matches like this:
5228 (define (list-matches regexp string . flags)
5229 (reverse! (apply fold-matches regexp string '() cons flags)))
5231 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
5235 *** New function: hook? OBJ
5237 Return #t if OBJ is a hook, otherwise #f.
5239 *** New function: make-hook-with-name NAME [ARITY]
5241 Return a hook with name NAME and arity ARITY. The default value for
5242 ARITY is 0. The only effect of NAME is that it will appear when the
5243 hook object is printed to ease debugging.
5245 *** New function: hook-empty? HOOK
5247 Return #t if HOOK doesn't contain any procedures, otherwise #f.
5249 *** New function: hook->list HOOK
5251 Return a list of the procedures that are called when run-hook is
5254 ** `map' signals an error if its argument lists are not all the same length.
5256 This is the behavior required by R5RS, so this change is really a bug
5257 fix. But it seems to affect a lot of people's code, so we're
5258 mentioning it here anyway.
5260 ** Print-state handling has been made more transparent
5262 Under certain circumstances, ports are represented as a port with an
5263 associated print state. Earlier, this pair was represented as a pair
5264 (see "Some magic has been added to the printer" below). It is now
5265 indistinguishable (almost; see `get-print-state') from a port on the
5268 *** New function: port-with-print-state OUTPUT-PORT PRINT-STATE
5270 Return a new port with the associated print state PRINT-STATE.
5272 *** New function: get-print-state OUTPUT-PORT
5274 Return the print state associated with this port if it exists,
5275 otherwise return #f.
5277 *** New function: directory-stream? OBJECT
5279 Returns true iff OBJECT is a directory stream --- the sort of object
5280 returned by `opendir'.
5282 ** New function: using-readline?
5284 Return #t if readline is in use in the current repl.
5286 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
5288 Structs will be replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into Guile
5289 and use GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
5291 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5293 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
5295 The entire current struct interface (struct.c, struct.h) will be
5296 replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into libguile and use
5297 GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
5299 ** The internal representation of subr's has changed
5301 Instead of giving a hint to the subr name, the CAR field of the subr
5302 now contains an index to a subr entry in scm_subr_table.
5304 *** New variable: scm_subr_table
5306 An array of subr entries. A subr entry contains the name, properties
5307 and documentation associated with the subr. The properties and
5308 documentation slots are not yet used.
5310 ** A new scheme for "forwarding" calls to a builtin to a generic function
5312 It is now possible to extend the functionality of some Guile
5313 primitives by letting them defer a call to a GOOPS generic function on
5314 argument mismatch. This means that there is no loss of efficiency in
5319 (use-modules (oop goops)) ; Must be GOOPS version 0.2.
5320 (define-method + ((x <string>) (y <string>))
5321 (string-append x y))
5323 + will still be as efficient as usual in numerical calculations, but
5324 can also be used for concatenating strings.
5326 Who will be the first one to extend Guile's numerical tower to
5327 rationals? :) [OK, there a few other things to fix before this can
5328 be made in a clean way.]
5330 *** New snarf macros for defining primitives: SCM_GPROC, SCM_GPROC1
5332 New macro: SCM_GPROC (CNAME, SNAME, REQ, OPT, VAR, CFUNC, GENERIC)
5334 New macro: SCM_GPROC1 (CNAME, SNAME, TYPE, CFUNC, GENERIC)
5336 These do the same job as SCM_PROC and SCM_PROC1, but they also define
5337 a variable GENERIC which can be used by the dispatch macros below.
5339 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
5341 *** New macros for forwarding control to a generic on arg type error
5343 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_1 (GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
5345 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
5347 These correspond to the scm_wta function call, and have the same
5348 behaviour until the user has called the GOOPS primitive
5349 `enable-primitive-generic!'. After that, these macros will apply the
5350 generic function GENERIC to the argument(s) instead of calling
5353 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
5355 *** New macros for argument testing with generic dispatch
5357 New macro: SCM_GASSERT1 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
5359 New macro: SCM_GASSERT2 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
5361 These correspond to the SCM_ASSERT macro, but will defer control to
5362 GENERIC on error after `enable-primitive-generic!' has been called.
5364 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
5366 ** New function: SCM scm_eval_body (SCM body, SCM env)
5368 Evaluates the body of a special form.
5370 ** The internal representation of struct's has changed
5372 Previously, four slots were allocated for the procedure(s) of entities
5373 and operators. The motivation for this representation had to do with
5374 the structure of the evaluator, the wish to support tail-recursive
5375 generic functions, and efficiency. Since the generic function
5376 dispatch mechanism has changed, there is no longer a need for such an
5377 expensive representation, and the representation has been simplified.
5379 This should not make any difference for most users.
5381 ** GOOPS support has been cleaned up.
5383 Some code has been moved from eval.c to objects.c and code in both of
5384 these compilation units has been cleaned up and better structured.
5386 *** New functions for applying generic functions
5388 New function: SCM scm_apply_generic (GENERIC, ARGS)
5389 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_0 (GENERIC)
5390 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_1 (GENERIC, ARG1)
5391 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2)
5392 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_3 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, ARG3)
5394 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_named_hook
5396 It is now replaced by:
5398 ** New function: SCM scm_create_hook (const char *name, int arity)
5400 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
5401 binds a variable named NAME to it.
5403 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
5405 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module.
5406 This might change when we get the new module system.
5408 [The behaviour is identical to scm_make_named_hook.]
5412 Changes since Guile 1.3:
5414 * Changes to mailing lists
5416 ** Some of the Guile mailing lists have moved to sourceware.cygnus.com.
5418 See the README file to find current addresses for all the Guile
5421 * Changes to the distribution
5423 ** Readline support is no longer included with Guile by default.
5425 Based on the different license terms of Guile and Readline, we
5426 concluded that Guile should not *by default* cause the linking of
5427 Readline into an application program. Readline support is now offered
5428 as a separate module, which is linked into an application only when
5429 you explicitly specify it.
5431 Although Guile is GNU software, its distribution terms add a special
5432 exception to the usual GNU General Public License (GPL). Guile's
5433 license includes a clause that allows you to link Guile with non-free
5434 programs. We add this exception so as not to put Guile at a
5435 disadvantage vis-a-vis other extensibility packages that support other
5438 In contrast, the GNU Readline library is distributed under the GNU
5439 General Public License pure and simple. This means that you may not
5440 link Readline, even dynamically, into an application unless it is
5441 distributed under a free software license that is compatible the GPL.
5443 Because of this difference in distribution terms, an application that
5444 can use Guile may not be able to use Readline. Now users will be
5445 explicitly offered two independent decisions about the use of these
5448 You can activate the readline support by issuing
5450 (use-modules (readline-activator))
5453 from your ".guile" file, for example.
5455 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
5457 ** All builtins now print as primitives.
5458 Previously builtin procedures not belonging to the fundamental subr
5459 types printed as #<compiled closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>.
5460 Now, they print as #<primitive-procedure NAME>.
5462 ** Backtraces slightly more intelligible.
5463 gsubr-apply and macro transformer application frames no longer appear
5466 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
5468 ** Guile now correctly handles internal defines by rewriting them into
5469 their equivalent letrec. Previously, internal defines would
5470 incrementally add to the innermost environment, without checking
5471 whether the restrictions specified in RnRS were met. This lead to the
5472 correct behaviour when these restriction actually were met, but didn't
5473 catch all illegal uses. Such an illegal use could lead to crashes of
5474 the Guile interpreter or or other unwanted results. An example of
5475 incorrect internal defines that made Guile behave erratically:
5487 The problem with this example is that the definition of `c' uses the
5488 value of `b' directly. This confuses the meoization machine of Guile
5489 so that the second call of `b' (this time in a larger environment that
5490 also contains bindings for `c' and `d') refers to the binding of `c'
5491 instead of `a'. You could also make Guile crash with a variation on
5496 (define (b flag) (if flag a 1))
5497 (define c (1+ (b flag)))
5505 From now on, Guile will issue an `Unbound variable: b' error message
5510 A hook contains a list of functions which should be called on
5511 particular occasions in an existing program. Hooks are used for
5514 A window manager might have a hook before-window-map-hook. The window
5515 manager uses the function run-hooks to call all functions stored in
5516 before-window-map-hook each time a window is mapped. The user can
5517 store functions in the hook using add-hook!.
5519 In Guile, hooks are first class objects.
5521 *** New function: make-hook [N_ARGS]
5523 Return a hook for hook functions which can take N_ARGS arguments.
5524 The default value for N_ARGS is 0.
5526 (See also scm_make_named_hook below.)
5528 *** New function: add-hook! HOOK PROC [APPEND_P]
5530 Put PROC at the beginning of the list of functions stored in HOOK.
5531 If APPEND_P is supplied, and non-false, put PROC at the end instead.
5533 PROC must be able to take the number of arguments specified when the
5536 If PROC already exists in HOOK, then remove it first.
5538 *** New function: remove-hook! HOOK PROC
5540 Remove PROC from the list of functions in HOOK.
5542 *** New function: reset-hook! HOOK
5544 Clear the list of hook functions stored in HOOK.
5546 *** New function: run-hook HOOK ARG1 ...
5548 Run all hook functions stored in HOOK with arguments ARG1 ... .
5549 The number of arguments supplied must correspond to the number given
5550 when the hook was created.
5552 ** The function `dynamic-link' now takes optional keyword arguments.
5553 The only keyword argument that is currently defined is `:global
5554 BOOL'. With it, you can control whether the shared library will be
5555 linked in global mode or not. In global mode, the symbols from the
5556 linked library can be used to resolve references from other
5557 dynamically linked libraries. In non-global mode, the linked
5558 library is essentially invisible and can only be accessed via
5559 `dynamic-func', etc. The default is now to link in global mode.
5560 Previously, the default has been non-global mode.
5562 The `#:global' keyword is only effective on platforms that support
5563 the dlopen family of functions.
5565 ** New function `provided?'
5567 - Function: provided? FEATURE
5568 Return true iff FEATURE is supported by this installation of
5569 Guile. FEATURE must be a symbol naming a feature; the global
5570 variable `*features*' is a list of available features.
5572 ** Changes to the module (ice-9 expect):
5574 *** The expect-strings macro now matches `$' in a regular expression
5575 only at a line-break or end-of-file by default. Previously it would
5576 match the end of the string accumulated so far. The old behaviour
5577 can be obtained by setting the variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
5580 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
5581 for the regexp-exec flags. If `regexp/noteol' is included, then `$'
5582 in a regular expression will still match before a line-break or
5583 end-of-file. The default is `regexp/noteol'.
5585 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable
5586 `expect-strings-compile-flags' for the flags to be supplied to
5587 `make-regexp'. The default is `regexp/newline', which was previously
5590 *** The expect macro now supplies two arguments to a match procedure:
5591 the current accumulated string and a flag to indicate whether
5592 end-of-file has been reached. Previously only the string was supplied.
5593 If end-of-file is reached, the match procedure will be called an
5594 additional time with the same accumulated string as the previous call
5595 but with the flag set.
5597 ** New module (ice-9 format), implementing the Common Lisp `format' function.
5599 This code, and the documentation for it that appears here, was
5600 borrowed from SLIB, with minor adaptations for Guile.
5602 - Function: format DESTINATION FORMAT-STRING . ARGUMENTS
5603 An almost complete implementation of Common LISP format description
5604 according to the CL reference book `Common LISP' from Guy L.
5605 Steele, Digital Press. Backward compatible to most of the
5606 available Scheme format implementations.
5608 Returns `#t', `#f' or a string; has side effect of printing
5609 according to FORMAT-STRING. If DESTINATION is `#t', the output is
5610 to the current output port and `#t' is returned. If DESTINATION
5611 is `#f', a formatted string is returned as the result of the call.
5612 NEW: If DESTINATION is a string, DESTINATION is regarded as the
5613 format string; FORMAT-STRING is then the first argument and the
5614 output is returned as a string. If DESTINATION is a number, the
5615 output is to the current error port if available by the
5616 implementation. Otherwise DESTINATION must be an output port and
5619 FORMAT-STRING must be a string. In case of a formatting error
5620 format returns `#f' and prints a message on the current output or
5621 error port. Characters are output as if the string were output by
5622 the `display' function with the exception of those prefixed by a
5623 tilde (~). For a detailed description of the FORMAT-STRING syntax
5624 please consult a Common LISP format reference manual. For a test
5625 suite to verify this format implementation load `formatst.scm'.
5626 Please send bug reports to `lutzeb@cs.tu-berlin.de'.
5628 Note: `format' is not reentrant, i.e. only one `format'-call may
5629 be executed at a time.
5632 *** Format Specification (Format version 3.0)
5634 Please consult a Common LISP format reference manual for a detailed
5635 description of the format string syntax. For a demonstration of the
5636 implemented directives see `formatst.scm'.
5638 This implementation supports directive parameters and modifiers (`:'
5639 and `@' characters). Multiple parameters must be separated by a comma
5640 (`,'). Parameters can be numerical parameters (positive or negative),
5641 character parameters (prefixed by a quote character (`''), variable
5642 parameters (`v'), number of rest arguments parameter (`#'), empty and
5643 default parameters. Directive characters are case independent. The
5644 general form of a directive is:
5646 DIRECTIVE ::= ~{DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER,}[:][@]DIRECTIVE-CHARACTER
5648 DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER ::= [ [-|+]{0-9}+ | 'CHARACTER | v | # ]
5650 *** Implemented CL Format Control Directives
5652 Documentation syntax: Uppercase characters represent the
5653 corresponding control directive characters. Lowercase characters
5654 represent control directive parameter descriptions.
5657 Any (print as `display' does).
5661 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARA'
5665 S-expression (print as `write' does).
5669 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARS'
5675 print number sign always.
5678 print comma separated.
5680 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARD'
5686 print number sign always.
5689 print comma separated.
5691 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARX'
5697 print number sign always.
5700 print comma separated.
5702 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARO'
5708 print number sign always.
5711 print comma separated.
5713 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARB'
5718 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARR'
5722 print a number as a Roman numeral.
5725 print a number as an "old fashioned" Roman numeral.
5728 print a number as an ordinal English number.
5731 print a number as a cardinal English number.
5736 prints `y' and `ies'.
5739 as `~P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
5742 as `~@P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
5747 prints a character as the reader can understand it (i.e. `#\'
5751 prints a character as emacs does (eg. `^C' for ASCII 03).
5754 Fixed-format floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN).
5755 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHARF'
5757 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
5760 Exponential floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN`E'EE).
5761 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARE'
5763 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
5766 General floating-point (prints a flonum either fixed or
5768 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARG'
5770 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
5773 Dollars floating-point (prints a flonum in fixed with signs
5775 `~DIGITS,SCALE,WIDTH,PADCHAR$'
5777 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
5780 A sign is always printed and appears before the padding.
5783 The sign appears before the padding.
5791 print newline if not at the beginning of the output line.
5793 prints `~&' and then N-1 newlines.
5798 print N page separators.
5808 newline is ignored, white space left.
5811 newline is left, white space ignored.
5816 relative tabulation.
5822 Indirection (expects indirect arguments as a list).
5824 extracts indirect arguments from format arguments.
5827 Case conversion (converts by `string-downcase').
5829 converts by `string-capitalize'.
5832 converts by `string-capitalize-first'.
5835 converts by `string-upcase'.
5838 Argument Jumping (jumps 1 argument forward).
5840 jumps N arguments forward.
5843 jumps 1 argument backward.
5846 jumps N arguments backward.
5849 jumps to the 0th argument.
5852 jumps to the Nth argument (beginning from 0)
5854 `~[STR0~;STR1~;...~;STRN~]'
5855 Conditional Expression (numerical clause conditional).
5857 take argument from N.
5860 true test conditional.
5863 if-else-then conditional.
5869 default clause follows.
5872 Iteration (args come from the next argument (a list)).
5874 at most N iterations.
5877 args from next arg (a list of lists).
5880 args from the rest of arguments.
5883 args from the rest args (lists).
5894 aborts if N <= M <= K
5896 *** Not Implemented CL Format Control Directives
5899 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
5902 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
5908 (sorry I don't understand its semantics completely)
5910 *** Extended, Replaced and Additional Control Directives
5912 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHD'
5913 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHX'
5914 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHO'
5915 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHB'
5916 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHR'
5917 COMMAWIDTH is the number of characters between two comma
5921 print a R4RS complex number as `~F~@Fi' with passed parameters for
5925 Pretty print formatting of an argument for scheme code lists.
5931 Flushes the output if format DESTINATION is a port.
5934 Print a `#\space' character
5936 print N `#\space' characters.
5939 Print a `#\tab' character
5941 print N `#\tab' characters.
5944 Takes N as an integer representation for a character. No arguments
5945 are consumed. N is converted to a character by `integer->char'. N
5946 must be a positive decimal number.
5949 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
5950 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
5951 be processed by `read'.
5954 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
5955 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
5956 be processed by `read'.
5959 Prints information and a copyright notice on the format
5962 prints format version.
5965 may also print number strings, i.e. passing a number as a string
5966 and format it accordingly.
5968 *** Configuration Variables
5970 The format module exports some configuration variables to suit the
5971 systems and users needs. There should be no modification necessary for
5972 the configuration that comes with Guile. Format detects automatically
5973 if the running scheme system implements floating point numbers and
5976 format:symbol-case-conv
5977 Symbols are converted by `symbol->string' so the case type of the
5978 printed symbols is implementation dependent.
5979 `format:symbol-case-conv' is a one arg closure which is either
5980 `#f' (no conversion), `string-upcase', `string-downcase' or
5981 `string-capitalize'. (default `#f')
5983 format:iobj-case-conv
5984 As FORMAT:SYMBOL-CASE-CONV but applies for the representation of
5985 implementation internal objects. (default `#f')
5988 The character prefixing the exponent value in `~E' printing.
5991 *** Compatibility With Other Format Implementations
5997 Downward compatible except for padding support and `~A', `~S',
5998 `~P', `~X' uppercase printing. SLIB format 1.4 uses C-style
5999 `printf' padding support which is completely replaced by the CL
6000 `format' padding style.
6003 Downward compatible except for `~', which is not documented
6004 (ignores all characters inside the format string up to a newline
6005 character). (7.1 implements `~a', `~s', ~NEWLINE, `~~', `~%',
6006 numerical and variable parameters and `:/@' modifiers in the CL
6010 Downward compatible except for `~A' and `~S' which print in
6011 uppercase. (Elk implements `~a', `~s', `~~', and `~%' (no
6012 directive parameters or modifiers)).
6015 Downward compatible except for an optional destination parameter:
6016 S2C accepts a format call without a destination which returns a
6017 formatted string. This is equivalent to a #f destination in S2C.
6018 (S2C implements `~a', `~s', `~c', `~%', and `~~' (no directive
6019 parameters or modifiers)).
6022 ** Changes to string-handling functions.
6024 These functions were added to support the (ice-9 format) module, above.
6026 *** New function: string-upcase STRING
6027 *** New function: string-downcase STRING
6029 These are non-destructive versions of the existing string-upcase! and
6030 string-downcase! functions.
6032 *** New function: string-capitalize! STRING
6033 *** New function: string-capitalize STRING
6035 These functions convert the first letter of each word in the string to
6038 (string-capitalize "howdy there")
6041 As with the other functions, string-capitalize! modifies the string in
6042 place, while string-capitalize returns a modified copy of its argument.
6044 *** New function: string-ci->symbol STRING
6046 Return a symbol whose name is STRING, but having the same case as if
6047 the symbol had be read by `read'.
6049 Guile can be configured to be sensitive or insensitive to case
6050 differences in Scheme identifiers. If Guile is case-insensitive, all
6051 symbols are converted to lower case on input. The `string-ci->symbol'
6052 function returns a symbol whose name in STRING, transformed as Guile
6053 would if STRING were input.
6055 *** New function: substring-move! STRING1 START END STRING2 START
6057 Copy the substring of STRING1 from START (inclusive) to END
6058 (exclusive) to STRING2 at START. STRING1 and STRING2 may be the same
6059 string, and the source and destination areas may overlap; in all
6060 cases, the function behaves as if all the characters were copied
6063 *** Extended functions: substring-move-left! substring-move-right!
6065 These functions now correctly copy arbitrarily overlapping substrings;
6066 they are both synonyms for substring-move!.
6069 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-long), with the function `getopt-long'.
6071 getopt-long is a function for parsing command-line arguments in a
6072 manner consistent with other GNU programs.
6074 (getopt-long ARGS GRAMMAR)
6075 Parse the arguments ARGS according to the argument list grammar GRAMMAR.
6077 ARGS should be a list of strings. Its first element should be the
6078 name of the program; subsequent elements should be the arguments
6079 that were passed to the program on the command line. The
6080 `program-arguments' procedure returns a list of this form.
6082 GRAMMAR is a list of the form:
6083 ((OPTION (PROPERTY VALUE) ...) ...)
6085 Each OPTION should be a symbol. `getopt-long' will accept a
6086 command-line option named `--OPTION'.
6087 Each option can have the following (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs:
6089 (single-char CHAR) --- Accept `-CHAR' as a single-character
6090 equivalent to `--OPTION'. This is how to specify traditional
6092 (required? BOOL) --- If BOOL is true, the option is required.
6093 getopt-long will raise an error if it is not found in ARGS.
6094 (value BOOL) --- If BOOL is #t, the option accepts a value; if
6095 it is #f, it does not; and if it is the symbol
6096 `optional', the option may appear in ARGS with or
6098 (predicate FUNC) --- If the option accepts a value (i.e. you
6099 specified `(value #t)' for this option), then getopt
6100 will apply FUNC to the value, and throw an exception
6101 if it returns #f. FUNC should be a procedure which
6102 accepts a string and returns a boolean value; you may
6103 need to use quasiquotes to get it into GRAMMAR.
6105 The (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs may occur in any order, but each
6106 property may occur only once. By default, options do not have
6107 single-character equivalents, are not required, and do not take
6110 In ARGS, single-character options may be combined, in the usual
6111 Unix fashion: ("-x" "-y") is equivalent to ("-xy"). If an option
6112 accepts values, then it must be the last option in the
6113 combination; the value is the next argument. So, for example, using
6114 the following grammar:
6115 ((apples (single-char #\a))
6116 (blimps (single-char #\b) (value #t))
6117 (catalexis (single-char #\c) (value #t)))
6118 the following argument lists would be acceptable:
6119 ("-a" "-b" "bang" "-c" "couth") ("bang" and "couth" are the values
6120 for "blimps" and "catalexis")
6121 ("-ab" "bang" "-c" "couth") (same)
6122 ("-ac" "couth" "-b" "bang") (same)
6123 ("-abc" "couth" "bang") (an error, since `-b' is not the
6124 last option in its combination)
6126 If an option's value is optional, then `getopt-long' decides
6127 whether it has a value by looking at what follows it in ARGS. If
6128 the next element is a string, and it does not appear to be an
6129 option itself, then that string is the option's value.
6131 The value of a long option can appear as the next element in ARGS,
6132 or it can follow the option name, separated by an `=' character.
6133 Thus, using the same grammar as above, the following argument lists
6135 ("--apples" "Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
6136 ("--apples=Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
6137 ("--blimps" "Goodyear" "--apples=Braeburn")
6139 If the option "--" appears in ARGS, argument parsing stops there;
6140 subsequent arguments are returned as ordinary arguments, even if
6141 they resemble options. So, in the argument list:
6142 ("--apples" "Granny Smith" "--" "--blimp" "Goodyear")
6143 `getopt-long' will recognize the `apples' option as having the
6144 value "Granny Smith", but it will not recognize the `blimp'
6145 option; it will return the strings "--blimp" and "Goodyear" as
6146 ordinary argument strings.
6148 The `getopt-long' function returns the parsed argument list as an
6149 assocation list, mapping option names --- the symbols from GRAMMAR
6150 --- onto their values, or #t if the option does not accept a value.
6151 Unused options do not appear in the alist.
6153 All arguments that are not the value of any option are returned
6154 as a list, associated with the empty list.
6156 `getopt-long' throws an exception if:
6157 - it finds an unrecognized option in ARGS
6158 - a required option is omitted
6159 - an option that requires an argument doesn't get one
6160 - an option that doesn't accept an argument does get one (this can
6161 only happen using the long option `--opt=value' syntax)
6162 - an option predicate fails
6167 `((lockfile-dir (required? #t)
6170 (predicate ,file-is-directory?))
6171 (verbose (required? #f)
6174 (x-includes (single-char #\x))
6175 (rnet-server (single-char #\y)
6176 (predicate ,string?))))
6178 (getopt-long '("my-prog" "-vk" "/tmp" "foo1" "--x-includes=/usr/include"
6179 "--rnet-server=lamprod" "--" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
6181 => ((() "foo1" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
6182 (rnet-server . "lamprod")
6183 (x-includes . "/usr/include")
6184 (lockfile-dir . "/tmp")
6187 ** The (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) module is obsolete; use (ice-9 getopt-long).
6189 It will be removed in a few releases.
6191 ** New syntax: lambda*
6192 ** New syntax: define*
6193 ** New syntax: define*-public
6194 ** New syntax: defmacro*
6195 ** New syntax: defmacro*-public
6196 Guile now supports optional arguments.
6198 `lambda*', `define*', `define*-public', `defmacro*' and
6199 `defmacro*-public' are identical to the non-* versions except that
6200 they use an extended type of parameter list that has the following BNF
6201 syntax (parentheses are literal, square brackets indicate grouping,
6202 and `*', `+' and `?' have the usual meaning):
6204 ext-param-list ::= ( [identifier]* [#&optional [ext-var-decl]+]?
6205 [#&key [ext-var-decl]+ [#&allow-other-keys]?]?
6206 [[#&rest identifier]|[. identifier]]? ) | [identifier]
6208 ext-var-decl ::= identifier | ( identifier expression )
6210 The semantics are best illustrated with the following documentation
6211 and examples for `lambda*':
6214 lambda extended for optional and keyword arguments
6216 lambda* creates a procedure that takes optional arguments. These
6217 are specified by putting them inside brackets at the end of the
6218 paramater list, but before any dotted rest argument. For example,
6219 (lambda* (a b #&optional c d . e) '())
6220 creates a procedure with fixed arguments a and b, optional arguments c
6221 and d, and rest argument e. If the optional arguments are omitted
6222 in a call, the variables for them are unbound in the procedure. This
6223 can be checked with the bound? macro.
6225 lambda* can also take keyword arguments. For example, a procedure
6227 (lambda* (#&key xyzzy larch) '())
6228 can be called with any of the argument lists (#:xyzzy 11)
6229 (#:larch 13) (#:larch 42 #:xyzzy 19) (). Whichever arguments
6230 are given as keywords are bound to values.
6232 Optional and keyword arguments can also be given default values
6233 which they take on when they are not present in a call, by giving a
6234 two-item list in place of an optional argument, for example in:
6235 (lambda* (foo #&optional (bar 42) #&key (baz 73)) (list foo bar baz))
6236 foo is a fixed argument, bar is an optional argument with default
6237 value 42, and baz is a keyword argument with default value 73.
6238 Default value expressions are not evaluated unless they are needed
6239 and until the procedure is called.
6241 lambda* now supports two more special parameter list keywords.
6243 lambda*-defined procedures now throw an error by default if a
6244 keyword other than one of those specified is found in the actual
6245 passed arguments. However, specifying #&allow-other-keys
6246 immediately after the kyword argument declarations restores the
6247 previous behavior of ignoring unknown keywords. lambda* also now
6248 guarantees that if the same keyword is passed more than once, the
6249 last one passed is the one that takes effect. For example,
6250 ((lambda* (#&key (heads 0) (tails 0)) (display (list heads tails)))
6251 #:heads 37 #:tails 42 #:heads 99)
6252 would result in (99 47) being displayed.
6254 #&rest is also now provided as a synonym for the dotted syntax rest
6255 argument. The argument lists (a . b) and (a #&rest b) are equivalent in
6256 all respects to lambda*. This is provided for more similarity to DSSSL,
6257 MIT-Scheme and Kawa among others, as well as for refugees from other
6260 Further documentation may be found in the optargs.scm file itself.
6262 The optional argument module also exports the macros `let-optional',
6263 `let-optional*', `let-keywords', `let-keywords*' and `bound?'. These
6264 are not documented here because they may be removed in the future, but
6265 full documentation is still available in optargs.scm.
6267 ** New syntax: and-let*
6268 Guile now supports the `and-let*' form, described in the draft SRFI-2.
6270 Syntax: (land* (<clause> ...) <body> ...)
6271 Each <clause> should have one of the following forms:
6272 (<variable> <expression>)
6275 Each <variable> or <bound-variable> should be an identifier. Each
6276 <expression> should be a valid expression. The <body> should be a
6277 possibly empty sequence of expressions, like the <body> of a
6280 Semantics: A LAND* expression is evaluated by evaluating the
6281 <expression> or <bound-variable> of each of the <clause>s from
6282 left to right. The value of the first <expression> or
6283 <bound-variable> that evaluates to a false value is returned; the
6284 remaining <expression>s and <bound-variable>s are not evaluated.
6285 The <body> forms are evaluated iff all the <expression>s and
6286 <bound-variable>s evaluate to true values.
6288 The <expression>s and the <body> are evaluated in an environment
6289 binding each <variable> of the preceding (<variable> <expression>)
6290 clauses to the value of the <expression>. Later bindings
6291 shadow earlier bindings.
6293 Guile's and-let* macro was contributed by Michael Livshin.
6295 ** New sorting functions
6297 *** New function: sorted? SEQUENCE LESS?
6298 Returns `#t' when the sequence argument is in non-decreasing order
6299 according to LESS? (that is, there is no adjacent pair `... x y
6300 ...' for which `(less? y x)').
6302 Returns `#f' when the sequence contains at least one out-of-order
6303 pair. It is an error if the sequence is neither a list nor a
6306 *** New function: merge LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
6307 LIST1 and LIST2 are sorted lists.
6308 Returns the sorted list of all elements in LIST1 and LIST2.
6310 Assume that the elements a and b1 in LIST1 and b2 in LIST2 are "equal"
6311 in the sense that (LESS? x y) --> #f for x, y in {a, b1, b2},
6312 and that a < b1 in LIST1. Then a < b1 < b2 in the result.
6313 (Here "<" should read "comes before".)
6315 *** New procedure: merge! LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
6316 Merges two lists, re-using the pairs of LIST1 and LIST2 to build
6317 the result. If the code is compiled, and LESS? constructs no new
6318 pairs, no pairs at all will be allocated. The first pair of the
6319 result will be either the first pair of LIST1 or the first pair of
6322 *** New function: sort SEQUENCE LESS?
6323 Accepts either a list or a vector, and returns a new sequence
6324 which is sorted. The new sequence is the same type as the input.
6325 Always `(sorted? (sort sequence less?) less?)'. The original
6326 sequence is not altered in any way. The new sequence shares its
6327 elements with the old one; no elements are copied.
6329 *** New procedure: sort! SEQUENCE LESS
6330 Returns its sorted result in the original boxes. No new storage is
6331 allocated at all. Proper usage: (set! slist (sort! slist <))
6333 *** New function: stable-sort SEQUENCE LESS?
6334 Similar to `sort' but stable. That is, if "equal" elements are
6335 ordered a < b in the original sequence, they will have the same order
6338 *** New function: stable-sort! SEQUENCE LESS?
6339 Similar to `sort!' but stable.
6340 Uses temporary storage when sorting vectors.
6342 *** New functions: sort-list, sort-list!
6343 Added for compatibility with scsh.
6345 ** New built-in random number support
6347 *** New function: random N [STATE]
6348 Accepts a positive integer or real N and returns a number of the
6349 same type between zero (inclusive) and N (exclusive). The values
6350 returned have a uniform distribution.
6352 The optional argument STATE must be of the type produced by
6353 `copy-random-state' or `seed->random-state'. It defaults to the value
6354 of the variable `*random-state*'. This object is used to maintain the
6355 state of the pseudo-random-number generator and is altered as a side
6356 effect of the `random' operation.
6358 *** New variable: *random-state*
6359 Holds a data structure that encodes the internal state of the
6360 random-number generator that `random' uses by default. The nature
6361 of this data structure is implementation-dependent. It may be
6362 printed out and successfully read back in, but may or may not
6363 function correctly as a random-number state object in another
6366 *** New function: copy-random-state [STATE]
6367 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
6368 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
6369 If argument STATE is given, a copy of it is returned. Otherwise a
6370 copy of `*random-state*' is returned.
6372 *** New function: seed->random-state SEED
6373 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
6374 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
6375 SEED is a string or a number. A new state is generated and
6376 initialized using SEED.
6378 *** New function: random:uniform [STATE]
6379 Returns an uniformly distributed inexact real random number in the
6380 range between 0 and 1.
6382 *** New procedure: random:solid-sphere! VECT [STATE]
6383 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose
6384 squares is less than 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in
6385 space of dimension N = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are
6386 uniformly distributed within the unit N-shere. The sum of the
6387 squares of the numbers is returned. VECT can be either a vector
6388 or a uniform vector of doubles.
6390 *** New procedure: random:hollow-sphere! VECT [STATE]
6391 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose squares
6392 is equal to 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in space of
6393 dimension n = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are uniformly
6394 distributed over the surface of the unit n-shere. VECT can be either
6395 a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
6397 *** New function: random:normal [STATE]
6398 Returns an inexact real in a normal distribution with mean 0 and
6399 standard deviation 1. For a normal distribution with mean M and
6400 standard deviation D use `(+ M (* D (random:normal)))'.
6402 *** New procedure: random:normal-vector! VECT [STATE]
6403 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers which are independent and
6404 standard normally distributed (i.e., with mean 0 and variance 1).
6405 VECT can be either a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
6407 *** New function: random:exp STATE
6408 Returns an inexact real in an exponential distribution with mean 1.
6409 For an exponential distribution with mean U use (* U (random:exp)).
6411 ** The range of logand, logior, logxor, logtest, and logbit? have changed.
6413 These functions now operate on numbers in the range of a C unsigned
6416 These functions used to operate on numbers in the range of a C signed
6417 long; however, this seems inappropriate, because Guile integers don't
6420 ** New function: make-guardian
6421 This is an implementation of guardians as described in
6422 R. Kent Dybvig, Carl Bruggeman, and David Eby (1993) "Guardians in a
6423 Generation-Based Garbage Collector" ACM SIGPLAN Conference on
6424 Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1993
6425 ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/guardians.ps.gz
6427 ** New functions: delq1!, delv1!, delete1!
6428 These procedures behave similar to delq! and friends but delete only
6429 one object if at all.
6431 ** New function: unread-string STRING PORT
6432 Unread STRING to PORT, that is, push it back onto the port so that
6433 next read operation will work on the pushed back characters.
6435 ** unread-char can now be called multiple times
6436 If unread-char is called multiple times, the unread characters will be
6437 read again in last-in first-out order.
6439 ** the procedures uniform-array-read! and uniform-array-write! now
6440 work on any kind of port, not just ports which are open on a file.
6442 ** Now 'l' in a port mode requests line buffering.
6444 ** The procedure truncate-file now works on string ports as well
6445 as file ports. If the size argument is omitted, the current
6446 file position is used.
6448 ** new procedure: seek PORT/FDES OFFSET WHENCE
6449 The arguments are the same as for the old fseek procedure, but it
6450 works on string ports as well as random-access file ports.
6452 ** the fseek procedure now works on string ports, since it has been
6453 redefined using seek.
6455 ** the setvbuf procedure now uses a default size if mode is _IOFBF and
6456 size is not supplied.
6458 ** the newline procedure no longer flushes the port if it's not
6459 line-buffered: previously it did if it was the current output port.
6461 ** open-pipe and close-pipe are no longer primitive procedures, but
6462 an emulation can be obtained using `(use-modules (ice-9 popen))'.
6464 ** the freopen procedure has been removed.
6466 ** new procedure: drain-input PORT
6467 Drains PORT's read buffers (including any pushed-back characters)
6468 and returns the contents as a single string.
6470 ** New function: map-in-order PROC LIST1 LIST2 ...
6471 Version of `map' which guarantees that the procedure is applied to the
6472 lists in serial order.
6474 ** Renamed `serial-array-copy!' and `serial-array-map!' to
6475 `array-copy-in-order!' and `array-map-in-order!'. The old names are
6476 now obsolete and will go away in release 1.5.
6478 ** New syntax: collect BODY1 ...
6479 Version of `begin' which returns a list of the results of the body
6480 forms instead of the result of the last body form. In contrast to
6481 `begin', `collect' allows an empty body.
6483 ** New functions: read-history FILENAME, write-history FILENAME
6484 Read/write command line history from/to file. Returns #t on success
6485 and #f if an error occured.
6487 ** `ls' and `lls' in module (ice-9 ls) now handle no arguments.
6489 These procedures return a list of definitions available in the specified
6490 argument, a relative module reference. In the case of no argument,
6491 `(current-module)' is now consulted for definitions to return, instead
6492 of simply returning #f, the former behavior.
6494 ** The #/ syntax for lists is no longer supported.
6496 Earlier versions of Scheme accepted this syntax, but printed a
6499 ** Guile no longer consults the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable.
6501 Instead, you should set GUILE_LOAD_PATH to tell Guile where to find
6504 * Changes to the gh_ interface
6508 Now takes a second argument which is the result array. If this
6509 pointer is NULL, a new array is malloced (the old behaviour).
6511 ** gh_chars2byvect, gh_shorts2svect, gh_floats2fvect, gh_scm2chars,
6512 gh_scm2shorts, gh_scm2longs, gh_scm2floats
6516 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6518 ** Function: scm_make_named_hook (char* name, int n_args)
6520 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
6521 binds a variable named NAME to it.
6523 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
6525 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module. This
6526 might change when we get the new module system.
6528 ** The smob interface
6530 The interface for creating smobs has changed. For documentation, see
6531 data-rep.info (made from guile-core/doc/data-rep.texi).
6533 *** Deprecated function: SCM scm_newsmob (scm_smobfuns *)
6535 >>> This function will be removed in 1.3.4. <<<
6539 *** Function: SCM scm_make_smob_type (const char *name, scm_sizet size)
6540 This function adds a new smob type, named NAME, with instance size
6541 SIZE to the system. The return value is a tag that is used in
6542 creating instances of the type. If SIZE is 0, then no memory will
6543 be allocated when instances of the smob are created, and nothing
6544 will be freed by the default free function.
6546 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_mark (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
6547 This function sets the smob marking procedure for the smob type
6548 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
6549 `scm_make_smob_type'.
6551 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_free (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
6552 This function sets the smob freeing procedure for the smob type
6553 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
6554 `scm_make_smob_type'.
6556 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_print (tc, print)
6558 - Function: void scm_set_smob_print (long tc,
6559 scm_sizet (*print) (SCM,
6563 This function sets the smob printing procedure for the smob type
6564 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
6565 `scm_make_smob_type'.
6567 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_equalp (long tc, SCM (*equalp) (SCM, SCM))
6568 This function sets the smob equality-testing predicate for the
6569 smob type specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
6570 `scm_make_smob_type'.
6572 *** Macro: void SCM_NEWSMOB (SCM var, long tc, void *data)
6573 Make VALUE contain a smob instance of the type with type code TC and
6574 smob data DATA. VALUE must be previously declared as C type `SCM'.
6576 *** Macro: fn_returns SCM_RETURN_NEWSMOB (long tc, void *data)
6577 This macro expands to a block of code that creates a smob instance
6578 of the type with type code TC and smob data DATA, and returns that
6579 `SCM' value. It should be the last piece of code in a block.
6581 ** The interfaces for using I/O ports and implementing port types
6582 (ptobs) have changed significantly. The new interface is based on
6583 shared access to buffers and a new set of ptob procedures.
6585 *** scm_newptob has been removed
6589 *** Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (type_name, fill_buffer, write_flush)
6591 - Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (char *type_name,
6592 int (*fill_buffer) (SCM port),
6593 void (*write_flush) (SCM port));
6595 Similarly to the new smob interface, there is a set of function
6596 setters by which the user can customize the behaviour of his port
6597 type. See ports.h (scm_set_port_XXX).
6599 ** scm_strport_to_string: New function: creates a new string from
6600 a string port's buffer.
6602 ** Plug in interface for random number generators
6603 The variable `scm_the_rng' in random.c contains a value and three
6604 function pointers which together define the current random number
6605 generator being used by the Scheme level interface and the random
6606 number library functions.
6608 The user is free to replace the default generator with the generator
6611 *** Variable: size_t scm_the_rng.rstate_size
6612 The size of the random state type used by the current RNG
6615 *** Function: unsigned long scm_the_rng.random_bits (scm_rstate *STATE)
6616 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
6618 *** Function: void scm_the_rng.init_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE, chars *S, int N)
6619 Seed random state STATE using string S of length N.
6621 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_the_rng.copy_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE)
6622 Given random state STATE, return a malloced copy.
6625 The default RNG is the MWC (Multiply With Carry) random number
6626 generator described by George Marsaglia at the Department of
6627 Statistics and Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The
6628 Florida State University (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo).
6630 It uses 64 bits, has a period of 4578426017172946943 (4.6e18), and
6631 passes all tests in the DIEHARD test suite
6632 (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo/diehard.html). The generation of 32 bits
6633 costs one multiply and one add on platforms which either supports long
6634 longs (gcc does this on most systems) or have 64 bit longs. The cost
6635 is four multiply on other systems but this can be optimized by writing
6636 scm_i_uniform32 in assembler.
6638 These functions are provided through the scm_the_rng interface for use
6639 by libguile and the application.
6641 *** Function: unsigned long scm_i_uniform32 (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
6642 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
6643 Don't use this function directly. Instead go through the plugin
6644 interface (see "Plug in interface" above).
6646 *** Function: void scm_i_init_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE, char *SEED, int N)
6647 Initialize STATE using SEED of length N.
6649 *** Function: scm_i_rstate *scm_i_copy_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
6650 Return a malloc:ed copy of STATE. This function can easily be re-used
6651 in the interfaces to other RNGs.
6653 ** Random number library functions
6654 These functions use the current RNG through the scm_the_rng interface.
6655 It might be a good idea to use these functions from your C code so
6656 that only one random generator is used by all code in your program.
6658 The default random state is stored in:
6660 *** Variable: SCM scm_var_random_state
6661 Contains the vcell of the Scheme variable "*random-state*" which is
6662 used as default state by all random number functions in the Scheme
6667 double x = scm_c_uniform01 (SCM_RSTATE (SCM_CDR (scm_var_random_state)));
6669 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_default_rstate (void)
6670 This is a convenience function which returns the value of
6671 scm_var_random_state. An error message is generated if this value
6672 isn't a random state.
6674 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_make_rstate (char *SEED, int LENGTH)
6675 Make a new random state from the string SEED of length LENGTH.
6677 It is generally not a good idea to use multiple random states in a
6678 program. While subsequent random numbers generated from one random
6679 state are guaranteed to be reasonably independent, there is no such
6680 guarantee for numbers generated from different random states.
6682 *** Macro: unsigned long scm_c_uniform32 (scm_rstate *STATE)
6683 Return 32 random bits.
6685 *** Function: double scm_c_uniform01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
6686 Return a sample from the uniform(0,1) distribution.
6688 *** Function: double scm_c_normal01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
6689 Return a sample from the normal(0,1) distribution.
6691 *** Function: double scm_c_exp1 (scm_rstate *STATE)
6692 Return a sample from the exp(1) distribution.
6694 *** Function: unsigned long scm_c_random (scm_rstate *STATE, unsigned long M)
6695 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
6697 *** Function: SCM scm_c_random_bignum (scm_rstate *STATE, SCM M)
6698 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
6699 M must be a bignum object. The returned value may be an INUM.
6703 Changes in Guile 1.3 (released Monday, October 19, 1998):
6705 * Changes to the distribution
6707 ** We renamed the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable to GUILE_LOAD_PATH.
6708 To avoid conflicts, programs should name environment variables after
6709 themselves, except when there's a common practice establishing some
6712 For now, Guile supports both GUILE_LOAD_PATH and SCHEME_LOAD_PATH,
6713 giving the former precedence, and printing a warning message if the
6714 latter is set. Guile 1.4 will not recognize SCHEME_LOAD_PATH at all.
6716 ** The header files related to multi-byte characters have been removed.
6717 They were: libguile/extchrs.h and libguile/mbstrings.h. Any C code
6718 which referred to these explicitly will probably need to be rewritten,
6719 since the support for the variant string types has been removed; see
6722 ** The header files append.h and sequences.h have been removed. These
6723 files implemented non-R4RS operations which would encourage
6724 non-portable programming style and less easy-to-read code.
6726 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
6728 ** New procedures have been added to implement a "batch mode":
6730 *** Function: batch-mode?
6732 Returns a boolean indicating whether the interpreter is in batch
6735 *** Function: set-batch-mode?! ARG
6737 If ARG is true, switches the interpreter to batch mode. The `#f'
6738 case has not been implemented.
6740 ** Guile now provides full command-line editing, when run interactively.
6741 To use this feature, you must have the readline library installed.
6742 The Guile build process will notice it, and automatically include
6745 The readline library is available via anonymous FTP from any GNU
6746 mirror site; the canonical location is "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
6748 ** the-last-stack is now a fluid.
6750 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
6752 ** You can now use the `guile-config' utility to build programs that use Guile.
6754 Guile now includes a command-line utility called `guile-config', which
6755 can provide information about how to compile and link programs that
6758 *** `guile-config compile' prints any C compiler flags needed to use Guile.
6759 You should include this command's output on the command line you use
6760 to compile C or C++ code that #includes the Guile header files. It's
6761 usually just a `-I' flag to help the compiler find the Guile headers.
6764 *** `guile-config link' prints any linker flags necessary to link with Guile.
6766 This command writes to its standard output a list of flags which you
6767 must pass to the linker to link your code against the Guile library.
6768 The flags include '-lguile' itself, any other libraries the Guile
6769 library depends upon, and any `-L' flags needed to help the linker
6770 find those libraries.
6772 For example, here is a Makefile rule that builds a program named 'foo'
6773 from the object files ${FOO_OBJECTS}, and links them against Guile:
6776 ${CC} ${CFLAGS} ${FOO_OBJECTS} `guile-config link` -o foo
6778 Previous Guile releases recommended that you use autoconf to detect
6779 which of a predefined set of libraries were present on your system.
6780 It is more robust to use `guile-config', since it records exactly which
6781 libraries the installed Guile library requires.
6783 This was originally called `build-guile', but was renamed to
6784 `guile-config' before Guile 1.3 was released, to be consistent with
6785 the analogous script for the GTK+ GUI toolkit, which is called
6789 ** Use the GUILE_FLAGS macro in your configure.in file to find Guile.
6791 If you are using the GNU autoconf package to configure your program,
6792 you can use the GUILE_FLAGS autoconf macro to call `guile-config'
6793 (described above) and gather the necessary values for use in your
6796 The GUILE_FLAGS macro expands to configure script code which runs the
6797 `guile-config' script, to find out where Guile's header files and
6798 libraries are installed. It sets two variables, marked for
6799 substitution, as by AC_SUBST.
6801 GUILE_CFLAGS --- flags to pass to a C or C++ compiler to build
6802 code that uses Guile header files. This is almost always just a
6805 GUILE_LDFLAGS --- flags to pass to the linker to link a
6806 program against Guile. This includes `-lguile' for the Guile
6807 library itself, any libraries that Guile itself requires (like
6808 -lqthreads), and so on. It may also include a -L flag to tell the
6809 compiler where to find the libraries.
6811 GUILE_FLAGS is defined in the file guile.m4, in the top-level
6812 directory of the Guile distribution. You can copy it into your
6813 package's aclocal.m4 file, and then use it in your configure.in file.
6815 If you are using the `aclocal' program, distributed with GNU automake,
6816 to maintain your aclocal.m4 file, the Guile installation process
6817 installs guile.m4 where aclocal will find it. All you need to do is
6818 use GUILE_FLAGS in your configure.in file, and then run `aclocal';
6819 this will copy the definition of GUILE_FLAGS into your aclocal.m4
6823 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
6825 ** Multi-byte strings have been removed, as have multi-byte and wide
6826 ports. We felt that these were the wrong approach to
6827 internationalization support.
6829 ** New function: readline [PROMPT]
6830 Read a line from the terminal, and allow the user to edit it,
6831 prompting with PROMPT. READLINE provides a large set of Emacs-like
6832 editing commands, lets the user recall previously typed lines, and
6833 works on almost every kind of terminal, including dumb terminals.
6835 READLINE assumes that the cursor is at the beginning of the line when
6836 it is invoked. Thus, you can't print a prompt yourself, and then call
6837 READLINE; you need to package up your prompt as a string, pass it to
6838 the function, and let READLINE print the prompt itself. This is
6839 because READLINE needs to know the prompt's screen width.
6841 For Guile to provide this function, you must have the readline
6842 library, version 2.1 or later, installed on your system. Readline is
6843 available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in pub/gnu, or from
6844 any GNU mirror site.
6846 See also ADD-HISTORY function.
6848 ** New function: add-history STRING
6849 Add STRING as the most recent line in the history used by the READLINE
6850 command. READLINE does not add lines to the history itself; you must
6851 call ADD-HISTORY to make previous input available to the user.
6853 ** The behavior of the read-line function has changed.
6855 This function now uses standard C library functions to read the line,
6856 for speed. This means that it doesn not respect the value of
6857 scm-line-incrementors; it assumes that lines are delimited with
6860 (Note that this is read-line, the function that reads a line of text
6861 from a port, not readline, the function that reads a line from a
6862 terminal, providing full editing capabilities.)
6864 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style): Parse command-line arguments.
6866 This module provides some simple argument parsing. It exports one
6869 Function: getopt-gnu-style ARG-LS
6870 Parse a list of program arguments into an alist of option
6873 Each item in the list of program arguments is examined to see if
6874 it meets the syntax of a GNU long-named option. An argument like
6875 `--MUMBLE' produces an element of the form (MUMBLE . #t) in the
6876 returned alist, where MUMBLE is a keyword object with the same
6877 name as the argument. An argument like `--MUMBLE=FROB' produces
6878 an element of the form (MUMBLE . FROB), where FROB is a string.
6880 As a special case, the returned alist also contains a pair whose
6881 car is the symbol `rest'. The cdr of this pair is a list
6882 containing all the items in the argument list that are not options
6883 of the form mentioned above.
6885 The argument `--' is treated specially: all items in the argument
6886 list appearing after such an argument are not examined, and are
6887 returned in the special `rest' list.
6889 This function does not parse normal single-character switches.
6890 You will need to parse them out of the `rest' list yourself.
6892 ** The read syntax for byte vectors and short vectors has changed.
6894 Instead of #bytes(...), write #y(...).
6896 Instead of #short(...), write #h(...).
6898 This may seem nutty, but, like the other uniform vectors, byte vectors
6899 and short vectors want to have the same print and read syntax (and,
6900 more basic, want to have read syntax!). Changing the read syntax to
6901 use multiple characters after the hash sign breaks with the
6902 conventions used in R5RS and the conventions used for the other
6903 uniform vectors. It also introduces complexity in the current reader,
6904 both on the C and Scheme levels. (The Right solution is probably to
6905 change the syntax and prototypes for uniform vectors entirely.)
6908 ** The new module (ice-9 session) provides useful interactive functions.
6910 *** New procedure: (apropos REGEXP OPTION ...)
6912 Display a list of top-level variables whose names match REGEXP, and
6913 the modules they are imported from. Each OPTION should be one of the
6916 value --- Show the value of each matching variable.
6917 shadow --- Show bindings shadowed by subsequently imported modules.
6918 full --- Same as both `shadow' and `value'.
6922 guile> (apropos "trace" 'full)
6923 debug: trace #<procedure trace args>
6924 debug: untrace #<procedure untrace args>
6925 the-scm-module: display-backtrace #<compiled-closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>
6926 the-scm-module: before-backtrace-hook ()
6927 the-scm-module: backtrace #<primitive-procedure backtrace>
6928 the-scm-module: after-backtrace-hook ()
6929 the-scm-module: has-shown-backtrace-hint? #f
6932 ** There are new functions and syntax for working with macros.
6934 Guile implements macros as a special object type. Any variable whose
6935 top-level binding is a macro object acts as a macro. The macro object
6936 specifies how the expression should be transformed before evaluation.
6938 *** Macro objects now print in a reasonable way, resembling procedures.
6940 *** New function: (macro? OBJ)
6941 True iff OBJ is a macro object.
6943 *** New function: (primitive-macro? OBJ)
6944 Like (macro? OBJ), but true only if OBJ is one of the Guile primitive
6945 macro transformers, implemented in eval.c rather than Scheme code.
6947 Why do we have this function?
6948 - For symmetry with procedure? and primitive-procedure?,
6949 - to allow custom print procedures to tell whether a macro is
6950 primitive, and display it differently, and
6951 - to allow compilers and user-written evaluators to distinguish
6952 builtin special forms from user-defined ones, which could be
6955 *** New function: (macro-type OBJ)
6956 Return a value indicating what kind of macro OBJ is. Possible return
6959 The symbol `syntax' --- a macro created by procedure->syntax.
6960 The symbol `macro' --- a macro created by procedure->macro.
6961 The symbol `macro!' --- a macro created by procedure->memoizing-macro.
6962 The boolean #f --- if OBJ is not a macro object.
6964 *** New function: (macro-name MACRO)
6965 Return the name of the macro object MACRO's procedure, as returned by
6968 *** New function: (macro-transformer MACRO)
6969 Return the transformer procedure for MACRO.
6971 *** New syntax: (use-syntax MODULE ... TRANSFORMER)
6973 Specify a new macro expander to use in the current module. Each
6974 MODULE is a module name, with the same meaning as in the `use-modules'
6975 form; each named module's exported bindings are added to the current
6976 top-level environment. TRANSFORMER is an expression evaluated in the
6977 resulting environment which must yield a procedure to use as the
6978 module's eval transformer: every expression evaluated in this module
6979 is passed to this function, and the result passed to the Guile
6982 *** macro-eval! is removed. Use local-eval instead.
6984 ** Some magic has been added to the printer to better handle user
6985 written printing routines (like record printers, closure printers).
6987 The problem is that these user written routines must have access to
6988 the current `print-state' to be able to handle fancy things like
6989 detection of circular references. These print-states have to be
6990 passed to the builtin printing routines (display, write, etc) to
6991 properly continue the print chain.
6993 We didn't want to change all existing print code so that it
6994 explicitly passes thru a print state in addition to a port. Instead,
6995 we extented the possible values that the builtin printing routines
6996 accept as a `port'. In addition to a normal port, they now also take
6997 a pair of a normal port and a print-state. Printing will go to the
6998 port and the print-state will be used to control the detection of
6999 circular references, etc. If the builtin function does not care for a
7000 print-state, it is simply ignored.
7002 User written callbacks are now called with such a pair as their
7003 `port', but because every function now accepts this pair as a PORT
7004 argument, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, it is probably
7005 safest to not check for these pairs.
7007 However, it is sometimes necessary to continue a print chain on a
7008 different port, for example to get a intermediate string
7009 representation of the printed value, mangle that string somehow, and
7010 then to finally print the mangled string. Use the new function
7012 inherit-print-state OLD-PORT NEW-PORT
7014 for this. It constructs a new `port' that prints to NEW-PORT but
7015 inherits the print-state of OLD-PORT.
7017 ** struct-vtable-offset renamed to vtable-offset-user
7019 ** New constants: vtable-index-layout, vtable-index-vtable, vtable-index-printer
7021 ** There is now a third optional argument to make-vtable-vtable
7022 (and fourth to make-struct) when constructing new types (vtables).
7023 This argument initializes field vtable-index-printer of the vtable.
7025 ** The detection of circular references has been extended to structs.
7026 That is, a structure that -- in the process of being printed -- prints
7027 itself does not lead to infinite recursion.
7029 ** There is now some basic support for fluids. Please read
7030 "libguile/fluid.h" to find out more. It is accessible from Scheme with
7031 the following functions and macros:
7033 Function: make-fluid
7035 Create a new fluid object. Fluids are not special variables or
7036 some other extension to the semantics of Scheme, but rather
7037 ordinary Scheme objects. You can store them into variables (that
7038 are still lexically scoped, of course) or into any other place you
7039 like. Every fluid has a initial value of `#f'.
7041 Function: fluid? OBJ
7043 Test whether OBJ is a fluid.
7045 Function: fluid-ref FLUID
7046 Function: fluid-set! FLUID VAL
7048 Access/modify the fluid FLUID. Modifications are only visible
7049 within the current dynamic root (that includes threads).
7051 Function: with-fluids* FLUIDS VALUES THUNK
7053 FLUIDS is a list of fluids and VALUES a corresponding list of
7054 values for these fluids. Before THUNK gets called the values are
7055 installed in the fluids and the old values of the fluids are
7056 saved in the VALUES list. When the flow of control leaves THUNK
7057 or reenters it, the values get swapped again. You might think of
7058 this as a `safe-fluid-excursion'. Note that the VALUES list is
7059 modified by `with-fluids*'.
7061 Macro: with-fluids ((FLUID VALUE) ...) FORM ...
7063 The same as `with-fluids*' but with a different syntax. It looks
7064 just like `let', but both FLUID and VALUE are evaluated. Remember,
7065 fluids are not special variables but ordinary objects. FLUID
7066 should evaluate to a fluid.
7068 ** Changes to system call interfaces:
7070 *** close-port, close-input-port and close-output-port now return a
7071 boolean instead of an `unspecified' object. #t means that the port
7072 was successfully closed, while #f means it was already closed. It is
7073 also now possible for these procedures to raise an exception if an
7074 error occurs (some errors from write can be delayed until close.)
7076 *** the first argument to chmod, fcntl, ftell and fseek can now be a
7079 *** the third argument to fcntl is now optional.
7081 *** the first argument to chown can now be a file descriptor or a port.
7083 *** the argument to stat can now be a port.
7085 *** The following new procedures have been added (most use scsh
7088 *** procedure: close PORT/FD
7089 Similar to close-port (*note close-port: Closing Ports.), but also
7090 works on file descriptors. A side effect of closing a file
7091 descriptor is that any ports using that file descriptor are moved
7092 to a different file descriptor and have their revealed counts set
7095 *** procedure: port->fdes PORT
7096 Returns the integer file descriptor underlying PORT. As a side
7097 effect the revealed count of PORT is incremented.
7099 *** procedure: fdes->ports FDES
7100 Returns a list of existing ports which have FDES as an underlying
7101 file descriptor, without changing their revealed counts.
7103 *** procedure: fdes->inport FDES
7104 Returns an existing input port which has FDES as its underlying
7105 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
7106 Otherwise, returns a new input port with a revealed count of 1.
7108 *** procedure: fdes->outport FDES
7109 Returns an existing output port which has FDES as its underlying
7110 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
7111 Otherwise, returns a new output port with a revealed count of 1.
7113 The next group of procedures perform a `dup2' system call, if NEWFD
7114 (an integer) is supplied, otherwise a `dup'. The file descriptor to be
7115 duplicated can be supplied as an integer or contained in a port. The
7116 type of value returned varies depending on which procedure is used.
7118 All procedures also have the side effect when performing `dup2' that
7119 any ports using NEWFD are moved to a different file descriptor and have
7120 their revealed counts set to zero.
7122 *** procedure: dup->fdes PORT/FD [NEWFD]
7123 Returns an integer file descriptor.
7125 *** procedure: dup->inport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
7126 Returns a new input port using the new file descriptor.
7128 *** procedure: dup->outport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
7129 Returns a new output port using the new file descriptor.
7131 *** procedure: dup PORT/FD [NEWFD]
7132 Returns a new port if PORT/FD is a port, with the same mode as the
7133 supplied port, otherwise returns an integer file descriptor.
7135 *** procedure: dup->port PORT/FD MODE [NEWFD]
7136 Returns a new port using the new file descriptor. MODE supplies a
7137 mode string for the port (*note open-file: File Ports.).
7139 *** procedure: setenv NAME VALUE
7140 Modifies the environment of the current process, which is also the
7141 default environment inherited by child processes.
7143 If VALUE is `#f', then NAME is removed from the environment.
7144 Otherwise, the string NAME=VALUE is added to the environment,
7145 replacing any existing string with name matching NAME.
7147 The return value is unspecified.
7149 *** procedure: truncate-file OBJ SIZE
7150 Truncates the file referred to by OBJ to at most SIZE bytes. OBJ
7151 can be a string containing a file name or an integer file
7152 descriptor or port open for output on the file. The underlying
7153 system calls are `truncate' and `ftruncate'.
7155 The return value is unspecified.
7157 *** procedure: setvbuf PORT MODE [SIZE]
7158 Set the buffering mode for PORT. MODE can be:
7166 block buffered, using a newly allocated buffer of SIZE bytes.
7167 However if SIZE is zero or unspecified, the port will be made
7170 This procedure should not be used after I/O has been performed with
7173 Ports are usually block buffered by default, with a default buffer
7174 size. Procedures e.g., *Note open-file: File Ports, which accept a
7175 mode string allow `0' to be added to request an unbuffered port.
7177 *** procedure: fsync PORT/FD
7178 Copies any unwritten data for the specified output file descriptor
7179 to disk. If PORT/FD is a port, its buffer is flushed before the
7180 underlying file descriptor is fsync'd. The return value is
7183 *** procedure: open-fdes PATH FLAGS [MODES]
7184 Similar to `open' but returns a file descriptor instead of a port.
7186 *** procedure: execle PATH ENV [ARG] ...
7187 Similar to `execl', but the environment of the new process is
7188 specified by ENV, which must be a list of strings as returned by
7189 the `environ' procedure.
7191 This procedure is currently implemented using the `execve' system
7192 call, but we call it `execle' because of its Scheme calling
7195 *** procedure: strerror ERRNO
7196 Returns the Unix error message corresponding to ERRNO, an integer.
7198 *** procedure: primitive-exit [STATUS]
7199 Terminate the current process without unwinding the Scheme stack.
7200 This is would typically be useful after a fork. The exit status
7201 is STATUS if supplied, otherwise zero.
7203 *** procedure: times
7204 Returns an object with information about real and processor time.
7205 The following procedures accept such an object as an argument and
7206 return a selected component:
7209 The current real time, expressed as time units relative to an
7213 The CPU time units used by the calling process.
7216 The CPU time units used by the system on behalf of the
7220 The CPU time units used by terminated child processes of the
7221 calling process, whose status has been collected (e.g., using
7225 Similarly, the CPU times units used by the system on behalf of
7226 terminated child processes.
7228 ** Removed: list-length
7229 ** Removed: list-append, list-append!
7230 ** Removed: list-reverse, list-reverse!
7232 ** array-map renamed to array-map!
7234 ** serial-array-map renamed to serial-array-map!
7236 ** catch doesn't take #f as first argument any longer
7238 Previously, it was possible to pass #f instead of a key to `catch'.
7239 That would cause `catch' to pass a jump buffer object to the procedure
7240 passed as second argument. The procedure could then use this jump
7241 buffer objekt as an argument to throw.
7243 This mechanism has been removed since its utility doesn't motivate the
7244 extra complexity it introduces.
7246 ** The `#/' notation for lists now provokes a warning message from Guile.
7247 This syntax will be removed from Guile in the near future.
7249 To disable the warning message, set the GUILE_HUSH environment
7250 variable to any non-empty value.
7252 ** The newline character now prints as `#\newline', following the
7253 normal Scheme notation, not `#\nl'.
7255 * Changes to the gh_ interface
7257 ** The gh_enter function now takes care of loading the Guile startup files.
7258 gh_enter works by calling scm_boot_guile; see the remarks below.
7260 ** Function: void gh_write (SCM x)
7262 Write the printed representation of the scheme object x to the current
7263 output port. Corresponds to the scheme level `write'.
7265 ** gh_list_length renamed to gh_length.
7267 ** vector handling routines
7269 Several major changes. In particular, gh_vector() now resembles
7270 (vector ...) (with a caveat -- see manual), and gh_make_vector() now
7271 exists and behaves like (make-vector ...). gh_vset() and gh_vref()
7272 have been renamed gh_vector_set_x() and gh_vector_ref(). Some missing
7273 vector-related gh_ functions have been implemented.
7275 ** pair and list routines
7277 Implemented several of the R4RS pair and list functions that were
7280 ** gh_scm2doubles, gh_doubles2scm, gh_doubles2dvect
7282 New function. Converts double arrays back and forth between Scheme
7285 * Changes to the scm_ interface
7287 ** The function scm_boot_guile now takes care of loading the startup files.
7289 Guile's primary initialization function, scm_boot_guile, now takes
7290 care of loading `boot-9.scm', in the `ice-9' module, to initialize
7291 Guile, define the module system, and put together some standard
7292 bindings. It also loads `init.scm', which is intended to hold
7293 site-specific initialization code.
7295 Since Guile cannot operate properly until boot-9.scm is loaded, there
7296 is no reason to separate loading boot-9.scm from Guile's other
7297 initialization processes.
7299 This job used to be done by scm_compile_shell_switches, which didn't
7300 make much sense; in particular, it meant that people using Guile for
7301 non-shell-like applications had to jump through hoops to get Guile
7302 initialized properly.
7304 ** The function scm_compile_shell_switches no longer loads the startup files.
7305 Now, Guile always loads the startup files, whenever it is initialized;
7306 see the notes above for scm_boot_guile and scm_load_startup_files.
7308 ** Function: scm_load_startup_files
7309 This new function takes care of loading Guile's initialization file
7310 (`boot-9.scm'), and the site initialization file, `init.scm'. Since
7311 this is always called by the Guile initialization process, it's
7312 probably not too useful to call this yourself, but it's there anyway.
7314 ** The semantics of smob marking have changed slightly.
7316 The smob marking function (the `mark' member of the scm_smobfuns
7317 structure) is no longer responsible for setting the mark bit on the
7318 smob. The generic smob handling code in the garbage collector will
7319 set this bit. The mark function need only ensure that any other
7320 objects the smob refers to get marked.
7322 Note that this change means that the smob's GC8MARK bit is typically
7323 already set upon entry to the mark function. Thus, marking functions
7324 which look like this:
7327 if (SCM_GC8MARKP (ptr))
7329 SCM_SETGC8MARK (ptr);
7330 ... mark objects to which the smob refers ...
7333 are now incorrect, since they will return early, and fail to mark any
7334 other objects the smob refers to. Some code in the Guile library used
7337 ** The semantics of the I/O port functions in scm_ptobfuns have changed.
7339 If you have implemented your own I/O port type, by writing the
7340 functions required by the scm_ptobfuns and then calling scm_newptob,
7341 you will need to change your functions slightly.
7343 The functions in a scm_ptobfuns structure now expect the port itself
7344 as their argument; they used to expect the `stream' member of the
7345 port's scm_port_table structure. This allows functions in an
7346 scm_ptobfuns structure to easily access the port's cell (and any flags
7347 it its CAR), and the port's scm_port_table structure.
7349 Guile now passes the I/O port itself as the `port' argument in the
7350 following scm_ptobfuns functions:
7352 int (*free) (SCM port);
7353 int (*fputc) (int, SCM port);
7354 int (*fputs) (char *, SCM port);
7355 scm_sizet (*fwrite) SCM_P ((char *ptr,
7359 int (*fflush) (SCM port);
7360 int (*fgetc) (SCM port);
7361 int (*fclose) (SCM port);
7363 The interfaces to the `mark', `print', `equalp', and `fgets' methods
7366 If you have existing code which defines its own port types, it is easy
7367 to convert your code to the new interface; simply apply SCM_STREAM to
7368 the port argument to yield the value you code used to expect.
7370 Note that since both the port and the stream have the same type in the
7371 C code --- they are both SCM values --- the C compiler will not remind
7372 you if you forget to update your scm_ptobfuns functions.
7375 ** Function: int scm_internal_select (int fds,
7379 struct timeval *timeout);
7381 This is a replacement for the `select' function provided by the OS.
7382 It enables I/O blocking and sleeping to happen for one cooperative
7383 thread without blocking other threads. It also avoids busy-loops in
7384 these situations. It is intended that all I/O blocking and sleeping
7385 will finally go through this function. Currently, this function is
7386 only available on systems providing `gettimeofday' and `select'.
7388 ** Function: SCM scm_internal_stack_catch (SCM tag,
7389 scm_catch_body_t body,
7391 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
7394 A new sibling to the other two C level `catch' functions
7395 scm_internal_catch and scm_internal_lazy_catch. Use it if you want
7396 the stack to be saved automatically into the variable `the-last-stack'
7397 (scm_the_last_stack_var) on error. This is necessary if you want to
7398 use advanced error reporting, such as calling scm_display_error and
7399 scm_display_backtrace. (They both take a stack object as argument.)
7401 ** Function: SCM scm_spawn_thread (scm_catch_body_t body,
7403 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
7406 Spawns a new thread. It does a job similar to
7407 scm_call_with_new_thread but takes arguments more suitable when
7408 spawning threads from application C code.
7410 ** The hook scm_error_callback has been removed. It was originally
7411 intended as a way for the user to install his own error handler. But
7412 that method works badly since it intervenes between throw and catch,
7413 thereby changing the semantics of expressions like (catch #t ...).
7414 The correct way to do it is to use one of the C level catch functions
7415 in throw.c: scm_internal_catch/lazy_catch/stack_catch.
7417 ** Removed functions:
7419 scm_obj_length, scm_list_length, scm_list_append, scm_list_append_x,
7420 scm_list_reverse, scm_list_reverse_x
7422 ** New macros: SCM_LISTn where n is one of the integers 0-9.
7424 These can be used for pretty list creation from C. The idea is taken
7425 from Erick Gallesio's STk.
7427 ** scm_array_map renamed to scm_array_map_x
7429 ** mbstrings are now removed
7431 This means that the type codes scm_tc7_mb_string and
7432 scm_tc7_mb_substring has been removed.
7434 ** scm_gen_putc, scm_gen_puts, scm_gen_write, and scm_gen_getc have changed.
7436 Since we no longer support multi-byte strings, these I/O functions
7437 have been simplified, and renamed. Here are their old names, and
7438 their new names and arguments:
7440 scm_gen_putc -> void scm_putc (int c, SCM port);
7441 scm_gen_puts -> void scm_puts (char *s, SCM port);
7442 scm_gen_write -> void scm_lfwrite (char *ptr, scm_sizet size, SCM port);
7443 scm_gen_getc -> void scm_getc (SCM port);
7446 ** The macros SCM_TYP7D and SCM_TYP7SD has been removed.
7448 ** The macro SCM_TYP7S has taken the role of the old SCM_TYP7D
7450 SCM_TYP7S now masks away the bit which distinguishes substrings from
7453 ** scm_catch_body_t: Backward incompatible change!
7455 Body functions to scm_internal_catch and friends do not any longer
7456 take a second argument. This is because it is no longer possible to
7457 pass a #f arg to catch.
7459 ** Calls to scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect now nest properly.
7461 The function scm_protect_object protects its argument from being freed
7462 by the garbage collector. scm_unprotect_object removes that
7465 These functions now nest properly. That is, for every object O, there
7466 is a counter which scm_protect_object(O) increments and
7467 scm_unprotect_object(O) decrements, if the counter is greater than
7468 zero. Every object's counter is zero when it is first created. If an
7469 object's counter is greater than zero, the garbage collector will not
7470 reclaim its storage.
7472 This allows you to use scm_protect_object in your code without
7473 worrying that some other function you call will call
7474 scm_unprotect_object, and allow it to be freed. Assuming that the
7475 functions you call are well-behaved, and unprotect only those objects
7476 they protect, you can follow the same rule and have confidence that
7477 objects will be freed only at appropriate times.
7480 Changes in Guile 1.2 (released Tuesday, June 24 1997):
7482 * Changes to the distribution
7484 ** Nightly snapshots are now available from ftp.red-bean.com.
7485 The old server, ftp.cyclic.com, has been relinquished to its rightful
7488 Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are now available via
7489 anonymous FTP from ftp.red-bean.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.
7491 Via the web, that's: ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
7492 For getit, that's: ftp.red-bean.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
7494 ** To run Guile without installing it, the procedure has changed a bit.
7496 If you used a separate build directory to compile Guile, you'll need
7497 to include the build directory in SCHEME_LOAD_PATH, as well as the
7498 source directory. See the `INSTALL' file for examples.
7500 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
7502 ** The standard Guile load path for Scheme code now includes
7503 $(datadir)/guile (usually /usr/local/share/guile). This means that
7504 you can install your own Scheme files there, and Guile will find them.
7505 (Previous versions of Guile only checked a directory whose name
7506 contained the Guile version number, so you had to re-install or move
7507 your Scheme sources each time you installed a fresh version of Guile.)
7509 The load path also includes $(datadir)/guile/site; we recommend
7510 putting individual Scheme files there. If you want to install a
7511 package with multiple source files, create a directory for them under
7514 ** Guile 1.2 will now use the Rx regular expression library, if it is
7515 installed on your system. When you are linking libguile into your own
7516 programs, this means you will have to link against -lguile, -lqt (if
7517 you configured Guile with thread support), and -lrx.
7519 If you are using autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your
7520 application, the following lines should suffice to add the appropriate
7521 libraries to your link command:
7523 ### Find Rx, quickthreads and libguile.
7524 AC_CHECK_LIB(rx, main)
7525 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
7526 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
7528 The Guile 1.2 distribution does not contain sources for the Rx
7529 library, as Guile 1.0 did. If you want to use Rx, you'll need to
7530 retrieve it from a GNU FTP site and install it separately.
7532 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
7534 ** The dynamic linking features of Guile are now enabled by default.
7535 You can disable them by giving the `--disable-dynamic-linking' option
7538 (dynamic-link FILENAME)
7540 Find the object file denoted by FILENAME (a string) and link it
7541 into the running Guile application. When everything works out,
7542 return a Scheme object suitable for representing the linked object
7543 file. Otherwise an error is thrown. How object files are
7544 searched is system dependent.
7546 (dynamic-object? VAL)
7548 Determine whether VAL represents a dynamically linked object file.
7550 (dynamic-unlink DYNOBJ)
7552 Unlink the indicated object file from the application. DYNOBJ
7553 should be one of the values returned by `dynamic-link'.
7555 (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
7557 Search the C function indicated by FUNCTION (a string or symbol)
7558 in DYNOBJ and return some Scheme object that can later be used
7559 with `dynamic-call' to actually call this function. Right now,
7560 these Scheme objects are formed by casting the address of the
7561 function to `long' and converting this number to its Scheme
7564 (dynamic-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
7566 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ. The
7567 function is passed no arguments and its return value is ignored.
7568 When FUNCTION is something returned by `dynamic-func', call that
7569 function and ignore DYNOBJ. When FUNCTION is a string (or symbol,
7570 etc.), look it up in DYNOBJ; this is equivalent to
7572 (dynamic-call (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ) #f)
7574 Interrupts are deferred while the C function is executing (with
7575 SCM_DEFER_INTS/SCM_ALLOW_INTS).
7577 (dynamic-args-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ ARGS)
7579 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ, but pass it
7580 some arguments and return its return value. The C function is
7581 expected to take two arguments and return an `int', just like
7584 int c_func (int argc, char **argv);
7586 ARGS must be a list of strings and is converted into an array of
7587 `char *'. The array is passed in ARGV and its size in ARGC. The
7588 return value is converted to a Scheme number and returned from the
7589 call to `dynamic-args-call'.
7591 When dynamic linking is disabled or not supported on your system,
7592 the above functions throw errors, but they are still available.
7594 Here is a small example that works on GNU/Linux:
7596 (define libc-obj (dynamic-link "libc.so"))
7597 (dynamic-args-call 'rand libc-obj '())
7599 See the file `libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING' for additional comments.
7601 ** The #/ syntax for module names is depreciated, and will be removed
7602 in a future version of Guile. Instead of
7610 The latter syntax is more consistent with existing Lisp practice.
7612 ** Guile now does fancier printing of structures. Structures are the
7613 underlying implementation for records, which in turn are used to
7614 implement modules, so all of these object now print differently and in
7615 a more informative way.
7617 The Scheme printer will examine the builtin variable *struct-printer*
7618 whenever it needs to print a structure object. When this variable is
7619 not `#f' it is deemed to be a procedure and will be applied to the
7620 structure object and the output port. When *struct-printer* is `#f'
7621 or the procedure return `#f' the structure object will be printed in
7622 the boring #<struct 80458270> form.
7624 This hook is used by some routines in ice-9/boot-9.scm to implement
7625 type specific printing routines. Please read the comments there about
7628 One of the more specific uses of structs are records. The printing
7629 procedure that could be passed to MAKE-RECORD-TYPE is now actually
7630 called. It should behave like a *struct-printer* procedure (described
7633 ** Guile now supports a new R4RS-compliant syntax for keywords. A
7634 token of the form #:NAME, where NAME has the same syntax as a Scheme
7635 symbol, is the external representation of the keyword named NAME.
7636 Keyword objects print using this syntax as well, so values containing
7637 keyword objects can be read back into Guile. When used in an
7638 expression, keywords are self-quoting objects.
7640 Guile suports this read syntax, and uses this print syntax, regardless
7641 of the current setting of the `keyword' read option. The `keyword'
7642 read option only controls whether Guile recognizes the `:NAME' syntax,
7643 which is incompatible with R4RS. (R4RS says such token represent
7646 ** Guile has regular expression support again. Guile 1.0 included
7647 functions for matching regular expressions, based on the Rx library.
7648 In Guile 1.1, the Guile/Rx interface was removed to simplify the
7649 distribution, and thus Guile had no regular expression support. Guile
7650 1.2 again supports the most commonly used functions, and supports all
7651 of SCSH's regular expression functions.
7653 If your system does not include a POSIX regular expression library,
7654 and you have not linked Guile with a third-party regexp library such as
7655 Rx, these functions will not be available. You can tell whether your
7656 Guile installation includes regular expression support by checking
7657 whether the `*features*' list includes the `regex' symbol.
7659 *** regexp functions
7661 By default, Guile supports POSIX extended regular expressions. That
7662 means that the characters `(', `)', `+' and `?' are special, and must
7663 be escaped if you wish to match the literal characters.
7665 This regular expression interface was modeled after that implemented
7666 by SCSH, the Scheme Shell. It is intended to be upwardly compatible
7667 with SCSH regular expressions.
7669 **** Function: string-match PATTERN STR [START]
7670 Compile the string PATTERN into a regular expression and compare
7671 it with STR. The optional numeric argument START specifies the
7672 position of STR at which to begin matching.
7674 `string-match' returns a "match structure" which describes what,
7675 if anything, was matched by the regular expression. *Note Match
7676 Structures::. If STR does not match PATTERN at all,
7677 `string-match' returns `#f'.
7679 Each time `string-match' is called, it must compile its PATTERN
7680 argument into a regular expression structure. This operation is
7681 expensive, which makes `string-match' inefficient if the same regular
7682 expression is used several times (for example, in a loop). For better
7683 performance, you can compile a regular expression in advance and then
7684 match strings against the compiled regexp.
7686 **** Function: make-regexp STR [FLAGS]
7687 Compile the regular expression described by STR, and return the
7688 compiled regexp structure. If STR does not describe a legal
7689 regular expression, `make-regexp' throws a
7690 `regular-expression-syntax' error.
7692 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
7694 **** Constant: regexp/extended
7695 Use POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting
7696 STR. If not set, POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used.
7697 If the FLAGS argument is omitted, we assume regexp/extended.
7699 **** Constant: regexp/icase
7700 Do not differentiate case. Subsequent searches using the
7701 returned regular expression will be case insensitive.
7703 **** Constant: regexp/newline
7704 Match-any-character operators don't match a newline.
7706 A non-matching list ([^...]) not containing a newline matches a
7709 Match-beginning-of-line operator (^) matches the empty string
7710 immediately after a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
7711 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/notbol.
7713 Match-end-of-line operator ($) matches the empty string
7714 immediately before a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
7715 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/noteol.
7717 **** Function: regexp-exec REGEXP STR [START [FLAGS]]
7718 Match the compiled regular expression REGEXP against `str'. If
7719 the optional integer START argument is provided, begin matching
7720 from that position in the string. Return a match structure
7721 describing the results of the match, or `#f' if no match could be
7724 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
7726 **** Constant: regexp/notbol
7727 The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but
7728 see the compilation flag regexp/newline above) This flag may be
7729 used when different portions of a string are passed to
7730 regexp-exec and the beginning of the string should not be
7731 interpreted as the beginning of the line.
7733 **** Constant: regexp/noteol
7734 The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the
7735 compilation flag regexp/newline above)
7737 **** Function: regexp? OBJ
7738 Return `#t' if OBJ is a compiled regular expression, or `#f'
7741 Regular expressions are commonly used to find patterns in one string
7742 and replace them with the contents of another string.
7744 **** Function: regexp-substitute PORT MATCH [ITEM...]
7745 Write to the output port PORT selected contents of the match
7746 structure MATCH. Each ITEM specifies what should be written, and
7747 may be one of the following arguments:
7749 * A string. String arguments are written out verbatim.
7751 * An integer. The submatch with that number is written.
7753 * The symbol `pre'. The portion of the matched string preceding
7754 the regexp match is written.
7756 * The symbol `post'. The portion of the matched string
7757 following the regexp match is written.
7759 PORT may be `#f', in which case nothing is written; instead,
7760 `regexp-substitute' constructs a string from the specified ITEMs
7763 **** Function: regexp-substitute/global PORT REGEXP TARGET [ITEM...]
7764 Similar to `regexp-substitute', but can be used to perform global
7765 substitutions on STR. Instead of taking a match structure as an
7766 argument, `regexp-substitute/global' takes two string arguments: a
7767 REGEXP string describing a regular expression, and a TARGET string
7768 which should be matched against this regular expression.
7770 Each ITEM behaves as in REGEXP-SUBSTITUTE, with the following
7773 * A function may be supplied. When this function is called, it
7774 will be passed one argument: a match structure for a given
7775 regular expression match. It should return a string to be
7776 written out to PORT.
7778 * The `post' symbol causes `regexp-substitute/global' to recurse
7779 on the unmatched portion of STR. This *must* be supplied in
7780 order to perform global search-and-replace on STR; if it is
7781 not present among the ITEMs, then `regexp-substitute/global'
7782 will return after processing a single match.
7784 *** Match Structures
7786 A "match structure" is the object returned by `string-match' and
7787 `regexp-exec'. It describes which portion of a string, if any, matched
7788 the given regular expression. Match structures include: a reference to
7789 the string that was checked for matches; the starting and ending
7790 positions of the regexp match; and, if the regexp included any
7791 parenthesized subexpressions, the starting and ending positions of each
7794 In each of the regexp match functions described below, the `match'
7795 argument must be a match structure returned by a previous call to
7796 `string-match' or `regexp-exec'. Most of these functions return some
7797 information about the original target string that was matched against a
7798 regular expression; we will call that string TARGET for easy reference.
7800 **** Function: regexp-match? OBJ
7801 Return `#t' if OBJ is a match structure returned by a previous
7802 call to `regexp-exec', or `#f' otherwise.
7804 **** Function: match:substring MATCH [N]
7805 Return the portion of TARGET matched by subexpression number N.
7806 Submatch 0 (the default) represents the entire regexp match. If
7807 the regular expression as a whole matched, but the subexpression
7808 number N did not match, return `#f'.
7810 **** Function: match:start MATCH [N]
7811 Return the starting position of submatch number N.
7813 **** Function: match:end MATCH [N]
7814 Return the ending position of submatch number N.
7816 **** Function: match:prefix MATCH
7817 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET preceding the regexp match.
7819 **** Function: match:suffix MATCH
7820 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET following the regexp match.
7822 **** Function: match:count MATCH
7823 Return the number of parenthesized subexpressions from MATCH.
7824 Note that the entire regular expression match itself counts as a
7825 subexpression, and failed submatches are included in the count.
7827 **** Function: match:string MATCH
7828 Return the original TARGET string.
7830 *** Backslash Escapes
7832 Sometimes you will want a regexp to match characters like `*' or `$'
7833 exactly. For example, to check whether a particular string represents
7834 a menu entry from an Info node, it would be useful to match it against
7835 a regexp like `^* [^:]*::'. However, this won't work; because the
7836 asterisk is a metacharacter, it won't match the `*' at the beginning of
7837 the string. In this case, we want to make the first asterisk un-magic.
7839 You can do this by preceding the metacharacter with a backslash
7840 character `\'. (This is also called "quoting" the metacharacter, and
7841 is known as a "backslash escape".) When Guile sees a backslash in a
7842 regular expression, it considers the following glyph to be an ordinary
7843 character, no matter what special meaning it would ordinarily have.
7844 Therefore, we can make the above example work by changing the regexp to
7845 `^\* [^:]*::'. The `\*' sequence tells the regular expression engine
7846 to match only a single asterisk in the target string.
7848 Since the backslash is itself a metacharacter, you may force a
7849 regexp to match a backslash in the target string by preceding the
7850 backslash with itself. For example, to find variable references in a
7851 TeX program, you might want to find occurrences of the string `\let\'
7852 followed by any number of alphabetic characters. The regular expression
7853 `\\let\\[A-Za-z]*' would do this: the double backslashes in the regexp
7854 each match a single backslash in the target string.
7856 **** Function: regexp-quote STR
7857 Quote each special character found in STR with a backslash, and
7858 return the resulting string.
7860 *Very important:* Using backslash escapes in Guile source code (as
7861 in Emacs Lisp or C) can be tricky, because the backslash character has
7862 special meaning for the Guile reader. For example, if Guile encounters
7863 the character sequence `\n' in the middle of a string while processing
7864 Scheme code, it replaces those characters with a newline character.
7865 Similarly, the character sequence `\t' is replaced by a horizontal tab.
7866 Several of these "escape sequences" are processed by the Guile reader
7867 before your code is executed. Unrecognized escape sequences are
7868 ignored: if the characters `\*' appear in a string, they will be
7869 translated to the single character `*'.
7871 This translation is obviously undesirable for regular expressions,
7872 since we want to be able to include backslashes in a string in order to
7873 escape regexp metacharacters. Therefore, to make sure that a backslash
7874 is preserved in a string in your Guile program, you must use *two*
7875 consecutive backslashes:
7877 (define Info-menu-entry-pattern (make-regexp "^\\* [^:]*"))
7879 The string in this example is preprocessed by the Guile reader before
7880 any code is executed. The resulting argument to `make-regexp' is the
7881 string `^\* [^:]*', which is what we really want.
7883 This also means that in order to write a regular expression that
7884 matches a single backslash character, the regular expression string in
7885 the source code must include *four* backslashes. Each consecutive pair
7886 of backslashes gets translated by the Guile reader to a single
7887 backslash, and the resulting double-backslash is interpreted by the
7888 regexp engine as matching a single backslash character. Hence:
7890 (define tex-variable-pattern (make-regexp "\\\\let\\\\=[A-Za-z]*"))
7892 The reason for the unwieldiness of this syntax is historical. Both
7893 regular expression pattern matchers and Unix string processing systems
7894 have traditionally used backslashes with the special meanings described
7895 above. The POSIX regular expression specification and ANSI C standard
7896 both require these semantics. Attempting to abandon either convention
7897 would cause other kinds of compatibility problems, possibly more severe
7898 ones. Therefore, without extending the Scheme reader to support
7899 strings with different quoting conventions (an ungainly and confusing
7900 extension when implemented in other languages), we must adhere to this
7901 cumbersome escape syntax.
7903 * Changes to the gh_ interface
7905 * Changes to the scm_ interface
7907 * Changes to system call interfaces:
7909 ** The value returned by `raise' is now unspecified. It throws an exception
7912 *** A new procedure `sigaction' can be used to install signal handlers
7914 (sigaction signum [action] [flags])
7916 signum is the signal number, which can be specified using the value
7919 If action is omitted, sigaction returns a pair: the CAR is the current
7920 signal hander, which will be either an integer with the value SIG_DFL
7921 (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or the Scheme procedure which
7922 handles the signal, or #f if a non-Scheme procedure handles the
7923 signal. The CDR contains the current sigaction flags for the handler.
7925 If action is provided, it is installed as the new handler for signum.
7926 action can be a Scheme procedure taking one argument, or the value of
7927 SIG_DFL (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or #f to restore
7928 whatever signal handler was installed before sigaction was first used.
7929 Flags can optionally be specified for the new handler (SA_RESTART is
7930 always used if the system provides it, so need not be specified.) The
7931 return value is a pair with information about the old handler as
7934 This interface does not provide access to the "signal blocking"
7935 facility. Maybe this is not needed, since the thread support may
7936 provide solutions to the problem of consistent access to data
7939 *** A new procedure `flush-all-ports' is equivalent to running
7940 `force-output' on every port open for output.
7942 ** Guile now provides information on how it was built, via the new
7943 global variable, %guile-build-info. This variable records the values
7944 of the standard GNU makefile directory variables as an assocation
7945 list, mapping variable names (symbols) onto directory paths (strings).
7946 For example, to find out where the Guile link libraries were
7947 installed, you can say:
7949 guile -c "(display (assq-ref %guile-build-info 'libdir)) (newline)"
7952 * Changes to the scm_ interface
7954 ** The new function scm_handle_by_message_noexit is just like the
7955 existing scm_handle_by_message function, except that it doesn't call
7956 exit to terminate the process. Instead, it prints a message and just
7957 returns #f. This might be a more appropriate catch-all handler for
7958 new dynamic roots and threads.
7961 Changes in Guile 1.1 (released Friday, May 16 1997):
7963 * Changes to the distribution.
7965 The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
7967 guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
7968 guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
7969 Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
7970 is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
7971 guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
7972 expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
7973 programming language. These are packaged together because the
7974 Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
7976 This NEWS file describes the changes made to guile-core since the 1.0
7979 We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
7980 date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
7985 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
7987 ** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
7988 Shivers' Scheme Shell.
7990 In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
7991 exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
7992 stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
7993 the (command-line) function.
7994 -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
7995 -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
7996 -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
7998 The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
7999 -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
8000 -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
8001 command line arguments
8002 -ds do -s script at this point
8003 --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
8004 -h, --help display this help and exit
8005 -v, --version display version information and exit
8006 \ read arguments from following script lines
8008 So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
8009 which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
8011 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
8014 (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
8018 (main (command-line))
8020 Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
8022 ekko a speckled gecko
8024 Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
8025 token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
8026 following list of command-line arguments:
8028 ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
8030 Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
8031 the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
8032 with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
8033 defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
8034 remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
8036 In Unix, the first line of a script file must take the following form:
8038 #!INTERPRETER ARGUMENT
8040 where INTERPRETER is the absolute filename of the interpreter
8041 executable, and ARGUMENT is a single command-line argument to pass to
8044 You may only pass one argument to the interpreter, and its length is
8045 limited. These restrictions can be annoying to work around, so Guile
8046 provides a general mechanism (borrowed from, and compatible with,
8047 SCSH) for circumventing them.
8049 If the ARGUMENT in a Guile script is a single backslash character,
8050 `\', Guile will open the script file, parse arguments from its second
8051 and subsequent lines, and replace the `\' with them. So, for example,
8052 here is another implementation of the `ekko' script:
8054 #!/usr/local/bin/guile \
8058 (for-each (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
8062 If the user invokes this script as follows:
8064 ekko a speckled gecko
8066 Unix expands this into
8068 /usr/local/bin/guile \ ekko a speckled gecko
8070 When Guile sees the `\' argument, it replaces it with the arguments
8071 read from the second line of the script, producing:
8073 /usr/local/bin/guile -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
8075 This tells Guile to load the `ekko' script, and apply the function
8076 `main' to the argument list ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
8078 Here is how Guile parses the command-line arguments:
8079 - Each space character terminates an argument. This means that two
8080 spaces in a row introduce an empty-string argument.
8081 - The tab character is not permitted (unless you quote it with the
8082 backslash character, as described below), to avoid confusion.
8083 - The newline character terminates the sequence of arguments, and will
8084 also terminate a final non-empty argument. (However, a newline
8085 following a space will not introduce a final empty-string argument;
8086 it only terminates the argument list.)
8087 - The backslash character is the escape character. It escapes
8088 backslash, space, tab, and newline. The ANSI C escape sequences
8089 like \n and \t are also supported. These produce argument
8090 constituents; the two-character combination \n doesn't act like a
8091 terminating newline. The escape sequence \NNN for exactly three
8092 octal digits reads as the character whose ASCII code is NNN. As
8093 above, characters produced this way are argument constituents.
8094 Backslash followed by other characters is not allowed.
8096 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
8098 ** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
8099 system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
8100 all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
8101 supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
8102 libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
8104 Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
8105 it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
8106 independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
8108 ** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
8110 To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
8111 -lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
8112 autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
8113 following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
8116 ### Find quickthreads and libguile.
8117 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
8118 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
8120 * Changes to Scheme functions
8122 ** Guile Scheme's special syntax for keyword objects is now optional,
8123 and disabled by default.
8125 The syntax variation from R4RS made it difficult to port some
8126 interesting packages to Guile. The routines which accepted keyword
8127 arguments (mostly in the module system) have been modified to also
8128 accept symbols whose names begin with `:'.
8130 To change the keyword syntax, you must first import the (ice-9 debug)
8132 (use-modules (ice-9 debug))
8134 Then you can enable the keyword syntax as follows:
8135 (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
8137 To disable keyword syntax, do this:
8138 (read-set! keywords #f)
8140 ** Many more primitive functions accept shared substrings as
8141 arguments. In the past, these functions required normal, mutable
8142 strings as arguments, although they never made use of this
8145 ** The uniform array functions now operate on byte vectors. These
8146 functions are `array-fill!', `serial-array-copy!', `array-copy!',
8147 `serial-array-map', `array-map', `array-for-each', and
8150 ** The new functions `trace' and `untrace' implement simple debugging
8151 support for Scheme functions.
8153 The `trace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
8154 and tells the Guile interpreter to display each procedure's name and
8155 arguments each time the procedure is invoked. When invoked with no
8156 arguments, `trace' returns the list of procedures currently being
8159 The `untrace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
8160 and tells the Guile interpreter not to trace them any more. When
8161 invoked with no arguments, `untrace' untraces all curretly traced
8164 The tracing in Guile has an advantage over most other systems: we
8165 don't create new procedure objects, but mark the procedure objects
8166 themselves. This means that anonymous and internal procedures can be
8169 ** The function `assert-repl-prompt' has been renamed to
8170 `set-repl-prompt!'. It takes one argument, PROMPT.
8171 - If PROMPT is #f, the Guile read-eval-print loop will not prompt.
8172 - If PROMPT is a string, we use it as a prompt.
8173 - If PROMPT is a procedure accepting no arguments, we call it, and
8174 display the result as a prompt.
8175 - Otherwise, we display "> ".
8177 ** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
8178 string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
8179 in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
8182 ** The new function `thunk?' returns true iff its argument is a
8183 procedure of zero arguments.
8185 ** `defined?' is now a builtin function, instead of syntax. This
8186 means that its argument should be quoted. It returns #t iff its
8187 argument is bound in the current module.
8189 ** The new syntax `use-modules' allows you to add new modules to your
8190 environment without re-typing a complete `define-module' form. It
8191 accepts any number of module names as arguments, and imports their
8192 public bindings into the current module.
8194 ** The new function (module-defined? NAME MODULE) returns true iff
8195 NAME, a symbol, is defined in MODULE, a module object.
8197 ** The new function `builtin-bindings' creates and returns a hash
8198 table containing copies of all the root module's bindings.
8200 ** The new function `builtin-weak-bindings' does the same as
8201 `builtin-bindings', but creates a doubly-weak hash table.
8203 ** The `equal?' function now considers variable objects to be
8204 equivalent if they have the same name and the same value.
8206 ** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
8207 given to Guile, as a list of strings.
8209 When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
8210 script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
8211 `-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
8212 behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
8213 command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
8215 ** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
8216 in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
8217 mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
8218 but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
8220 ** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
8223 ** Changes to I/O functions
8225 *** The functions `read', `primitive-load', `read-and-eval!', and
8226 `primitive-load-path' no longer take optional arguments controlling
8227 case insensitivity and a `#' parser.
8229 Case sensitivity is now controlled by a read option called
8230 `case-insensitive'. The user can add new `#' syntaxes with the
8231 `read-hash-extend' function (see below).
8233 *** The new function `read-hash-extend' allows the user to change the
8234 syntax of Guile Scheme in a somewhat controlled way.
8236 (read-hash-extend CHAR PROC)
8237 When parsing S-expressions, if we read a `#' character followed by
8238 the character CHAR, use PROC to parse an object from the stream.
8239 If PROC is #f, remove any parsing procedure registered for CHAR.
8241 The reader applies PROC to two arguments: CHAR and an input port.
8243 *** The new functions read-delimited and read-delimited! provide a
8244 general mechanism for doing delimited input on streams.
8246 (read-delimited DELIMS [PORT HANDLE-DELIM])
8247 Read until we encounter one of the characters in DELIMS (a string),
8248 or end-of-file. PORT is the input port to read from; it defaults to
8249 the current input port. The HANDLE-DELIM parameter determines how
8250 the terminating character is handled; it should be one of the
8253 'trim omit delimiter from result
8254 'peek leave delimiter character in input stream
8255 'concat append delimiter character to returned value
8256 'split return a pair: (RESULT . TERMINATOR)
8258 HANDLE-DELIM defaults to 'peek.
8260 (read-delimited! DELIMS BUF [PORT HANDLE-DELIM START END])
8261 A side-effecting variant of `read-delimited'.
8263 The data is written into the string BUF at the indices in the
8264 half-open interval [START, END); the default interval is the whole
8265 string: START = 0 and END = (string-length BUF). The values of
8266 START and END must specify a well-defined interval in BUF, i.e.
8267 0 <= START <= END <= (string-length BUF).
8269 It returns NBYTES, the number of bytes read. If the buffer filled
8270 up without a delimiter character being found, it returns #f. If the
8271 port is at EOF when the read starts, it returns the EOF object.
8273 If an integer is returned (i.e., the read is successfully terminated
8274 by reading a delimiter character), then the HANDLE-DELIM parameter
8275 determines how to handle the terminating character. It is described
8276 above, and defaults to 'peek.
8278 (The descriptions of these functions were borrowed from the SCSH
8279 manual, by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
8281 *** The `%read-delimited!' function is the primitive used to implement
8282 `read-delimited' and `read-delimited!'.
8284 (%read-delimited! DELIMS BUF GOBBLE? [PORT START END])
8286 This returns a pair of values: (TERMINATOR . NUM-READ).
8287 - TERMINATOR describes why the read was terminated. If it is a
8288 character or the eof object, then that is the value that terminated
8289 the read. If it is #f, the function filled the buffer without finding
8290 a delimiting character.
8291 - NUM-READ is the number of characters read into BUF.
8293 If the read is successfully terminated by reading a delimiter
8294 character, then the gobble? parameter determines what to do with the
8295 terminating character. If true, the character is removed from the
8296 input stream; if false, the character is left in the input stream
8297 where a subsequent read operation will retrieve it. In either case,
8298 the character is also the first value returned by the procedure call.
8300 (The descriptions of this function was borrowed from the SCSH manual,
8301 by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
8303 *** The `read-line' and `read-line!' functions have changed; they now
8304 trim the terminator by default; previously they appended it to the
8305 returned string. For the old behavior, use (read-line PORT 'concat).
8307 *** The functions `uniform-array-read!' and `uniform-array-write!' now
8308 take new optional START and END arguments, specifying the region of
8309 the array to read and write.
8311 *** The `ungetc-char-ready?' function has been removed. We feel it's
8312 inappropriate for an interface to expose implementation details this
8315 ** Changes to the Unix library and system call interface
8317 *** The new fcntl function provides access to the Unix `fcntl' system
8320 (fcntl PORT COMMAND VALUE)
8321 Apply COMMAND to PORT's file descriptor, with VALUE as an argument.
8322 Values for COMMAND are:
8324 F_DUPFD duplicate a file descriptor
8325 F_GETFD read the descriptor's close-on-exec flag
8326 F_SETFD set the descriptor's close-on-exec flag to VALUE
8327 F_GETFL read the descriptor's flags, as set on open
8328 F_SETFL set the descriptor's flags, as set on open to VALUE
8329 F_GETOWN return the process ID of a socket's owner, for SIGIO
8330 F_SETOWN set the process that owns a socket to VALUE, for SIGIO
8331 FD_CLOEXEC not sure what this is
8333 For details, see the documentation for the fcntl system call.
8335 *** The arguments to `select' have changed, for compatibility with
8336 SCSH. The TIMEOUT parameter may now be non-integral, yielding the
8337 expected behavior. The MILLISECONDS parameter has been changed to
8338 MICROSECONDS, to more closely resemble the underlying system call.
8339 The RVEC, WVEC, and EVEC arguments can now be vectors; the type of the
8340 corresponding return set will be the same.
8342 *** The arguments to the `mknod' system call have changed. They are
8345 (mknod PATH TYPE PERMS DEV)
8346 Create a new file (`node') in the file system. PATH is the name of
8347 the file to create. TYPE is the kind of file to create; it should
8348 be 'fifo, 'block-special, or 'char-special. PERMS specifies the
8349 permission bits to give the newly created file. If TYPE is
8350 'block-special or 'char-special, DEV specifies which device the
8351 special file refers to; its interpretation depends on the kind of
8352 special file being created.
8354 *** The `fork' function has been renamed to `primitive-fork', to avoid
8355 clashing with various SCSH forks.
8357 *** The `recv' and `recvfrom' functions have been renamed to `recv!'
8358 and `recvfrom!'. They no longer accept a size for a second argument;
8359 you must pass a string to hold the received value. They no longer
8360 return the buffer. Instead, `recv' returns the length of the message
8361 received, and `recvfrom' returns a pair containing the packet's length
8362 and originating address.
8364 *** The file descriptor datatype has been removed, as have the
8365 `read-fd', `write-fd', `close', `lseek', and `dup' functions.
8366 We plan to replace these functions with a SCSH-compatible interface.
8368 *** The `create' function has been removed; it's just a special case
8371 *** There are new functions to break down process termination status
8372 values. In the descriptions below, STATUS is a value returned by
8375 (status:exit-val STATUS)
8376 If the child process exited normally, this function returns the exit
8377 code for the child process (i.e., the value passed to exit, or
8378 returned from main). If the child process did not exit normally,
8379 this function returns #f.
8381 (status:stop-sig STATUS)
8382 If the child process was suspended by a signal, this function
8383 returns the signal that suspended the child. Otherwise, it returns
8386 (status:term-sig STATUS)
8387 If the child process terminated abnormally, this function returns
8388 the signal that terminated the child. Otherwise, this function
8391 POSIX promises that exactly one of these functions will return true on
8392 a valid STATUS value.
8394 These functions are compatible with SCSH.
8396 *** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
8397 returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
8399 Component Accessor Setter
8400 ========================= ============ ============
8401 seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
8402 minutes tm:min set-tm:min
8403 hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
8404 day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
8405 month tm:mon set-tm:mon
8406 year tm:year set-tm:year
8407 day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
8408 day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
8409 daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
8410 GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
8411 name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
8413 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname',
8414 describing the host system:
8417 ============================================== ================
8418 name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
8419 network name of this machine utsname:nodename
8420 release level of the operating system utsname:release
8421 version level of the operating system utsname:version
8422 machine hardware platform utsname:machine
8424 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getpw',
8425 `getpwnam', `getpwuid', and `getpwent', describing entries from the
8426 system's user database:
8429 ====================== =================
8430 user name passwd:name
8431 user password passwd:passwd
8434 real name passwd:gecos
8435 home directory passwd:dir
8436 shell program passwd:shell
8438 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getgr',
8439 `getgrnam', `getgrgid', and `getgrent', describing entries from the
8440 system's group database:
8443 ======================= ============
8444 group name group:name
8445 group password group:passwd
8447 group members group:mem
8449 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `gethost',
8450 `gethostbyaddr', `gethostbyname', and `gethostent', describing
8454 ========================= ===============
8455 official name of host hostent:name
8456 alias list hostent:aliases
8457 host address type hostent:addrtype
8458 length of address hostent:length
8459 list of addresses hostent:addr-list
8461 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getnet',
8462 `getnetbyaddr', `getnetbyname', and `getnetent', describing internet
8466 ========================= ===============
8467 official name of net netent:name
8468 alias list netent:aliases
8469 net number type netent:addrtype
8470 net number netent:net
8472 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getproto',
8473 `getprotobyname', `getprotobynumber', and `getprotoent', describing
8477 ========================= ===============
8478 official protocol name protoent:name
8479 alias list protoent:aliases
8480 protocol number protoent:proto
8482 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getserv',
8483 `getservbyname', `getservbyport', and `getservent', describing
8487 ========================= ===============
8488 official service name servent:name
8489 alias list servent:aliases
8490 port number servent:port
8491 protocol to use servent:proto
8493 *** There are new accessors for the sockaddr structures returned by
8494 `accept', `getsockname', `getpeername', `recvfrom!':
8497 ======================================== ===============
8498 address format (`family') sockaddr:fam
8499 path, for file domain addresses sockaddr:path
8500 address, for internet domain addresses sockaddr:addr
8501 TCP or UDP port, for internet sockaddr:port
8503 *** The `getpwent', `getgrent', `gethostent', `getnetent',
8504 `getprotoent', and `getservent' functions now return #f at the end of
8505 the user database. (They used to throw an exception.)
8507 Note that calling MUMBLEent function is equivalent to calling the
8508 corresponding MUMBLE function with no arguments.
8510 *** The `setpwent', `setgrent', `sethostent', `setnetent',
8511 `setprotoent', and `setservent' routines now take no arguments.
8513 *** The `gethost', `getproto', `getnet', and `getserv' functions now
8514 provide more useful information when they throw an exception.
8516 *** The `lnaof' function has been renamed to `inet-lnaof'.
8518 *** Guile now claims to have the `current-time' feature.
8520 *** The `mktime' function now takes an optional second argument ZONE,
8521 giving the time zone to use for the conversion. ZONE should be a
8522 string, in the same format as expected for the "TZ" environment variable.
8524 *** The `strptime' function now returns a pair (TIME . COUNT), where
8525 TIME is the parsed time as a vector, and COUNT is the number of
8526 characters from the string left unparsed. This function used to
8527 return the remaining characters as a string.
8529 *** The `gettimeofday' function has replaced the old `time+ticks' function.
8530 The return value is now (SECONDS . MICROSECONDS); the fractional
8531 component is no longer expressed in "ticks".
8533 *** The `ticks/sec' constant has been removed, in light of the above change.
8535 * Changes to the gh_ interface
8537 ** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
8540 ** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
8543 ** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
8544 and returns the array
8546 ** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
8547 null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
8548 the user to interpret the data both ways.
8550 * Changes to the scm_ interface
8552 ** The new function scm_symbol_value0 provides an easy way to get a
8553 symbol's value from C code:
8555 SCM scm_symbol_value0 (char *NAME)
8556 Return the value of the symbol named by the null-terminated string
8557 NAME in the current module. If the symbol named NAME is unbound in
8558 the current module, return SCM_UNDEFINED.
8560 ** The new function scm_sysintern0 creates new top-level variables,
8561 without assigning them a value.
8563 SCM scm_sysintern0 (char *NAME)
8564 Create a new Scheme top-level variable named NAME. NAME is a
8565 null-terminated string. Return the variable's value cell.
8567 ** The function scm_internal_catch is the guts of catch. It handles
8568 all the mechanics of setting up a catch target, invoking the catch
8569 body, and perhaps invoking the handler if the body does a throw.
8571 The function is designed to be usable from C code, but is general
8572 enough to implement all the semantics Guile Scheme expects from throw.
8574 TAG is the catch tag. Typically, this is a symbol, but this function
8575 doesn't actually care about that.
8577 BODY is a pointer to a C function which runs the body of the catch;
8578 this is the code you can throw from. We call it like this:
8579 BODY (BODY_DATA, JMPBUF)
8581 BODY_DATA is just the BODY_DATA argument we received; we pass it
8582 through to BODY as its first argument. The caller can make
8583 BODY_DATA point to anything useful that BODY might need.
8584 JMPBUF is the Scheme jmpbuf object corresponding to this catch,
8585 which we have just created and initialized.
8587 HANDLER is a pointer to a C function to deal with a throw to TAG,
8588 should one occur. We call it like this:
8589 HANDLER (HANDLER_DATA, THROWN_TAG, THROW_ARGS)
8591 HANDLER_DATA is the HANDLER_DATA argument we recevied; it's the
8592 same idea as BODY_DATA above.
8593 THROWN_TAG is the tag that the user threw to; usually this is
8594 TAG, but it could be something else if TAG was #t (i.e., a
8595 catch-all), or the user threw to a jmpbuf.
8596 THROW_ARGS is the list of arguments the user passed to the THROW
8599 BODY_DATA is just a pointer we pass through to BODY. HANDLER_DATA
8600 is just a pointer we pass through to HANDLER. We don't actually
8601 use either of those pointers otherwise ourselves. The idea is
8602 that, if our caller wants to communicate something to BODY or
8603 HANDLER, it can pass a pointer to it as MUMBLE_DATA, which BODY and
8604 HANDLER can then use. Think of it as a way to make BODY and
8605 HANDLER closures, not just functions; MUMBLE_DATA points to the
8608 Of course, it's up to the caller to make sure that any data a
8609 MUMBLE_DATA needs is protected from GC. A common way to do this is
8610 to make MUMBLE_DATA a pointer to data stored in an automatic
8611 structure variable; since the collector must scan the stack for
8612 references anyway, this assures that any references in MUMBLE_DATA
8615 ** The new function scm_internal_lazy_catch is exactly like
8616 scm_internal_catch, except:
8618 - It does not unwind the stack (this is the major difference).
8619 - If handler returns, its value is returned from the throw.
8620 - BODY always receives #f as its JMPBUF argument (since there's no
8621 jmpbuf associated with a lazy catch, because we don't unwind the
8624 ** scm_body_thunk is a new body function you can pass to
8625 scm_internal_catch if you want the body to be like Scheme's `catch'
8626 --- a thunk, or a function of one argument if the tag is #f.
8628 BODY_DATA is a pointer to a scm_body_thunk_data structure, which
8629 contains the Scheme procedure to invoke as the body, and the tag
8630 we're catching. If the tag is #f, then we pass JMPBUF (created by
8631 scm_internal_catch) to the body procedure; otherwise, the body gets
8634 ** scm_handle_by_proc is a new handler function you can pass to
8635 scm_internal_catch if you want the handler to act like Scheme's catch
8636 --- call a procedure with the tag and the throw arguments.
8638 If the user does a throw to this catch, this function runs a handler
8639 procedure written in Scheme. HANDLER_DATA is a pointer to an SCM
8640 variable holding the Scheme procedure object to invoke. It ought to
8641 be a pointer to an automatic variable (i.e., one living on the stack),
8642 or the procedure object should be otherwise protected from GC.
8644 ** scm_handle_by_message is a new handler function to use with
8645 `scm_internal_catch' if you want Guile to print a message and die.
8646 It's useful for dealing with throws to uncaught keys at the top level.
8648 HANDLER_DATA, if non-zero, is assumed to be a char * pointing to a
8649 message header to print; if zero, we use "guile" instead. That
8650 text is followed by a colon, then the message described by ARGS.
8652 ** The return type of scm_boot_guile is now void; the function does
8653 not return a value, and indeed, never returns at all.
8655 ** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
8656 process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
8657 stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
8660 To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
8661 linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
8662 of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will add
8663 any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
8664 argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
8665 generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
8666 command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
8669 ** The new functions scm_get_meta_args and scm_count_argv help you
8670 implement the SCSH-style meta-argument, `\'.
8672 char **scm_get_meta_args (int ARGC, char **ARGV)
8673 If the second element of ARGV is a string consisting of a single
8674 backslash character (i.e. "\\" in Scheme notation), open the file
8675 named by the following argument, parse arguments from it, and return
8676 the spliced command line. The returned array is terminated by a
8679 For details of argument parsing, see above, under "guile now accepts
8680 command-line arguments compatible with SCSH..."
8682 int scm_count_argv (char **ARGV)
8683 Count the arguments in ARGV, assuming it is terminated by a null
8686 For an example of how these functions might be used, see the source
8687 code for the function scm_shell in libguile/script.c.
8689 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
8692 ** The new function scm_compile_shell_switches turns an array of
8693 command-line arguments into Scheme code to carry out the actions they
8694 describe. Given ARGC and ARGV, it returns a Scheme expression to
8695 evaluate, and calls scm_set_program_arguments to make any remaining
8696 command-line arguments available to the Scheme code. For example,
8697 given the following arguments:
8699 -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
8701 scm_set_program_arguments will return the following expression:
8703 (begin (load "ekko") (main (command-line)) (quit))
8705 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
8708 ** The function scm_shell_usage prints a usage message appropriate for
8709 an interpreter that uses scm_compile_shell_switches to handle its
8710 command-line arguments.
8712 void scm_shell_usage (int FATAL, char *MESSAGE)
8713 Print a usage message to the standard error output. If MESSAGE is
8714 non-zero, write it before the usage message, followed by a newline.
8715 If FATAL is non-zero, exit the process, using FATAL as the
8716 termination status. (If you want to be compatible with Guile,
8717 always use 1 as the exit status when terminating due to command-line
8720 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
8723 ** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
8724 expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL. Earth-shattering.
8726 ** The macros for declaring scheme objects in C code have been
8727 rearranged slightly. They are now:
8729 SCM_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
8730 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
8731 point to the Scheme symbol whose name is SCHEME_NAME. C_NAME should
8732 be a C identifier, and SCHEME_NAME should be a C string.
8734 SCM_GLOBAL_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
8735 Just like SCM_SYMBOL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
8737 SCM_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
8738 Create a global variable at the Scheme level named SCHEME_NAME.
8739 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
8740 point to the Scheme variable's value cell.
8742 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
8743 Just like SCM_VCELL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
8745 The `guile-snarf' script writes initialization code for these macros
8746 to its standard output, given C source code as input.
8748 The SCM_GLOBAL macro is gone.
8750 ** The scm_read_line and scm_read_line_x functions have been replaced
8751 by Scheme code based on the %read-delimited! procedure (known to C
8752 code as scm_read_delimited_x). See its description above for more
8755 ** The function scm_sys_open has been renamed to scm_open. It now
8756 returns a port instead of an FD object.
8758 * The dynamic linking support has changed. For more information, see
8759 libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING.
8764 User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
8767 * Changes to the 'guile' program:
8769 ** Guile now loads some new files when it starts up. Guile first
8770 searches the load path for init.scm, and loads it if found. Then, if
8771 Guile is not being used to execute a script, and the user's home
8772 directory contains a file named `.guile', Guile loads that.
8774 ** You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
8776 To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
8778 When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
8779 characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
8780 be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
8781 to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
8782 specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
8783 the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
8784 and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
8785 filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
8786 following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
8787 for more information.
8789 Now you can use Guile as an interpreter, using a mechanism which is a
8790 compatible subset of that provided by SCSH.
8792 Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
8793 name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
8794 characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
8795 to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
8796 following two lines at the top of the file:
8798 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
8801 Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
8802 of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
8803 start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
8805 For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
8807 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
8809 (let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
8812 (display (car args))
8813 (if (pair? (cdr args))
8815 (loop (cdr args)))))
8818 Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
8819 end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
8820 don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
8821 we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
8822 scripts once we do. Furthermore, if the path to Guile on your system
8823 is too long for your kernel, you can start the script with this
8827 exec /really/long/path/to/guile -s "$0" ${1+"$@"}
8830 Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
8833 ** You can now run Guile without installing it.
8835 Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
8836 couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
8837 they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
8838 later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
8839 itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
8842 To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
8843 then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
8844 colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
8845 of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
8846 full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
8849 export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
8852 ** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
8853 results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
8854 expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
8857 ** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
8858 however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
8859 request that they be displayed by default. After an error, evaluate
8861 to see a backtrace, and
8862 (debug-enable 'backtrace)
8863 to see them by default.
8867 * Changes to Guile Scheme:
8869 ** Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
8871 This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
8872 upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
8875 Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
8876 type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
8877 caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
8878 way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
8881 ** Guile's delq, delv, delete functions, and their destructive
8882 counterparts, delq!, delv!, and delete!, now remove all matching
8883 elements from the list, not just the first. This matches the behavior
8884 of the corresponding Emacs Lisp functions, and (I believe) the Maclisp
8885 functions which inspired them.
8887 I recognize that this change may break code in subtle ways, but it
8888 seems best to make the change before the FSF's first Guile release,
8892 ** The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
8894 ** The facilities for loading Scheme source files have changed.
8896 *** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
8897 for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
8900 *** The variable %load-extensions now tells Guile which extensions to
8901 try appending to a filename when searching the load path. Its value
8902 is a list of strings. Its default value is ("" ".scm").
8904 *** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
8905 value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME,
8906 with all the extensions listed in %load-extensions. If it finds a
8907 match, then it returns its full filename. If FILENAME is absolute, it
8908 returns it unchanged. Otherwise, it returns #f.
8910 %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to directories.
8912 *** (primitive-load FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
8913 uses %seach-load-path to find a file named FILENAME, and loads it if
8914 it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for any reason, it throws an
8917 The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
8920 *** load uses the same searching semantics as primitive-load.
8922 *** The functions %try-load, try-load-with-path, %load, load-with-path,
8923 basic-try-load-with-path, basic-load-with-path, try-load-module-with-
8924 path, and load-module-with-path have been deleted. The functions
8925 above should serve their purposes.
8927 *** If the value of the variable %load-hook is a procedure,
8928 `primitive-load' applies its value to the name of the file being
8929 loaded (without the load path directory name prepended). If its value
8930 is #f, it is ignored. Otherwise, an error occurs.
8932 This is mostly useful for printing load notification messages.
8935 ** The function `eval!' is no longer accessible from the scheme level.
8936 We can't allow operations which introduce glocs into the scheme level,
8937 because Guile's type system can't handle these as data. Use `eval' or
8938 `read-and-eval!' (see below) as replacement.
8940 ** The new function read-and-eval! reads an expression from PORT,
8941 evaluates it, and returns the result. This is more efficient than
8942 simply calling `read' and `eval', since it is not necessary to make a
8943 copy of the expression for the evaluator to munge.
8945 Its optional arguments CASE_INSENSITIVE_P and SHARP are interpreted as
8946 for the `read' function.
8949 ** The function `int?' has been removed; its definition was identical
8950 to that of `integer?'.
8952 ** The functions `<?', `<?', `<=?', `=?', `>?', and `>=?'. Code should
8953 use the R4RS names for these functions.
8955 ** The function object-properties no longer returns the hash handle;
8956 it simply returns the object's property list.
8958 ** Many functions have been changed to throw errors, instead of
8959 returning #f on failure. The point of providing exception handling in
8960 the language is to simplify the logic of user code, but this is less
8961 useful if Guile's primitives don't throw exceptions.
8963 ** The function `fileno' has been renamed from `%fileno'.
8965 ** The function primitive-mode->fdes returns #t or #f now, not 1 or 0.
8968 * Changes to Guile's C interface:
8970 ** The library's initialization procedure has been simplified.
8971 scm_boot_guile now has the prototype:
8973 void scm_boot_guile (int ARGC,
8975 void (*main_func) (),
8978 scm_boot_guile calls MAIN_FUNC, passing it CLOSURE, ARGC, and ARGV.
8979 MAIN_FUNC should do all the work of the program (initializing other
8980 packages, reading user input, etc.) before returning. When MAIN_FUNC
8981 returns, call exit (0); this function never returns. If you want some
8982 other exit value, MAIN_FUNC may call exit itself.
8984 scm_boot_guile arranges for program-arguments to return the strings
8985 given by ARGC and ARGV. If MAIN_FUNC modifies ARGC/ARGV, should call
8986 scm_set_program_arguments with the final list, so Scheme code will
8987 know which arguments have been processed.
8989 scm_boot_guile establishes a catch-all catch handler which prints an
8990 error message and exits the process. This means that Guile exits in a
8991 coherent way when system errors occur and the user isn't prepared to
8992 handle it. If the user doesn't like this behavior, they can establish
8993 their own universal catcher in MAIN_FUNC to shadow this one.
8995 Why must the caller do all the real work from MAIN_FUNC? The garbage
8996 collector assumes that all local variables of type SCM will be above
8997 scm_boot_guile's stack frame on the stack. If you try to manipulate
8998 SCM values after this function returns, it's the luck of the draw
8999 whether the GC will be able to find the objects you allocate. So,
9000 scm_boot_guile function exits, rather than returning, to discourage
9001 people from making that mistake.
9003 The IN, OUT, and ERR arguments were removed; there are other
9004 convenient ways to override these when desired.
9006 The RESULT argument was deleted; this function should never return.
9008 The BOOT_CMD argument was deleted; the MAIN_FUNC argument is more
9012 ** Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
9015 In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
9016 versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
9017 Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
9018 Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
9021 Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
9022 refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
9023 Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
9024 the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
9027 ** Two new C functions, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object,
9028 have been added to the Guile library.
9030 scm_protect_object (OBJ) protects OBJ from the garbage collector.
9031 OBJ will not be freed, even if all other references are dropped,
9032 until someone does scm_unprotect_object (OBJ). Both functions
9035 Note that calls to scm_protect_object do not nest. You can call
9036 scm_protect_object any number of times on a given object, and the
9037 next call to scm_unprotect_object will unprotect it completely.
9039 Basically, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object just
9040 maintain a list of references to things. Since the GC knows about
9041 this list, all objects it mentions stay alive. scm_protect_object
9042 adds its argument to the list; scm_unprotect_object remove its
9043 argument from the list.
9046 ** scm_eval_0str now returns the value of the last expression
9049 ** The new function scm_read_0str reads an s-expression from a
9050 null-terminated string, and returns it.
9052 ** The new function `scm_stdio_to_port' converts a STDIO file pointer
9053 to a Scheme port object.
9055 ** The new function `scm_set_program_arguments' allows C code to set
9056 the value returned by the Scheme `program-arguments' function.
9061 * Guile no longer includes sophisticated Tcl/Tk support.
9063 The old Tcl/Tk support was unsatisfying to us, because it required the
9064 user to link against the Tcl library, as well as Tk and Guile. The
9065 interface was also un-lispy, in that it preserved Tcl/Tk's practice of
9066 referring to widgets by names, rather than exporting widgets to Scheme
9067 code as a special datatype.
9069 In the Usenix Tk Developer's Workshop held in July 1996, the Tcl/Tk
9070 maintainers described some very interesting changes in progress to the
9071 Tcl/Tk internals, which would facilitate clean interfaces between lone
9072 Tk and other interpreters --- even for garbage-collected languages
9073 like Scheme. They expected the new Tk to be publicly available in the
9076 Since it seems that Guile might soon have a new, cleaner interface to
9077 lone Tk, and that the old Guile/Tk glue code would probably need to be
9078 completely rewritten, we (Jim Blandy and Richard Stallman) have
9079 decided not to support the old code. We'll spend the time instead on
9080 a good interface to the newer Tk, as soon as it is available.
9082 Until then, gtcltk-lib provides trivial, low-maintenance functionality.
9085 Copyright information:
9087 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
9089 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
9090 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
9091 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
9092 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
9094 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
9095 of this document, or of portions of it,
9096 under the above conditions, provided also that they
9097 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
9102 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"