1 Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes.
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12 * New modules (see the manual for details)
14 ** The `(ice-9 i18n)' module provides internationalization support
16 * Changes to the distribution
18 ** Guile now uses Gnulib as a portability aid
20 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
21 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
23 ** A new 'memoize-symbol evaluator trap has been added. This trap can
24 be used for efficiently implementing a Scheme code coverage.
26 ** Duplicate bindings among used modules are resolved lazily.
27 This slightly improves program startup times.
29 ** New thread cancellation and thread cleanup API
30 See `cancel-thread', `set-thread-cleanup!', and `thread-cleanup'.
32 * Changes to the C interface
34 ** Functions for handling `scm_option' now no longer require an argument
35 indicating length of the `scm_t_option' array.
39 Changes in 1.8.4 (since 1.8.3)
43 ** CR (ASCII 0x0d) is (again) recognized as a token delimiter by the reader
44 ** Fixed a segmentation fault which occurred when displaying the
45 backtrace of a stack with a promise object (made by `delay') in it.
46 ** Make `accept' leave guile mode while blocking
47 ** `scm_c_read ()' and `scm_c_write ()' now type-check their port argument
48 ** Fixed a build problem on AIX (use of func_data identifier)
49 ** Fixed a segmentation fault which occurred when hashx-ref or hashx-set! was
50 called with an associator proc that returns neither a pair nor #f.
51 ** Secondary threads now always return a valid module for (current-module).
52 ** Avoid MacOS build problems caused by incorrect combination of "64"
53 system and library calls.
54 ** `guile-snarf' now honors `$TMPDIR'
55 ** Fixed build with Sun Studio (Solaris 9)
56 ** Fixed wrong-type-arg errors when creating zero length SRFI-4
57 uniform vectors on AIX.
58 ** Fixed a deadlock that occurs upon GC with multiple threads.
59 ** Fixed compile problem with GCC on Solaris and AIX (use of _Complex_I)
60 ** Fixed autotool-derived build problems on AIX 6.1.
61 ** Fixed NetBSD/alpha support
62 ** Fixed MacOS build problem caused by use of rl_get_keymap(_name)
64 * New modules (see the manual for details)
68 * Documentation fixes and improvements
70 ** Removed premature breakpoint documentation
72 The features described are not available in the series of 1.8.x
73 releases, so the documentation was misleading and has been removed.
75 ** More about Guile's default *random-state* variable
77 ** GOOPS: more about how to use `next-method'
79 * Changes to the distribution
81 ** Corrected a few files that referred incorrectly to the old GPL + special exception licence
83 In fact Guile since 1.8.0 has been licensed with the GNU Lesser
84 General Public License, and the few incorrect files have now been
85 fixed to agree with the rest of the Guile distribution.
87 ** Removed unnecessary extra copies of COPYING*
89 The distribution now contains a single COPYING.LESSER at its top level.
92 Changes in 1.8.3 (since 1.8.2)
94 * New modules (see the manual for details)
101 ** The `(ice-9 slib)' module now works as expected
102 ** Expressions like "(set! 'x #t)" no longer yield a crash
103 ** Warnings about duplicate bindings now go to stderr
104 ** A memory leak in `make-socket-address' was fixed
105 ** Alignment issues (e.g., on SPARC) in network routines were fixed
106 ** A threading issue that showed up at least on NetBSD was fixed
107 ** Build problems on Solaris and IRIX fixed
109 * Implementation improvements
111 ** The reader is now faster, which reduces startup time
112 ** Procedures returned by `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' are faster
116 Changes in 1.8.2 (since 1.8.1):
118 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
120 ** set-program-arguments
125 ** Fractions were not `equal?' if stored in unreduced form.
126 (A subtle problem, since printing a value reduced it, making it work.)
127 ** srfi-60 `copy-bit' failed on 64-bit systems
128 ** "guile --use-srfi" option at the REPL can replace core functions
129 (Programs run with that option were ok, but in the interactive REPL
130 the core bindings got priority, preventing SRFI replacements or
132 ** `regexp-exec' doesn't abort() on #\nul in the input or bad flags arg
133 ** `kill' on mingw throws an error for a PID other than oneself
134 ** Procedure names are attached to procedure-with-setters
135 ** Array read syntax works with negative lower bound
136 ** `array-in-bounds?' fix if an array has different lower bounds on each index
137 ** `*' returns exact 0 for "(* inexact 0)"
138 This follows what it always did for "(* 0 inexact)".
139 ** SRFI-19: Value returned by `(current-time time-process)' was incorrect
140 ** SRFI-19: `date->julian-day' did not account for timezone offset
141 ** `ttyname' no longer crashes when passed a non-tty argument
142 ** `inet-ntop' no longer crashes on SPARC when passed an `AF_INET' address
143 ** Small memory leaks have been fixed in `make-fluid' and `add-history'
144 ** GOOPS: Fixed a bug in `method-more-specific?'
145 ** Build problems on Solaris fixed
146 ** Build problems on HP-UX IA64 fixed
147 ** Build problems on MinGW fixed
150 Changes in 1.8.1 (since 1.8.0):
152 * LFS functions are now used to access 64-bit files on 32-bit systems.
154 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
156 ** primitive-_exit - [Scheme] the-root-module
157 ** scm_primitive__exit - [C]
158 ** make-completion-function - [Scheme] (ice-9 readline)
159 ** scm_c_locale_stringn_to_number - [C]
160 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse [C]
161 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse_x [C]
167 * New `(ice-9 i18n)' module (see the manual for details)
171 ** Build problems have been fixed on MacOS, SunOS, and QNX.
173 ** `strftime' fix sign of %z timezone offset.
175 ** A one-dimensional array can now be 'equal?' to a vector.
177 ** Structures, records, and SRFI-9 records can now be compared with `equal?'.
179 ** SRFI-14 standard char sets are recomputed upon a successful `setlocale'.
181 ** `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' now have strict type checks.
183 Record accessor and modifier procedures now throw an error if the
184 record type of the record they're given is not the type expected.
185 (Previously accessors returned #f and modifiers silently did nothing).
187 ** It is now OK to use both autoload and use-modules on a given module.
189 ** `apply' checks the number of arguments more carefully on "0 or 1" funcs.
191 Previously there was no checking on primatives like make-vector that
192 accept "one or two" arguments. Now there is.
194 ** The srfi-1 assoc function now calls its equality predicate properly.
196 Previously srfi-1 assoc would call the equality predicate with the key
197 last. According to the SRFI, the key should be first.
199 ** A bug in n-par-for-each and n-for-each-par-map has been fixed.
201 ** The array-set! procedure no longer segfaults when given a bit vector.
203 ** Bugs in make-shared-array have been fixed.
205 ** string<? and friends now follow char<? etc order on 8-bit chars.
207 ** The format procedure now handles inf and nan values for ~f correctly.
209 ** exact->inexact should no longer overflow when given certain large fractions.
211 ** srfi-9 accessor and modifier procedures now have strict record type checks.
213 This matches the srfi-9 specification.
215 ** (ice-9 ftw) procedures won't ignore different files with same inode number.
217 Previously the (ice-9 ftw) procedures would ignore any file that had
218 the same inode number as a file they had already seen, even if that
219 file was on a different device.
222 Changes in 1.8.0 (changes since the 1.6.x series):
224 * Changes to the distribution
226 ** Guile is now licensed with the GNU Lesser General Public License.
228 ** The manual is now licensed with the GNU Free Documentation License.
230 ** Guile now requires GNU MP (http://swox.com/gmp).
232 Guile now uses the GNU MP library for arbitrary precision arithmetic.
234 ** Guile now has separate private and public configuration headers.
236 That is, things like HAVE_STRING_H no longer leak from Guile's
239 ** Guile now provides and uses an "effective" version number.
241 Guile now provides scm_effective_version and effective-version
242 functions which return the "effective" version number. This is just
243 the normal full version string without the final micro-version number,
244 so the current effective-version is "1.8". The effective version
245 should remain unchanged during a stable series, and should be used for
246 items like the versioned share directory name
247 i.e. /usr/share/guile/1.8.
249 Providing an unchanging version number during a stable release for
250 things like the versioned share directory can be particularly
251 important for Guile "add-on" packages, since it provides a directory
252 that they can install to that won't be changed out from under them
253 with each micro release during a stable series.
255 ** Thread implementation has changed.
257 When you configure "--with-threads=null", you will get the usual
258 threading API (call-with-new-thread, make-mutex, etc), but you can't
259 actually create new threads. Also, "--with-threads=no" is now
260 equivalent to "--with-threads=null". This means that the thread API
261 is always present, although you might not be able to create new
264 When you configure "--with-threads=pthreads" or "--with-threads=yes",
265 you will get threads that are implemented with the portable POSIX
266 threads. These threads can run concurrently (unlike the previous
267 "coop" thread implementation), but need to cooperate for things like
270 The default is "pthreads", unless your platform doesn't have pthreads,
271 in which case "null" threads are used.
273 See the manual for details, nodes "Initialization", "Multi-Threading",
274 "Blocking", and others.
276 ** There is the new notion of 'discouraged' features.
278 This is a milder form of deprecation.
280 Things that are discouraged should not be used in new code, but it is
281 OK to leave them in old code for now. When a discouraged feature is
282 used, no warning message is printed like there is for 'deprecated'
283 features. Also, things that are merely discouraged are nevertheless
284 implemented efficiently, while deprecated features can be very slow.
286 You can omit discouraged features from libguile by configuring it with
287 the '--disable-discouraged' option.
289 ** Deprecation warnings can be controlled at run-time.
291 (debug-enable 'warn-deprecated) switches them on and (debug-disable
292 'warn-deprecated) switches them off.
294 ** Support for SRFI 61, extended cond syntax for multiple values has
297 This SRFI is always available.
299 ** Support for require-extension, SRFI-55, has been added.
301 The SRFI-55 special form `require-extension' has been added. It is
302 available at startup, and provides a portable way to load Scheme
303 extensions. SRFI-55 only requires support for one type of extension,
304 "srfi"; so a set of SRFIs may be loaded via (require-extension (srfi 1
307 ** New module (srfi srfi-26) provides support for `cut' and `cute'.
309 The (srfi srfi-26) module is an implementation of SRFI-26 which
310 provides the `cut' and `cute' syntax. These may be used to specialize
311 parameters without currying.
313 ** New module (srfi srfi-31)
315 This is an implementation of SRFI-31 which provides a special form
316 `rec' for recursive evaluation.
318 ** The modules (srfi srfi-13), (srfi srfi-14) and (srfi srfi-4) have
319 been merged with the core, making their functionality always
322 The modules are still available, tho, and you could use them together
323 with a renaming import, for example.
325 ** Guile no longer includes its own version of libltdl.
327 The official version is good enough now.
329 ** The --enable-htmldoc option has been removed from 'configure'.
331 Support for translating the documentation into HTML is now always
332 provided. Use 'make html'.
334 ** New module (ice-9 serialize):
336 (serialize FORM1 ...) and (parallelize FORM1 ...) are useful when you
337 don't trust the thread safety of most of your program, but where you
338 have some section(s) of code which you consider can run in parallel to
339 other sections. See ice-9/serialize.scm for more information.
341 ** The configure option '--disable-arrays' has been removed.
343 Support for arrays and uniform numeric arrays is now always included
346 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
348 ** New command line option `-L'.
350 This option adds a directory to the front of the load path.
352 ** New command line option `--no-debug'.
354 Specifying `--no-debug' on the command line will keep the debugging
355 evaluator turned off, even for interactive sessions.
357 ** User-init file ~/.guile is now loaded with the debugging evaluator.
359 Previously, the normal evaluator would have been used. Using the
360 debugging evaluator gives better error messages.
362 ** The '-e' option now 'read's its argument.
364 This is to allow the new '(@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)' construct to
365 be used with '-e'. For example, you can now write a script like
368 exec guile -e '(@ (demo) main)' -s "$0" "$@"
371 (define-module (demo)
375 (format #t "Demo: ~a~%" args))
378 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
380 ** Guardians have changed back to their original semantics
382 Guardians now behave like described in the paper by Dybvig et al. In
383 particular, they no longer make guarantees about the order in which
384 they return objects, and they can no longer be greedy.
386 They no longer drop cyclic data structures.
388 The C function scm_make_guardian has been changed incompatibly and no
389 longer takes the 'greedy_p' argument.
391 ** New function hashx-remove!
393 This function completes the set of 'hashx' functions.
395 ** The concept of dynamic roots has been factored into continuation
396 barriers and dynamic states.
398 Each thread has a current dynamic state that carries the values of the
399 fluids. You can create and copy dynamic states and use them as the
400 second argument for 'eval'. See "Fluids and Dynamic States" in the
403 To restrict the influence that captured continuations can have on the
404 control flow, you can errect continuation barriers. See "Continuation
405 Barriers" in the manual.
407 The function call-with-dynamic-root now essentially temporarily
408 installs a new dynamic state and errects a continuation barrier.
410 ** The default load path no longer includes "." at the end.
412 Automatically loading modules from the current directory should not
413 happen by default. If you want to allow it in a more controlled
414 manner, set the environment variable GUILE_LOAD_PATH or the Scheme
417 ** The uniform vector and array support has been overhauled.
419 It now complies with SRFI-4 and the weird prototype based uniform
420 array creation has been deprecated. See the manual for more details.
422 Some non-compatible changes have been made:
423 - characters can no longer be stored into byte arrays.
424 - strings and bit vectors are no longer considered to be uniform numeric
426 - array-rank throws an error for non-arrays instead of returning zero.
427 - array-ref does no longer accept non-arrays when no indices are given.
429 There is the new notion of 'generalized vectors' and corresponding
430 procedures like 'generalized-vector-ref'. Generalized vectors include
431 strings, bitvectors, ordinary vectors, and uniform numeric vectors.
433 Arrays use generalized vectors as their storage, so that you still
434 have arrays of characters, bits, etc. However, uniform-array-read!
435 and uniform-array-write can no longer read/write strings and
438 ** There is now support for copy-on-write substrings, mutation-sharing
439 substrings and read-only strings.
441 Three new procedures are related to this: substring/shared,
442 substring/copy, and substring/read-only. See the manual for more
445 ** Backtraces will now highlight the value that caused the error.
447 By default, these values are enclosed in "{...}", such as in this
456 <unnamed port>:1:1: In procedure car in expression (car (quote a)):
457 <unnamed port>:1:1: Wrong type (expecting pair): a
458 ABORT: (wrong-type-arg)
460 The prefix and suffix used for highlighting can be set via the two new
461 printer options 'highlight-prefix' and 'highlight-suffix'. For
462 example, putting this into ~/.guile will output the bad value in bold
465 (print-set! highlight-prefix "\x1b[1m")
466 (print-set! highlight-suffix "\x1b[22m")
469 ** 'gettext' support for internationalization has been added.
471 See the manual for details.
473 ** New syntax '@' and '@@':
475 You can now directly refer to variables exported from a module by
478 (@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)
480 For example (@ (ice-9 pretty-print) pretty-print) will directly access
481 the pretty-print variable exported from the (ice-9 pretty-print)
482 module. You don't need to 'use' that module first. You can also use
483 '@' as a target of 'set!', as in (set! (@ mod var) val).
485 The related syntax (@@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME) works just like '@',
486 but it can also access variables that have not been exported. It is
487 intended only for kluges and temporary fixes and for debugging, not
490 ** Keyword syntax has been made more disciplined.
492 Previously, the name of a keyword was read as a 'token' but printed as
493 a symbol. Now, it is read as a general Scheme datum which must be a
504 ERROR: In expression (a b c):
508 ERROR: Unbound variable: foo
513 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): 12
517 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): (a b c)
521 ** The printing of symbols that might look like keywords can be
524 The new printer option 'quote-keywordish-symbols' controls how symbols
525 are printed that have a colon as their first or last character. The
526 default now is to only quote a symbol with #{...}# when the read
527 option 'keywords' is not '#f'. Thus:
529 guile> (define foo (string->symbol ":foo"))
530 guile> (read-set! keywords #f)
533 guile> (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
536 guile> (print-set! quote-keywordish-symbols #f)
540 ** 'while' now provides 'break' and 'continue'
542 break and continue were previously bound in a while loop, but not
543 documented, and continue didn't quite work properly. The undocumented
544 parameter to break which gave a return value for the while has been
547 ** 'call-with-current-continuation' is now also available under the name
550 ** The module system now checks for duplicate bindings.
552 The module system now can check for name conflicts among imported
555 The behavior can be controlled by specifying one or more 'duplicates'
556 handlers. For example, to make Guile return an error for every name
564 The new default behavior of the module system when a name collision
565 has been detected is to
567 1. Give priority to bindings marked as a replacement.
568 2. Issue a warning (different warning if overriding core binding).
569 3. Give priority to the last encountered binding (this corresponds to
572 If you want the old behavior back without replacements or warnings you
575 (default-duplicate-binding-handler 'last)
577 to your .guile init file.
579 ** New define-module option: :replace
581 :replace works as :export, but, in addition, marks the binding as a
584 A typical example is `format' in (ice-9 format) which is a replacement
585 for the core binding `format'.
587 ** Adding prefixes to imported bindings in the module system
589 There is now a new :use-module option :prefix. It can be used to add
590 a prefix to all imported bindings.
593 :use-module ((bar) :prefix bar:))
595 will import all bindings exported from bar, but rename them by adding
598 ** Conflicting generic functions can be automatically merged.
600 When two imported bindings conflict and they are both generic
601 functions, the two functions can now be merged automatically. This is
602 activated with the 'duplicates' handler 'merge-generics'.
604 ** New function: effective-version
606 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
607 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
608 to the distribution" above.
610 ** New threading functions: parallel, letpar, par-map, and friends
612 These are convenient ways to run calculations in parallel in new
613 threads. See "Parallel forms" in the manual for details.
615 ** New function 'try-mutex'.
617 This function will attempt to lock a mutex but will return immediately
618 instead of blocking and indicate failure.
620 ** Waiting on a condition variable can have a timeout.
622 The function 'wait-condition-variable' now takes a third, optional
623 argument that specifies the point in time where the waiting should be
626 ** New function 'broadcast-condition-variable'.
628 ** New functions 'all-threads' and 'current-thread'.
630 ** Signals and system asyncs work better with threads.
632 The function 'sigaction' now takes a fourth, optional, argument that
633 specifies the thread that the handler should run in. When the
634 argument is omitted, the handler will run in the thread that called
637 Likewise, 'system-async-mark' takes a second, optional, argument that
638 specifies the thread that the async should run in. When it is
639 omitted, the async will run in the thread that called
642 C code can use the new functions scm_sigaction_for_thread and
643 scm_system_async_mark_for_thread to pass the new thread argument.
645 When a thread blocks on a mutex, a condition variable or is waiting
646 for IO to be possible, it will still execute system asyncs. This can
647 be used to interrupt such a thread by making it execute a 'throw', for
650 ** The function 'system-async' is deprecated.
652 You can now pass any zero-argument procedure to 'system-async-mark'.
653 The function 'system-async' will just return its argument unchanged
656 ** New functions 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' and
657 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
659 The expression (call-with-blocked-asyncs PROC) will call PROC and will
660 block execution of system asyncs for the current thread by one level
661 while PROC runs. Likewise, call-with-unblocked-asyncs will call a
662 procedure and will unblock the execution of system asyncs by one
663 level for the current thread.
665 Only system asyncs are affected by these functions.
667 ** The functions 'mask-signals' and 'unmask-signals' are deprecated.
669 Use 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' or 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
670 instead. Those functions are easier to use correctly and can be
673 ** New function 'unsetenv'.
675 ** New macro 'define-syntax-public'.
677 It works like 'define-syntax' and also exports the defined macro (but
680 ** There is support for Infinity and NaNs.
682 Following PLT Scheme, Guile can now work with infinite numbers, and
685 There is new syntax for numbers: "+inf.0" (infinity), "-inf.0"
686 (negative infinity), "+nan.0" (not-a-number), and "-nan.0" (same as
687 "+nan.0"). These numbers are inexact and have no exact counterpart.
689 Dividing by an inexact zero returns +inf.0 or -inf.0, depending on the
690 sign of the dividend. The infinities are integers, and they answer #t
691 for both 'even?' and 'odd?'. The +nan.0 value is not an integer and is
692 not '=' to itself, but '+nan.0' is 'eqv?' to itself.
703 ERROR: Numerical overflow
705 Two new predicates 'inf?' and 'nan?' can be used to test for the
708 ** Inexact zero can have a sign.
710 Guile can now distinguish between plus and minus inexact zero, if your
711 platform supports this, too. The two zeros are equal according to
712 '=', but not according to 'eqv?'. For example
723 ** Guile now has exact rationals.
725 Guile can now represent fractions such as 1/3 exactly. Computing with
726 them is also done exactly, of course:
731 ** 'floor', 'ceiling', 'round' and 'truncate' now return exact numbers
734 For example: (floor 2) now returns an exact 2 where in the past it
735 returned an inexact 2.0. Likewise, (floor 5/4) returns an exact 1.
737 ** inexact->exact no longer returns only integers.
739 Without exact rationals, the closest exact number was always an
740 integer, but now inexact->exact returns the fraction that is exactly
741 equal to a floating point number. For example:
743 (inexact->exact 1.234)
744 => 694680242521899/562949953421312
746 When you want the old behavior, use 'round' explicitly:
748 (inexact->exact (round 1.234))
751 ** New function 'rationalize'.
753 This function finds a simple fraction that is close to a given real
754 number. For example (and compare with inexact->exact above):
756 (rationalize (inexact->exact 1.234) 1/2000)
759 Note that, as required by R5RS, rationalize returns only then an exact
760 result when both its arguments are exact.
762 ** 'odd?' and 'even?' work also for inexact integers.
764 Previously, (odd? 1.0) would signal an error since only exact integers
765 were recognized as integers. Now (odd? 1.0) returns #t, (odd? 2.0)
766 returns #f and (odd? 1.5) signals an error.
768 ** Guile now has uninterned symbols.
770 The new function 'make-symbol' will return an uninterned symbol. This
771 is a symbol that is unique and is guaranteed to remain unique.
772 However, uninterned symbols can not yet be read back in.
774 Use the new function 'symbol-interned?' to check whether a symbol is
777 ** pretty-print has more options.
779 The function pretty-print from the (ice-9 pretty-print) module can now
780 also be invoked with keyword arguments that control things like
781 maximum output width. See the manual for details.
783 ** Variables have no longer a special behavior for `equal?'.
785 Previously, comparing two variables with `equal?' would recursivly
786 compare their values. This is no longer done. Variables are now only
787 `equal?' if they are `eq?'.
789 ** `(begin)' is now valid.
791 You can now use an empty `begin' form. It will yield #<unspecified>
792 when evaluated and simply be ignored in a definition context.
794 ** Deprecated: procedure->macro
796 Change your code to use 'define-macro' or r5rs macros. Also, be aware
797 that macro expansion will not be done during evaluation, but prior to
800 ** Soft ports now allow a `char-ready?' procedure
802 The vector argument to `make-soft-port' can now have a length of
803 either 5 or 6. (Previously the length had to be 5.) The optional 6th
804 element is interpreted as an `input-waiting' thunk -- i.e. a thunk
805 that returns the number of characters that can be read immediately
806 without the soft port blocking.
808 ** Deprecated: undefine
810 There is no replacement for undefine.
812 ** The functions make-keyword-from-dash-symbol and keyword-dash-symbol
813 have been discouraged.
815 They are relics from a time where a keyword like #:foo was used
816 directly as a Tcl option "-foo" and thus keywords were internally
817 stored as a symbol with a starting dash. We now store a symbol
820 Use symbol->keyword and keyword->symbol instead.
822 ** The `cheap' debug option is now obsolete
824 Evaluator trap calls are now unconditionally "cheap" - in other words,
825 they pass a debug object to the trap handler rather than a full
826 continuation. The trap handler code can capture a full continuation
827 by using `call-with-current-continuation' in the usual way, if it so
830 The `cheap' option is retained for now so as not to break existing
831 code which gets or sets it, but setting it now has no effect. It will
832 be removed in the next major Guile release.
834 ** Evaluator trap calls now support `tweaking'
836 `Tweaking' means that the trap handler code can modify the Scheme
837 expression that is about to be evaluated (in the case of an
838 enter-frame trap) or the value that is being returned (in the case of
839 an exit-frame trap). The trap handler code indicates that it wants to
840 do this by returning a pair whose car is the symbol 'instead and whose
841 cdr is the modified expression or return value.
843 * Changes to the C interface
845 ** The functions scm_hash_fn_remove_x and scm_hashx_remove_x no longer
846 take a 'delete' function argument.
848 This argument makes no sense since the delete function is used to
849 remove a pair from an alist, and this must not be configurable.
851 This is an incompatible change.
853 ** The GH interface is now subject to the deprecation mechanism
855 The GH interface has been deprecated for quite some time but now it is
856 actually removed from Guile when it is configured with
857 --disable-deprecated.
859 See the manual "Transitioning away from GH" for more information.
861 ** A new family of functions for converting between C values and
862 Scheme values has been added.
864 These functions follow a common naming scheme and are designed to be
865 easier to use, thread-safe and more future-proof than the older
870 These are predicates that return a C boolean: 1 or 0. Instead of
871 SCM_NFALSEP, you can now use scm_is_true, for example.
873 - <type> scm_to_<type> (SCM val, ...)
875 These are functions that convert a Scheme value into an appropriate
876 C value. For example, you can use scm_to_int to safely convert from
879 - SCM scm_from_<type> (<type> val, ...)
881 These functions convert from a C type to a SCM value; for example,
882 scm_from_int for ints.
884 There is a huge number of these functions, for numbers, strings,
885 symbols, vectors, etc. They are documented in the reference manual in
886 the API section together with the types that they apply to.
888 ** New functions for dealing with complex numbers in C have been added.
890 The new functions are scm_c_make_rectangular, scm_c_make_polar,
891 scm_c_real_part, scm_c_imag_part, scm_c_magnitude and scm_c_angle.
892 They work like scm_make_rectangular etc but take or return doubles
895 ** The function scm_make_complex has been discouraged.
897 Use scm_c_make_rectangular instead.
899 ** The INUM macros have been deprecated.
901 A lot of code uses these macros to do general integer conversions,
902 although the macros only work correctly with fixnums. Use the
903 following alternatives.
905 SCM_INUMP -> scm_is_integer or similar
906 SCM_NINUMP -> !scm_is_integer or similar
907 SCM_MAKINUM -> scm_from_int or similar
908 SCM_INUM -> scm_to_int or similar
910 SCM_VALIDATE_INUM_* -> Do not use these; scm_to_int, etc. will
911 do the validating for you.
913 ** The scm_num2<type> and scm_<type>2num functions and scm_make_real
914 have been discouraged.
916 Use the newer scm_to_<type> and scm_from_<type> functions instead for
917 new code. The functions have been discouraged since they don't fit
920 ** The 'boolean' macros SCM_FALSEP etc have been discouraged.
922 They have strange names, especially SCM_NFALSEP, and SCM_BOOLP
923 evaluates its argument twice. Use scm_is_true, etc. instead for new
926 ** The macro SCM_EQ_P has been discouraged.
928 Use scm_is_eq for new code, which fits better into the naming
931 ** The macros SCM_CONSP, SCM_NCONSP, SCM_NULLP, and SCM_NNULLP have
934 Use the function scm_is_pair or scm_is_null instead.
936 ** The functions scm_round and scm_truncate have been deprecated and
937 are now available as scm_c_round and scm_c_truncate, respectively.
939 These functions occupy the names that scm_round_number and
940 scm_truncate_number should have.
942 ** The functions scm_c_string2str, scm_c_substring2str, and
943 scm_c_symbol2str have been deprecated.
945 Use scm_to_locale_stringbuf or similar instead, maybe together with
948 ** New functions scm_c_make_string, scm_c_string_length,
949 scm_c_string_ref, scm_c_string_set_x, scm_c_substring,
950 scm_c_substring_shared, scm_c_substring_copy.
952 These are like scm_make_string, scm_length, etc. but are slightly
953 easier to use from C.
955 ** The macros SCM_STRINGP, SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_STRING_LENGTH,
956 SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, and SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH have been deprecated.
958 They export too many assumptions about the implementation of strings
959 and symbols that are no longer true in the presence of
960 mutation-sharing substrings and when Guile switches to some form of
963 When working with strings, it is often best to use the normal string
964 functions provided by Guile, such as scm_c_string_ref,
965 scm_c_string_set_x, scm_string_append, etc. Be sure to look in the
966 manual since many more such functions are now provided than
969 When you want to convert a SCM string to a C string, use the
970 scm_to_locale_string function or similar instead. For symbols, use
971 scm_symbol_to_string and then work with that string. Because of the
972 new string representation, scm_symbol_to_string does not need to copy
973 and is thus quite efficient.
975 ** Some string, symbol and keyword functions have been discouraged.
977 They don't fit into the uniform naming scheme and are not explicit
978 about the character encoding.
980 Replace according to the following table:
982 scm_allocate_string -> scm_c_make_string
983 scm_take_str -> scm_take_locale_stringn
984 scm_take0str -> scm_take_locale_string
985 scm_mem2string -> scm_from_locale_stringn
986 scm_str2string -> scm_from_locale_string
987 scm_makfrom0str -> scm_from_locale_string
988 scm_mem2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symboln
989 scm_mem2uninterned_symbol -> scm_from_locale_stringn + scm_make_symbol
990 scm_str2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symbol
992 SCM_SYMBOL_HASH -> scm_hashq
993 SCM_SYMBOL_INTERNED_P -> scm_symbol_interned_p
995 scm_c_make_keyword -> scm_from_locale_keyword
997 ** The functions scm_keyword_to_symbol and sym_symbol_to_keyword are
998 now also available to C code.
1000 ** SCM_KEYWORDP and SCM_KEYWORDSYM have been deprecated.
1002 Use scm_is_keyword and scm_keyword_to_symbol instead, but note that
1003 the latter returns the true name of the keyword, not the 'dash name',
1004 as SCM_KEYWORDSYM used to do.
1006 ** A new way to access arrays in a thread-safe and efficient way has
1009 See the manual, node "Accessing Arrays From C".
1011 ** The old uniform vector and bitvector implementations have been
1012 unceremoniously removed.
1014 This implementation exposed the details of the tagging system of
1015 Guile. Use the new C API explained in the manual in node "Uniform
1016 Numeric Vectors" and "Bit Vectors", respectively.
1018 The following macros are gone: SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE,
1019 SCM_UVECTOR_MAXLENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_UVECTOR_TAG,
1020 SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVECTOR_P, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE,
1021 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
1022 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_BITVECTOR_TAG,
1023 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVEC_REF, SCM_BITVEC_SET,
1026 ** The macros dealing with vectors have been deprecated.
1028 Use the new functions scm_is_vector, scm_vector_elements,
1029 scm_vector_writable_elements, etc, or scm_is_simple_vector,
1030 SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_REF, SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_SET, etc instead. See the
1031 manual for more details.
1033 Deprecated are SCM_VECTORP, SCM_VELTS, SCM_VECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
1034 SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_REF, SCM_VECTOR_SET, SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS.
1036 The following macros have been removed: SCM_VECTOR_BASE,
1037 SCM_SET_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_MAKE_VECTOR_TAG, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH,
1038 SCM_VELTS_AS_STACKITEMS, SCM_SETVELTS, SCM_GC_WRITABLE_VELTS.
1040 ** Some C functions and macros related to arrays have been deprecated.
1042 Migrate according to the following table:
1044 scm_make_uve -> scm_make_typed_array, scm_make_u8vector etc.
1045 scm_make_ra -> scm_make_array
1046 scm_shap2ra -> scm_make_array
1047 scm_cvref -> scm_c_generalized_vector_ref
1048 scm_ra_set_contp -> do not use
1049 scm_aind -> scm_array_handle_pos
1050 scm_raprin1 -> scm_display or scm_write
1052 SCM_ARRAYP -> scm_is_array
1053 SCM_ARRAY_NDIM -> scm_c_array_rank
1054 SCM_ARRAY_DIMS -> scm_array_handle_dims
1055 SCM_ARRAY_CONTP -> do not use
1056 SCM_ARRAY_MEM -> do not use
1057 SCM_ARRAY_V -> scm_array_handle_elements or similar
1058 SCM_ARRAY_BASE -> do not use
1060 ** SCM_CELL_WORD_LOC has been deprecated.
1062 Use the new macro SCM_CELL_OBJECT_LOC instead, which returns a pointer
1063 to a SCM, as opposed to a pointer to a scm_t_bits.
1065 This was done to allow the correct use of pointers into the Scheme
1066 heap. Previously, the heap words were of type scm_t_bits and local
1067 variables and function arguments were of type SCM, making it
1068 non-standards-conformant to have a pointer that can point to both.
1070 ** New macros SCM_SMOB_DATA_2, SCM_SMOB_DATA_3, etc.
1072 These macros should be used instead of SCM_CELL_WORD_2/3 to access the
1073 second and third words of double smobs. Likewise for
1074 SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_2 and SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_3.
1076 Also, there is SCM_SMOB_FLAGS and SCM_SET_SMOB_FLAGS that should be
1077 used to get and set the 16 exra bits in the zeroth word of a smob.
1079 And finally, there is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT and SCM_SMOB_SET_OBJECT for
1080 accesing the first immediate word of a smob as a SCM value, and there
1081 is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_LOC for getting a pointer to the first immediate
1082 smob word. Like wise for SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_2, etc.
1084 ** New way to deal with non-local exits and re-entries.
1086 There is a new set of functions that essentially do what
1087 scm_internal_dynamic_wind does, but in a way that is more convenient
1088 for C code in some situations. Here is a quick example of how to
1089 prevent a potential memory leak:
1096 scm_dynwind_begin (0);
1098 mem = scm_malloc (100);
1099 scm_dynwind_unwind_handler (free, mem, SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY);
1101 /* MEM would leak if BAR throws an error.
1102 SCM_DYNWIND_UNWIND_HANDLER frees it nevertheless.
1109 /* Because of SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY, MEM will be freed by
1110 SCM_DYNWIND_END as well.
1114 For full documentation, see the node "Dynamic Wind" in the manual.
1116 ** New function scm_dynwind_free
1118 This function calls 'free' on a given pointer when a dynwind context
1119 is left. Thus the call to scm_dynwind_unwind_handler above could be
1120 replaced with simply scm_dynwind_free (mem).
1122 ** New functions scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
1123 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs
1125 Like scm_call_with_blocked_asyncs etc. but for C functions.
1127 ** New functions scm_dynwind_block_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs
1129 In addition to scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs you can now also use
1130 scm_dynwind_block_asyncs in a 'dynwind context' (see above). Likewise for
1131 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs.
1133 ** The macros SCM_DEFER_INTS, SCM_ALLOW_INTS, SCM_REDEFER_INTS,
1134 SCM_REALLOW_INTS have been deprecated.
1136 They do no longer fulfill their original role of blocking signal
1137 delivery. Depending on what you want to achieve, replace a pair of
1138 SCM_DEFER_INTS and SCM_ALLOW_INTS with a dynwind context that locks a
1139 mutex, blocks asyncs, or both. See node "Critical Sections" in the
1142 ** The value 'scm_mask_ints' is no longer writable.
1144 Previously, you could set scm_mask_ints directly. This is no longer
1145 possible. Use scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
1146 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs instead.
1148 ** New way to temporarily set the current input, output or error ports
1150 C code can now use scm_dynwind_current_<foo>_port in a 'dynwind
1151 context' (see above). <foo> is one of "input", "output" or "error".
1153 ** New way to temporarily set fluids
1155 C code can now use scm_dynwind_fluid in a 'dynwind context' (see
1156 above) to temporarily set the value of a fluid.
1158 ** New types scm_t_intmax and scm_t_uintmax.
1160 On platforms that have them, these types are identical to intmax_t and
1161 uintmax_t, respectively. On other platforms, they are identical to
1162 the largest integer types that Guile knows about.
1164 ** The functions scm_unmemocopy and scm_unmemoize have been removed.
1166 You should not have used them.
1168 ** Many public #defines with generic names have been made private.
1170 #defines with generic names like HAVE_FOO or SIZEOF_FOO have been made
1171 private or renamed with a more suitable public name.
1173 ** The macro SCM_TYP16S has been deprecated.
1175 This macro is not intended for public use.
1177 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_INEXACTP has been deprecated.
1179 Use scm_is_true (scm_inexact_p (...)) instead.
1181 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_REALP has been deprecated.
1183 Use scm_is_real instead.
1185 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_COMPLEXP has been deprecated.
1187 Use scm_is_complex instead.
1189 ** Some preprocessor defines have been deprecated.
1191 These defines indicated whether a certain feature was present in Guile
1192 or not. Going forward, assume that the features are always present.
1194 The macros are: USE_THREADS, GUILE_ISELECT, READER_EXTENSIONS,
1195 DEBUG_EXTENSIONS, DYNAMIC_LINKING.
1197 The following macros have been removed completely: MEMOIZE_LOCALS,
1198 SCM_RECKLESS, SCM_CAUTIOUS.
1200 ** The preprocessor define STACK_DIRECTION has been deprecated.
1202 There should be no need to know about the stack direction for ordinary
1205 ** New function: scm_effective_version
1207 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
1208 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
1209 to the distribution" above.
1211 ** The function scm_call_with_new_thread has a new prototype.
1213 Instead of taking a list with the thunk and handler, these two
1214 arguments are now passed directly:
1216 SCM scm_call_with_new_thread (SCM thunk, SCM handler);
1218 This is an incompatible change.
1220 ** New snarfer macro SCM_DEFINE_PUBLIC.
1222 This is like SCM_DEFINE, but also calls scm_c_export for the defined
1223 function in the init section.
1225 ** The snarfer macro SCM_SNARF_INIT is now officially supported.
1227 ** Garbage collector rewrite.
1229 The garbage collector is cleaned up a lot, and now uses lazy
1230 sweeping. This is reflected in the output of (gc-stats); since cells
1231 are being freed when they are allocated, the cells-allocated field
1232 stays roughly constant.
1234 For malloc related triggers, the behavior is changed. It uses the same
1235 heuristic as the cell-triggered collections. It may be tuned with the
1236 environment variables GUILE_MIN_YIELD_MALLOC. This is the percentage
1237 for minimum yield of malloc related triggers. The default is 40.
1238 GUILE_INIT_MALLOC_LIMIT sets the initial trigger for doing a GC. The
1241 Debugging operations for the freelist have been deprecated, along with
1242 the C variables that control garbage collection. The environment
1243 variables GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE, GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2,
1244 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1, and GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2 should be used.
1246 For understanding the memory usage of a GUILE program, the routine
1247 gc-live-object-stats returns an alist containing the number of live
1248 objects for every type.
1251 ** The function scm_definedp has been renamed to scm_defined_p
1253 The name scm_definedp is deprecated.
1255 ** The struct scm_cell type has been renamed to scm_t_cell
1257 This is in accordance to Guile's naming scheme for types. Note that
1258 the name scm_cell is now used for a function that allocates and
1259 initializes a new cell (see below).
1261 ** New functions for memory management
1263 A new set of functions for memory management has been added since the
1264 old way (scm_must_malloc, scm_must_free, etc) was error prone and
1265 indeed, Guile itself contained some long standing bugs that could
1266 cause aborts in long running programs.
1268 The new functions are more symmetrical and do not need cooperation
1269 from smob free routines, among other improvements.
1271 The new functions are scm_malloc, scm_realloc, scm_calloc, scm_strdup,
1272 scm_strndup, scm_gc_malloc, scm_gc_calloc, scm_gc_realloc,
1273 scm_gc_free, scm_gc_register_collectable_memory, and
1274 scm_gc_unregister_collectable_memory. Refer to the manual for more
1275 details and for upgrading instructions.
1277 The old functions for memory management have been deprecated. They
1278 are: scm_must_malloc, scm_must_realloc, scm_must_free,
1279 scm_must_strdup, scm_must_strndup, scm_done_malloc, scm_done_free.
1281 ** Declarations of exported features are marked with SCM_API.
1283 Every declaration of a feature that belongs to the exported Guile API
1284 has been marked by adding the macro "SCM_API" to the start of the
1285 declaration. This macro can expand into different things, the most
1286 common of which is just "extern" for Unix platforms. On Win32, it can
1287 be used to control which symbols are exported from a DLL.
1289 If you `#define SCM_IMPORT' before including <libguile.h>, SCM_API
1290 will expand into "__declspec (dllimport) extern", which is needed for
1291 linking to the Guile DLL in Windows.
1293 There are also SCM_RL_IMPORT, SCM_SRFI1314_IMPORT, and
1294 SCM_SRFI4_IMPORT, for the corresponding libraries.
1296 ** SCM_NEWCELL and SCM_NEWCELL2 have been deprecated.
1298 Use the new functions scm_cell and scm_double_cell instead. The old
1299 macros had problems because with them allocation and initialization
1300 was separated and the GC could sometimes observe half initialized
1301 cells. Only careful coding by the user of SCM_NEWCELL and
1302 SCM_NEWCELL2 could make this safe and efficient.
1304 ** CHECK_ENTRY, CHECK_APPLY and CHECK_EXIT have been deprecated.
1306 Use the variables scm_check_entry_p, scm_check_apply_p and scm_check_exit_p
1309 ** SRCBRKP has been deprecated.
1311 Use scm_c_source_property_breakpoint_p instead.
1313 ** Deprecated: scm_makmacro
1315 Change your code to use either scm_makmmacro or to define macros in
1316 Scheme, using 'define-macro'.
1318 ** New function scm_c_port_for_each.
1320 This function is like scm_port_for_each but takes a pointer to a C
1321 function as the callback instead of a SCM value.
1323 ** The names scm_internal_select, scm_thread_sleep, and
1324 scm_thread_usleep have been discouraged.
1326 Use scm_std_select, scm_std_sleep, scm_std_usleep instead.
1328 ** The GC can no longer be blocked.
1330 The global flags scm_gc_heap_lock and scm_block_gc have been removed.
1331 The GC can now run (partially) concurrently with other code and thus
1332 blocking it is not well defined.
1334 ** Many definitions have been removed that were previously deprecated.
1336 scm_lisp_nil, scm_lisp_t, s_nil_ify, scm_m_nil_ify, s_t_ify,
1337 scm_m_t_ify, s_0_cond, scm_m_0_cond, s_0_ify, scm_m_0_ify, s_1_ify,
1338 scm_m_1_ify, scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2,
1339 scm_tc16_allocated, SCM_SET_SYMBOL_HASH, SCM_IM_NIL_IFY, SCM_IM_T_IFY,
1340 SCM_IM_0_COND, SCM_IM_0_IFY, SCM_IM_1_IFY, SCM_GC_SET_ALLOCATED,
1341 scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL, SCM_INT_SIGNAL,
1342 SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL, SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL,
1343 SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD, SCM_ORD_SIG,
1344 SCM_NUM_SIGS, scm_top_level_lookup_closure_var,
1345 *top-level-lookup-closure*, scm_system_transformer, scm_eval_3,
1346 scm_eval2, root_module_lookup_closure, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
1347 SCM_RWSTRINGP, scm_read_only_string_p, scm_make_shared_substring,
1348 scm_tc7_substring, sym_huh, SCM_VARVCELL, SCM_UDVARIABLEP,
1349 SCM_DEFVARIABLEP, scm_mkbig, scm_big2inum, scm_adjbig, scm_normbig,
1350 scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl, SCM_FIXNUM_BIT,
1351 SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_SLOPPY_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET,
1352 SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_ROLENGTH,
1353 SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
1354 scm_sym2vcell, scm_intern, scm_intern0, scm_sysintern, scm_sysintern0,
1355 scm_sysintern0_no_module_lookup, scm_init_symbols_deprecated,
1356 scm_vector_set_length_x, scm_contregs, scm_debug_info,
1357 scm_debug_frame, SCM_DSIDEVAL, SCM_CONST_LONG, SCM_VCELL,
1358 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL, SCM_VCELL_INIT, SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL_INIT,
1359 SCM_HUGE_LENGTH, SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING,
1360 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY, SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY,
1361 SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, DIGITS, scm_small_istr2int, scm_istr2int,
1362 scm_istr2flo, scm_istring2number, scm_istr2int, scm_istr2flo,
1363 scm_istring2number, scm_vtable_index_vcell, scm_si_vcell, SCM_ECONSP,
1364 SCM_NECONSP, SCM_GLOC_VAR, SCM_GLOC_VAL, SCM_GLOC_SET_VAL,
1365 SCM_GLOC_VAL_LOC, scm_make_gloc, scm_gloc_p, scm_tc16_variable,
1366 SCM_CHARS, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH.
1368 * Changes to bundled modules
1372 Using the (ice-9 debug) module no longer automatically switches Guile
1373 to use the debugging evaluator. If you want to switch to the
1374 debugging evaluator (which is needed for backtrace information if you
1375 hit an error), please add an explicit "(debug-enable 'debug)" to your
1376 code just after the code to use (ice-9 debug).
1379 Changes since Guile 1.4:
1381 * Changes to the distribution
1383 ** A top-level TODO file is included.
1385 ** Guile now uses a versioning scheme similar to that of the Linux kernel.
1387 Guile now always uses three numbers to represent the version,
1388 i.e. "1.6.5". The first number, 1, is the major version number, the
1389 second number, 6, is the minor version number, and the third number,
1390 5, is the micro version number. Changes in major version number
1391 indicate major changes in Guile.
1393 Minor version numbers that are even denote stable releases, and odd
1394 minor version numbers denote development versions (which may be
1395 unstable). The micro version number indicates a minor sub-revision of
1396 a given MAJOR.MINOR release.
1398 In keeping with the new scheme, (minor-version) and scm_minor_version
1399 no longer return everything but the major version number. They now
1400 just return the minor version number. Two new functions
1401 (micro-version) and scm_micro_version have been added to report the
1402 micro version number.
1404 In addition, ./GUILE-VERSION now defines GUILE_MICRO_VERSION.
1406 ** New preprocessor definitions are available for checking versions.
1408 version.h now #defines SCM_MAJOR_VERSION, SCM_MINOR_VERSION, and
1409 SCM_MICRO_VERSION to the appropriate integer values.
1411 ** Guile now actively warns about deprecated features.
1413 The new configure option `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' and the
1414 environment variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED control this mechanism.
1415 See INSTALL and README for more information.
1417 ** Guile is much more likely to work on 64-bit architectures.
1419 Guile now compiles and passes "make check" with only two UNRESOLVED GC
1420 cases on Alpha and ia64 based machines now. Thanks to John Goerzen
1421 for the use of a test machine, and thanks to Stefan Jahn for ia64
1424 ** New functions: setitimer and getitimer.
1426 These implement a fairly direct interface to the libc functions of the
1429 ** The #. reader extension is now disabled by default.
1431 For safety reasons, #. evaluation is disabled by default. To
1432 re-enable it, set the fluid read-eval? to #t. For example:
1434 (fluid-set! read-eval? #t)
1436 but make sure you realize the potential security risks involved. With
1437 read-eval? enabled, reading a data file from an untrusted source can
1440 ** New SRFI modules have been added:
1442 SRFI-0 `cond-expand' is now supported in Guile, without requiring
1445 (srfi srfi-1) is a library containing many useful pair- and list-processing
1448 (srfi srfi-2) exports and-let*.
1450 (srfi srfi-4) implements homogeneous numeric vector datatypes.
1452 (srfi srfi-6) is a dummy module for now, since guile already provides
1453 all of the srfi-6 procedures by default: open-input-string,
1454 open-output-string, get-output-string.
1456 (srfi srfi-8) exports receive.
1458 (srfi srfi-9) exports define-record-type.
1460 (srfi srfi-10) exports define-reader-ctor and implements the reader
1463 (srfi srfi-11) exports let-values and let*-values.
1465 (srfi srfi-13) implements the SRFI String Library.
1467 (srfi srfi-14) implements the SRFI Character-Set Library.
1469 (srfi srfi-17) implements setter and getter-with-setter and redefines
1470 some accessor procedures as procedures with getters. (such as car,
1471 cdr, vector-ref etc.)
1473 (srfi srfi-19) implements the SRFI Time/Date Library.
1475 ** New scripts / "executable modules"
1477 Subdirectory "scripts" contains Scheme modules that are packaged to
1478 also be executable as scripts. At this time, these scripts are available:
1487 See README there for more info.
1489 These scripts can be invoked from the shell with the new program
1490 "guile-tools", which keeps track of installation directory for you.
1493 $ guile-tools display-commentary srfi/*.scm
1495 guile-tools is copied to the standard $bindir on "make install".
1497 ** New module (ice-9 stack-catch):
1499 stack-catch is like catch, but saves the current state of the stack in
1500 the fluid the-last-stack. This fluid can be useful when using the
1501 debugger and when re-throwing an error.
1503 ** The module (ice-9 and-let*) has been renamed to (ice-9 and-let-star)
1505 This has been done to prevent problems on lesser operating systems
1506 that can't tolerate `*'s in file names. The exported macro continues
1507 to be named `and-let*', of course.
1509 On systems that support it, there is also a compatibility module named
1510 (ice-9 and-let*). It will go away in the next release.
1512 ** New modules (oop goops) etc.:
1515 (oop goops describe)
1517 (oop goops active-slot)
1518 (oop goops composite-slot)
1520 The Guile Object Oriented Programming System (GOOPS) has been
1521 integrated into Guile. For further information, consult the GOOPS
1522 manual and tutorial in the `doc' directory.
1524 ** New module (ice-9 rdelim).
1526 This exports the following procedures which were previously defined
1527 in the default environment:
1529 read-line read-line! read-delimited read-delimited! %read-delimited!
1530 %read-line write-line
1532 For backwards compatibility the definitions are still imported into the
1533 default environment in this version of Guile. However you should add:
1535 (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim))
1537 to any program which uses the definitions, since this may change in
1540 Alternatively, if guile-scsh is installed, the (scsh rdelim) module
1541 can be used for similar functionality.
1543 ** New module (ice-9 rw)
1545 This is a subset of the (scsh rw) module from guile-scsh. Currently
1546 it defines two procedures:
1548 *** New function: read-string!/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
1550 Read characters from a port or file descriptor into a string STR.
1551 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
1552 fport. This procedure is scsh-compatible and can efficiently read
1555 *** New function: write-string/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
1557 Write characters from a string STR to a port or file descriptor.
1558 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
1559 fport. This procedure is mostly compatible and can efficiently
1560 write large strings.
1562 ** New module (ice-9 match)
1564 This module includes Andrew K. Wright's pattern matcher. See
1565 ice-9/match.scm for brief description or
1567 http://www.star-lab.com/wright/code.html
1569 for complete documentation.
1571 ** New module (ice-9 buffered-input)
1573 This module provides procedures to construct an input port from an
1574 underlying source of input that reads and returns its input in chunks.
1575 The underlying input source is a Scheme procedure, specified by the
1576 caller, which the port invokes whenever it needs more input.
1578 This is useful when building an input port whose back end is Readline
1579 or a UI element such as the GtkEntry widget.
1583 The reference and tutorial documentation that was previously
1584 distributed separately, as `guile-doc', is now included in the core
1585 Guile distribution. The documentation consists of the following
1588 - The Guile Tutorial (guile-tut.texi) contains a tutorial introduction
1591 - The Guile Reference Manual (guile.texi) contains (or is intended to
1592 contain) reference documentation on all aspects of Guile.
1594 - The GOOPS Manual (goops.texi) contains both tutorial-style and
1595 reference documentation for using GOOPS, Guile's Object Oriented
1598 - The Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
1601 See the README file in the `doc' directory for more details.
1603 ** There are a couple of examples in the examples/ directory now.
1605 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
1607 ** New command line option `--use-srfi'
1609 Using this option, SRFI modules can be loaded on startup and be
1610 available right from the beginning. This makes programming portable
1611 Scheme programs easier.
1613 The option `--use-srfi' expects a comma-separated list of numbers,
1614 each representing a SRFI number to be loaded into the interpreter
1615 before starting evaluating a script file or the REPL. Additionally,
1616 the feature identifier for the loaded SRFIs is recognized by
1617 `cond-expand' when using this option.
1620 $ guile --use-srfi=8,13
1621 guile> (receive (x z) (values 1 2) (+ 1 2))
1623 guile> (string-pad "bla" 20)
1626 ** Guile now always starts up in the `(guile-user)' module.
1628 Previously, scripts executed via the `-s' option would run in the
1629 `(guile)' module and the repl would run in the `(guile-user)' module.
1630 Now every user action takes place in the `(guile-user)' module by
1633 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
1635 ** Character classifiers work for non-ASCII characters.
1637 The predicates `char-alphabetic?', `char-numeric?',
1638 `char-whitespace?', `char-lower?', `char-upper?' and `char-is-both?'
1639 no longer check whether their arguments are ASCII characters.
1640 Previously, a character would only be considered alphabetic when it
1641 was also ASCII, for example.
1643 ** Previously deprecated Scheme functions have been removed:
1645 tag - no replacement.
1646 fseek - replaced by seek.
1647 list* - replaced by cons*.
1649 ** It's now possible to create modules with controlled environments
1653 (use-modules (ice-9 safe))
1654 (define m (make-safe-module))
1655 ;;; m will now be a module containing only a safe subset of R5RS
1656 (eval '(+ 1 2) m) --> 3
1657 (eval 'load m) --> ERROR: Unbound variable: load
1659 ** Evaluation of "()", the empty list, is now an error.
1661 Previously, the expression "()" evaluated to the empty list. This has
1662 been changed to signal a "missing expression" error. The correct way
1663 to write the empty list as a literal constant is to use quote: "'()".
1665 ** New concept of `Guile Extensions'.
1667 A Guile Extension is just a ordinary shared library that can be linked
1668 at run-time. We found it advantageous to give this simple concept a
1669 dedicated name to distinguish the issues related to shared libraries
1670 from the issues related to the module system.
1672 *** New function: load-extension
1674 Executing (load-extension lib init) is mostly equivalent to
1676 (dynamic-call init (dynamic-link lib))
1678 except when scm_register_extension has been called previously.
1679 Whenever appropriate, you should use `load-extension' instead of
1680 dynamic-link and dynamic-call.
1682 *** New C function: scm_c_register_extension
1684 This function registers a initialization function for use by
1685 `load-extension'. Use it when you don't want specific extensions to
1686 be loaded as shared libraries (for example on platforms that don't
1687 support dynamic linking).
1689 ** Auto-loading of compiled-code modules is deprecated.
1691 Guile used to be able to automatically find and link a shared
1692 library to satisfy requests for a module. For example, the module
1693 `(foo bar)' could be implemented by placing a shared library named
1694 "foo/libbar.so" (or with a different extension) in a directory on the
1697 This has been found to be too tricky, and is no longer supported. The
1698 shared libraries are now called "extensions". You should now write a
1699 small Scheme file that calls `load-extension' to load the shared
1700 library and initialize it explicitly.
1702 The shared libraries themselves should be installed in the usual
1703 places for shared libraries, with names like "libguile-foo-bar".
1705 For example, place this into a file "foo/bar.scm"
1707 (define-module (foo bar))
1709 (load-extension "libguile-foo-bar" "foobar_init")
1711 ** Backward incompatible change: eval EXP ENVIRONMENT-SPECIFIER
1713 `eval' is now R5RS, that is it takes two arguments.
1714 The second argument is an environment specifier, i.e. either
1716 (scheme-report-environment 5)
1717 (null-environment 5)
1718 (interaction-environment)
1724 ** The module system has been made more disciplined.
1726 The function `eval' will save and restore the current module around
1727 the evaluation of the specified expression. While this expression is
1728 evaluated, `(current-module)' will now return the right module, which
1729 is the module specified as the second argument to `eval'.
1731 A consequence of this change is that `eval' is not particularly
1732 useful when you want allow the evaluated code to change what module is
1733 designated as the current module and have this change persist from one
1734 call to `eval' to the next. The read-eval-print-loop is an example
1735 where `eval' is now inadequate. To compensate, there is a new
1736 function `primitive-eval' that does not take a module specifier and
1737 that does not save/restore the current module. You should use this
1738 function together with `set-current-module', `current-module', etc
1739 when you want to have more control over the state that is carried from
1740 one eval to the next.
1742 Additionally, it has been made sure that forms that are evaluated at
1743 the top level are always evaluated with respect to the current module.
1744 Previously, subforms of top-level forms such as `begin', `case',
1745 etc. did not respect changes to the current module although these
1746 subforms are at the top-level as well.
1748 To prevent strange behavior, the forms `define-module',
1749 `use-modules', `use-syntax', and `export' have been restricted to only
1750 work on the top level. The forms `define-public' and
1751 `defmacro-public' only export the new binding on the top level. They
1752 behave just like `define' and `defmacro', respectively, when they are
1753 used in a lexical environment.
1755 Also, `export' will no longer silently re-export bindings imported
1756 from a used module. It will emit a `deprecation' warning and will
1757 cease to perform any re-export in the next version. If you actually
1758 want to re-export bindings, use the new `re-export' in place of
1759 `export'. The new `re-export' will not make copies of variables when
1760 rexporting them, as `export' did wrongly.
1762 ** Module system now allows selection and renaming of imported bindings
1764 Previously, when using `use-modules' or the `#:use-module' clause in
1765 the `define-module' form, all the bindings (association of symbols to
1766 values) for imported modules were added to the "current module" on an
1767 as-is basis. This has been changed to allow finer control through two
1768 new facilities: selection and renaming.
1770 You can now select which of the imported module's bindings are to be
1771 visible in the current module by using the `:select' clause. This
1772 clause also can be used to rename individual bindings. For example:
1774 ;; import all bindings no questions asked
1775 (use-modules (ice-9 common-list))
1777 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them;
1778 ;; the current module sees: every some zonk-y zonk-n
1779 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1781 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1782 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))))
1784 You can also programmatically rename all selected bindings using the
1785 `:renamer' clause, which specifies a proc that takes a symbol and
1786 returns another symbol. Because it is common practice to use a prefix,
1787 we now provide the convenience procedure `symbol-prefix-proc'. For
1790 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
1791 ;; and all four w/ prefix "CL:";
1792 ;; the current module sees: CL:every CL:some CL:zonk-y CL:zonk-n
1793 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1795 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1796 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
1797 :renamer (symbol-prefix-proc 'CL:)))
1799 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
1800 ;; and all four by upcasing.
1801 ;; the current module sees: EVERY SOME ZONK-Y ZONK-N
1802 (define (upcase-symbol sym)
1803 (string->symbol (string-upcase (symbol->string sym))))
1805 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
1807 (remove-if . zonk-y)
1808 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
1809 :renamer upcase-symbol))
1811 Note that programmatic renaming is done *after* individual renaming.
1812 Also, the above examples show `use-modules', but the same facilities are
1813 available for the `#:use-module' clause of `define-module'.
1815 See manual for more info.
1817 ** The semantics of guardians have changed.
1819 The changes are for the most part compatible. An important criterion
1820 was to keep the typical usage of guardians as simple as before, but to
1821 make the semantics safer and (as a result) more useful.
1823 *** All objects returned from guardians are now properly alive.
1825 It is now guaranteed that any object referenced by an object returned
1826 from a guardian is alive. It's now impossible for a guardian to
1827 return a "contained" object before its "containing" object.
1829 One incompatible (but probably not very important) change resulting
1830 from this is that it is no longer possible to guard objects that
1831 indirectly reference themselves (i.e. are parts of cycles). If you do
1832 so accidentally, you'll get a warning.
1834 *** There are now two types of guardians: greedy and sharing.
1836 If you call (make-guardian #t) or just (make-guardian), you'll get a
1837 greedy guardian, and for (make-guardian #f) a sharing guardian.
1839 Greedy guardians are the default because they are more "defensive".
1840 You can only greedily guard an object once. If you guard an object
1841 more than once, once in a greedy guardian and the rest of times in
1842 sharing guardians, then it is guaranteed that the object won't be
1843 returned from sharing guardians as long as it is greedily guarded
1846 Guardians returned by calls to `make-guardian' can now take one more
1847 optional parameter, which says whether to throw an error in case an
1848 attempt is made to greedily guard an object that is already greedily
1849 guarded. The default is true, i.e. throw an error. If the parameter
1850 is false, the guardian invocation returns #t if guarding was
1851 successful and #f if it wasn't.
1853 Also, since greedy guarding is, in effect, a side-effecting operation
1854 on objects, a new function is introduced: `destroy-guardian!'.
1855 Invoking this function on a guardian renders it unoperative and, if
1856 the guardian is greedy, clears the "greedily guarded" property of the
1857 objects that were guarded by it, thus undoing the side effect.
1859 Note that all this hair is hardly very important, since guardian
1860 objects are usually permanent.
1862 ** Continuations created by call-with-current-continuation now accept
1863 any number of arguments, as required by R5RS.
1865 ** New function `issue-deprecation-warning'
1867 This function is used to display the deprecation messages that are
1868 controlled by GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION as explained in the README.
1871 (issue-deprecation-warning "`id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.")
1875 ;; `id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.
1880 ** New syntax `begin-deprecated'
1882 When deprecated features are included (as determined by the configure
1883 option --enable-deprecated), `begin-deprecated' is identical to
1884 `begin'. When deprecated features are excluded, it always evaluates
1885 to `#f', ignoring the body forms.
1887 ** New function `make-object-property'
1889 This function returns a new `procedure with setter' P that can be used
1890 to attach a property to objects. When calling P as
1894 where `obj' is any kind of object, it attaches `val' to `obj' in such
1895 a way that it can be retrieved by calling P as
1899 This function will replace procedure properties, symbol properties and
1900 source properties eventually.
1902 ** Module (ice-9 optargs) now uses keywords instead of `#&'.
1904 Instead of #&optional, #&key, etc you should now use #:optional,
1905 #:key, etc. Since #:optional is a keyword, you can write it as just
1906 :optional when (read-set! keywords 'prefix) is active.
1908 The old reader syntax `#&' is still supported, but deprecated. It
1909 will be removed in the next release.
1911 ** New define-module option: pure
1913 Tells the module system not to include any bindings from the root
1918 (define-module (totally-empty-module)
1921 ** New define-module option: export NAME1 ...
1923 Export names NAME1 ...
1925 This option is required if you want to be able to export bindings from
1926 a module which doesn't import one of `define-public' or `export'.
1930 (define-module (foo)
1932 :use-module (ice-9 r5rs)
1935 ;;; Note that we're pure R5RS below this point!
1940 ** New function: object->string OBJ
1942 Return a Scheme string obtained by printing a given object.
1944 ** New function: port? X
1946 Returns a boolean indicating whether X is a port. Equivalent to
1947 `(or (input-port? X) (output-port? X))'.
1949 ** New function: file-port?
1951 Determines whether a given object is a port that is related to a file.
1953 ** New function: port-for-each proc
1955 Apply PROC to each port in the Guile port table in turn. The return
1956 value is unspecified. More specifically, PROC is applied exactly once
1957 to every port that exists in the system at the time PORT-FOR-EACH is
1958 invoked. Changes to the port table while PORT-FOR-EACH is running
1959 have no effect as far as PORT-FOR-EACH is concerned.
1961 ** New function: dup2 oldfd newfd
1963 A simple wrapper for the `dup2' system call. Copies the file
1964 descriptor OLDFD to descriptor number NEWFD, replacing the
1965 previous meaning of NEWFD. Both OLDFD and NEWFD must be integers.
1966 Unlike for dup->fdes or primitive-move->fdes, no attempt is made
1967 to move away ports which are using NEWFD. The return value is
1970 ** New function: close-fdes fd
1972 A simple wrapper for the `close' system call. Close file
1973 descriptor FD, which must be an integer. Unlike close (*note
1974 close: Ports and File Descriptors.), the file descriptor will be
1975 closed even if a port is using it. The return value is
1978 ** New function: crypt password salt
1980 Encrypts `password' using the standard unix password encryption
1983 ** New function: chroot path
1985 Change the root directory of the running process to `path'.
1987 ** New functions: getlogin, cuserid
1989 Return the login name or the user name of the current effective user
1992 ** New functions: getpriority which who, setpriority which who prio
1994 Get or set the priority of the running process.
1996 ** New function: getpass prompt
1998 Read a password from the terminal, first displaying `prompt' and
2001 ** New function: flock file operation
2003 Set/remove an advisory shared or exclusive lock on `file'.
2005 ** New functions: sethostname name, gethostname
2007 Set or get the hostname of the machine the current process is running
2010 ** New function: mkstemp! tmpl
2012 mkstemp creates a new unique file in the file system and returns a
2013 new buffered port open for reading and writing to the file. TMPL
2014 is a string specifying where the file should be created: it must
2015 end with `XXXXXX' and will be changed in place to return the name
2016 of the temporary file.
2018 ** New function: open-input-string string
2020 Return an input string port which delivers the characters from
2021 `string'. This procedure, together with `open-output-string' and
2022 `get-output-string' implements SRFI-6.
2024 ** New function: open-output-string
2026 Return an output string port which collects all data written to it.
2027 The data can then be retrieved by `get-output-string'.
2029 ** New function: get-output-string
2031 Return the contents of an output string port.
2033 ** New function: identity
2035 Return the argument.
2037 ** socket, connect, accept etc., now have support for IPv6. IPv6 addresses
2038 are represented in Scheme as integers with normal host byte ordering.
2040 ** New function: inet-pton family address
2042 Convert a printable string network address into an integer. Note that
2043 unlike the C version of this function, the result is an integer with
2044 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
2047 (inet-pton AF_INET "127.0.0.1") => 2130706433
2048 (inet-pton AF_INET6 "::1") => 1
2050 ** New function: inet-ntop family address
2052 Convert an integer network address into a printable string. Note that
2053 unlike the C version of this function, the input is an integer with
2054 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
2057 (inet-ntop AF_INET 2130706433) => "127.0.0.1"
2058 (inet-ntop AF_INET6 (- (expt 2 128) 1)) =>
2059 ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
2063 Use `identity' instead.
2069 ** Deprecated: return-it
2073 ** Deprecated: string-character-length
2075 Use `string-length' instead.
2077 ** Deprecated: flags
2079 Use `logior' instead.
2081 ** Deprecated: close-all-ports-except.
2083 This was intended for closing ports in a child process after a fork,
2084 but it has the undesirable side effect of flushing buffers.
2085 port-for-each is more flexible.
2087 ** The (ice-9 popen) module now attempts to set up file descriptors in
2088 the child process from the current Scheme ports, instead of using the
2089 current values of file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 in the parent process.
2091 ** Removed function: builtin-weak-bindings
2093 There is no such concept as a weak binding any more.
2095 ** Removed constants: bignum-radix, scm-line-incrementors
2097 ** define-method: New syntax mandatory.
2099 The new method syntax is now mandatory:
2101 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ...) BODY ...)
2102 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ... . REST-ARG) BODY ...)
2104 ARG-SPEC ::= ARG-NAME | (ARG-NAME TYPE)
2105 REST-ARG ::= ARG-NAME
2107 If you have old code using the old syntax, import
2108 (oop goops old-define-method) before (oop goops) as in:
2110 (use-modules (oop goops old-define-method) (oop goops))
2112 ** Deprecated function: builtin-variable
2113 Removed function: builtin-bindings
2115 There is no longer a distinction between builtin or other variables.
2116 Use module system operations for all variables.
2118 ** Lazy-catch handlers are no longer allowed to return.
2120 That is, a call to `throw', `error', etc is now guaranteed to not
2123 ** Bugfixes for (ice-9 getopt-long)
2125 This module is now tested using test-suite/tests/getopt-long.test.
2126 The following bugs have been fixed:
2128 *** Parsing for options that are specified to have `optional' args now checks
2129 if the next element is an option instead of unconditionally taking it as the
2132 *** An error is now thrown for `--opt=val' when the option description
2133 does not specify `(value #t)' or `(value optional)'. This condition used to
2134 be accepted w/o error, contrary to the documentation.
2136 *** The error message for unrecognized options is now more informative.
2137 It used to be "not a record", an artifact of the implementation.
2139 *** The error message for `--opt' terminating the arg list (no value), when
2140 `(value #t)' is specified, is now more informative. It used to be "not enough
2143 *** "Clumped" single-char args now preserve trailing string, use it as arg.
2144 The expansion used to be like so:
2146 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "--xyz")
2148 Note that the "5d" is dropped. Now it is like so:
2150 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "5d" "--xyz")
2152 This enables single-char options to have adjoining arguments as long as their
2153 constituent characters are not potential single-char options.
2155 ** (ice-9 session) procedure `arity' now works with (ice-9 optargs) `lambda*'
2157 The `lambda*' and derivative forms in (ice-9 optargs) now set a procedure
2158 property `arglist', which can be retrieved by `arity'. The result is that
2159 `arity' can give more detailed information than before:
2163 guile> (use-modules (ice-9 optargs))
2164 guile> (define* (foo #:optional a b c) a)
2166 0 or more arguments in `lambda*:G0'.
2171 3 optional arguments: `a', `b' and `c'.
2172 guile> (define* (bar a b #:key c d #:allow-other-keys) a)
2174 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 2 keyword arguments: `c'
2175 and `d', other keywords allowed.
2176 guile> (define* (baz a b #:optional c #:rest r) a)
2178 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 1 optional argument: `c',
2181 * Changes to the C interface
2183 ** Types have been renamed from scm_*_t to scm_t_*.
2185 This has been done for POSIX sake. It reserves identifiers ending
2186 with "_t". What a concept.
2188 The old names are still available with status `deprecated'.
2190 ** scm_t_bits (former scm_bits_t) is now a unsigned type.
2192 ** Deprecated features have been removed.
2196 SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP SCM_ICHRP, SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR
2197 SCM_SETJMPBUF SCM_NSTRINGP SCM_NRWSTRINGP SCM_NVECTORP SCM_DOUBLE_CELLP
2199 *** C Functions removed
2201 scm_sysmissing scm_tag scm_tc16_flo scm_tc_flo
2202 scm_fseek - replaced by scm_seek.
2203 gc-thunk - replaced by after-gc-hook.
2204 gh_int2scmb - replaced by gh_bool2scm.
2205 scm_tc_dblr - replaced by scm_tc16_real.
2206 scm_tc_dblc - replaced by scm_tc16_complex.
2207 scm_list_star - replaced by scm_cons_star.
2209 ** Deprecated: scm_makfromstr
2211 Use scm_mem2string instead.
2213 ** Deprecated: scm_make_shared_substring
2215 Explicit shared substrings will disappear from Guile.
2217 Instead, "normal" strings will be implemented using sharing
2218 internally, combined with a copy-on-write strategy.
2220 ** Deprecated: scm_read_only_string_p
2222 The concept of read-only strings will disappear in next release of
2225 ** Deprecated: scm_sloppy_memq, scm_sloppy_memv, scm_sloppy_member
2227 Instead, use scm_c_memq or scm_memq, scm_memv, scm_member.
2229 ** New functions: scm_call_0, scm_call_1, scm_call_2, scm_call_3
2231 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments. See "Fly
2232 Evaluation" in the manual.
2234 ** New functions: scm_apply_0, scm_apply_1, scm_apply_2, scm_apply_3
2236 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments and a list of
2237 further arguments. See "Fly Evaluation" in the manual.
2239 ** New functions: scm_list_1, scm_list_2, scm_list_3, scm_list_4, scm_list_5
2241 Create a list of the given number of elements. See "List
2242 Constructors" in the manual.
2244 ** Renamed function: scm_listify has been replaced by scm_list_n.
2246 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_LIST0, SCM_LIST1, SCM_LIST2, SCM_LIST3, SCM_LIST4,
2247 SCM_LIST5, SCM_LIST6, SCM_LIST7, SCM_LIST8, SCM_LIST9.
2249 Use functions scm_list_N instead.
2251 ** New function: scm_c_read (SCM port, void *buffer, scm_sizet size)
2253 Used by an application to read arbitrary number of bytes from a port.
2254 Same semantics as libc read, except that scm_c_read only returns less
2255 than SIZE bytes if at end-of-file.
2257 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
2259 ** New function: scm_c_write (SCM port, const void *ptr, scm_sizet size)
2261 Used by an application to write arbitrary number of bytes to an SCM
2262 port. Similar semantics as libc write. However, unlike libc
2263 write, scm_c_write writes the requested number of bytes and has no
2266 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
2268 ** New function: scm_init_guile ()
2270 In contrast to scm_boot_guile, scm_init_guile will return normally
2271 after initializing Guile. It is not available on all systems, tho.
2273 ** New functions: scm_str2symbol, scm_mem2symbol
2275 The function scm_str2symbol takes a const char* pointing to a zero-terminated
2276 field of characters and creates a scheme symbol object from that C string.
2277 The function scm_mem2symbol takes a const char* and a number of characters and
2278 creates a symbol from the characters in that memory area.
2280 ** New functions: scm_primitive_make_property
2281 scm_primitive_property_ref
2282 scm_primitive_property_set_x
2283 scm_primitive_property_del_x
2285 These functions implement a new way to deal with object properties.
2286 See libguile/properties.c for their documentation.
2288 ** New function: scm_done_free (long size)
2290 This function is the inverse of scm_done_malloc. Use it to report the
2291 amount of smob memory you free. The previous method, which involved
2292 calling scm_done_malloc with negative argument, was somewhat
2293 unintuitive (and is still available, of course).
2295 ** New function: scm_c_memq (SCM obj, SCM list)
2297 This function provides a fast C level alternative for scm_memq for the case
2298 that the list parameter is known to be a proper list. The function is a
2299 replacement for scm_sloppy_memq, but is stricter in its requirements on its
2300 list input parameter, since for anything else but a proper list the function's
2301 behaviour is undefined - it may even crash or loop endlessly. Further, for
2302 the case that the object is not found in the list, scm_c_memq returns #f which
2303 is similar to scm_memq, but different from scm_sloppy_memq's behaviour.
2305 ** New functions: scm_remember_upto_here_1, scm_remember_upto_here_2,
2306 scm_remember_upto_here
2308 These functions replace the function scm_remember.
2310 ** Deprecated function: scm_remember
2312 Use one of the new functions scm_remember_upto_here_1,
2313 scm_remember_upto_here_2 or scm_remember_upto_here instead.
2315 ** New function: scm_allocate_string
2317 This function replaces the function scm_makstr.
2319 ** Deprecated function: scm_makstr
2321 Use the new function scm_allocate_string instead.
2323 ** New global variable scm_gc_running_p introduced.
2325 Use this variable to find out if garbage collection is being executed. Up to
2326 now applications have used scm_gc_heap_lock to test if garbage collection was
2327 running, which also works because of the fact that up to know only the garbage
2328 collector has set this variable. But, this is an implementation detail that
2329 may change. Further, scm_gc_heap_lock is not set throughout gc, thus the use
2330 of this variable is (and has been) not fully safe anyway.
2332 ** New macros: SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH
2334 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
2336 ** New macros: SCM_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_CCLO_LENGTH, SCM_STACK_LENGTH,
2337 SCM_STRING_LENGTH, SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
2338 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH.
2340 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH.
2342 ** New macros: SCM_SET_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH,
2343 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
2344 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH
2346 Use these instead of SCM_SETLENGTH
2348 ** New macros: SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_CCLO_BASE,
2349 SCM_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_COMPLEX_MEM,
2352 Use these instead of SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS, SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS or
2355 ** New macros: SCM_SET_BIGNUM_BASE, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS,
2356 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE,
2359 Use these instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
2361 ** New macro: SCM_BITVECTOR_P
2363 ** New macro: SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X
2365 Use instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
2367 ** New macros: SCM_DIR_OPEN_P, SCM_DIR_FLAG_OPEN
2369 For directory objects, use these instead of SCM_OPDIRP and SCM_OPN.
2371 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_OUTOFRANGE, SCM_NALLOC, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL,
2372 SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL,
2373 SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD,
2374 SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS, SCM_SYMBOL_SLOTS, SCM_SLOTS, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
2375 SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_FREEP, SCM_NFREEP, SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS,
2376 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY,
2377 SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_HUGE_LENGTH,
2378 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
2379 SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_RWSTRINGP, SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, SCM_ROCHARS,
2380 SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_GC8MARKP,
2381 SCM_SETGC8MARK, SCM_CLRGC8MARK, SCM_GCTYP16, SCM_GCCDR, SCM_SUBR_DOC,
2382 SCM_OPDIRP, SCM_VALIDATE_OPDIR, SCM_WTA, RETURN_SCM_WTA, SCM_CONST_LONG,
2383 SCM_WNA, SCM_FUNC_NAME, SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_COPY,
2384 SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_DEF_COPY, SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP, SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP,
2385 SCM_SETAND_CDR, SCM_SETOR_CDR, SCM_SETAND_CAR, SCM_SETOR_CAR
2387 Use SCM_ASSERT_RANGE or SCM_VALIDATE_XXX_RANGE instead of SCM_OUTOFRANGE.
2388 Use scm_memory_error instead of SCM_NALLOC.
2389 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP.
2390 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR.
2391 Use SCM_FREE_CELL_P instead of SCM_FREEP/SCM_NFREEP
2392 Use a type specific accessor macro instead of SCM_CHARS/SCM_UCHARS.
2393 Use a type specific accessor instead of SCM(_|_RO|_HUGE_)LENGTH.
2394 Use SCM_VALIDATE_(SYMBOL|STRING) instead of SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING.
2395 Use SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
2396 Use SCM_STRINGP or SCM_SYMBOLP instead of SCM_ROSTRINGP.
2397 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_RWSTRINGP.
2398 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING.
2399 Use SCM_STRING_CHARS instead of SCM_ROCHARS.
2400 Use SCM_STRING_UCHARS instead of SCM_ROUCHARS.
2401 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETLENGTH.
2402 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
2403 Use a type specific length macro instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
2404 Use SCM_GCMARKP instead of SCM_GC8MARKP.
2405 Use SCM_SETGCMARK instead of SCM_SETGC8MARK.
2406 Use SCM_CLRGCMARK instead of SCM_CLRGC8MARK.
2407 Use SCM_TYP16 instead of SCM_GCTYP16.
2408 Use SCM_CDR instead of SCM_GCCDR.
2409 Use SCM_DIR_OPEN_P instead of SCM_OPDIRP.
2410 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of SCM_WTA.
2411 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of RETURN_SCM_WTA.
2412 Use SCM_VCELL_INIT instead of SCM_CONST_LONG.
2413 Use SCM_WRONG_NUM_ARGS instead of SCM_WNA.
2414 Use SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP.
2415 Use !SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP.
2417 ** Removed function: scm_struct_init
2419 ** Removed variable: scm_symhash_dim
2421 ** Renamed function: scm_make_cont has been replaced by
2422 scm_make_continuation, which has a different interface.
2424 ** Deprecated function: scm_call_catching_errors
2426 Use scm_catch or scm_lazy_catch from throw.[ch] instead.
2428 ** Deprecated function: scm_strhash
2430 Use scm_string_hash instead.
2432 ** Deprecated function: scm_vector_set_length_x
2434 Instead, create a fresh vector of the desired size and copy the contents.
2436 ** scm_gensym has changed prototype
2438 scm_gensym now only takes one argument.
2440 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc7_ssymbol, scm_tc7_msymbol, scm_tcs_symbols,
2443 There is now only a single symbol type scm_tc7_symbol.
2444 The tag scm_tc7_lvector was not used anyway.
2446 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe, scm_set_smob_mfpe.
2448 Use scm_make_smob_type and scm_set_smob_XXX instead.
2450 ** New function scm_set_smob_apply.
2452 This can be used to set an apply function to a smob type.
2454 ** Deprecated function: scm_strprint_obj
2456 Use scm_object_to_string instead.
2458 ** Deprecated function: scm_wta
2460 Use scm_wrong_type_arg, or another appropriate error signalling function
2463 ** Explicit support for obarrays has been deprecated.
2465 Use `scm_str2symbol' and the generic hashtable functions instead.
2467 ** The concept of `vcells' has been deprecated.
2469 The data type `variable' is now used exclusively. `Vcells' have been
2470 a low-level concept so you are likely not affected by this change.
2472 *** Deprecated functions: scm_sym2vcell, scm_sysintern,
2473 scm_sysintern0, scm_symbol_value0, scm_intern, scm_intern0.
2475 Use scm_c_define or scm_c_lookup instead, as appropriate.
2477 *** New functions: scm_c_module_lookup, scm_c_lookup,
2478 scm_c_module_define, scm_c_define, scm_module_lookup, scm_lookup,
2479 scm_module_define, scm_define.
2481 These functions work with variables instead of with vcells.
2483 ** New functions for creating and defining `subr's and `gsubr's.
2485 The new functions more clearly distinguish between creating a subr (or
2486 gsubr) object and adding it to the current module.
2488 These new functions are available: scm_c_make_subr, scm_c_define_subr,
2489 scm_c_make_subr_with_generic, scm_c_define_subr_with_generic,
2490 scm_c_make_gsubr, scm_c_define_gsubr, scm_c_make_gsubr_with_generic,
2491 scm_c_define_gsubr_with_generic.
2493 ** Deprecated functions: scm_make_subr, scm_make_subr_opt,
2494 scm_make_subr_with_generic, scm_make_gsubr,
2495 scm_make_gsubr_with_generic.
2497 Use the new ones from above instead.
2499 ** C interface to the module system has changed.
2501 While we suggest that you avoid as many explicit module system
2502 operations from C as possible for the time being, the C interface has
2503 been made more similar to the high-level Scheme module system.
2505 *** New functions: scm_c_define_module, scm_c_use_module,
2506 scm_c_export, scm_c_resolve_module.
2508 They mostly work like their Scheme namesakes. scm_c_define_module
2509 takes a function that is called a context where the new module is
2512 *** Deprecated functions: scm_the_root_module, scm_make_module,
2513 scm_ensure_user_module, scm_load_scheme_module.
2515 Use the new functions instead.
2517 ** Renamed function: scm_internal_with_fluids becomes
2520 scm_internal_with_fluids is available as a deprecated function.
2522 ** New function: scm_c_with_fluid.
2524 Just like scm_c_with_fluids, but takes one fluid and one value instead
2527 ** Deprecated typedefs: long_long, ulong_long.
2529 They are of questionable utility and they pollute the global
2532 ** Deprecated typedef: scm_sizet
2534 It is of questionable utility now that Guile requires ANSI C, and is
2537 ** Deprecated typedefs: scm_port_rw_active, scm_port,
2538 scm_ptob_descriptor, scm_debug_info, scm_debug_frame, scm_fport,
2539 scm_option, scm_rstate, scm_rng, scm_array, scm_array_dim.
2541 Made more compliant with the naming policy by adding a _t at the end.
2543 ** Deprecated functions: scm_mkbig, scm_big2num, scm_adjbig,
2544 scm_normbig, scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl
2546 With the exception of the mysterious scm_2ulong2big, they are still
2547 available under new names (scm_i_mkbig etc). These functions are not
2548 intended to be used in user code. You should avoid dealing with
2549 bignums directly, and should deal with numbers in general (which can
2552 ** Change in behavior: scm_num2long, scm_num2ulong
2554 The scm_num2[u]long functions don't any longer accept an inexact
2555 argument. This change in behavior is motivated by concordance with
2556 R5RS: It is more common that a primitive doesn't want to accept an
2557 inexact for an exact.
2559 ** New functions: scm_short2num, scm_ushort2num, scm_int2num,
2560 scm_uint2num, scm_size2num, scm_ptrdiff2num, scm_num2short,
2561 scm_num2ushort, scm_num2int, scm_num2uint, scm_num2ptrdiff,
2564 These are conversion functions between the various ANSI C integral
2565 types and Scheme numbers. NOTE: The scm_num2xxx functions don't
2566 accept an inexact argument.
2568 ** New functions: scm_float2num, scm_double2num,
2569 scm_num2float, scm_num2double.
2571 These are conversion functions between the two ANSI C float types and
2574 ** New number validation macros:
2575 SCM_NUM2{SIZE,PTRDIFF,SHORT,USHORT,INT,UINT}[_DEF]
2579 ** New functions: scm_gc_protect_object, scm_gc_unprotect_object
2581 These are just nicer-named old scm_protect_object and
2582 scm_unprotect_object.
2584 ** Deprecated functions: scm_protect_object, scm_unprotect_object
2586 ** New functions: scm_gc_[un]register_root, scm_gc_[un]register_roots
2588 These functions can be used to register pointers to locations that
2591 ** Deprecated function: scm_create_hook.
2593 Its sins are: misleading name, non-modularity and lack of general
2597 Changes since Guile 1.3.4:
2599 * Changes to the distribution
2601 ** Trees from nightly snapshots and CVS now require you to run autogen.sh.
2603 We've changed the way we handle generated files in the Guile source
2604 repository. As a result, the procedure for building trees obtained
2605 from the nightly FTP snapshots or via CVS has changed:
2606 - You must have appropriate versions of autoconf, automake, and
2607 libtool installed on your system. See README for info on how to
2608 obtain these programs.
2609 - Before configuring the tree, you must first run the script
2610 `autogen.sh' at the top of the source tree.
2612 The Guile repository used to contain not only source files, written by
2613 humans, but also some generated files, like configure scripts and
2614 Makefile.in files. Even though the contents of these files could be
2615 derived mechanically from other files present, we thought it would
2616 make the tree easier to build if we checked them into CVS.
2618 However, this approach means that minor differences between
2619 developer's installed tools and habits affected the whole team.
2620 So we have removed the generated files from the repository, and
2621 added the autogen.sh script, which will reconstruct them
2625 ** configure now has experimental options to remove support for certain
2628 --disable-arrays omit array and uniform array support
2629 --disable-posix omit posix interfaces
2630 --disable-networking omit networking interfaces
2631 --disable-regex omit regular expression interfaces
2633 These are likely to become separate modules some day.
2635 ** New configure option --enable-debug-freelist
2637 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
2638 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
2640 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
2641 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
2643 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
2644 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
2646 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
2647 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can
2648 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
2649 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
2651 ** New configure option --enable-debug-malloc
2653 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
2657 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
2658 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
2660 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
2662 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
2663 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
2665 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
2666 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
2667 number of objects of that kind.
2669 ** All includes are now referenced relative to the root directory
2671 Since some users have had problems with mixups between Guile and
2672 system headers, we have decided to always refer to Guile headers via
2673 their parent directories. This essentially creates a "private name
2674 space" for Guile headers. This means that the compiler only is given
2675 -I options for the root build and root source directory.
2677 ** Header files kw.h and genio.h have been removed.
2679 ** The module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) has been removed.
2681 ** New module (ice-9 documentation)
2683 Implements the interface to documentation strings associated with
2686 ** New module (ice-9 time)
2688 Provides a macro `time', which displays execution time of a given form.
2690 ** New module (ice-9 history)
2692 Loading this module enables value history in the repl.
2694 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2696 ** New command line option --debug
2698 Start Guile with debugging evaluator and backtraces enabled.
2700 This is useful when debugging your .guile init file or scripts.
2702 ** New help facility
2704 Usage: (help NAME) gives documentation about objects named NAME (a symbol)
2705 (help REGEXP) ditto for objects with names matching REGEXP (a string)
2706 (help 'NAME) gives documentation for NAME, even if it is not an object
2707 (help ,EXPR) gives documentation for object returned by EXPR
2708 (help (my module)) gives module commentary for `(my module)'
2709 (help) gives this text
2711 `help' searches among bindings exported from loaded modules, while
2712 `apropos' searches among bindings visible from the "current" module.
2714 Examples: (help help)
2716 (help "output-string")
2718 ** `help' and `apropos' now prints full module names
2720 ** Dynamic linking now uses libltdl from the libtool package.
2722 The old system dependent code for doing dynamic linking has been
2723 replaced with calls to the libltdl functions which do all the hairy
2726 The major improvement is that you can now directly pass libtool
2727 library names like "libfoo.la" to `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-link'
2728 will be able to do the best shared library job you can get, via
2731 The way dynamic libraries are found has changed and is not really
2732 portable across platforms, probably. It is therefore recommended to
2733 use absolute filenames when possible.
2735 If you pass a filename without an extension to `dynamic-link', it will
2736 try a few appropriate ones. Thus, the most platform ignorant way is
2737 to specify a name like "libfoo", without any directories and
2740 ** Guile COOP threads are now compatible with LinuxThreads
2742 Previously, COOP threading wasn't possible in applications linked with
2743 Linux POSIX threads due to their use of the stack pointer to find the
2744 thread context. This has now been fixed with a workaround which uses
2745 the pthreads to allocate the stack.
2747 ** New primitives: `pkgdata-dir', `site-dir', `library-dir'
2749 ** Positions of erring expression in scripts
2751 With version 1.3.4, the location of the erring expression in Guile
2752 scipts is no longer automatically reported. (This should have been
2753 documented before the 1.3.4 release.)
2755 You can get this information by enabling recording of positions of
2756 source expressions and running the debugging evaluator. Put this at
2757 the top of your script (or in your "site" file):
2759 (read-enable 'positions)
2760 (debug-enable 'debug)
2762 ** Backtraces in scripts
2764 It is now possible to get backtraces in scripts.
2768 (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
2770 at the top of the script.
2772 (The first options enables the debugging evaluator.
2773 The second enables backtraces.)
2775 ** Part of module system symbol lookup now implemented in C
2777 The eval closure of most modules is now implemented in C. Since this
2778 was one of the bottlenecks for loading speed, Guile now loads code
2779 substantially faster than before.
2781 ** Attempting to get the value of an unbound variable now produces
2782 an exception with a key of 'unbound-variable instead of 'misc-error.
2784 ** The initial default output port is now unbuffered if it's using a
2785 tty device. Previously in this situation it was line-buffered.
2787 ** New hook: after-gc-hook
2789 after-gc-hook takes over the role of gc-thunk. This hook is run at
2790 the first SCM_TICK after a GC. (Thus, the code is run at the same
2791 point during evaluation as signal handlers.)
2793 Note that this hook should be used only for diagnostic and debugging
2794 purposes. It is not certain that it will continue to be well-defined
2795 when this hook is run in the future.
2797 C programmers: Note the new C level hooks scm_before_gc_c_hook,
2798 scm_before_sweep_c_hook, scm_after_gc_c_hook.
2800 ** Improvements to garbage collector
2802 Guile 1.4 has a new policy for triggering heap allocation and
2803 determining the sizes of heap segments. It fixes a number of problems
2806 1. The new policy can handle two separate pools of cells
2807 (2-word/4-word) better. (The old policy would run wild, allocating
2808 more and more memory for certain programs.)
2810 2. The old code would sometimes allocate far too much heap so that the
2811 Guile process became gigantic. The new code avoids this.
2813 3. The old code would sometimes allocate too little so that few cells
2814 were freed at GC so that, in turn, too much time was spent in GC.
2816 4. The old code would often trigger heap allocation several times in a
2817 row. (The new scheme predicts how large the segments needs to be
2818 in order not to need further allocation.)
2820 All in all, the new GC policy will make larger applications more
2823 The new GC scheme also is prepared for POSIX threading. Threads can
2824 allocate private pools of cells ("clusters") with just a single
2825 function call. Allocation of single cells from such a cluster can
2826 then proceed without any need of inter-thread synchronization.
2828 ** New environment variables controlling GC parameters
2830 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE Maximal segment size
2833 Allocation of 2-word cell heaps:
2835 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1 Size of initial heap segment in bytes
2838 GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1 Minimum number of freed cells at each
2839 GC in percent of total heap size
2842 Allocation of 4-word cell heaps
2843 (used for real numbers and misc other objects):
2845 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2
2847 (See entry "Way for application to customize GC parameters" under
2848 section "Changes to the scm_ interface" below.)
2850 ** Guile now implements reals using 4-word cells
2852 This speeds up computation with reals. (They were earlier allocated
2853 with `malloc'.) There is still some room for optimizations, however.
2855 ** Some further steps toward POSIX thread support have been taken
2857 *** Guile's critical sections (SCM_DEFER/ALLOW_INTS)
2858 don't have much effect any longer, and many of them will be removed in
2862 are only handled at the top of the evaluator loop, immediately after
2863 I/O, and in scm_equalp.
2865 *** The GC can allocate thread private pools of pairs.
2867 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2869 ** close-input-port and close-output-port are now R5RS
2871 These procedures have been turned into primitives and have R5RS behaviour.
2873 ** New procedure: simple-format PORT MESSAGE ARG1 ...
2875 (ice-9 boot) makes `format' an alias for `simple-format' until possibly
2876 extended by the more sophisticated version in (ice-9 format)
2878 (simple-format port message . args)
2879 Write MESSAGE to DESTINATION, defaulting to `current-output-port'.
2880 MESSAGE can contain ~A (was %s) and ~S (was %S) escapes. When printed,
2881 the escapes are replaced with corresponding members of ARGS:
2882 ~A formats using `display' and ~S formats using `write'.
2883 If DESTINATION is #t, then use the `current-output-port',
2884 if DESTINATION is #f, then return a string containing the formatted text.
2885 Does not add a trailing newline."
2887 ** string-ref: the second argument is no longer optional.
2889 ** string, list->string: no longer accept strings in their arguments,
2890 only characters, for compatibility with R5RS.
2892 ** New procedure: port-closed? PORT
2893 Returns #t if PORT is closed or #f if it is open.
2895 ** Deprecated: list*
2897 The list* functionality is now provided by cons* (SRFI-1 compliant)
2899 ** New procedure: cons* ARG1 ARG2 ... ARGn
2901 Like `list', but the last arg provides the tail of the constructed list,
2902 returning (cons ARG1 (cons ARG2 (cons ... ARGn))).
2904 Requires at least one argument. If given one argument, that argument
2905 is returned as result.
2907 This function is called `list*' in some other Schemes and in Common LISP.
2909 ** Removed deprecated: serial-map, serial-array-copy!, serial-array-map!
2911 ** New procedure: object-documentation OBJECT
2913 Returns the documentation string associated with OBJECT. The
2914 procedure uses a caching mechanism so that subsequent lookups are
2917 Exported by (ice-9 documentation).
2919 ** module-name now returns full names of modules
2921 Previously, only the last part of the name was returned (`session' for
2922 `(ice-9 session)'). Ex: `(ice-9 session)'.
2924 * Changes to the gh_ interface
2926 ** Deprecated: gh_int2scmb
2928 Use gh_bool2scm instead.
2930 * Changes to the scm_ interface
2932 ** Guile primitives now carry docstrings!
2934 Thanks to Greg Badros!
2936 ** Guile primitives are defined in a new way: SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
2938 Now Guile primitives are defined using the SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
2939 macros and must contain a docstring that is extracted into foo.doc using a new
2940 guile-doc-snarf script (that uses guile-doc-snarf.awk).
2942 However, a major overhaul of these macros is scheduled for the next release of
2945 ** Guile primitives use a new technique for validation of arguments
2947 SCM_VALIDATE_* macros are defined to ease the redundancy and improve
2948 the readability of argument checking.
2950 ** All (nearly?) K&R prototypes for functions replaced with ANSI C equivalents.
2952 ** New macros: SCM_PACK, SCM_UNPACK
2954 Compose/decompose an SCM value.
2956 The SCM type is now treated as an abstract data type and may be defined as a
2957 long, a void* or as a struct, depending on the architecture and compile time
2958 options. This makes it easier to find several types of bugs, for example when
2959 SCM values are treated as integers without conversion. Values of the SCM type
2960 should be treated as "atomic" values. These macros are used when
2961 composing/decomposing an SCM value, either because you want to access
2962 individual bits, or because you want to treat it as an integer value.
2964 E.g., in order to set bit 7 in an SCM value x, use the expression
2966 SCM_PACK (SCM_UNPACK (x) | 0x80)
2968 ** The name property of hooks is deprecated.
2969 Thus, the use of SCM_HOOK_NAME and scm_make_hook_with_name is deprecated.
2971 You can emulate this feature by using object properties.
2973 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP, SCM_CRDY, SCM_ICHRP,
2974 SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR, SCM_SETJMPBUF, SCM_NSTRINGP, SCM_NRWSTRINGP,
2977 These macros will be removed in a future release of Guile.
2979 ** The following types, functions and macros from numbers.h are deprecated:
2980 scm_dblproc, SCM_UNEGFIXABLE, SCM_FLOBUFLEN, SCM_INEXP, SCM_CPLXP, SCM_REAL,
2981 SCM_IMAG, SCM_REALPART, scm_makdbl, SCM_SINGP, SCM_NUM2DBL, SCM_NO_BIGDIG
2983 ** Port internals: the rw_random variable in the scm_port structure
2984 must be set to non-zero in any random access port. In recent Guile
2985 releases it was only set for bidirectional random-access ports.
2987 ** Port internals: the seek ptob procedure is now responsible for
2988 resetting the buffers if required. The change was made so that in the
2989 special case of reading the current position (i.e., seek p 0 SEEK_CUR)
2990 the fport and strport ptobs can avoid resetting the buffers,
2991 in particular to avoid discarding unread chars. An existing port
2992 type can be fixed by adding something like the following to the
2993 beginning of the ptob seek procedure:
2995 if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_READ)
2996 scm_end_input (object);
2997 else if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_WRITE)
2998 ptob->flush (object);
3000 although to actually avoid resetting the buffers and discard unread
3001 chars requires further hacking that depends on the characteristics
3004 ** Deprecated functions: scm_fseek, scm_tag
3006 These functions are no longer used and will be removed in a future version.
3008 ** The scm_sysmissing procedure is no longer used in libguile.
3009 Unless it turns out to be unexpectedly useful to somebody, it will be
3010 removed in a future version.
3012 ** The format of error message strings has changed
3014 The two C procedures: scm_display_error and scm_error, as well as the
3015 primitive `scm-error', now use scm_simple_format to do their work.
3016 This means that the message strings of all code must be updated to use
3017 ~A where %s was used before, and ~S where %S was used before.
3019 During the period when there still are a lot of old Guiles out there,
3020 you might want to support both old and new versions of Guile.
3022 There are basically two methods to achieve this. Both methods use
3025 AC_CHECK_FUNCS(scm_simple_format)
3027 in your configure.in.
3029 Method 1: Use the string concatenation features of ANSI C's
3034 #ifdef HAVE_SCM_SIMPLE_FORMAT
3040 Then represent each of your error messages using a preprocessor macro:
3042 #define E_SPIDER_ERROR "There's a spider in your " ## FMT_S ## "!!!"
3046 (define fmt-s (if (defined? 'simple-format) "~S" "%S"))
3047 (define make-message string-append)
3049 (define e-spider-error (make-message "There's a spider in your " fmt-s "!!!"))
3051 Method 2: Use the oldfmt function found in doc/oldfmt.c.
3055 scm_misc_error ("picnic", scm_c_oldfmt0 ("There's a spider in your ~S!!!"),
3060 (scm-error 'misc-error "picnic" (oldfmt "There's a spider in your ~S!!!")
3064 ** Deprecated: coop_mutex_init, coop_condition_variable_init
3066 Don't use the functions coop_mutex_init and
3067 coop_condition_variable_init. They will change.
3069 Use scm_mutex_init and scm_cond_init instead.
3071 ** New function: int scm_cond_timedwait (scm_cond_t *COND, scm_mutex_t *MUTEX, const struct timespec *ABSTIME)
3072 `scm_cond_timedwait' atomically unlocks MUTEX and waits on
3073 COND, as `scm_cond_wait' does, but it also bounds the duration
3074 of the wait. If COND has not been signaled before time ABSTIME,
3075 the mutex MUTEX is re-acquired and `scm_cond_timedwait'
3076 returns the error code `ETIMEDOUT'.
3078 The ABSTIME parameter specifies an absolute time, with the same
3079 origin as `time' and `gettimeofday': an ABSTIME of 0 corresponds
3080 to 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970.
3082 ** New function: scm_cond_broadcast (scm_cond_t *COND)
3083 `scm_cond_broadcast' restarts all the threads that are waiting
3084 on the condition variable COND. Nothing happens if no threads are
3087 ** New function: scm_key_create (scm_key_t *KEY, void (*destr_function) (void *))
3088 `scm_key_create' allocates a new TSD key. The key is stored in
3089 the location pointed to by KEY. There is no limit on the number
3090 of keys allocated at a given time. The value initially associated
3091 with the returned key is `NULL' in all currently executing threads.
3093 The DESTR_FUNCTION argument, if not `NULL', specifies a destructor
3094 function associated with the key. When a thread terminates,
3095 DESTR_FUNCTION is called on the value associated with the key in
3096 that thread. The DESTR_FUNCTION is not called if a key is deleted
3097 with `scm_key_delete' or a value is changed with
3098 `scm_setspecific'. The order in which destructor functions are
3099 called at thread termination time is unspecified.
3101 Destructors are not yet implemented.
3103 ** New function: scm_setspecific (scm_key_t KEY, const void *POINTER)
3104 `scm_setspecific' changes the value associated with KEY in the
3105 calling thread, storing the given POINTER instead.
3107 ** New function: scm_getspecific (scm_key_t KEY)
3108 `scm_getspecific' returns the value currently associated with
3109 KEY in the calling thread.
3111 ** New function: scm_key_delete (scm_key_t KEY)
3112 `scm_key_delete' deallocates a TSD key. It does not check
3113 whether non-`NULL' values are associated with that key in the
3114 currently executing threads, nor call the destructor function
3115 associated with the key.
3117 ** New function: scm_c_hook_init (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *HOOK_DATA, scm_c_hook_type_t TYPE)
3119 Initialize a C level hook HOOK with associated HOOK_DATA and type
3120 TYPE. (See scm_c_hook_run ().)
3122 ** New function: scm_c_hook_add (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA, int APPENDP)
3124 Add hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA to HOOK. If APPENDP
3125 is true, add it last, otherwise first. The same FUNC can be added
3126 multiple times if FUNC_DATA differ and vice versa.
3128 ** New function: scm_c_hook_remove (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA)
3130 Remove hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA from HOOK. A
3131 function is only removed if both FUNC and FUNC_DATA matches.
3133 ** New function: void *scm_c_hook_run (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *DATA)
3135 Run hook HOOK passing DATA to the hook functions.
3137 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_NORMAL, all hook functions are run. The value
3138 returned is undefined.
3140 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_OR, hook functions are run until a function
3141 returns a non-NULL value. This value is returned as the result of
3142 scm_c_hook_run. If all functions return NULL, NULL is returned.
3144 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_AND, hook functions are run until a function
3145 returns a NULL value, and NULL is returned. If all functions returns
3146 a non-NULL value, the last value is returned.
3148 ** New C level GC hooks
3150 Five new C level hooks has been added to the garbage collector.
3152 scm_before_gc_c_hook
3155 are run before locking and after unlocking the heap. The system is
3156 thus in a mode where evaluation can take place. (Except that
3157 scm_before_gc_c_hook must not allocate new cells.)
3159 scm_before_mark_c_hook
3160 scm_before_sweep_c_hook
3161 scm_after_sweep_c_hook
3163 are run when the heap is locked. These are intended for extension of
3164 the GC in a modular fashion. Examples are the weaks and guardians
3167 ** Way for application to customize GC parameters
3169 The application can set up other default values for the GC heap
3170 allocation parameters
3172 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_1, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1,
3173 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2,
3174 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE,
3178 scm_default_init_heap_size_1, scm_default_min_yield_1,
3179 scm_default_init_heap_size_2, scm_default_min_yield_2,
3180 scm_default_max_segment_size
3182 respectively before callong scm_boot_guile.
3184 (See entry "New environment variables ..." in section
3185 "Changes to the stand-alone interpreter" above.)
3187 ** scm_protect_object/scm_unprotect_object now nest
3189 This means that you can call scm_protect_object multiple times on an
3190 object and count on the object being protected until
3191 scm_unprotect_object has been call the same number of times.
3193 The functions also have better time complexity.
3195 Still, it is usually possible to structure the application in a way
3196 that you don't need to use these functions. For example, if you use a
3197 protected standard Guile list to keep track of live objects rather
3198 than some custom data type, objects will die a natural death when they
3199 are no longer needed.
3201 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc16_flo, scm_tc_flo, scm_tc_dblr, scm_tc_dblc
3203 Guile does not provide the float representation for inexact real numbers any
3204 more. Now, only doubles are used to represent inexact real numbers. Further,
3205 the tag names scm_tc_dblr and scm_tc_dblc have been changed to scm_tc16_real
3206 and scm_tc16_complex, respectively.
3208 ** Removed deprecated type scm_smobfuns
3210 ** Removed deprecated function scm_newsmob
3212 ** Warning: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe might become deprecated in a future release
3214 There is an ongoing discussion among the developers whether to
3215 deprecate `scm_make_smob_type_mfpe' or not. Please use the current
3216 standard interface (scm_make_smob_type, scm_set_smob_XXX) in new code
3217 until this issue has been settled.
3219 ** Removed deprecated type tag scm_tc16_kw
3221 ** Added type tag scm_tc16_keyword
3223 (This was introduced already in release 1.3.4 but was not documented
3226 ** gdb_print now prints "*** Guile not initialized ***" until Guile initialized
3228 * Changes to system call interfaces:
3230 ** The "select" procedure now tests port buffers for the ability to
3231 provide input or accept output. Previously only the underlying file
3232 descriptors were checked.
3234 ** New variable PIPE_BUF: the maximum number of bytes that can be
3235 atomically written to a pipe.
3237 ** If a facility is not available on the system when Guile is
3238 compiled, the corresponding primitive procedure will not be defined.
3239 Previously it would have been defined but would throw a system-error
3240 exception if called. Exception handlers which catch this case may
3241 need minor modification: an error will be thrown with key
3242 'unbound-variable instead of 'system-error. Alternatively it's
3243 now possible to use `defined?' to check whether the facility is
3246 ** Procedures which depend on the timezone should now give the correct
3247 result on systems which cache the TZ environment variable, even if TZ
3248 is changed without calling tzset.
3250 * Changes to the networking interfaces:
3252 ** New functions: htons, ntohs, htonl, ntohl: for converting short and
3253 long integers between network and host format. For now, it's not
3254 particularly convenient to do this kind of thing, but consider:
3256 (define write-network-long
3257 (lambda (value port)
3258 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
3259 (uniform-vector-set! v 0 (htonl value))
3260 (uniform-vector-write v port))))
3262 (define read-network-long
3264 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
3265 (uniform-vector-read! v port)
3266 (ntohl (uniform-vector-ref v 0)))))
3268 ** If inet-aton fails, it now throws an error with key 'misc-error
3269 instead of 'system-error, since errno is not relevant.
3271 ** Certain gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr failures now throw errors with
3272 specific keys instead of 'system-error. The latter is inappropriate
3273 since errno will not have been set. The keys are:
3274 'host-not-found, 'try-again, 'no-recovery and 'no-data.
3276 ** sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent: now take an
3277 optional argument STAYOPEN, which specifies whether the database
3278 remains open after a database entry is accessed randomly (e.g., using
3279 gethostbyname for the hosts database.) The default is #f. Previously
3283 Changes since Guile 1.3.2:
3285 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3289 An initial version of the Guile debugger written by Chris Hanson has
3290 been added. The debugger is still under development but is included
3291 in the distribution anyway since it is already quite useful.
3297 after an error to enter the debugger. Type `help' inside the debugger
3298 for a description of available commands.
3300 If you prefer to have stack frames numbered and printed in
3301 anti-chronological order and prefer up in the stack to be down on the
3302 screen as is the case in gdb, you can put
3304 (debug-enable 'backwards)
3306 in your .guile startup file. (However, this means that Guile can't
3307 use indentation to indicate stack level.)
3309 The debugger is autoloaded into Guile at the first use.
3311 ** Further enhancements to backtraces
3313 There is a new debug option `width' which controls the maximum width
3314 on the screen of printed stack frames. Fancy printing parameters
3315 ("level" and "length" as in Common LISP) are adaptively adjusted for
3316 each stack frame to give maximum information while still fitting
3317 within the bounds. If the stack frame can't be made to fit by
3318 adjusting parameters, it is simply cut off at the end. This is marked
3321 ** Some modules are now only loaded when the repl is started
3323 The modules (ice-9 debug), (ice-9 session), (ice-9 threads) and (ice-9
3324 regex) are now loaded into (guile-user) only if the repl has been
3325 started. The effect is that the startup time for scripts has been
3326 reduced to 30% of what it was previously.
3328 Correctly written scripts load the modules they require at the top of
3329 the file and should not be affected by this change.
3331 ** Hooks are now represented as smobs
3333 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3335 ** Readline support has changed again.
3337 The old (readline-activator) module is gone. Use (ice-9 readline)
3338 instead, which now contains all readline functionality. So the code
3339 to activate readline is now
3341 (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
3344 This should work at any time, including from the guile prompt.
3346 To avoid confusion about the terms of Guile's license, please only
3347 enable readline for your personal use; please don't make it the
3348 default for others. Here is why we make this rather odd-sounding
3351 Guile is normally licensed under a weakened form of the GNU General
3352 Public License, which allows you to link code with Guile without
3353 placing that code under the GPL. This exception is important to some
3356 However, since readline is distributed under the GNU General Public
3357 License, when you link Guile with readline, either statically or
3358 dynamically, you effectively change Guile's license to the strict GPL.
3359 Whenever you link any strictly GPL'd code into Guile, uses of Guile
3360 which are normally permitted become forbidden. This is a rather
3361 non-obvious consequence of the licensing terms.
3363 So, to make sure things remain clear, please let people choose for
3364 themselves whether to link GPL'd libraries like readline with Guile.
3366 ** regexp-substitute/global has changed slightly, but incompatibly.
3368 If you include a function in the item list, the string of the match
3369 object it receives is the same string passed to
3370 regexp-substitute/global, not some suffix of that string.
3371 Correspondingly, the match's positions are relative to the entire
3372 string, not the suffix.
3374 If the regexp can match the empty string, the way matches are chosen
3375 from the string has changed. regexp-substitute/global recognizes the
3376 same set of matches that list-matches does; see below.
3378 ** New function: list-matches REGEXP STRING [FLAGS]
3380 Return a list of match objects, one for every non-overlapping, maximal
3381 match of REGEXP in STRING. The matches appear in left-to-right order.
3382 list-matches only reports matches of the empty string if there are no
3383 other matches which begin on, end at, or include the empty match's
3386 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
3388 ** New function: fold-matches REGEXP STRING INIT PROC [FLAGS]
3390 For each match of REGEXP in STRING, apply PROC to the match object,
3391 and the last value PROC returned, or INIT for the first call. Return
3392 the last value returned by PROC. We apply PROC to the matches as they
3393 appear from left to right.
3395 This function recognizes matches according to the same criteria as
3398 Thus, you could define list-matches like this:
3400 (define (list-matches regexp string . flags)
3401 (reverse! (apply fold-matches regexp string '() cons flags)))
3403 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
3407 *** New function: hook? OBJ
3409 Return #t if OBJ is a hook, otherwise #f.
3411 *** New function: make-hook-with-name NAME [ARITY]
3413 Return a hook with name NAME and arity ARITY. The default value for
3414 ARITY is 0. The only effect of NAME is that it will appear when the
3415 hook object is printed to ease debugging.
3417 *** New function: hook-empty? HOOK
3419 Return #t if HOOK doesn't contain any procedures, otherwise #f.
3421 *** New function: hook->list HOOK
3423 Return a list of the procedures that are called when run-hook is
3426 ** `map' signals an error if its argument lists are not all the same length.
3428 This is the behavior required by R5RS, so this change is really a bug
3429 fix. But it seems to affect a lot of people's code, so we're
3430 mentioning it here anyway.
3432 ** Print-state handling has been made more transparent
3434 Under certain circumstances, ports are represented as a port with an
3435 associated print state. Earlier, this pair was represented as a pair
3436 (see "Some magic has been added to the printer" below). It is now
3437 indistinguishable (almost; see `get-print-state') from a port on the
3440 *** New function: port-with-print-state OUTPUT-PORT PRINT-STATE
3442 Return a new port with the associated print state PRINT-STATE.
3444 *** New function: get-print-state OUTPUT-PORT
3446 Return the print state associated with this port if it exists,
3447 otherwise return #f.
3449 *** New function: directory-stream? OBJECT
3451 Returns true iff OBJECT is a directory stream --- the sort of object
3452 returned by `opendir'.
3454 ** New function: using-readline?
3456 Return #t if readline is in use in the current repl.
3458 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
3460 Structs will be replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into Guile
3461 and use GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
3463 * Changes to the scm_ interface
3465 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
3467 The entire current struct interface (struct.c, struct.h) will be
3468 replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into libguile and use
3469 GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
3471 ** The internal representation of subr's has changed
3473 Instead of giving a hint to the subr name, the CAR field of the subr
3474 now contains an index to a subr entry in scm_subr_table.
3476 *** New variable: scm_subr_table
3478 An array of subr entries. A subr entry contains the name, properties
3479 and documentation associated with the subr. The properties and
3480 documentation slots are not yet used.
3482 ** A new scheme for "forwarding" calls to a builtin to a generic function
3484 It is now possible to extend the functionality of some Guile
3485 primitives by letting them defer a call to a GOOPS generic function on
3486 argument mismatch. This means that there is no loss of efficiency in
3491 (use-modules (oop goops)) ; Must be GOOPS version 0.2.
3492 (define-method + ((x <string>) (y <string>))
3493 (string-append x y))
3495 + will still be as efficient as usual in numerical calculations, but
3496 can also be used for concatenating strings.
3498 Who will be the first one to extend Guile's numerical tower to
3499 rationals? :) [OK, there a few other things to fix before this can
3500 be made in a clean way.]
3502 *** New snarf macros for defining primitives: SCM_GPROC, SCM_GPROC1
3504 New macro: SCM_GPROC (CNAME, SNAME, REQ, OPT, VAR, CFUNC, GENERIC)
3506 New macro: SCM_GPROC1 (CNAME, SNAME, TYPE, CFUNC, GENERIC)
3508 These do the same job as SCM_PROC and SCM_PROC1, but they also define
3509 a variable GENERIC which can be used by the dispatch macros below.
3511 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3513 *** New macros for forwarding control to a generic on arg type error
3515 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_1 (GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
3517 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
3519 These correspond to the scm_wta function call, and have the same
3520 behaviour until the user has called the GOOPS primitive
3521 `enable-primitive-generic!'. After that, these macros will apply the
3522 generic function GENERIC to the argument(s) instead of calling
3525 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3527 *** New macros for argument testing with generic dispatch
3529 New macro: SCM_GASSERT1 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
3531 New macro: SCM_GASSERT2 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
3533 These correspond to the SCM_ASSERT macro, but will defer control to
3534 GENERIC on error after `enable-primitive-generic!' has been called.
3536 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
3538 ** New function: SCM scm_eval_body (SCM body, SCM env)
3540 Evaluates the body of a special form.
3542 ** The internal representation of struct's has changed
3544 Previously, four slots were allocated for the procedure(s) of entities
3545 and operators. The motivation for this representation had to do with
3546 the structure of the evaluator, the wish to support tail-recursive
3547 generic functions, and efficiency. Since the generic function
3548 dispatch mechanism has changed, there is no longer a need for such an
3549 expensive representation, and the representation has been simplified.
3551 This should not make any difference for most users.
3553 ** GOOPS support has been cleaned up.
3555 Some code has been moved from eval.c to objects.c and code in both of
3556 these compilation units has been cleaned up and better structured.
3558 *** New functions for applying generic functions
3560 New function: SCM scm_apply_generic (GENERIC, ARGS)
3561 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_0 (GENERIC)
3562 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_1 (GENERIC, ARG1)
3563 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2)
3564 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_3 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, ARG3)
3566 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_named_hook
3568 It is now replaced by:
3570 ** New function: SCM scm_create_hook (const char *name, int arity)
3572 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
3573 binds a variable named NAME to it.
3575 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
3577 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module.
3578 This might change when we get the new module system.
3580 [The behaviour is identical to scm_make_named_hook.]
3584 Changes since Guile 1.3:
3586 * Changes to mailing lists
3588 ** Some of the Guile mailing lists have moved to sourceware.cygnus.com.
3590 See the README file to find current addresses for all the Guile
3593 * Changes to the distribution
3595 ** Readline support is no longer included with Guile by default.
3597 Based on the different license terms of Guile and Readline, we
3598 concluded that Guile should not *by default* cause the linking of
3599 Readline into an application program. Readline support is now offered
3600 as a separate module, which is linked into an application only when
3601 you explicitly specify it.
3603 Although Guile is GNU software, its distribution terms add a special
3604 exception to the usual GNU General Public License (GPL). Guile's
3605 license includes a clause that allows you to link Guile with non-free
3606 programs. We add this exception so as not to put Guile at a
3607 disadvantage vis-a-vis other extensibility packages that support other
3610 In contrast, the GNU Readline library is distributed under the GNU
3611 General Public License pure and simple. This means that you may not
3612 link Readline, even dynamically, into an application unless it is
3613 distributed under a free software license that is compatible the GPL.
3615 Because of this difference in distribution terms, an application that
3616 can use Guile may not be able to use Readline. Now users will be
3617 explicitly offered two independent decisions about the use of these
3620 You can activate the readline support by issuing
3622 (use-modules (readline-activator))
3625 from your ".guile" file, for example.
3627 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3629 ** All builtins now print as primitives.
3630 Previously builtin procedures not belonging to the fundamental subr
3631 types printed as #<compiled closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>.
3632 Now, they print as #<primitive-procedure NAME>.
3634 ** Backtraces slightly more intelligible.
3635 gsubr-apply and macro transformer application frames no longer appear
3638 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3640 ** Guile now correctly handles internal defines by rewriting them into
3641 their equivalent letrec. Previously, internal defines would
3642 incrementally add to the innermost environment, without checking
3643 whether the restrictions specified in RnRS were met. This lead to the
3644 correct behaviour when these restriction actually were met, but didn't
3645 catch all illegal uses. Such an illegal use could lead to crashes of
3646 the Guile interpreter or or other unwanted results. An example of
3647 incorrect internal defines that made Guile behave erratically:
3659 The problem with this example is that the definition of `c' uses the
3660 value of `b' directly. This confuses the meoization machine of Guile
3661 so that the second call of `b' (this time in a larger environment that
3662 also contains bindings for `c' and `d') refers to the binding of `c'
3663 instead of `a'. You could also make Guile crash with a variation on
3668 (define (b flag) (if flag a 1))
3669 (define c (1+ (b flag)))
3677 From now on, Guile will issue an `Unbound variable: b' error message
3682 A hook contains a list of functions which should be called on
3683 particular occasions in an existing program. Hooks are used for
3686 A window manager might have a hook before-window-map-hook. The window
3687 manager uses the function run-hooks to call all functions stored in
3688 before-window-map-hook each time a window is mapped. The user can
3689 store functions in the hook using add-hook!.
3691 In Guile, hooks are first class objects.
3693 *** New function: make-hook [N_ARGS]
3695 Return a hook for hook functions which can take N_ARGS arguments.
3696 The default value for N_ARGS is 0.
3698 (See also scm_make_named_hook below.)
3700 *** New function: add-hook! HOOK PROC [APPEND_P]
3702 Put PROC at the beginning of the list of functions stored in HOOK.
3703 If APPEND_P is supplied, and non-false, put PROC at the end instead.
3705 PROC must be able to take the number of arguments specified when the
3708 If PROC already exists in HOOK, then remove it first.
3710 *** New function: remove-hook! HOOK PROC
3712 Remove PROC from the list of functions in HOOK.
3714 *** New function: reset-hook! HOOK
3716 Clear the list of hook functions stored in HOOK.
3718 *** New function: run-hook HOOK ARG1 ...
3720 Run all hook functions stored in HOOK with arguments ARG1 ... .
3721 The number of arguments supplied must correspond to the number given
3722 when the hook was created.
3724 ** The function `dynamic-link' now takes optional keyword arguments.
3725 The only keyword argument that is currently defined is `:global
3726 BOOL'. With it, you can control whether the shared library will be
3727 linked in global mode or not. In global mode, the symbols from the
3728 linked library can be used to resolve references from other
3729 dynamically linked libraries. In non-global mode, the linked
3730 library is essentially invisible and can only be accessed via
3731 `dynamic-func', etc. The default is now to link in global mode.
3732 Previously, the default has been non-global mode.
3734 The `#:global' keyword is only effective on platforms that support
3735 the dlopen family of functions.
3737 ** New function `provided?'
3739 - Function: provided? FEATURE
3740 Return true iff FEATURE is supported by this installation of
3741 Guile. FEATURE must be a symbol naming a feature; the global
3742 variable `*features*' is a list of available features.
3744 ** Changes to the module (ice-9 expect):
3746 *** The expect-strings macro now matches `$' in a regular expression
3747 only at a line-break or end-of-file by default. Previously it would
3748 match the end of the string accumulated so far. The old behaviour
3749 can be obtained by setting the variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
3752 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
3753 for the regexp-exec flags. If `regexp/noteol' is included, then `$'
3754 in a regular expression will still match before a line-break or
3755 end-of-file. The default is `regexp/noteol'.
3757 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable
3758 `expect-strings-compile-flags' for the flags to be supplied to
3759 `make-regexp'. The default is `regexp/newline', which was previously
3762 *** The expect macro now supplies two arguments to a match procedure:
3763 the current accumulated string and a flag to indicate whether
3764 end-of-file has been reached. Previously only the string was supplied.
3765 If end-of-file is reached, the match procedure will be called an
3766 additional time with the same accumulated string as the previous call
3767 but with the flag set.
3769 ** New module (ice-9 format), implementing the Common Lisp `format' function.
3771 This code, and the documentation for it that appears here, was
3772 borrowed from SLIB, with minor adaptations for Guile.
3774 - Function: format DESTINATION FORMAT-STRING . ARGUMENTS
3775 An almost complete implementation of Common LISP format description
3776 according to the CL reference book `Common LISP' from Guy L.
3777 Steele, Digital Press. Backward compatible to most of the
3778 available Scheme format implementations.
3780 Returns `#t', `#f' or a string; has side effect of printing
3781 according to FORMAT-STRING. If DESTINATION is `#t', the output is
3782 to the current output port and `#t' is returned. If DESTINATION
3783 is `#f', a formatted string is returned as the result of the call.
3784 NEW: If DESTINATION is a string, DESTINATION is regarded as the
3785 format string; FORMAT-STRING is then the first argument and the
3786 output is returned as a string. If DESTINATION is a number, the
3787 output is to the current error port if available by the
3788 implementation. Otherwise DESTINATION must be an output port and
3791 FORMAT-STRING must be a string. In case of a formatting error
3792 format returns `#f' and prints a message on the current output or
3793 error port. Characters are output as if the string were output by
3794 the `display' function with the exception of those prefixed by a
3795 tilde (~). For a detailed description of the FORMAT-STRING syntax
3796 please consult a Common LISP format reference manual. For a test
3797 suite to verify this format implementation load `formatst.scm'.
3798 Please send bug reports to `lutzeb@cs.tu-berlin.de'.
3800 Note: `format' is not reentrant, i.e. only one `format'-call may
3801 be executed at a time.
3804 *** Format Specification (Format version 3.0)
3806 Please consult a Common LISP format reference manual for a detailed
3807 description of the format string syntax. For a demonstration of the
3808 implemented directives see `formatst.scm'.
3810 This implementation supports directive parameters and modifiers (`:'
3811 and `@' characters). Multiple parameters must be separated by a comma
3812 (`,'). Parameters can be numerical parameters (positive or negative),
3813 character parameters (prefixed by a quote character (`''), variable
3814 parameters (`v'), number of rest arguments parameter (`#'), empty and
3815 default parameters. Directive characters are case independent. The
3816 general form of a directive is:
3818 DIRECTIVE ::= ~{DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER,}[:][@]DIRECTIVE-CHARACTER
3820 DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER ::= [ [-|+]{0-9}+ | 'CHARACTER | v | # ]
3822 *** Implemented CL Format Control Directives
3824 Documentation syntax: Uppercase characters represent the
3825 corresponding control directive characters. Lowercase characters
3826 represent control directive parameter descriptions.
3829 Any (print as `display' does).
3833 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARA'
3837 S-expression (print as `write' does).
3841 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARS'
3847 print number sign always.
3850 print comma separated.
3852 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARD'
3858 print number sign always.
3861 print comma separated.
3863 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARX'
3869 print number sign always.
3872 print comma separated.
3874 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARO'
3880 print number sign always.
3883 print comma separated.
3885 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARB'
3890 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARR'
3894 print a number as a Roman numeral.
3897 print a number as an "old fashioned" Roman numeral.
3900 print a number as an ordinal English number.
3903 print a number as a cardinal English number.
3908 prints `y' and `ies'.
3911 as `~P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
3914 as `~@P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
3919 prints a character as the reader can understand it (i.e. `#\'
3923 prints a character as emacs does (eg. `^C' for ASCII 03).
3926 Fixed-format floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN).
3927 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHARF'
3929 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3932 Exponential floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN`E'EE).
3933 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARE'
3935 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3938 General floating-point (prints a flonum either fixed or
3940 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARG'
3942 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3945 Dollars floating-point (prints a flonum in fixed with signs
3947 `~DIGITS,SCALE,WIDTH,PADCHAR$'
3949 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
3952 A sign is always printed and appears before the padding.
3955 The sign appears before the padding.
3963 print newline if not at the beginning of the output line.
3965 prints `~&' and then N-1 newlines.
3970 print N page separators.
3980 newline is ignored, white space left.
3983 newline is left, white space ignored.
3988 relative tabulation.
3994 Indirection (expects indirect arguments as a list).
3996 extracts indirect arguments from format arguments.
3999 Case conversion (converts by `string-downcase').
4001 converts by `string-capitalize'.
4004 converts by `string-capitalize-first'.
4007 converts by `string-upcase'.
4010 Argument Jumping (jumps 1 argument forward).
4012 jumps N arguments forward.
4015 jumps 1 argument backward.
4018 jumps N arguments backward.
4021 jumps to the 0th argument.
4024 jumps to the Nth argument (beginning from 0)
4026 `~[STR0~;STR1~;...~;STRN~]'
4027 Conditional Expression (numerical clause conditional).
4029 take argument from N.
4032 true test conditional.
4035 if-else-then conditional.
4041 default clause follows.
4044 Iteration (args come from the next argument (a list)).
4046 at most N iterations.
4049 args from next arg (a list of lists).
4052 args from the rest of arguments.
4055 args from the rest args (lists).
4066 aborts if N <= M <= K
4068 *** Not Implemented CL Format Control Directives
4071 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
4074 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
4080 (sorry I don't understand its semantics completely)
4082 *** Extended, Replaced and Additional Control Directives
4084 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHD'
4085 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHX'
4086 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHO'
4087 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHB'
4088 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHR'
4089 COMMAWIDTH is the number of characters between two comma
4093 print a R4RS complex number as `~F~@Fi' with passed parameters for
4097 Pretty print formatting of an argument for scheme code lists.
4103 Flushes the output if format DESTINATION is a port.
4106 Print a `#\space' character
4108 print N `#\space' characters.
4111 Print a `#\tab' character
4113 print N `#\tab' characters.
4116 Takes N as an integer representation for a character. No arguments
4117 are consumed. N is converted to a character by `integer->char'. N
4118 must be a positive decimal number.
4121 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
4122 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
4123 be processed by `read'.
4126 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
4127 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
4128 be processed by `read'.
4131 Prints information and a copyright notice on the format
4134 prints format version.
4137 may also print number strings, i.e. passing a number as a string
4138 and format it accordingly.
4140 *** Configuration Variables
4142 The format module exports some configuration variables to suit the
4143 systems and users needs. There should be no modification necessary for
4144 the configuration that comes with Guile. Format detects automatically
4145 if the running scheme system implements floating point numbers and
4148 format:symbol-case-conv
4149 Symbols are converted by `symbol->string' so the case type of the
4150 printed symbols is implementation dependent.
4151 `format:symbol-case-conv' is a one arg closure which is either
4152 `#f' (no conversion), `string-upcase', `string-downcase' or
4153 `string-capitalize'. (default `#f')
4155 format:iobj-case-conv
4156 As FORMAT:SYMBOL-CASE-CONV but applies for the representation of
4157 implementation internal objects. (default `#f')
4160 The character prefixing the exponent value in `~E' printing.
4163 *** Compatibility With Other Format Implementations
4169 Downward compatible except for padding support and `~A', `~S',
4170 `~P', `~X' uppercase printing. SLIB format 1.4 uses C-style
4171 `printf' padding support which is completely replaced by the CL
4172 `format' padding style.
4175 Downward compatible except for `~', which is not documented
4176 (ignores all characters inside the format string up to a newline
4177 character). (7.1 implements `~a', `~s', ~NEWLINE, `~~', `~%',
4178 numerical and variable parameters and `:/@' modifiers in the CL
4182 Downward compatible except for `~A' and `~S' which print in
4183 uppercase. (Elk implements `~a', `~s', `~~', and `~%' (no
4184 directive parameters or modifiers)).
4187 Downward compatible except for an optional destination parameter:
4188 S2C accepts a format call without a destination which returns a
4189 formatted string. This is equivalent to a #f destination in S2C.
4190 (S2C implements `~a', `~s', `~c', `~%', and `~~' (no directive
4191 parameters or modifiers)).
4194 ** Changes to string-handling functions.
4196 These functions were added to support the (ice-9 format) module, above.
4198 *** New function: string-upcase STRING
4199 *** New function: string-downcase STRING
4201 These are non-destructive versions of the existing string-upcase! and
4202 string-downcase! functions.
4204 *** New function: string-capitalize! STRING
4205 *** New function: string-capitalize STRING
4207 These functions convert the first letter of each word in the string to
4210 (string-capitalize "howdy there")
4213 As with the other functions, string-capitalize! modifies the string in
4214 place, while string-capitalize returns a modified copy of its argument.
4216 *** New function: string-ci->symbol STRING
4218 Return a symbol whose name is STRING, but having the same case as if
4219 the symbol had be read by `read'.
4221 Guile can be configured to be sensitive or insensitive to case
4222 differences in Scheme identifiers. If Guile is case-insensitive, all
4223 symbols are converted to lower case on input. The `string-ci->symbol'
4224 function returns a symbol whose name in STRING, transformed as Guile
4225 would if STRING were input.
4227 *** New function: substring-move! STRING1 START END STRING2 START
4229 Copy the substring of STRING1 from START (inclusive) to END
4230 (exclusive) to STRING2 at START. STRING1 and STRING2 may be the same
4231 string, and the source and destination areas may overlap; in all
4232 cases, the function behaves as if all the characters were copied
4235 *** Extended functions: substring-move-left! substring-move-right!
4237 These functions now correctly copy arbitrarily overlapping substrings;
4238 they are both synonyms for substring-move!.
4241 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-long), with the function `getopt-long'.
4243 getopt-long is a function for parsing command-line arguments in a
4244 manner consistent with other GNU programs.
4246 (getopt-long ARGS GRAMMAR)
4247 Parse the arguments ARGS according to the argument list grammar GRAMMAR.
4249 ARGS should be a list of strings. Its first element should be the
4250 name of the program; subsequent elements should be the arguments
4251 that were passed to the program on the command line. The
4252 `program-arguments' procedure returns a list of this form.
4254 GRAMMAR is a list of the form:
4255 ((OPTION (PROPERTY VALUE) ...) ...)
4257 Each OPTION should be a symbol. `getopt-long' will accept a
4258 command-line option named `--OPTION'.
4259 Each option can have the following (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs:
4261 (single-char CHAR) --- Accept `-CHAR' as a single-character
4262 equivalent to `--OPTION'. This is how to specify traditional
4264 (required? BOOL) --- If BOOL is true, the option is required.
4265 getopt-long will raise an error if it is not found in ARGS.
4266 (value BOOL) --- If BOOL is #t, the option accepts a value; if
4267 it is #f, it does not; and if it is the symbol
4268 `optional', the option may appear in ARGS with or
4270 (predicate FUNC) --- If the option accepts a value (i.e. you
4271 specified `(value #t)' for this option), then getopt
4272 will apply FUNC to the value, and throw an exception
4273 if it returns #f. FUNC should be a procedure which
4274 accepts a string and returns a boolean value; you may
4275 need to use quasiquotes to get it into GRAMMAR.
4277 The (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs may occur in any order, but each
4278 property may occur only once. By default, options do not have
4279 single-character equivalents, are not required, and do not take
4282 In ARGS, single-character options may be combined, in the usual
4283 Unix fashion: ("-x" "-y") is equivalent to ("-xy"). If an option
4284 accepts values, then it must be the last option in the
4285 combination; the value is the next argument. So, for example, using
4286 the following grammar:
4287 ((apples (single-char #\a))
4288 (blimps (single-char #\b) (value #t))
4289 (catalexis (single-char #\c) (value #t)))
4290 the following argument lists would be acceptable:
4291 ("-a" "-b" "bang" "-c" "couth") ("bang" and "couth" are the values
4292 for "blimps" and "catalexis")
4293 ("-ab" "bang" "-c" "couth") (same)
4294 ("-ac" "couth" "-b" "bang") (same)
4295 ("-abc" "couth" "bang") (an error, since `-b' is not the
4296 last option in its combination)
4298 If an option's value is optional, then `getopt-long' decides
4299 whether it has a value by looking at what follows it in ARGS. If
4300 the next element is a string, and it does not appear to be an
4301 option itself, then that string is the option's value.
4303 The value of a long option can appear as the next element in ARGS,
4304 or it can follow the option name, separated by an `=' character.
4305 Thus, using the same grammar as above, the following argument lists
4307 ("--apples" "Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
4308 ("--apples=Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
4309 ("--blimps" "Goodyear" "--apples=Braeburn")
4311 If the option "--" appears in ARGS, argument parsing stops there;
4312 subsequent arguments are returned as ordinary arguments, even if
4313 they resemble options. So, in the argument list:
4314 ("--apples" "Granny Smith" "--" "--blimp" "Goodyear")
4315 `getopt-long' will recognize the `apples' option as having the
4316 value "Granny Smith", but it will not recognize the `blimp'
4317 option; it will return the strings "--blimp" and "Goodyear" as
4318 ordinary argument strings.
4320 The `getopt-long' function returns the parsed argument list as an
4321 assocation list, mapping option names --- the symbols from GRAMMAR
4322 --- onto their values, or #t if the option does not accept a value.
4323 Unused options do not appear in the alist.
4325 All arguments that are not the value of any option are returned
4326 as a list, associated with the empty list.
4328 `getopt-long' throws an exception if:
4329 - it finds an unrecognized option in ARGS
4330 - a required option is omitted
4331 - an option that requires an argument doesn't get one
4332 - an option that doesn't accept an argument does get one (this can
4333 only happen using the long option `--opt=value' syntax)
4334 - an option predicate fails
4339 `((lockfile-dir (required? #t)
4342 (predicate ,file-is-directory?))
4343 (verbose (required? #f)
4346 (x-includes (single-char #\x))
4347 (rnet-server (single-char #\y)
4348 (predicate ,string?))))
4350 (getopt-long '("my-prog" "-vk" "/tmp" "foo1" "--x-includes=/usr/include"
4351 "--rnet-server=lamprod" "--" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
4353 => ((() "foo1" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
4354 (rnet-server . "lamprod")
4355 (x-includes . "/usr/include")
4356 (lockfile-dir . "/tmp")
4359 ** The (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) module is obsolete; use (ice-9 getopt-long).
4361 It will be removed in a few releases.
4363 ** New syntax: lambda*
4364 ** New syntax: define*
4365 ** New syntax: define*-public
4366 ** New syntax: defmacro*
4367 ** New syntax: defmacro*-public
4368 Guile now supports optional arguments.
4370 `lambda*', `define*', `define*-public', `defmacro*' and
4371 `defmacro*-public' are identical to the non-* versions except that
4372 they use an extended type of parameter list that has the following BNF
4373 syntax (parentheses are literal, square brackets indicate grouping,
4374 and `*', `+' and `?' have the usual meaning):
4376 ext-param-list ::= ( [identifier]* [#&optional [ext-var-decl]+]?
4377 [#&key [ext-var-decl]+ [#&allow-other-keys]?]?
4378 [[#&rest identifier]|[. identifier]]? ) | [identifier]
4380 ext-var-decl ::= identifier | ( identifier expression )
4382 The semantics are best illustrated with the following documentation
4383 and examples for `lambda*':
4386 lambda extended for optional and keyword arguments
4388 lambda* creates a procedure that takes optional arguments. These
4389 are specified by putting them inside brackets at the end of the
4390 paramater list, but before any dotted rest argument. For example,
4391 (lambda* (a b #&optional c d . e) '())
4392 creates a procedure with fixed arguments a and b, optional arguments c
4393 and d, and rest argument e. If the optional arguments are omitted
4394 in a call, the variables for them are unbound in the procedure. This
4395 can be checked with the bound? macro.
4397 lambda* can also take keyword arguments. For example, a procedure
4399 (lambda* (#&key xyzzy larch) '())
4400 can be called with any of the argument lists (#:xyzzy 11)
4401 (#:larch 13) (#:larch 42 #:xyzzy 19) (). Whichever arguments
4402 are given as keywords are bound to values.
4404 Optional and keyword arguments can also be given default values
4405 which they take on when they are not present in a call, by giving a
4406 two-item list in place of an optional argument, for example in:
4407 (lambda* (foo #&optional (bar 42) #&key (baz 73)) (list foo bar baz))
4408 foo is a fixed argument, bar is an optional argument with default
4409 value 42, and baz is a keyword argument with default value 73.
4410 Default value expressions are not evaluated unless they are needed
4411 and until the procedure is called.
4413 lambda* now supports two more special parameter list keywords.
4415 lambda*-defined procedures now throw an error by default if a
4416 keyword other than one of those specified is found in the actual
4417 passed arguments. However, specifying #&allow-other-keys
4418 immediately after the kyword argument declarations restores the
4419 previous behavior of ignoring unknown keywords. lambda* also now
4420 guarantees that if the same keyword is passed more than once, the
4421 last one passed is the one that takes effect. For example,
4422 ((lambda* (#&key (heads 0) (tails 0)) (display (list heads tails)))
4423 #:heads 37 #:tails 42 #:heads 99)
4424 would result in (99 47) being displayed.
4426 #&rest is also now provided as a synonym for the dotted syntax rest
4427 argument. The argument lists (a . b) and (a #&rest b) are equivalent in
4428 all respects to lambda*. This is provided for more similarity to DSSSL,
4429 MIT-Scheme and Kawa among others, as well as for refugees from other
4432 Further documentation may be found in the optargs.scm file itself.
4434 The optional argument module also exports the macros `let-optional',
4435 `let-optional*', `let-keywords', `let-keywords*' and `bound?'. These
4436 are not documented here because they may be removed in the future, but
4437 full documentation is still available in optargs.scm.
4439 ** New syntax: and-let*
4440 Guile now supports the `and-let*' form, described in the draft SRFI-2.
4442 Syntax: (land* (<clause> ...) <body> ...)
4443 Each <clause> should have one of the following forms:
4444 (<variable> <expression>)
4447 Each <variable> or <bound-variable> should be an identifier. Each
4448 <expression> should be a valid expression. The <body> should be a
4449 possibly empty sequence of expressions, like the <body> of a
4452 Semantics: A LAND* expression is evaluated by evaluating the
4453 <expression> or <bound-variable> of each of the <clause>s from
4454 left to right. The value of the first <expression> or
4455 <bound-variable> that evaluates to a false value is returned; the
4456 remaining <expression>s and <bound-variable>s are not evaluated.
4457 The <body> forms are evaluated iff all the <expression>s and
4458 <bound-variable>s evaluate to true values.
4460 The <expression>s and the <body> are evaluated in an environment
4461 binding each <variable> of the preceding (<variable> <expression>)
4462 clauses to the value of the <expression>. Later bindings
4463 shadow earlier bindings.
4465 Guile's and-let* macro was contributed by Michael Livshin.
4467 ** New sorting functions
4469 *** New function: sorted? SEQUENCE LESS?
4470 Returns `#t' when the sequence argument is in non-decreasing order
4471 according to LESS? (that is, there is no adjacent pair `... x y
4472 ...' for which `(less? y x)').
4474 Returns `#f' when the sequence contains at least one out-of-order
4475 pair. It is an error if the sequence is neither a list nor a
4478 *** New function: merge LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
4479 LIST1 and LIST2 are sorted lists.
4480 Returns the sorted list of all elements in LIST1 and LIST2.
4482 Assume that the elements a and b1 in LIST1 and b2 in LIST2 are "equal"
4483 in the sense that (LESS? x y) --> #f for x, y in {a, b1, b2},
4484 and that a < b1 in LIST1. Then a < b1 < b2 in the result.
4485 (Here "<" should read "comes before".)
4487 *** New procedure: merge! LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
4488 Merges two lists, re-using the pairs of LIST1 and LIST2 to build
4489 the result. If the code is compiled, and LESS? constructs no new
4490 pairs, no pairs at all will be allocated. The first pair of the
4491 result will be either the first pair of LIST1 or the first pair of
4494 *** New function: sort SEQUENCE LESS?
4495 Accepts either a list or a vector, and returns a new sequence
4496 which is sorted. The new sequence is the same type as the input.
4497 Always `(sorted? (sort sequence less?) less?)'. The original
4498 sequence is not altered in any way. The new sequence shares its
4499 elements with the old one; no elements are copied.
4501 *** New procedure: sort! SEQUENCE LESS
4502 Returns its sorted result in the original boxes. No new storage is
4503 allocated at all. Proper usage: (set! slist (sort! slist <))
4505 *** New function: stable-sort SEQUENCE LESS?
4506 Similar to `sort' but stable. That is, if "equal" elements are
4507 ordered a < b in the original sequence, they will have the same order
4510 *** New function: stable-sort! SEQUENCE LESS?
4511 Similar to `sort!' but stable.
4512 Uses temporary storage when sorting vectors.
4514 *** New functions: sort-list, sort-list!
4515 Added for compatibility with scsh.
4517 ** New built-in random number support
4519 *** New function: random N [STATE]
4520 Accepts a positive integer or real N and returns a number of the
4521 same type between zero (inclusive) and N (exclusive). The values
4522 returned have a uniform distribution.
4524 The optional argument STATE must be of the type produced by
4525 `copy-random-state' or `seed->random-state'. It defaults to the value
4526 of the variable `*random-state*'. This object is used to maintain the
4527 state of the pseudo-random-number generator and is altered as a side
4528 effect of the `random' operation.
4530 *** New variable: *random-state*
4531 Holds a data structure that encodes the internal state of the
4532 random-number generator that `random' uses by default. The nature
4533 of this data structure is implementation-dependent. It may be
4534 printed out and successfully read back in, but may or may not
4535 function correctly as a random-number state object in another
4538 *** New function: copy-random-state [STATE]
4539 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
4540 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
4541 If argument STATE is given, a copy of it is returned. Otherwise a
4542 copy of `*random-state*' is returned.
4544 *** New function: seed->random-state SEED
4545 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
4546 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
4547 SEED is a string or a number. A new state is generated and
4548 initialized using SEED.
4550 *** New function: random:uniform [STATE]
4551 Returns an uniformly distributed inexact real random number in the
4552 range between 0 and 1.
4554 *** New procedure: random:solid-sphere! VECT [STATE]
4555 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose
4556 squares is less than 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in
4557 space of dimension N = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are
4558 uniformly distributed within the unit N-shere. The sum of the
4559 squares of the numbers is returned. VECT can be either a vector
4560 or a uniform vector of doubles.
4562 *** New procedure: random:hollow-sphere! VECT [STATE]
4563 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose squares
4564 is equal to 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in space of
4565 dimension n = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are uniformly
4566 distributed over the surface of the unit n-shere. VECT can be either
4567 a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
4569 *** New function: random:normal [STATE]
4570 Returns an inexact real in a normal distribution with mean 0 and
4571 standard deviation 1. For a normal distribution with mean M and
4572 standard deviation D use `(+ M (* D (random:normal)))'.
4574 *** New procedure: random:normal-vector! VECT [STATE]
4575 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers which are independent and
4576 standard normally distributed (i.e., with mean 0 and variance 1).
4577 VECT can be either a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
4579 *** New function: random:exp STATE
4580 Returns an inexact real in an exponential distribution with mean 1.
4581 For an exponential distribution with mean U use (* U (random:exp)).
4583 ** The range of logand, logior, logxor, logtest, and logbit? have changed.
4585 These functions now operate on numbers in the range of a C unsigned
4588 These functions used to operate on numbers in the range of a C signed
4589 long; however, this seems inappropriate, because Guile integers don't
4592 ** New function: make-guardian
4593 This is an implementation of guardians as described in
4594 R. Kent Dybvig, Carl Bruggeman, and David Eby (1993) "Guardians in a
4595 Generation-Based Garbage Collector" ACM SIGPLAN Conference on
4596 Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1993
4597 ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/guardians.ps.gz
4599 ** New functions: delq1!, delv1!, delete1!
4600 These procedures behave similar to delq! and friends but delete only
4601 one object if at all.
4603 ** New function: unread-string STRING PORT
4604 Unread STRING to PORT, that is, push it back onto the port so that
4605 next read operation will work on the pushed back characters.
4607 ** unread-char can now be called multiple times
4608 If unread-char is called multiple times, the unread characters will be
4609 read again in last-in first-out order.
4611 ** the procedures uniform-array-read! and uniform-array-write! now
4612 work on any kind of port, not just ports which are open on a file.
4614 ** Now 'l' in a port mode requests line buffering.
4616 ** The procedure truncate-file now works on string ports as well
4617 as file ports. If the size argument is omitted, the current
4618 file position is used.
4620 ** new procedure: seek PORT/FDES OFFSET WHENCE
4621 The arguments are the same as for the old fseek procedure, but it
4622 works on string ports as well as random-access file ports.
4624 ** the fseek procedure now works on string ports, since it has been
4625 redefined using seek.
4627 ** the setvbuf procedure now uses a default size if mode is _IOFBF and
4628 size is not supplied.
4630 ** the newline procedure no longer flushes the port if it's not
4631 line-buffered: previously it did if it was the current output port.
4633 ** open-pipe and close-pipe are no longer primitive procedures, but
4634 an emulation can be obtained using `(use-modules (ice-9 popen))'.
4636 ** the freopen procedure has been removed.
4638 ** new procedure: drain-input PORT
4639 Drains PORT's read buffers (including any pushed-back characters)
4640 and returns the contents as a single string.
4642 ** New function: map-in-order PROC LIST1 LIST2 ...
4643 Version of `map' which guarantees that the procedure is applied to the
4644 lists in serial order.
4646 ** Renamed `serial-array-copy!' and `serial-array-map!' to
4647 `array-copy-in-order!' and `array-map-in-order!'. The old names are
4648 now obsolete and will go away in release 1.5.
4650 ** New syntax: collect BODY1 ...
4651 Version of `begin' which returns a list of the results of the body
4652 forms instead of the result of the last body form. In contrast to
4653 `begin', `collect' allows an empty body.
4655 ** New functions: read-history FILENAME, write-history FILENAME
4656 Read/write command line history from/to file. Returns #t on success
4657 and #f if an error occured.
4659 ** `ls' and `lls' in module (ice-9 ls) now handle no arguments.
4661 These procedures return a list of definitions available in the specified
4662 argument, a relative module reference. In the case of no argument,
4663 `(current-module)' is now consulted for definitions to return, instead
4664 of simply returning #f, the former behavior.
4666 ** The #/ syntax for lists is no longer supported.
4668 Earlier versions of Scheme accepted this syntax, but printed a
4671 ** Guile no longer consults the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable.
4673 Instead, you should set GUILE_LOAD_PATH to tell Guile where to find
4676 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4680 Now takes a second argument which is the result array. If this
4681 pointer is NULL, a new array is malloced (the old behaviour).
4683 ** gh_chars2byvect, gh_shorts2svect, gh_floats2fvect, gh_scm2chars,
4684 gh_scm2shorts, gh_scm2longs, gh_scm2floats
4688 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4690 ** Function: scm_make_named_hook (char* name, int n_args)
4692 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
4693 binds a variable named NAME to it.
4695 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
4697 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module. This
4698 might change when we get the new module system.
4700 ** The smob interface
4702 The interface for creating smobs has changed. For documentation, see
4703 data-rep.info (made from guile-core/doc/data-rep.texi).
4705 *** Deprecated function: SCM scm_newsmob (scm_smobfuns *)
4707 >>> This function will be removed in 1.3.4. <<<
4711 *** Function: SCM scm_make_smob_type (const char *name, scm_sizet size)
4712 This function adds a new smob type, named NAME, with instance size
4713 SIZE to the system. The return value is a tag that is used in
4714 creating instances of the type. If SIZE is 0, then no memory will
4715 be allocated when instances of the smob are created, and nothing
4716 will be freed by the default free function.
4718 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_mark (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
4719 This function sets the smob marking procedure for the smob type
4720 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4721 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4723 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_free (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
4724 This function sets the smob freeing procedure for the smob type
4725 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4726 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4728 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_print (tc, print)
4730 - Function: void scm_set_smob_print (long tc,
4731 scm_sizet (*print) (SCM,
4735 This function sets the smob printing procedure for the smob type
4736 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4737 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4739 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_equalp (long tc, SCM (*equalp) (SCM, SCM))
4740 This function sets the smob equality-testing predicate for the
4741 smob type specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
4742 `scm_make_smob_type'.
4744 *** Macro: void SCM_NEWSMOB (SCM var, long tc, void *data)
4745 Make VALUE contain a smob instance of the type with type code TC and
4746 smob data DATA. VALUE must be previously declared as C type `SCM'.
4748 *** Macro: fn_returns SCM_RETURN_NEWSMOB (long tc, void *data)
4749 This macro expands to a block of code that creates a smob instance
4750 of the type with type code TC and smob data DATA, and returns that
4751 `SCM' value. It should be the last piece of code in a block.
4753 ** The interfaces for using I/O ports and implementing port types
4754 (ptobs) have changed significantly. The new interface is based on
4755 shared access to buffers and a new set of ptob procedures.
4757 *** scm_newptob has been removed
4761 *** Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (type_name, fill_buffer, write_flush)
4763 - Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (char *type_name,
4764 int (*fill_buffer) (SCM port),
4765 void (*write_flush) (SCM port));
4767 Similarly to the new smob interface, there is a set of function
4768 setters by which the user can customize the behaviour of his port
4769 type. See ports.h (scm_set_port_XXX).
4771 ** scm_strport_to_string: New function: creates a new string from
4772 a string port's buffer.
4774 ** Plug in interface for random number generators
4775 The variable `scm_the_rng' in random.c contains a value and three
4776 function pointers which together define the current random number
4777 generator being used by the Scheme level interface and the random
4778 number library functions.
4780 The user is free to replace the default generator with the generator
4783 *** Variable: size_t scm_the_rng.rstate_size
4784 The size of the random state type used by the current RNG
4787 *** Function: unsigned long scm_the_rng.random_bits (scm_rstate *STATE)
4788 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
4790 *** Function: void scm_the_rng.init_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE, chars *S, int N)
4791 Seed random state STATE using string S of length N.
4793 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_the_rng.copy_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE)
4794 Given random state STATE, return a malloced copy.
4797 The default RNG is the MWC (Multiply With Carry) random number
4798 generator described by George Marsaglia at the Department of
4799 Statistics and Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The
4800 Florida State University (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo).
4802 It uses 64 bits, has a period of 4578426017172946943 (4.6e18), and
4803 passes all tests in the DIEHARD test suite
4804 (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo/diehard.html). The generation of 32 bits
4805 costs one multiply and one add on platforms which either supports long
4806 longs (gcc does this on most systems) or have 64 bit longs. The cost
4807 is four multiply on other systems but this can be optimized by writing
4808 scm_i_uniform32 in assembler.
4810 These functions are provided through the scm_the_rng interface for use
4811 by libguile and the application.
4813 *** Function: unsigned long scm_i_uniform32 (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
4814 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
4815 Don't use this function directly. Instead go through the plugin
4816 interface (see "Plug in interface" above).
4818 *** Function: void scm_i_init_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE, char *SEED, int N)
4819 Initialize STATE using SEED of length N.
4821 *** Function: scm_i_rstate *scm_i_copy_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
4822 Return a malloc:ed copy of STATE. This function can easily be re-used
4823 in the interfaces to other RNGs.
4825 ** Random number library functions
4826 These functions use the current RNG through the scm_the_rng interface.
4827 It might be a good idea to use these functions from your C code so
4828 that only one random generator is used by all code in your program.
4830 The default random state is stored in:
4832 *** Variable: SCM scm_var_random_state
4833 Contains the vcell of the Scheme variable "*random-state*" which is
4834 used as default state by all random number functions in the Scheme
4839 double x = scm_c_uniform01 (SCM_RSTATE (SCM_CDR (scm_var_random_state)));
4841 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_default_rstate (void)
4842 This is a convenience function which returns the value of
4843 scm_var_random_state. An error message is generated if this value
4844 isn't a random state.
4846 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_make_rstate (char *SEED, int LENGTH)
4847 Make a new random state from the string SEED of length LENGTH.
4849 It is generally not a good idea to use multiple random states in a
4850 program. While subsequent random numbers generated from one random
4851 state are guaranteed to be reasonably independent, there is no such
4852 guarantee for numbers generated from different random states.
4854 *** Macro: unsigned long scm_c_uniform32 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4855 Return 32 random bits.
4857 *** Function: double scm_c_uniform01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4858 Return a sample from the uniform(0,1) distribution.
4860 *** Function: double scm_c_normal01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4861 Return a sample from the normal(0,1) distribution.
4863 *** Function: double scm_c_exp1 (scm_rstate *STATE)
4864 Return a sample from the exp(1) distribution.
4866 *** Function: unsigned long scm_c_random (scm_rstate *STATE, unsigned long M)
4867 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
4869 *** Function: SCM scm_c_random_bignum (scm_rstate *STATE, SCM M)
4870 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
4871 M must be a bignum object. The returned value may be an INUM.
4875 Changes in Guile 1.3 (released Monday, October 19, 1998):
4877 * Changes to the distribution
4879 ** We renamed the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable to GUILE_LOAD_PATH.
4880 To avoid conflicts, programs should name environment variables after
4881 themselves, except when there's a common practice establishing some
4884 For now, Guile supports both GUILE_LOAD_PATH and SCHEME_LOAD_PATH,
4885 giving the former precedence, and printing a warning message if the
4886 latter is set. Guile 1.4 will not recognize SCHEME_LOAD_PATH at all.
4888 ** The header files related to multi-byte characters have been removed.
4889 They were: libguile/extchrs.h and libguile/mbstrings.h. Any C code
4890 which referred to these explicitly will probably need to be rewritten,
4891 since the support for the variant string types has been removed; see
4894 ** The header files append.h and sequences.h have been removed. These
4895 files implemented non-R4RS operations which would encourage
4896 non-portable programming style and less easy-to-read code.
4898 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
4900 ** New procedures have been added to implement a "batch mode":
4902 *** Function: batch-mode?
4904 Returns a boolean indicating whether the interpreter is in batch
4907 *** Function: set-batch-mode?! ARG
4909 If ARG is true, switches the interpreter to batch mode. The `#f'
4910 case has not been implemented.
4912 ** Guile now provides full command-line editing, when run interactively.
4913 To use this feature, you must have the readline library installed.
4914 The Guile build process will notice it, and automatically include
4917 The readline library is available via anonymous FTP from any GNU
4918 mirror site; the canonical location is "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
4920 ** the-last-stack is now a fluid.
4922 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
4924 ** You can now use the `guile-config' utility to build programs that use Guile.
4926 Guile now includes a command-line utility called `guile-config', which
4927 can provide information about how to compile and link programs that
4930 *** `guile-config compile' prints any C compiler flags needed to use Guile.
4931 You should include this command's output on the command line you use
4932 to compile C or C++ code that #includes the Guile header files. It's
4933 usually just a `-I' flag to help the compiler find the Guile headers.
4936 *** `guile-config link' prints any linker flags necessary to link with Guile.
4938 This command writes to its standard output a list of flags which you
4939 must pass to the linker to link your code against the Guile library.
4940 The flags include '-lguile' itself, any other libraries the Guile
4941 library depends upon, and any `-L' flags needed to help the linker
4942 find those libraries.
4944 For example, here is a Makefile rule that builds a program named 'foo'
4945 from the object files ${FOO_OBJECTS}, and links them against Guile:
4948 ${CC} ${CFLAGS} ${FOO_OBJECTS} `guile-config link` -o foo
4950 Previous Guile releases recommended that you use autoconf to detect
4951 which of a predefined set of libraries were present on your system.
4952 It is more robust to use `guile-config', since it records exactly which
4953 libraries the installed Guile library requires.
4955 This was originally called `build-guile', but was renamed to
4956 `guile-config' before Guile 1.3 was released, to be consistent with
4957 the analogous script for the GTK+ GUI toolkit, which is called
4961 ** Use the GUILE_FLAGS macro in your configure.in file to find Guile.
4963 If you are using the GNU autoconf package to configure your program,
4964 you can use the GUILE_FLAGS autoconf macro to call `guile-config'
4965 (described above) and gather the necessary values for use in your
4968 The GUILE_FLAGS macro expands to configure script code which runs the
4969 `guile-config' script, to find out where Guile's header files and
4970 libraries are installed. It sets two variables, marked for
4971 substitution, as by AC_SUBST.
4973 GUILE_CFLAGS --- flags to pass to a C or C++ compiler to build
4974 code that uses Guile header files. This is almost always just a
4977 GUILE_LDFLAGS --- flags to pass to the linker to link a
4978 program against Guile. This includes `-lguile' for the Guile
4979 library itself, any libraries that Guile itself requires (like
4980 -lqthreads), and so on. It may also include a -L flag to tell the
4981 compiler where to find the libraries.
4983 GUILE_FLAGS is defined in the file guile.m4, in the top-level
4984 directory of the Guile distribution. You can copy it into your
4985 package's aclocal.m4 file, and then use it in your configure.in file.
4987 If you are using the `aclocal' program, distributed with GNU automake,
4988 to maintain your aclocal.m4 file, the Guile installation process
4989 installs guile.m4 where aclocal will find it. All you need to do is
4990 use GUILE_FLAGS in your configure.in file, and then run `aclocal';
4991 this will copy the definition of GUILE_FLAGS into your aclocal.m4
4995 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
4997 ** Multi-byte strings have been removed, as have multi-byte and wide
4998 ports. We felt that these were the wrong approach to
4999 internationalization support.
5001 ** New function: readline [PROMPT]
5002 Read a line from the terminal, and allow the user to edit it,
5003 prompting with PROMPT. READLINE provides a large set of Emacs-like
5004 editing commands, lets the user recall previously typed lines, and
5005 works on almost every kind of terminal, including dumb terminals.
5007 READLINE assumes that the cursor is at the beginning of the line when
5008 it is invoked. Thus, you can't print a prompt yourself, and then call
5009 READLINE; you need to package up your prompt as a string, pass it to
5010 the function, and let READLINE print the prompt itself. This is
5011 because READLINE needs to know the prompt's screen width.
5013 For Guile to provide this function, you must have the readline
5014 library, version 2.1 or later, installed on your system. Readline is
5015 available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in pub/gnu, or from
5016 any GNU mirror site.
5018 See also ADD-HISTORY function.
5020 ** New function: add-history STRING
5021 Add STRING as the most recent line in the history used by the READLINE
5022 command. READLINE does not add lines to the history itself; you must
5023 call ADD-HISTORY to make previous input available to the user.
5025 ** The behavior of the read-line function has changed.
5027 This function now uses standard C library functions to read the line,
5028 for speed. This means that it doesn not respect the value of
5029 scm-line-incrementors; it assumes that lines are delimited with
5032 (Note that this is read-line, the function that reads a line of text
5033 from a port, not readline, the function that reads a line from a
5034 terminal, providing full editing capabilities.)
5036 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style): Parse command-line arguments.
5038 This module provides some simple argument parsing. It exports one
5041 Function: getopt-gnu-style ARG-LS
5042 Parse a list of program arguments into an alist of option
5045 Each item in the list of program arguments is examined to see if
5046 it meets the syntax of a GNU long-named option. An argument like
5047 `--MUMBLE' produces an element of the form (MUMBLE . #t) in the
5048 returned alist, where MUMBLE is a keyword object with the same
5049 name as the argument. An argument like `--MUMBLE=FROB' produces
5050 an element of the form (MUMBLE . FROB), where FROB is a string.
5052 As a special case, the returned alist also contains a pair whose
5053 car is the symbol `rest'. The cdr of this pair is a list
5054 containing all the items in the argument list that are not options
5055 of the form mentioned above.
5057 The argument `--' is treated specially: all items in the argument
5058 list appearing after such an argument are not examined, and are
5059 returned in the special `rest' list.
5061 This function does not parse normal single-character switches.
5062 You will need to parse them out of the `rest' list yourself.
5064 ** The read syntax for byte vectors and short vectors has changed.
5066 Instead of #bytes(...), write #y(...).
5068 Instead of #short(...), write #h(...).
5070 This may seem nutty, but, like the other uniform vectors, byte vectors
5071 and short vectors want to have the same print and read syntax (and,
5072 more basic, want to have read syntax!). Changing the read syntax to
5073 use multiple characters after the hash sign breaks with the
5074 conventions used in R5RS and the conventions used for the other
5075 uniform vectors. It also introduces complexity in the current reader,
5076 both on the C and Scheme levels. (The Right solution is probably to
5077 change the syntax and prototypes for uniform vectors entirely.)
5080 ** The new module (ice-9 session) provides useful interactive functions.
5082 *** New procedure: (apropos REGEXP OPTION ...)
5084 Display a list of top-level variables whose names match REGEXP, and
5085 the modules they are imported from. Each OPTION should be one of the
5088 value --- Show the value of each matching variable.
5089 shadow --- Show bindings shadowed by subsequently imported modules.
5090 full --- Same as both `shadow' and `value'.
5094 guile> (apropos "trace" 'full)
5095 debug: trace #<procedure trace args>
5096 debug: untrace #<procedure untrace args>
5097 the-scm-module: display-backtrace #<compiled-closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>
5098 the-scm-module: before-backtrace-hook ()
5099 the-scm-module: backtrace #<primitive-procedure backtrace>
5100 the-scm-module: after-backtrace-hook ()
5101 the-scm-module: has-shown-backtrace-hint? #f
5104 ** There are new functions and syntax for working with macros.
5106 Guile implements macros as a special object type. Any variable whose
5107 top-level binding is a macro object acts as a macro. The macro object
5108 specifies how the expression should be transformed before evaluation.
5110 *** Macro objects now print in a reasonable way, resembling procedures.
5112 *** New function: (macro? OBJ)
5113 True iff OBJ is a macro object.
5115 *** New function: (primitive-macro? OBJ)
5116 Like (macro? OBJ), but true only if OBJ is one of the Guile primitive
5117 macro transformers, implemented in eval.c rather than Scheme code.
5119 Why do we have this function?
5120 - For symmetry with procedure? and primitive-procedure?,
5121 - to allow custom print procedures to tell whether a macro is
5122 primitive, and display it differently, and
5123 - to allow compilers and user-written evaluators to distinguish
5124 builtin special forms from user-defined ones, which could be
5127 *** New function: (macro-type OBJ)
5128 Return a value indicating what kind of macro OBJ is. Possible return
5131 The symbol `syntax' --- a macro created by procedure->syntax.
5132 The symbol `macro' --- a macro created by procedure->macro.
5133 The symbol `macro!' --- a macro created by procedure->memoizing-macro.
5134 The boolean #f --- if OBJ is not a macro object.
5136 *** New function: (macro-name MACRO)
5137 Return the name of the macro object MACRO's procedure, as returned by
5140 *** New function: (macro-transformer MACRO)
5141 Return the transformer procedure for MACRO.
5143 *** New syntax: (use-syntax MODULE ... TRANSFORMER)
5145 Specify a new macro expander to use in the current module. Each
5146 MODULE is a module name, with the same meaning as in the `use-modules'
5147 form; each named module's exported bindings are added to the current
5148 top-level environment. TRANSFORMER is an expression evaluated in the
5149 resulting environment which must yield a procedure to use as the
5150 module's eval transformer: every expression evaluated in this module
5151 is passed to this function, and the result passed to the Guile
5154 *** macro-eval! is removed. Use local-eval instead.
5156 ** Some magic has been added to the printer to better handle user
5157 written printing routines (like record printers, closure printers).
5159 The problem is that these user written routines must have access to
5160 the current `print-state' to be able to handle fancy things like
5161 detection of circular references. These print-states have to be
5162 passed to the builtin printing routines (display, write, etc) to
5163 properly continue the print chain.
5165 We didn't want to change all existing print code so that it
5166 explicitly passes thru a print state in addition to a port. Instead,
5167 we extented the possible values that the builtin printing routines
5168 accept as a `port'. In addition to a normal port, they now also take
5169 a pair of a normal port and a print-state. Printing will go to the
5170 port and the print-state will be used to control the detection of
5171 circular references, etc. If the builtin function does not care for a
5172 print-state, it is simply ignored.
5174 User written callbacks are now called with such a pair as their
5175 `port', but because every function now accepts this pair as a PORT
5176 argument, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, it is probably
5177 safest to not check for these pairs.
5179 However, it is sometimes necessary to continue a print chain on a
5180 different port, for example to get a intermediate string
5181 representation of the printed value, mangle that string somehow, and
5182 then to finally print the mangled string. Use the new function
5184 inherit-print-state OLD-PORT NEW-PORT
5186 for this. It constructs a new `port' that prints to NEW-PORT but
5187 inherits the print-state of OLD-PORT.
5189 ** struct-vtable-offset renamed to vtable-offset-user
5191 ** New constants: vtable-index-layout, vtable-index-vtable, vtable-index-printer
5193 ** There is now a third optional argument to make-vtable-vtable
5194 (and fourth to make-struct) when constructing new types (vtables).
5195 This argument initializes field vtable-index-printer of the vtable.
5197 ** The detection of circular references has been extended to structs.
5198 That is, a structure that -- in the process of being printed -- prints
5199 itself does not lead to infinite recursion.
5201 ** There is now some basic support for fluids. Please read
5202 "libguile/fluid.h" to find out more. It is accessible from Scheme with
5203 the following functions and macros:
5205 Function: make-fluid
5207 Create a new fluid object. Fluids are not special variables or
5208 some other extension to the semantics of Scheme, but rather
5209 ordinary Scheme objects. You can store them into variables (that
5210 are still lexically scoped, of course) or into any other place you
5211 like. Every fluid has a initial value of `#f'.
5213 Function: fluid? OBJ
5215 Test whether OBJ is a fluid.
5217 Function: fluid-ref FLUID
5218 Function: fluid-set! FLUID VAL
5220 Access/modify the fluid FLUID. Modifications are only visible
5221 within the current dynamic root (that includes threads).
5223 Function: with-fluids* FLUIDS VALUES THUNK
5225 FLUIDS is a list of fluids and VALUES a corresponding list of
5226 values for these fluids. Before THUNK gets called the values are
5227 installed in the fluids and the old values of the fluids are
5228 saved in the VALUES list. When the flow of control leaves THUNK
5229 or reenters it, the values get swapped again. You might think of
5230 this as a `safe-fluid-excursion'. Note that the VALUES list is
5231 modified by `with-fluids*'.
5233 Macro: with-fluids ((FLUID VALUE) ...) FORM ...
5235 The same as `with-fluids*' but with a different syntax. It looks
5236 just like `let', but both FLUID and VALUE are evaluated. Remember,
5237 fluids are not special variables but ordinary objects. FLUID
5238 should evaluate to a fluid.
5240 ** Changes to system call interfaces:
5242 *** close-port, close-input-port and close-output-port now return a
5243 boolean instead of an `unspecified' object. #t means that the port
5244 was successfully closed, while #f means it was already closed. It is
5245 also now possible for these procedures to raise an exception if an
5246 error occurs (some errors from write can be delayed until close.)
5248 *** the first argument to chmod, fcntl, ftell and fseek can now be a
5251 *** the third argument to fcntl is now optional.
5253 *** the first argument to chown can now be a file descriptor or a port.
5255 *** the argument to stat can now be a port.
5257 *** The following new procedures have been added (most use scsh
5260 *** procedure: close PORT/FD
5261 Similar to close-port (*note close-port: Closing Ports.), but also
5262 works on file descriptors. A side effect of closing a file
5263 descriptor is that any ports using that file descriptor are moved
5264 to a different file descriptor and have their revealed counts set
5267 *** procedure: port->fdes PORT
5268 Returns the integer file descriptor underlying PORT. As a side
5269 effect the revealed count of PORT is incremented.
5271 *** procedure: fdes->ports FDES
5272 Returns a list of existing ports which have FDES as an underlying
5273 file descriptor, without changing their revealed counts.
5275 *** procedure: fdes->inport FDES
5276 Returns an existing input port which has FDES as its underlying
5277 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
5278 Otherwise, returns a new input port with a revealed count of 1.
5280 *** procedure: fdes->outport FDES
5281 Returns an existing output port which has FDES as its underlying
5282 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
5283 Otherwise, returns a new output port with a revealed count of 1.
5285 The next group of procedures perform a `dup2' system call, if NEWFD
5286 (an integer) is supplied, otherwise a `dup'. The file descriptor to be
5287 duplicated can be supplied as an integer or contained in a port. The
5288 type of value returned varies depending on which procedure is used.
5290 All procedures also have the side effect when performing `dup2' that
5291 any ports using NEWFD are moved to a different file descriptor and have
5292 their revealed counts set to zero.
5294 *** procedure: dup->fdes PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5295 Returns an integer file descriptor.
5297 *** procedure: dup->inport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5298 Returns a new input port using the new file descriptor.
5300 *** procedure: dup->outport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5301 Returns a new output port using the new file descriptor.
5303 *** procedure: dup PORT/FD [NEWFD]
5304 Returns a new port if PORT/FD is a port, with the same mode as the
5305 supplied port, otherwise returns an integer file descriptor.
5307 *** procedure: dup->port PORT/FD MODE [NEWFD]
5308 Returns a new port using the new file descriptor. MODE supplies a
5309 mode string for the port (*note open-file: File Ports.).
5311 *** procedure: setenv NAME VALUE
5312 Modifies the environment of the current process, which is also the
5313 default environment inherited by child processes.
5315 If VALUE is `#f', then NAME is removed from the environment.
5316 Otherwise, the string NAME=VALUE is added to the environment,
5317 replacing any existing string with name matching NAME.
5319 The return value is unspecified.
5321 *** procedure: truncate-file OBJ SIZE
5322 Truncates the file referred to by OBJ to at most SIZE bytes. OBJ
5323 can be a string containing a file name or an integer file
5324 descriptor or port open for output on the file. The underlying
5325 system calls are `truncate' and `ftruncate'.
5327 The return value is unspecified.
5329 *** procedure: setvbuf PORT MODE [SIZE]
5330 Set the buffering mode for PORT. MODE can be:
5338 block buffered, using a newly allocated buffer of SIZE bytes.
5339 However if SIZE is zero or unspecified, the port will be made
5342 This procedure should not be used after I/O has been performed with
5345 Ports are usually block buffered by default, with a default buffer
5346 size. Procedures e.g., *Note open-file: File Ports, which accept a
5347 mode string allow `0' to be added to request an unbuffered port.
5349 *** procedure: fsync PORT/FD
5350 Copies any unwritten data for the specified output file descriptor
5351 to disk. If PORT/FD is a port, its buffer is flushed before the
5352 underlying file descriptor is fsync'd. The return value is
5355 *** procedure: open-fdes PATH FLAGS [MODES]
5356 Similar to `open' but returns a file descriptor instead of a port.
5358 *** procedure: execle PATH ENV [ARG] ...
5359 Similar to `execl', but the environment of the new process is
5360 specified by ENV, which must be a list of strings as returned by
5361 the `environ' procedure.
5363 This procedure is currently implemented using the `execve' system
5364 call, but we call it `execle' because of its Scheme calling
5367 *** procedure: strerror ERRNO
5368 Returns the Unix error message corresponding to ERRNO, an integer.
5370 *** procedure: primitive-exit [STATUS]
5371 Terminate the current process without unwinding the Scheme stack.
5372 This is would typically be useful after a fork. The exit status
5373 is STATUS if supplied, otherwise zero.
5375 *** procedure: times
5376 Returns an object with information about real and processor time.
5377 The following procedures accept such an object as an argument and
5378 return a selected component:
5381 The current real time, expressed as time units relative to an
5385 The CPU time units used by the calling process.
5388 The CPU time units used by the system on behalf of the
5392 The CPU time units used by terminated child processes of the
5393 calling process, whose status has been collected (e.g., using
5397 Similarly, the CPU times units used by the system on behalf of
5398 terminated child processes.
5400 ** Removed: list-length
5401 ** Removed: list-append, list-append!
5402 ** Removed: list-reverse, list-reverse!
5404 ** array-map renamed to array-map!
5406 ** serial-array-map renamed to serial-array-map!
5408 ** catch doesn't take #f as first argument any longer
5410 Previously, it was possible to pass #f instead of a key to `catch'.
5411 That would cause `catch' to pass a jump buffer object to the procedure
5412 passed as second argument. The procedure could then use this jump
5413 buffer objekt as an argument to throw.
5415 This mechanism has been removed since its utility doesn't motivate the
5416 extra complexity it introduces.
5418 ** The `#/' notation for lists now provokes a warning message from Guile.
5419 This syntax will be removed from Guile in the near future.
5421 To disable the warning message, set the GUILE_HUSH environment
5422 variable to any non-empty value.
5424 ** The newline character now prints as `#\newline', following the
5425 normal Scheme notation, not `#\nl'.
5427 * Changes to the gh_ interface
5429 ** The gh_enter function now takes care of loading the Guile startup files.
5430 gh_enter works by calling scm_boot_guile; see the remarks below.
5432 ** Function: void gh_write (SCM x)
5434 Write the printed representation of the scheme object x to the current
5435 output port. Corresponds to the scheme level `write'.
5437 ** gh_list_length renamed to gh_length.
5439 ** vector handling routines
5441 Several major changes. In particular, gh_vector() now resembles
5442 (vector ...) (with a caveat -- see manual), and gh_make_vector() now
5443 exists and behaves like (make-vector ...). gh_vset() and gh_vref()
5444 have been renamed gh_vector_set_x() and gh_vector_ref(). Some missing
5445 vector-related gh_ functions have been implemented.
5447 ** pair and list routines
5449 Implemented several of the R4RS pair and list functions that were
5452 ** gh_scm2doubles, gh_doubles2scm, gh_doubles2dvect
5454 New function. Converts double arrays back and forth between Scheme
5457 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5459 ** The function scm_boot_guile now takes care of loading the startup files.
5461 Guile's primary initialization function, scm_boot_guile, now takes
5462 care of loading `boot-9.scm', in the `ice-9' module, to initialize
5463 Guile, define the module system, and put together some standard
5464 bindings. It also loads `init.scm', which is intended to hold
5465 site-specific initialization code.
5467 Since Guile cannot operate properly until boot-9.scm is loaded, there
5468 is no reason to separate loading boot-9.scm from Guile's other
5469 initialization processes.
5471 This job used to be done by scm_compile_shell_switches, which didn't
5472 make much sense; in particular, it meant that people using Guile for
5473 non-shell-like applications had to jump through hoops to get Guile
5474 initialized properly.
5476 ** The function scm_compile_shell_switches no longer loads the startup files.
5477 Now, Guile always loads the startup files, whenever it is initialized;
5478 see the notes above for scm_boot_guile and scm_load_startup_files.
5480 ** Function: scm_load_startup_files
5481 This new function takes care of loading Guile's initialization file
5482 (`boot-9.scm'), and the site initialization file, `init.scm'. Since
5483 this is always called by the Guile initialization process, it's
5484 probably not too useful to call this yourself, but it's there anyway.
5486 ** The semantics of smob marking have changed slightly.
5488 The smob marking function (the `mark' member of the scm_smobfuns
5489 structure) is no longer responsible for setting the mark bit on the
5490 smob. The generic smob handling code in the garbage collector will
5491 set this bit. The mark function need only ensure that any other
5492 objects the smob refers to get marked.
5494 Note that this change means that the smob's GC8MARK bit is typically
5495 already set upon entry to the mark function. Thus, marking functions
5496 which look like this:
5499 if (SCM_GC8MARKP (ptr))
5501 SCM_SETGC8MARK (ptr);
5502 ... mark objects to which the smob refers ...
5505 are now incorrect, since they will return early, and fail to mark any
5506 other objects the smob refers to. Some code in the Guile library used
5509 ** The semantics of the I/O port functions in scm_ptobfuns have changed.
5511 If you have implemented your own I/O port type, by writing the
5512 functions required by the scm_ptobfuns and then calling scm_newptob,
5513 you will need to change your functions slightly.
5515 The functions in a scm_ptobfuns structure now expect the port itself
5516 as their argument; they used to expect the `stream' member of the
5517 port's scm_port_table structure. This allows functions in an
5518 scm_ptobfuns structure to easily access the port's cell (and any flags
5519 it its CAR), and the port's scm_port_table structure.
5521 Guile now passes the I/O port itself as the `port' argument in the
5522 following scm_ptobfuns functions:
5524 int (*free) (SCM port);
5525 int (*fputc) (int, SCM port);
5526 int (*fputs) (char *, SCM port);
5527 scm_sizet (*fwrite) SCM_P ((char *ptr,
5531 int (*fflush) (SCM port);
5532 int (*fgetc) (SCM port);
5533 int (*fclose) (SCM port);
5535 The interfaces to the `mark', `print', `equalp', and `fgets' methods
5538 If you have existing code which defines its own port types, it is easy
5539 to convert your code to the new interface; simply apply SCM_STREAM to
5540 the port argument to yield the value you code used to expect.
5542 Note that since both the port and the stream have the same type in the
5543 C code --- they are both SCM values --- the C compiler will not remind
5544 you if you forget to update your scm_ptobfuns functions.
5547 ** Function: int scm_internal_select (int fds,
5551 struct timeval *timeout);
5553 This is a replacement for the `select' function provided by the OS.
5554 It enables I/O blocking and sleeping to happen for one cooperative
5555 thread without blocking other threads. It also avoids busy-loops in
5556 these situations. It is intended that all I/O blocking and sleeping
5557 will finally go through this function. Currently, this function is
5558 only available on systems providing `gettimeofday' and `select'.
5560 ** Function: SCM scm_internal_stack_catch (SCM tag,
5561 scm_catch_body_t body,
5563 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
5566 A new sibling to the other two C level `catch' functions
5567 scm_internal_catch and scm_internal_lazy_catch. Use it if you want
5568 the stack to be saved automatically into the variable `the-last-stack'
5569 (scm_the_last_stack_var) on error. This is necessary if you want to
5570 use advanced error reporting, such as calling scm_display_error and
5571 scm_display_backtrace. (They both take a stack object as argument.)
5573 ** Function: SCM scm_spawn_thread (scm_catch_body_t body,
5575 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
5578 Spawns a new thread. It does a job similar to
5579 scm_call_with_new_thread but takes arguments more suitable when
5580 spawning threads from application C code.
5582 ** The hook scm_error_callback has been removed. It was originally
5583 intended as a way for the user to install his own error handler. But
5584 that method works badly since it intervenes between throw and catch,
5585 thereby changing the semantics of expressions like (catch #t ...).
5586 The correct way to do it is to use one of the C level catch functions
5587 in throw.c: scm_internal_catch/lazy_catch/stack_catch.
5589 ** Removed functions:
5591 scm_obj_length, scm_list_length, scm_list_append, scm_list_append_x,
5592 scm_list_reverse, scm_list_reverse_x
5594 ** New macros: SCM_LISTn where n is one of the integers 0-9.
5596 These can be used for pretty list creation from C. The idea is taken
5597 from Erick Gallesio's STk.
5599 ** scm_array_map renamed to scm_array_map_x
5601 ** mbstrings are now removed
5603 This means that the type codes scm_tc7_mb_string and
5604 scm_tc7_mb_substring has been removed.
5606 ** scm_gen_putc, scm_gen_puts, scm_gen_write, and scm_gen_getc have changed.
5608 Since we no longer support multi-byte strings, these I/O functions
5609 have been simplified, and renamed. Here are their old names, and
5610 their new names and arguments:
5612 scm_gen_putc -> void scm_putc (int c, SCM port);
5613 scm_gen_puts -> void scm_puts (char *s, SCM port);
5614 scm_gen_write -> void scm_lfwrite (char *ptr, scm_sizet size, SCM port);
5615 scm_gen_getc -> void scm_getc (SCM port);
5618 ** The macros SCM_TYP7D and SCM_TYP7SD has been removed.
5620 ** The macro SCM_TYP7S has taken the role of the old SCM_TYP7D
5622 SCM_TYP7S now masks away the bit which distinguishes substrings from
5625 ** scm_catch_body_t: Backward incompatible change!
5627 Body functions to scm_internal_catch and friends do not any longer
5628 take a second argument. This is because it is no longer possible to
5629 pass a #f arg to catch.
5631 ** Calls to scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect now nest properly.
5633 The function scm_protect_object protects its argument from being freed
5634 by the garbage collector. scm_unprotect_object removes that
5637 These functions now nest properly. That is, for every object O, there
5638 is a counter which scm_protect_object(O) increments and
5639 scm_unprotect_object(O) decrements, if the counter is greater than
5640 zero. Every object's counter is zero when it is first created. If an
5641 object's counter is greater than zero, the garbage collector will not
5642 reclaim its storage.
5644 This allows you to use scm_protect_object in your code without
5645 worrying that some other function you call will call
5646 scm_unprotect_object, and allow it to be freed. Assuming that the
5647 functions you call are well-behaved, and unprotect only those objects
5648 they protect, you can follow the same rule and have confidence that
5649 objects will be freed only at appropriate times.
5652 Changes in Guile 1.2 (released Tuesday, June 24 1997):
5654 * Changes to the distribution
5656 ** Nightly snapshots are now available from ftp.red-bean.com.
5657 The old server, ftp.cyclic.com, has been relinquished to its rightful
5660 Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are now available via
5661 anonymous FTP from ftp.red-bean.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.
5663 Via the web, that's: ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
5664 For getit, that's: ftp.red-bean.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
5666 ** To run Guile without installing it, the procedure has changed a bit.
5668 If you used a separate build directory to compile Guile, you'll need
5669 to include the build directory in SCHEME_LOAD_PATH, as well as the
5670 source directory. See the `INSTALL' file for examples.
5672 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
5674 ** The standard Guile load path for Scheme code now includes
5675 $(datadir)/guile (usually /usr/local/share/guile). This means that
5676 you can install your own Scheme files there, and Guile will find them.
5677 (Previous versions of Guile only checked a directory whose name
5678 contained the Guile version number, so you had to re-install or move
5679 your Scheme sources each time you installed a fresh version of Guile.)
5681 The load path also includes $(datadir)/guile/site; we recommend
5682 putting individual Scheme files there. If you want to install a
5683 package with multiple source files, create a directory for them under
5686 ** Guile 1.2 will now use the Rx regular expression library, if it is
5687 installed on your system. When you are linking libguile into your own
5688 programs, this means you will have to link against -lguile, -lqt (if
5689 you configured Guile with thread support), and -lrx.
5691 If you are using autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your
5692 application, the following lines should suffice to add the appropriate
5693 libraries to your link command:
5695 ### Find Rx, quickthreads and libguile.
5696 AC_CHECK_LIB(rx, main)
5697 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
5698 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
5700 The Guile 1.2 distribution does not contain sources for the Rx
5701 library, as Guile 1.0 did. If you want to use Rx, you'll need to
5702 retrieve it from a GNU FTP site and install it separately.
5704 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
5706 ** The dynamic linking features of Guile are now enabled by default.
5707 You can disable them by giving the `--disable-dynamic-linking' option
5710 (dynamic-link FILENAME)
5712 Find the object file denoted by FILENAME (a string) and link it
5713 into the running Guile application. When everything works out,
5714 return a Scheme object suitable for representing the linked object
5715 file. Otherwise an error is thrown. How object files are
5716 searched is system dependent.
5718 (dynamic-object? VAL)
5720 Determine whether VAL represents a dynamically linked object file.
5722 (dynamic-unlink DYNOBJ)
5724 Unlink the indicated object file from the application. DYNOBJ
5725 should be one of the values returned by `dynamic-link'.
5727 (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
5729 Search the C function indicated by FUNCTION (a string or symbol)
5730 in DYNOBJ and return some Scheme object that can later be used
5731 with `dynamic-call' to actually call this function. Right now,
5732 these Scheme objects are formed by casting the address of the
5733 function to `long' and converting this number to its Scheme
5736 (dynamic-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
5738 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ. The
5739 function is passed no arguments and its return value is ignored.
5740 When FUNCTION is something returned by `dynamic-func', call that
5741 function and ignore DYNOBJ. When FUNCTION is a string (or symbol,
5742 etc.), look it up in DYNOBJ; this is equivalent to
5744 (dynamic-call (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ) #f)
5746 Interrupts are deferred while the C function is executing (with
5747 SCM_DEFER_INTS/SCM_ALLOW_INTS).
5749 (dynamic-args-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ ARGS)
5751 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ, but pass it
5752 some arguments and return its return value. The C function is
5753 expected to take two arguments and return an `int', just like
5756 int c_func (int argc, char **argv);
5758 ARGS must be a list of strings and is converted into an array of
5759 `char *'. The array is passed in ARGV and its size in ARGC. The
5760 return value is converted to a Scheme number and returned from the
5761 call to `dynamic-args-call'.
5763 When dynamic linking is disabled or not supported on your system,
5764 the above functions throw errors, but they are still available.
5766 Here is a small example that works on GNU/Linux:
5768 (define libc-obj (dynamic-link "libc.so"))
5769 (dynamic-args-call 'rand libc-obj '())
5771 See the file `libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING' for additional comments.
5773 ** The #/ syntax for module names is depreciated, and will be removed
5774 in a future version of Guile. Instead of
5782 The latter syntax is more consistent with existing Lisp practice.
5784 ** Guile now does fancier printing of structures. Structures are the
5785 underlying implementation for records, which in turn are used to
5786 implement modules, so all of these object now print differently and in
5787 a more informative way.
5789 The Scheme printer will examine the builtin variable *struct-printer*
5790 whenever it needs to print a structure object. When this variable is
5791 not `#f' it is deemed to be a procedure and will be applied to the
5792 structure object and the output port. When *struct-printer* is `#f'
5793 or the procedure return `#f' the structure object will be printed in
5794 the boring #<struct 80458270> form.
5796 This hook is used by some routines in ice-9/boot-9.scm to implement
5797 type specific printing routines. Please read the comments there about
5800 One of the more specific uses of structs are records. The printing
5801 procedure that could be passed to MAKE-RECORD-TYPE is now actually
5802 called. It should behave like a *struct-printer* procedure (described
5805 ** Guile now supports a new R4RS-compliant syntax for keywords. A
5806 token of the form #:NAME, where NAME has the same syntax as a Scheme
5807 symbol, is the external representation of the keyword named NAME.
5808 Keyword objects print using this syntax as well, so values containing
5809 keyword objects can be read back into Guile. When used in an
5810 expression, keywords are self-quoting objects.
5812 Guile suports this read syntax, and uses this print syntax, regardless
5813 of the current setting of the `keyword' read option. The `keyword'
5814 read option only controls whether Guile recognizes the `:NAME' syntax,
5815 which is incompatible with R4RS. (R4RS says such token represent
5818 ** Guile has regular expression support again. Guile 1.0 included
5819 functions for matching regular expressions, based on the Rx library.
5820 In Guile 1.1, the Guile/Rx interface was removed to simplify the
5821 distribution, and thus Guile had no regular expression support. Guile
5822 1.2 again supports the most commonly used functions, and supports all
5823 of SCSH's regular expression functions.
5825 If your system does not include a POSIX regular expression library,
5826 and you have not linked Guile with a third-party regexp library such as
5827 Rx, these functions will not be available. You can tell whether your
5828 Guile installation includes regular expression support by checking
5829 whether the `*features*' list includes the `regex' symbol.
5831 *** regexp functions
5833 By default, Guile supports POSIX extended regular expressions. That
5834 means that the characters `(', `)', `+' and `?' are special, and must
5835 be escaped if you wish to match the literal characters.
5837 This regular expression interface was modeled after that implemented
5838 by SCSH, the Scheme Shell. It is intended to be upwardly compatible
5839 with SCSH regular expressions.
5841 **** Function: string-match PATTERN STR [START]
5842 Compile the string PATTERN into a regular expression and compare
5843 it with STR. The optional numeric argument START specifies the
5844 position of STR at which to begin matching.
5846 `string-match' returns a "match structure" which describes what,
5847 if anything, was matched by the regular expression. *Note Match
5848 Structures::. If STR does not match PATTERN at all,
5849 `string-match' returns `#f'.
5851 Each time `string-match' is called, it must compile its PATTERN
5852 argument into a regular expression structure. This operation is
5853 expensive, which makes `string-match' inefficient if the same regular
5854 expression is used several times (for example, in a loop). For better
5855 performance, you can compile a regular expression in advance and then
5856 match strings against the compiled regexp.
5858 **** Function: make-regexp STR [FLAGS]
5859 Compile the regular expression described by STR, and return the
5860 compiled regexp structure. If STR does not describe a legal
5861 regular expression, `make-regexp' throws a
5862 `regular-expression-syntax' error.
5864 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
5866 **** Constant: regexp/extended
5867 Use POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting
5868 STR. If not set, POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used.
5869 If the FLAGS argument is omitted, we assume regexp/extended.
5871 **** Constant: regexp/icase
5872 Do not differentiate case. Subsequent searches using the
5873 returned regular expression will be case insensitive.
5875 **** Constant: regexp/newline
5876 Match-any-character operators don't match a newline.
5878 A non-matching list ([^...]) not containing a newline matches a
5881 Match-beginning-of-line operator (^) matches the empty string
5882 immediately after a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
5883 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/notbol.
5885 Match-end-of-line operator ($) matches the empty string
5886 immediately before a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
5887 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/noteol.
5889 **** Function: regexp-exec REGEXP STR [START [FLAGS]]
5890 Match the compiled regular expression REGEXP against `str'. If
5891 the optional integer START argument is provided, begin matching
5892 from that position in the string. Return a match structure
5893 describing the results of the match, or `#f' if no match could be
5896 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
5898 **** Constant: regexp/notbol
5899 The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but
5900 see the compilation flag regexp/newline above) This flag may be
5901 used when different portions of a string are passed to
5902 regexp-exec and the beginning of the string should not be
5903 interpreted as the beginning of the line.
5905 **** Constant: regexp/noteol
5906 The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the
5907 compilation flag regexp/newline above)
5909 **** Function: regexp? OBJ
5910 Return `#t' if OBJ is a compiled regular expression, or `#f'
5913 Regular expressions are commonly used to find patterns in one string
5914 and replace them with the contents of another string.
5916 **** Function: regexp-substitute PORT MATCH [ITEM...]
5917 Write to the output port PORT selected contents of the match
5918 structure MATCH. Each ITEM specifies what should be written, and
5919 may be one of the following arguments:
5921 * A string. String arguments are written out verbatim.
5923 * An integer. The submatch with that number is written.
5925 * The symbol `pre'. The portion of the matched string preceding
5926 the regexp match is written.
5928 * The symbol `post'. The portion of the matched string
5929 following the regexp match is written.
5931 PORT may be `#f', in which case nothing is written; instead,
5932 `regexp-substitute' constructs a string from the specified ITEMs
5935 **** Function: regexp-substitute/global PORT REGEXP TARGET [ITEM...]
5936 Similar to `regexp-substitute', but can be used to perform global
5937 substitutions on STR. Instead of taking a match structure as an
5938 argument, `regexp-substitute/global' takes two string arguments: a
5939 REGEXP string describing a regular expression, and a TARGET string
5940 which should be matched against this regular expression.
5942 Each ITEM behaves as in REGEXP-SUBSTITUTE, with the following
5945 * A function may be supplied. When this function is called, it
5946 will be passed one argument: a match structure for a given
5947 regular expression match. It should return a string to be
5948 written out to PORT.
5950 * The `post' symbol causes `regexp-substitute/global' to recurse
5951 on the unmatched portion of STR. This *must* be supplied in
5952 order to perform global search-and-replace on STR; if it is
5953 not present among the ITEMs, then `regexp-substitute/global'
5954 will return after processing a single match.
5956 *** Match Structures
5958 A "match structure" is the object returned by `string-match' and
5959 `regexp-exec'. It describes which portion of a string, if any, matched
5960 the given regular expression. Match structures include: a reference to
5961 the string that was checked for matches; the starting and ending
5962 positions of the regexp match; and, if the regexp included any
5963 parenthesized subexpressions, the starting and ending positions of each
5966 In each of the regexp match functions described below, the `match'
5967 argument must be a match structure returned by a previous call to
5968 `string-match' or `regexp-exec'. Most of these functions return some
5969 information about the original target string that was matched against a
5970 regular expression; we will call that string TARGET for easy reference.
5972 **** Function: regexp-match? OBJ
5973 Return `#t' if OBJ is a match structure returned by a previous
5974 call to `regexp-exec', or `#f' otherwise.
5976 **** Function: match:substring MATCH [N]
5977 Return the portion of TARGET matched by subexpression number N.
5978 Submatch 0 (the default) represents the entire regexp match. If
5979 the regular expression as a whole matched, but the subexpression
5980 number N did not match, return `#f'.
5982 **** Function: match:start MATCH [N]
5983 Return the starting position of submatch number N.
5985 **** Function: match:end MATCH [N]
5986 Return the ending position of submatch number N.
5988 **** Function: match:prefix MATCH
5989 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET preceding the regexp match.
5991 **** Function: match:suffix MATCH
5992 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET following the regexp match.
5994 **** Function: match:count MATCH
5995 Return the number of parenthesized subexpressions from MATCH.
5996 Note that the entire regular expression match itself counts as a
5997 subexpression, and failed submatches are included in the count.
5999 **** Function: match:string MATCH
6000 Return the original TARGET string.
6002 *** Backslash Escapes
6004 Sometimes you will want a regexp to match characters like `*' or `$'
6005 exactly. For example, to check whether a particular string represents
6006 a menu entry from an Info node, it would be useful to match it against
6007 a regexp like `^* [^:]*::'. However, this won't work; because the
6008 asterisk is a metacharacter, it won't match the `*' at the beginning of
6009 the string. In this case, we want to make the first asterisk un-magic.
6011 You can do this by preceding the metacharacter with a backslash
6012 character `\'. (This is also called "quoting" the metacharacter, and
6013 is known as a "backslash escape".) When Guile sees a backslash in a
6014 regular expression, it considers the following glyph to be an ordinary
6015 character, no matter what special meaning it would ordinarily have.
6016 Therefore, we can make the above example work by changing the regexp to
6017 `^\* [^:]*::'. The `\*' sequence tells the regular expression engine
6018 to match only a single asterisk in the target string.
6020 Since the backslash is itself a metacharacter, you may force a
6021 regexp to match a backslash in the target string by preceding the
6022 backslash with itself. For example, to find variable references in a
6023 TeX program, you might want to find occurrences of the string `\let\'
6024 followed by any number of alphabetic characters. The regular expression
6025 `\\let\\[A-Za-z]*' would do this: the double backslashes in the regexp
6026 each match a single backslash in the target string.
6028 **** Function: regexp-quote STR
6029 Quote each special character found in STR with a backslash, and
6030 return the resulting string.
6032 *Very important:* Using backslash escapes in Guile source code (as
6033 in Emacs Lisp or C) can be tricky, because the backslash character has
6034 special meaning for the Guile reader. For example, if Guile encounters
6035 the character sequence `\n' in the middle of a string while processing
6036 Scheme code, it replaces those characters with a newline character.
6037 Similarly, the character sequence `\t' is replaced by a horizontal tab.
6038 Several of these "escape sequences" are processed by the Guile reader
6039 before your code is executed. Unrecognized escape sequences are
6040 ignored: if the characters `\*' appear in a string, they will be
6041 translated to the single character `*'.
6043 This translation is obviously undesirable for regular expressions,
6044 since we want to be able to include backslashes in a string in order to
6045 escape regexp metacharacters. Therefore, to make sure that a backslash
6046 is preserved in a string in your Guile program, you must use *two*
6047 consecutive backslashes:
6049 (define Info-menu-entry-pattern (make-regexp "^\\* [^:]*"))
6051 The string in this example is preprocessed by the Guile reader before
6052 any code is executed. The resulting argument to `make-regexp' is the
6053 string `^\* [^:]*', which is what we really want.
6055 This also means that in order to write a regular expression that
6056 matches a single backslash character, the regular expression string in
6057 the source code must include *four* backslashes. Each consecutive pair
6058 of backslashes gets translated by the Guile reader to a single
6059 backslash, and the resulting double-backslash is interpreted by the
6060 regexp engine as matching a single backslash character. Hence:
6062 (define tex-variable-pattern (make-regexp "\\\\let\\\\=[A-Za-z]*"))
6064 The reason for the unwieldiness of this syntax is historical. Both
6065 regular expression pattern matchers and Unix string processing systems
6066 have traditionally used backslashes with the special meanings described
6067 above. The POSIX regular expression specification and ANSI C standard
6068 both require these semantics. Attempting to abandon either convention
6069 would cause other kinds of compatibility problems, possibly more severe
6070 ones. Therefore, without extending the Scheme reader to support
6071 strings with different quoting conventions (an ungainly and confusing
6072 extension when implemented in other languages), we must adhere to this
6073 cumbersome escape syntax.
6075 * Changes to the gh_ interface
6077 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6079 * Changes to system call interfaces:
6081 ** The value returned by `raise' is now unspecified. It throws an exception
6084 *** A new procedure `sigaction' can be used to install signal handlers
6086 (sigaction signum [action] [flags])
6088 signum is the signal number, which can be specified using the value
6091 If action is omitted, sigaction returns a pair: the CAR is the current
6092 signal hander, which will be either an integer with the value SIG_DFL
6093 (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or the Scheme procedure which
6094 handles the signal, or #f if a non-Scheme procedure handles the
6095 signal. The CDR contains the current sigaction flags for the handler.
6097 If action is provided, it is installed as the new handler for signum.
6098 action can be a Scheme procedure taking one argument, or the value of
6099 SIG_DFL (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or #f to restore
6100 whatever signal handler was installed before sigaction was first used.
6101 Flags can optionally be specified for the new handler (SA_RESTART is
6102 always used if the system provides it, so need not be specified.) The
6103 return value is a pair with information about the old handler as
6106 This interface does not provide access to the "signal blocking"
6107 facility. Maybe this is not needed, since the thread support may
6108 provide solutions to the problem of consistent access to data
6111 *** A new procedure `flush-all-ports' is equivalent to running
6112 `force-output' on every port open for output.
6114 ** Guile now provides information on how it was built, via the new
6115 global variable, %guile-build-info. This variable records the values
6116 of the standard GNU makefile directory variables as an assocation
6117 list, mapping variable names (symbols) onto directory paths (strings).
6118 For example, to find out where the Guile link libraries were
6119 installed, you can say:
6121 guile -c "(display (assq-ref %guile-build-info 'libdir)) (newline)"
6124 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6126 ** The new function scm_handle_by_message_noexit is just like the
6127 existing scm_handle_by_message function, except that it doesn't call
6128 exit to terminate the process. Instead, it prints a message and just
6129 returns #f. This might be a more appropriate catch-all handler for
6130 new dynamic roots and threads.
6133 Changes in Guile 1.1 (released Friday, May 16 1997):
6135 * Changes to the distribution.
6137 The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
6139 guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
6140 guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
6141 Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
6142 is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
6143 guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
6144 expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
6145 programming language. These are packaged together because the
6146 Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
6148 This NEWS file describes the changes made to guile-core since the 1.0
6151 We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
6152 date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
6157 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
6159 ** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
6160 Shivers' Scheme Shell.
6162 In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
6163 exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
6164 stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
6165 the (command-line) function.
6166 -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
6167 -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
6168 -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
6170 The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
6171 -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
6172 -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
6173 command line arguments
6174 -ds do -s script at this point
6175 --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
6176 -h, --help display this help and exit
6177 -v, --version display version information and exit
6178 \ read arguments from following script lines
6180 So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
6181 which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
6183 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6186 (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
6190 (main (command-line))
6192 Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
6194 ekko a speckled gecko
6196 Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
6197 token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
6198 following list of command-line arguments:
6200 ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
6202 Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
6203 the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
6204 with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
6205 defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
6206 remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
6208 In Unix, the first line of a script file must take the following form:
6210 #!INTERPRETER ARGUMENT
6212 where INTERPRETER is the absolute filename of the interpreter
6213 executable, and ARGUMENT is a single command-line argument to pass to
6216 You may only pass one argument to the interpreter, and its length is
6217 limited. These restrictions can be annoying to work around, so Guile
6218 provides a general mechanism (borrowed from, and compatible with,
6219 SCSH) for circumventing them.
6221 If the ARGUMENT in a Guile script is a single backslash character,
6222 `\', Guile will open the script file, parse arguments from its second
6223 and subsequent lines, and replace the `\' with them. So, for example,
6224 here is another implementation of the `ekko' script:
6226 #!/usr/local/bin/guile \
6230 (for-each (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
6234 If the user invokes this script as follows:
6236 ekko a speckled gecko
6238 Unix expands this into
6240 /usr/local/bin/guile \ ekko a speckled gecko
6242 When Guile sees the `\' argument, it replaces it with the arguments
6243 read from the second line of the script, producing:
6245 /usr/local/bin/guile -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
6247 This tells Guile to load the `ekko' script, and apply the function
6248 `main' to the argument list ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
6250 Here is how Guile parses the command-line arguments:
6251 - Each space character terminates an argument. This means that two
6252 spaces in a row introduce an empty-string argument.
6253 - The tab character is not permitted (unless you quote it with the
6254 backslash character, as described below), to avoid confusion.
6255 - The newline character terminates the sequence of arguments, and will
6256 also terminate a final non-empty argument. (However, a newline
6257 following a space will not introduce a final empty-string argument;
6258 it only terminates the argument list.)
6259 - The backslash character is the escape character. It escapes
6260 backslash, space, tab, and newline. The ANSI C escape sequences
6261 like \n and \t are also supported. These produce argument
6262 constituents; the two-character combination \n doesn't act like a
6263 terminating newline. The escape sequence \NNN for exactly three
6264 octal digits reads as the character whose ASCII code is NNN. As
6265 above, characters produced this way are argument constituents.
6266 Backslash followed by other characters is not allowed.
6268 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
6270 ** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
6271 system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
6272 all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
6273 supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
6274 libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
6276 Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
6277 it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
6278 independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
6280 ** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
6282 To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
6283 -lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
6284 autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
6285 following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
6288 ### Find quickthreads and libguile.
6289 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
6290 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
6292 * Changes to Scheme functions
6294 ** Guile Scheme's special syntax for keyword objects is now optional,
6295 and disabled by default.
6297 The syntax variation from R4RS made it difficult to port some
6298 interesting packages to Guile. The routines which accepted keyword
6299 arguments (mostly in the module system) have been modified to also
6300 accept symbols whose names begin with `:'.
6302 To change the keyword syntax, you must first import the (ice-9 debug)
6304 (use-modules (ice-9 debug))
6306 Then you can enable the keyword syntax as follows:
6307 (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
6309 To disable keyword syntax, do this:
6310 (read-set! keywords #f)
6312 ** Many more primitive functions accept shared substrings as
6313 arguments. In the past, these functions required normal, mutable
6314 strings as arguments, although they never made use of this
6317 ** The uniform array functions now operate on byte vectors. These
6318 functions are `array-fill!', `serial-array-copy!', `array-copy!',
6319 `serial-array-map', `array-map', `array-for-each', and
6322 ** The new functions `trace' and `untrace' implement simple debugging
6323 support for Scheme functions.
6325 The `trace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
6326 and tells the Guile interpreter to display each procedure's name and
6327 arguments each time the procedure is invoked. When invoked with no
6328 arguments, `trace' returns the list of procedures currently being
6331 The `untrace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
6332 and tells the Guile interpreter not to trace them any more. When
6333 invoked with no arguments, `untrace' untraces all curretly traced
6336 The tracing in Guile has an advantage over most other systems: we
6337 don't create new procedure objects, but mark the procedure objects
6338 themselves. This means that anonymous and internal procedures can be
6341 ** The function `assert-repl-prompt' has been renamed to
6342 `set-repl-prompt!'. It takes one argument, PROMPT.
6343 - If PROMPT is #f, the Guile read-eval-print loop will not prompt.
6344 - If PROMPT is a string, we use it as a prompt.
6345 - If PROMPT is a procedure accepting no arguments, we call it, and
6346 display the result as a prompt.
6347 - Otherwise, we display "> ".
6349 ** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
6350 string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
6351 in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
6354 ** The new function `thunk?' returns true iff its argument is a
6355 procedure of zero arguments.
6357 ** `defined?' is now a builtin function, instead of syntax. This
6358 means that its argument should be quoted. It returns #t iff its
6359 argument is bound in the current module.
6361 ** The new syntax `use-modules' allows you to add new modules to your
6362 environment without re-typing a complete `define-module' form. It
6363 accepts any number of module names as arguments, and imports their
6364 public bindings into the current module.
6366 ** The new function (module-defined? NAME MODULE) returns true iff
6367 NAME, a symbol, is defined in MODULE, a module object.
6369 ** The new function `builtin-bindings' creates and returns a hash
6370 table containing copies of all the root module's bindings.
6372 ** The new function `builtin-weak-bindings' does the same as
6373 `builtin-bindings', but creates a doubly-weak hash table.
6375 ** The `equal?' function now considers variable objects to be
6376 equivalent if they have the same name and the same value.
6378 ** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
6379 given to Guile, as a list of strings.
6381 When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
6382 script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
6383 `-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
6384 behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
6385 command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
6387 ** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
6388 in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
6389 mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
6390 but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
6392 ** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
6395 ** Changes to I/O functions
6397 *** The functions `read', `primitive-load', `read-and-eval!', and
6398 `primitive-load-path' no longer take optional arguments controlling
6399 case insensitivity and a `#' parser.
6401 Case sensitivity is now controlled by a read option called
6402 `case-insensitive'. The user can add new `#' syntaxes with the
6403 `read-hash-extend' function (see below).
6405 *** The new function `read-hash-extend' allows the user to change the
6406 syntax of Guile Scheme in a somewhat controlled way.
6408 (read-hash-extend CHAR PROC)
6409 When parsing S-expressions, if we read a `#' character followed by
6410 the character CHAR, use PROC to parse an object from the stream.
6411 If PROC is #f, remove any parsing procedure registered for CHAR.
6413 The reader applies PROC to two arguments: CHAR and an input port.
6415 *** The new functions read-delimited and read-delimited! provide a
6416 general mechanism for doing delimited input on streams.
6418 (read-delimited DELIMS [PORT HANDLE-DELIM])
6419 Read until we encounter one of the characters in DELIMS (a string),
6420 or end-of-file. PORT is the input port to read from; it defaults to
6421 the current input port. The HANDLE-DELIM parameter determines how
6422 the terminating character is handled; it should be one of the
6425 'trim omit delimiter from result
6426 'peek leave delimiter character in input stream
6427 'concat append delimiter character to returned value
6428 'split return a pair: (RESULT . TERMINATOR)
6430 HANDLE-DELIM defaults to 'peek.
6432 (read-delimited! DELIMS BUF [PORT HANDLE-DELIM START END])
6433 A side-effecting variant of `read-delimited'.
6435 The data is written into the string BUF at the indices in the
6436 half-open interval [START, END); the default interval is the whole
6437 string: START = 0 and END = (string-length BUF). The values of
6438 START and END must specify a well-defined interval in BUF, i.e.
6439 0 <= START <= END <= (string-length BUF).
6441 It returns NBYTES, the number of bytes read. If the buffer filled
6442 up without a delimiter character being found, it returns #f. If the
6443 port is at EOF when the read starts, it returns the EOF object.
6445 If an integer is returned (i.e., the read is successfully terminated
6446 by reading a delimiter character), then the HANDLE-DELIM parameter
6447 determines how to handle the terminating character. It is described
6448 above, and defaults to 'peek.
6450 (The descriptions of these functions were borrowed from the SCSH
6451 manual, by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
6453 *** The `%read-delimited!' function is the primitive used to implement
6454 `read-delimited' and `read-delimited!'.
6456 (%read-delimited! DELIMS BUF GOBBLE? [PORT START END])
6458 This returns a pair of values: (TERMINATOR . NUM-READ).
6459 - TERMINATOR describes why the read was terminated. If it is a
6460 character or the eof object, then that is the value that terminated
6461 the read. If it is #f, the function filled the buffer without finding
6462 a delimiting character.
6463 - NUM-READ is the number of characters read into BUF.
6465 If the read is successfully terminated by reading a delimiter
6466 character, then the gobble? parameter determines what to do with the
6467 terminating character. If true, the character is removed from the
6468 input stream; if false, the character is left in the input stream
6469 where a subsequent read operation will retrieve it. In either case,
6470 the character is also the first value returned by the procedure call.
6472 (The descriptions of this function was borrowed from the SCSH manual,
6473 by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
6475 *** The `read-line' and `read-line!' functions have changed; they now
6476 trim the terminator by default; previously they appended it to the
6477 returned string. For the old behavior, use (read-line PORT 'concat).
6479 *** The functions `uniform-array-read!' and `uniform-array-write!' now
6480 take new optional START and END arguments, specifying the region of
6481 the array to read and write.
6483 *** The `ungetc-char-ready?' function has been removed. We feel it's
6484 inappropriate for an interface to expose implementation details this
6487 ** Changes to the Unix library and system call interface
6489 *** The new fcntl function provides access to the Unix `fcntl' system
6492 (fcntl PORT COMMAND VALUE)
6493 Apply COMMAND to PORT's file descriptor, with VALUE as an argument.
6494 Values for COMMAND are:
6496 F_DUPFD duplicate a file descriptor
6497 F_GETFD read the descriptor's close-on-exec flag
6498 F_SETFD set the descriptor's close-on-exec flag to VALUE
6499 F_GETFL read the descriptor's flags, as set on open
6500 F_SETFL set the descriptor's flags, as set on open to VALUE
6501 F_GETOWN return the process ID of a socket's owner, for SIGIO
6502 F_SETOWN set the process that owns a socket to VALUE, for SIGIO
6503 FD_CLOEXEC not sure what this is
6505 For details, see the documentation for the fcntl system call.
6507 *** The arguments to `select' have changed, for compatibility with
6508 SCSH. The TIMEOUT parameter may now be non-integral, yielding the
6509 expected behavior. The MILLISECONDS parameter has been changed to
6510 MICROSECONDS, to more closely resemble the underlying system call.
6511 The RVEC, WVEC, and EVEC arguments can now be vectors; the type of the
6512 corresponding return set will be the same.
6514 *** The arguments to the `mknod' system call have changed. They are
6517 (mknod PATH TYPE PERMS DEV)
6518 Create a new file (`node') in the file system. PATH is the name of
6519 the file to create. TYPE is the kind of file to create; it should
6520 be 'fifo, 'block-special, or 'char-special. PERMS specifies the
6521 permission bits to give the newly created file. If TYPE is
6522 'block-special or 'char-special, DEV specifies which device the
6523 special file refers to; its interpretation depends on the kind of
6524 special file being created.
6526 *** The `fork' function has been renamed to `primitive-fork', to avoid
6527 clashing with various SCSH forks.
6529 *** The `recv' and `recvfrom' functions have been renamed to `recv!'
6530 and `recvfrom!'. They no longer accept a size for a second argument;
6531 you must pass a string to hold the received value. They no longer
6532 return the buffer. Instead, `recv' returns the length of the message
6533 received, and `recvfrom' returns a pair containing the packet's length
6534 and originating address.
6536 *** The file descriptor datatype has been removed, as have the
6537 `read-fd', `write-fd', `close', `lseek', and `dup' functions.
6538 We plan to replace these functions with a SCSH-compatible interface.
6540 *** The `create' function has been removed; it's just a special case
6543 *** There are new functions to break down process termination status
6544 values. In the descriptions below, STATUS is a value returned by
6547 (status:exit-val STATUS)
6548 If the child process exited normally, this function returns the exit
6549 code for the child process (i.e., the value passed to exit, or
6550 returned from main). If the child process did not exit normally,
6551 this function returns #f.
6553 (status:stop-sig STATUS)
6554 If the child process was suspended by a signal, this function
6555 returns the signal that suspended the child. Otherwise, it returns
6558 (status:term-sig STATUS)
6559 If the child process terminated abnormally, this function returns
6560 the signal that terminated the child. Otherwise, this function
6563 POSIX promises that exactly one of these functions will return true on
6564 a valid STATUS value.
6566 These functions are compatible with SCSH.
6568 *** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
6569 returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
6571 Component Accessor Setter
6572 ========================= ============ ============
6573 seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
6574 minutes tm:min set-tm:min
6575 hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
6576 day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
6577 month tm:mon set-tm:mon
6578 year tm:year set-tm:year
6579 day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
6580 day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
6581 daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
6582 GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
6583 name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
6585 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname',
6586 describing the host system:
6589 ============================================== ================
6590 name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
6591 network name of this machine utsname:nodename
6592 release level of the operating system utsname:release
6593 version level of the operating system utsname:version
6594 machine hardware platform utsname:machine
6596 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getpw',
6597 `getpwnam', `getpwuid', and `getpwent', describing entries from the
6598 system's user database:
6601 ====================== =================
6602 user name passwd:name
6603 user password passwd:passwd
6606 real name passwd:gecos
6607 home directory passwd:dir
6608 shell program passwd:shell
6610 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getgr',
6611 `getgrnam', `getgrgid', and `getgrent', describing entries from the
6612 system's group database:
6615 ======================= ============
6616 group name group:name
6617 group password group:passwd
6619 group members group:mem
6621 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `gethost',
6622 `gethostbyaddr', `gethostbyname', and `gethostent', describing
6626 ========================= ===============
6627 official name of host hostent:name
6628 alias list hostent:aliases
6629 host address type hostent:addrtype
6630 length of address hostent:length
6631 list of addresses hostent:addr-list
6633 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getnet',
6634 `getnetbyaddr', `getnetbyname', and `getnetent', describing internet
6638 ========================= ===============
6639 official name of net netent:name
6640 alias list netent:aliases
6641 net number type netent:addrtype
6642 net number netent:net
6644 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getproto',
6645 `getprotobyname', `getprotobynumber', and `getprotoent', describing
6649 ========================= ===============
6650 official protocol name protoent:name
6651 alias list protoent:aliases
6652 protocol number protoent:proto
6654 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getserv',
6655 `getservbyname', `getservbyport', and `getservent', describing
6659 ========================= ===============
6660 official service name servent:name
6661 alias list servent:aliases
6662 port number servent:port
6663 protocol to use servent:proto
6665 *** There are new accessors for the sockaddr structures returned by
6666 `accept', `getsockname', `getpeername', `recvfrom!':
6669 ======================================== ===============
6670 address format (`family') sockaddr:fam
6671 path, for file domain addresses sockaddr:path
6672 address, for internet domain addresses sockaddr:addr
6673 TCP or UDP port, for internet sockaddr:port
6675 *** The `getpwent', `getgrent', `gethostent', `getnetent',
6676 `getprotoent', and `getservent' functions now return #f at the end of
6677 the user database. (They used to throw an exception.)
6679 Note that calling MUMBLEent function is equivalent to calling the
6680 corresponding MUMBLE function with no arguments.
6682 *** The `setpwent', `setgrent', `sethostent', `setnetent',
6683 `setprotoent', and `setservent' routines now take no arguments.
6685 *** The `gethost', `getproto', `getnet', and `getserv' functions now
6686 provide more useful information when they throw an exception.
6688 *** The `lnaof' function has been renamed to `inet-lnaof'.
6690 *** Guile now claims to have the `current-time' feature.
6692 *** The `mktime' function now takes an optional second argument ZONE,
6693 giving the time zone to use for the conversion. ZONE should be a
6694 string, in the same format as expected for the "TZ" environment variable.
6696 *** The `strptime' function now returns a pair (TIME . COUNT), where
6697 TIME is the parsed time as a vector, and COUNT is the number of
6698 characters from the string left unparsed. This function used to
6699 return the remaining characters as a string.
6701 *** The `gettimeofday' function has replaced the old `time+ticks' function.
6702 The return value is now (SECONDS . MICROSECONDS); the fractional
6703 component is no longer expressed in "ticks".
6705 *** The `ticks/sec' constant has been removed, in light of the above change.
6707 * Changes to the gh_ interface
6709 ** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
6712 ** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
6715 ** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
6716 and returns the array
6718 ** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
6719 null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
6720 the user to interpret the data both ways.
6722 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6724 ** The new function scm_symbol_value0 provides an easy way to get a
6725 symbol's value from C code:
6727 SCM scm_symbol_value0 (char *NAME)
6728 Return the value of the symbol named by the null-terminated string
6729 NAME in the current module. If the symbol named NAME is unbound in
6730 the current module, return SCM_UNDEFINED.
6732 ** The new function scm_sysintern0 creates new top-level variables,
6733 without assigning them a value.
6735 SCM scm_sysintern0 (char *NAME)
6736 Create a new Scheme top-level variable named NAME. NAME is a
6737 null-terminated string. Return the variable's value cell.
6739 ** The function scm_internal_catch is the guts of catch. It handles
6740 all the mechanics of setting up a catch target, invoking the catch
6741 body, and perhaps invoking the handler if the body does a throw.
6743 The function is designed to be usable from C code, but is general
6744 enough to implement all the semantics Guile Scheme expects from throw.
6746 TAG is the catch tag. Typically, this is a symbol, but this function
6747 doesn't actually care about that.
6749 BODY is a pointer to a C function which runs the body of the catch;
6750 this is the code you can throw from. We call it like this:
6751 BODY (BODY_DATA, JMPBUF)
6753 BODY_DATA is just the BODY_DATA argument we received; we pass it
6754 through to BODY as its first argument. The caller can make
6755 BODY_DATA point to anything useful that BODY might need.
6756 JMPBUF is the Scheme jmpbuf object corresponding to this catch,
6757 which we have just created and initialized.
6759 HANDLER is a pointer to a C function to deal with a throw to TAG,
6760 should one occur. We call it like this:
6761 HANDLER (HANDLER_DATA, THROWN_TAG, THROW_ARGS)
6763 HANDLER_DATA is the HANDLER_DATA argument we recevied; it's the
6764 same idea as BODY_DATA above.
6765 THROWN_TAG is the tag that the user threw to; usually this is
6766 TAG, but it could be something else if TAG was #t (i.e., a
6767 catch-all), or the user threw to a jmpbuf.
6768 THROW_ARGS is the list of arguments the user passed to the THROW
6771 BODY_DATA is just a pointer we pass through to BODY. HANDLER_DATA
6772 is just a pointer we pass through to HANDLER. We don't actually
6773 use either of those pointers otherwise ourselves. The idea is
6774 that, if our caller wants to communicate something to BODY or
6775 HANDLER, it can pass a pointer to it as MUMBLE_DATA, which BODY and
6776 HANDLER can then use. Think of it as a way to make BODY and
6777 HANDLER closures, not just functions; MUMBLE_DATA points to the
6780 Of course, it's up to the caller to make sure that any data a
6781 MUMBLE_DATA needs is protected from GC. A common way to do this is
6782 to make MUMBLE_DATA a pointer to data stored in an automatic
6783 structure variable; since the collector must scan the stack for
6784 references anyway, this assures that any references in MUMBLE_DATA
6787 ** The new function scm_internal_lazy_catch is exactly like
6788 scm_internal_catch, except:
6790 - It does not unwind the stack (this is the major difference).
6791 - If handler returns, its value is returned from the throw.
6792 - BODY always receives #f as its JMPBUF argument (since there's no
6793 jmpbuf associated with a lazy catch, because we don't unwind the
6796 ** scm_body_thunk is a new body function you can pass to
6797 scm_internal_catch if you want the body to be like Scheme's `catch'
6798 --- a thunk, or a function of one argument if the tag is #f.
6800 BODY_DATA is a pointer to a scm_body_thunk_data structure, which
6801 contains the Scheme procedure to invoke as the body, and the tag
6802 we're catching. If the tag is #f, then we pass JMPBUF (created by
6803 scm_internal_catch) to the body procedure; otherwise, the body gets
6806 ** scm_handle_by_proc is a new handler function you can pass to
6807 scm_internal_catch if you want the handler to act like Scheme's catch
6808 --- call a procedure with the tag and the throw arguments.
6810 If the user does a throw to this catch, this function runs a handler
6811 procedure written in Scheme. HANDLER_DATA is a pointer to an SCM
6812 variable holding the Scheme procedure object to invoke. It ought to
6813 be a pointer to an automatic variable (i.e., one living on the stack),
6814 or the procedure object should be otherwise protected from GC.
6816 ** scm_handle_by_message is a new handler function to use with
6817 `scm_internal_catch' if you want Guile to print a message and die.
6818 It's useful for dealing with throws to uncaught keys at the top level.
6820 HANDLER_DATA, if non-zero, is assumed to be a char * pointing to a
6821 message header to print; if zero, we use "guile" instead. That
6822 text is followed by a colon, then the message described by ARGS.
6824 ** The return type of scm_boot_guile is now void; the function does
6825 not return a value, and indeed, never returns at all.
6827 ** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
6828 process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
6829 stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
6832 To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
6833 linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
6834 of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will add
6835 any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
6836 argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
6837 generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
6838 command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
6841 ** The new functions scm_get_meta_args and scm_count_argv help you
6842 implement the SCSH-style meta-argument, `\'.
6844 char **scm_get_meta_args (int ARGC, char **ARGV)
6845 If the second element of ARGV is a string consisting of a single
6846 backslash character (i.e. "\\" in Scheme notation), open the file
6847 named by the following argument, parse arguments from it, and return
6848 the spliced command line. The returned array is terminated by a
6851 For details of argument parsing, see above, under "guile now accepts
6852 command-line arguments compatible with SCSH..."
6854 int scm_count_argv (char **ARGV)
6855 Count the arguments in ARGV, assuming it is terminated by a null
6858 For an example of how these functions might be used, see the source
6859 code for the function scm_shell in libguile/script.c.
6861 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6864 ** The new function scm_compile_shell_switches turns an array of
6865 command-line arguments into Scheme code to carry out the actions they
6866 describe. Given ARGC and ARGV, it returns a Scheme expression to
6867 evaluate, and calls scm_set_program_arguments to make any remaining
6868 command-line arguments available to the Scheme code. For example,
6869 given the following arguments:
6871 -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
6873 scm_set_program_arguments will return the following expression:
6875 (begin (load "ekko") (main (command-line)) (quit))
6877 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6880 ** The function scm_shell_usage prints a usage message appropriate for
6881 an interpreter that uses scm_compile_shell_switches to handle its
6882 command-line arguments.
6884 void scm_shell_usage (int FATAL, char *MESSAGE)
6885 Print a usage message to the standard error output. If MESSAGE is
6886 non-zero, write it before the usage message, followed by a newline.
6887 If FATAL is non-zero, exit the process, using FATAL as the
6888 termination status. (If you want to be compatible with Guile,
6889 always use 1 as the exit status when terminating due to command-line
6892 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
6895 ** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
6896 expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL. Earth-shattering.
6898 ** The macros for declaring scheme objects in C code have been
6899 rearranged slightly. They are now:
6901 SCM_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6902 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
6903 point to the Scheme symbol whose name is SCHEME_NAME. C_NAME should
6904 be a C identifier, and SCHEME_NAME should be a C string.
6906 SCM_GLOBAL_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6907 Just like SCM_SYMBOL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
6909 SCM_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6910 Create a global variable at the Scheme level named SCHEME_NAME.
6911 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
6912 point to the Scheme variable's value cell.
6914 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
6915 Just like SCM_VCELL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
6917 The `guile-snarf' script writes initialization code for these macros
6918 to its standard output, given C source code as input.
6920 The SCM_GLOBAL macro is gone.
6922 ** The scm_read_line and scm_read_line_x functions have been replaced
6923 by Scheme code based on the %read-delimited! procedure (known to C
6924 code as scm_read_delimited_x). See its description above for more
6927 ** The function scm_sys_open has been renamed to scm_open. It now
6928 returns a port instead of an FD object.
6930 * The dynamic linking support has changed. For more information, see
6931 libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING.
6936 User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
6939 * Changes to the 'guile' program:
6941 ** Guile now loads some new files when it starts up. Guile first
6942 searches the load path for init.scm, and loads it if found. Then, if
6943 Guile is not being used to execute a script, and the user's home
6944 directory contains a file named `.guile', Guile loads that.
6946 ** You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
6948 To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
6950 When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
6951 characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
6952 be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
6953 to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
6954 specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
6955 the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
6956 and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
6957 filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
6958 following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
6959 for more information.
6961 Now you can use Guile as an interpreter, using a mechanism which is a
6962 compatible subset of that provided by SCSH.
6964 Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
6965 name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
6966 characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
6967 to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
6968 following two lines at the top of the file:
6970 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6973 Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
6974 of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
6975 start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
6977 For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
6979 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6981 (let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
6984 (display (car args))
6985 (if (pair? (cdr args))
6987 (loop (cdr args)))))
6990 Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
6991 end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
6992 don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
6993 we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
6994 scripts once we do. Furthermore, if the path to Guile on your system
6995 is too long for your kernel, you can start the script with this
6999 exec /really/long/path/to/guile -s "$0" ${1+"$@"}
7002 Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
7005 ** You can now run Guile without installing it.
7007 Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
7008 couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
7009 they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
7010 later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
7011 itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
7014 To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
7015 then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
7016 colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
7017 of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
7018 full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
7021 export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
7024 ** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
7025 results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
7026 expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
7029 ** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
7030 however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
7031 request that they be displayed by default. After an error, evaluate
7033 to see a backtrace, and
7034 (debug-enable 'backtrace)
7035 to see them by default.
7039 * Changes to Guile Scheme:
7041 ** Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
7043 This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
7044 upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
7047 Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
7048 type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
7049 caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
7050 way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
7053 ** Guile's delq, delv, delete functions, and their destructive
7054 counterparts, delq!, delv!, and delete!, now remove all matching
7055 elements from the list, not just the first. This matches the behavior
7056 of the corresponding Emacs Lisp functions, and (I believe) the Maclisp
7057 functions which inspired them.
7059 I recognize that this change may break code in subtle ways, but it
7060 seems best to make the change before the FSF's first Guile release,
7064 ** The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
7066 ** The facilities for loading Scheme source files have changed.
7068 *** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
7069 for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
7072 *** The variable %load-extensions now tells Guile which extensions to
7073 try appending to a filename when searching the load path. Its value
7074 is a list of strings. Its default value is ("" ".scm").
7076 *** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
7077 value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME,
7078 with all the extensions listed in %load-extensions. If it finds a
7079 match, then it returns its full filename. If FILENAME is absolute, it
7080 returns it unchanged. Otherwise, it returns #f.
7082 %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to directories.
7084 *** (primitive-load FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
7085 uses %seach-load-path to find a file named FILENAME, and loads it if
7086 it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for any reason, it throws an
7089 The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
7092 *** load uses the same searching semantics as primitive-load.
7094 *** The functions %try-load, try-load-with-path, %load, load-with-path,
7095 basic-try-load-with-path, basic-load-with-path, try-load-module-with-
7096 path, and load-module-with-path have been deleted. The functions
7097 above should serve their purposes.
7099 *** If the value of the variable %load-hook is a procedure,
7100 `primitive-load' applies its value to the name of the file being
7101 loaded (without the load path directory name prepended). If its value
7102 is #f, it is ignored. Otherwise, an error occurs.
7104 This is mostly useful for printing load notification messages.
7107 ** The function `eval!' is no longer accessible from the scheme level.
7108 We can't allow operations which introduce glocs into the scheme level,
7109 because Guile's type system can't handle these as data. Use `eval' or
7110 `read-and-eval!' (see below) as replacement.
7112 ** The new function read-and-eval! reads an expression from PORT,
7113 evaluates it, and returns the result. This is more efficient than
7114 simply calling `read' and `eval', since it is not necessary to make a
7115 copy of the expression for the evaluator to munge.
7117 Its optional arguments CASE_INSENSITIVE_P and SHARP are interpreted as
7118 for the `read' function.
7121 ** The function `int?' has been removed; its definition was identical
7122 to that of `integer?'.
7124 ** The functions `<?', `<?', `<=?', `=?', `>?', and `>=?'. Code should
7125 use the R4RS names for these functions.
7127 ** The function object-properties no longer returns the hash handle;
7128 it simply returns the object's property list.
7130 ** Many functions have been changed to throw errors, instead of
7131 returning #f on failure. The point of providing exception handling in
7132 the language is to simplify the logic of user code, but this is less
7133 useful if Guile's primitives don't throw exceptions.
7135 ** The function `fileno' has been renamed from `%fileno'.
7137 ** The function primitive-mode->fdes returns #t or #f now, not 1 or 0.
7140 * Changes to Guile's C interface:
7142 ** The library's initialization procedure has been simplified.
7143 scm_boot_guile now has the prototype:
7145 void scm_boot_guile (int ARGC,
7147 void (*main_func) (),
7150 scm_boot_guile calls MAIN_FUNC, passing it CLOSURE, ARGC, and ARGV.
7151 MAIN_FUNC should do all the work of the program (initializing other
7152 packages, reading user input, etc.) before returning. When MAIN_FUNC
7153 returns, call exit (0); this function never returns. If you want some
7154 other exit value, MAIN_FUNC may call exit itself.
7156 scm_boot_guile arranges for program-arguments to return the strings
7157 given by ARGC and ARGV. If MAIN_FUNC modifies ARGC/ARGV, should call
7158 scm_set_program_arguments with the final list, so Scheme code will
7159 know which arguments have been processed.
7161 scm_boot_guile establishes a catch-all catch handler which prints an
7162 error message and exits the process. This means that Guile exits in a
7163 coherent way when system errors occur and the user isn't prepared to
7164 handle it. If the user doesn't like this behavior, they can establish
7165 their own universal catcher in MAIN_FUNC to shadow this one.
7167 Why must the caller do all the real work from MAIN_FUNC? The garbage
7168 collector assumes that all local variables of type SCM will be above
7169 scm_boot_guile's stack frame on the stack. If you try to manipulate
7170 SCM values after this function returns, it's the luck of the draw
7171 whether the GC will be able to find the objects you allocate. So,
7172 scm_boot_guile function exits, rather than returning, to discourage
7173 people from making that mistake.
7175 The IN, OUT, and ERR arguments were removed; there are other
7176 convenient ways to override these when desired.
7178 The RESULT argument was deleted; this function should never return.
7180 The BOOT_CMD argument was deleted; the MAIN_FUNC argument is more
7184 ** Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
7187 In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
7188 versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
7189 Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
7190 Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
7193 Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
7194 refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
7195 Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
7196 the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
7199 ** Two new C functions, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object,
7200 have been added to the Guile library.
7202 scm_protect_object (OBJ) protects OBJ from the garbage collector.
7203 OBJ will not be freed, even if all other references are dropped,
7204 until someone does scm_unprotect_object (OBJ). Both functions
7207 Note that calls to scm_protect_object do not nest. You can call
7208 scm_protect_object any number of times on a given object, and the
7209 next call to scm_unprotect_object will unprotect it completely.
7211 Basically, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object just
7212 maintain a list of references to things. Since the GC knows about
7213 this list, all objects it mentions stay alive. scm_protect_object
7214 adds its argument to the list; scm_unprotect_object remove its
7215 argument from the list.
7218 ** scm_eval_0str now returns the value of the last expression
7221 ** The new function scm_read_0str reads an s-expression from a
7222 null-terminated string, and returns it.
7224 ** The new function `scm_stdio_to_port' converts a STDIO file pointer
7225 to a Scheme port object.
7227 ** The new function `scm_set_program_arguments' allows C code to set
7228 the value returned by the Scheme `program-arguments' function.
7233 * Guile no longer includes sophisticated Tcl/Tk support.
7235 The old Tcl/Tk support was unsatisfying to us, because it required the
7236 user to link against the Tcl library, as well as Tk and Guile. The
7237 interface was also un-lispy, in that it preserved Tcl/Tk's practice of
7238 referring to widgets by names, rather than exporting widgets to Scheme
7239 code as a special datatype.
7241 In the Usenix Tk Developer's Workshop held in July 1996, the Tcl/Tk
7242 maintainers described some very interesting changes in progress to the
7243 Tcl/Tk internals, which would facilitate clean interfaces between lone
7244 Tk and other interpreters --- even for garbage-collected languages
7245 like Scheme. They expected the new Tk to be publicly available in the
7248 Since it seems that Guile might soon have a new, cleaner interface to
7249 lone Tk, and that the old Guile/Tk glue code would probably need to be
7250 completely rewritten, we (Jim Blandy and Richard Stallman) have
7251 decided not to support the old code. We'll spend the time instead on
7252 a good interface to the newer Tk, as soon as it is available.
7254 Until then, gtcltk-lib provides trivial, low-maintenance functionality.
7257 Copyright information:
7259 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
7261 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
7262 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
7263 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
7264 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
7266 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
7267 of this document, or of portions of it,
7268 under the above conditions, provided also that they
7269 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
7274 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"