1 Guile NEWS --- history of user-visible changes.
2 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
8 Note: During the 1.9 series, we will keep an incremental NEWS for the
9 latest prerelease, and a full NEWS corresponding to 1.8 -> 2.0.
11 Changes in 1.9.15 (since the 1.9.14 prerelease):
13 ** Formally deprecate omission of port to `format'
15 It used to be that you could omit passing a port to `format', in some
16 cases. This still works, but has been formally deprecated.
20 Noah Lavine and Kan-Ru Chen noticed and fixed a number of embarrassing
21 bugs in object creation, unicode literals in strings, empty function
22 bodies, non-breaking whitespace, and numeric literals.
24 ** `(web ...)' changes
26 *** `parse-uri', `unparse-uri' now called `string->uri', `uri->string'
28 *** `uri-decode' takes `#:encoding' keyword argument, not `#:charset'
30 *** HTTP header representation change
32 Guile properly garbage-collects symbols, so there's no need to read some
33 headers as symbols and some as strings: all header names are symbols
34 now. The same goes for many key-value constructs in headers. Guile
35 parses the challenge/authentication headers now, as well. Header decl
36 objects are no longer exposed to the user.
38 *** Request and response bodies are always bytevectors
40 Reading bodies as latin-1 strings was a cute hack, but not general, so
41 Guile's only official fetch-me-the-body procedures return bytevectors
44 ** New procedures: scm_{to,from}_{utf8,latin1}_symbol{n,}
45 ** New procedures: scm_{to,from}_{utf8,utf32,latin1}_symbol{n,}
47 These new procedures convert to and from string representations in
50 Basically, continue to use locale encoding for user input, user output,
51 or interacting with the C library. Use latin1 for ASCII, and for
52 literals in source code. Use utf8 for interaction with modern libraries
53 which deal in UTF-8. Use utf32 for interaction with utf32-using
54 libraries. Otherwise use scm_to_stringn or scm_from_stringn with a
57 Also, scm_from_latin1_symbol is quite a bit faster now.
59 ** Documentation updates
61 The GOOPS manual saw a lot of work, as well as documentation for the
64 ** Guile uses iconv directly for reading from and writing to ports.
66 [What does this mean for users?]
68 ** Source files default to UTF-8.
70 If source files do not specify their encoding via a `coding:' block,
71 the default encoding is UTF-8, instead of being taken from the current
76 Thanks to Mark Harig for many suggestions regarding the manual page,
77 which is getting better.
79 ** Interactive Guile installs the current locale.
81 Instead of leaving the user in the "C" locale, running the Guile REPL
82 installs the current locale. [FIXME xref?]
84 ** `recv!', `recvfrom!', `send', `sendto' now deal in bytevectors
86 These socket procedures now take bytevectors as arguments, instead of
87 strings. There is some deprecated string support, however.
89 ** New foreign API: `define-wrapped-pointer-type', `pointer?'
91 See "Foreign Types", for more.
93 ** Changes and bugfixes in numerics code
95 *** Added two new sets of fast quotient and remainder operators
97 Added two new sets of fast quotient and remainder operator pairs with
98 different semantics than the R5RS operators. They support not only
99 integers, but all reals, including exact rationals and inexact
100 floating point numbers.
102 These procedures accept two real numbers N and D, where the divisor D
103 must be non-zero. `euclidean-quotient' returns the integer Q and
104 `euclidean-remainder' returns the real R such that N = Q*D + R and
105 0 <= R < |D|. `euclidean/' returns both Q and R, and is more
106 efficient than computing each separately. Note that when D > 0,
107 `euclidean-quotient' returns floor(N/D), and when D < 0 it returns
110 `centered-quotient', `centered-remainder', and `centered/' are similar
111 except that the range of remainders is -abs(D/2) <= R < abs(D/2), and
112 `centered-quotient' rounds N/D to the nearest integer.
114 Note that these operators are equivalent to the R6RS integer division
115 operators `div', `mod', `div-and-mod', `div0', `mod0', and
118 *** `eqv?' and `equal?' now compare numbers equivalently
120 scm_equal_p `equal?' now behaves equivalently to scm_eqv_p `eqv?' for
121 numeric values, per R5RS. Previously, equal? worked differently,
122 e.g. `(equal? 0.0 -0.0)' returned #t but `(eqv? 0.0 -0.0)' returned #f,
123 and `(equal? +nan.0 +nan.0)' returned #f but `(eqv? +nan.0 +nan.0)'
126 *** `(equal? +nan.0 +nan.0)' now returns #t
128 Previously, `(equal? +nan.0 +nan.0)' returned #f, although
129 `(let ((x +nan.0)) (equal? x x))' and `(eqv? +nan.0 +nan.0)'
130 both returned #t. R5RS requires that `equal?' behave like
131 `eqv?' when comparing numbers.
133 *** `expt' and `integer-expt' changes when the base is 0
135 While `(expt 0 0)' is still 1, and `(expt 0 N)' for N > 0 is still
136 zero, `(expt 0 N)' for N < 0 is now a NaN value, and likewise for
137 integer-expt. This is more correct, and conforming to R6RS, but seems
138 to be incompatible with R5RS, which would return 0 for all non-zero
141 *** `expt' and `integer-expt' are more generic, less strict
143 When raising to an exact non-negative integer exponent, `expt' and
144 `integer-expt' are now able to exponentiate any object that can be
145 multiplied using `*'. They can also raise an object to an exact
146 negative integer power if its reciprocal can be taken using `/'.
147 In order to allow this, the type of the first argument is no longer
148 checked when raising to an exact integer power. If the exponent is 0
149 or 1, the first parameter is not manipulated at all, and need not
150 even support multiplication.
152 *** Infinities are no longer integers, nor rationals
154 scm_integer_p `integer?' and scm_rational_p `rational?' now return #f
155 for infinities, per R6RS. Previously they returned #t for real
156 infinities. The real infinities and NaNs are still considered real by
157 scm_real `real?' however, per R6RS.
159 *** NaNs are no longer rationals
161 scm_rational_p `rational?' now returns #f for NaN values, per R6RS.
162 Previously it returned #t for real NaN values. They are still
163 considered real by scm_real `real?' however, per R6RS.
165 *** `inf?' and `nan?' now throw exceptions for non-reals
167 The domain of `inf?' and `nan?' is the real numbers. Guile now signals
168 an error when a non-real number or non-number is passed to these
169 procedures. (Note that NaNs _are_ considered numbers by scheme, despite
172 *** New procedure: `finite?'
174 Add scm_finite_p `finite?' from R6RS to guile core, which returns #t
175 if and only if its argument is neither infinite nor a NaN. Note that
176 this is not the same as (not (inf? x)) or (not (infinite? x)), since
177 NaNs are neither finite nor infinite.
179 *** R6RS base library changes
181 **** `div', `mod', `div-and-mod', `div0', `mod0', `div0-and-mod0'
183 Efficient versions of these R6RS division operators are now supported.
184 See the NEWS entry entitled `Added two new sets of fast quotient and
185 remainder operators' for more information.
187 **** `infinite?' changes
189 `infinite?' and `finite?' now throw exceptions for non-numbers. (Note
190 that NaNs _are_ considered numbers by scheme, despite their name).
192 **** `real-valued?', `rational-valued?' and `integer-valued?' changes
194 These predicates are now implemented in accordance with R6RS.
196 ** New reader option: `hungry-eol-escapes'
198 Guile's string syntax is more compatible with R6RS when the
199 `hungry-eol-escapes' option is enabled. See "String Syntax" in the
200 manual, for more information.
202 ** And of course, the usual collection of bugfixes
204 Interested users should see the ChangeLog for more information.
208 Changes in 1.9.x (since the 1.8.x series):
210 * New modules (see the manual for details)
212 ** `(srfi srfi-18)', more sophisticated multithreading support
213 ** `(srfi srfi-27)', sources of random bits
214 ** `(srfi srfi-38)', External Representation for Data With Shared Structure
215 ** `(srfi srfi-42)', eager comprehensions
216 ** `(srfi srfi-45)', primitives for expressing iterative lazy algorithms
217 ** `(srfi srfi-67)', compare procedures
218 ** `(ice-9 i18n)', internationalization support
219 ** `(ice-9 futures)', fine-grain parallelism
220 ** `(rnrs bytevectors)', the R6RS bytevector API
221 ** `(rnrs io ports)', a subset of the R6RS I/O port API
222 ** `(system xref)', a cross-referencing facility (FIXME undocumented)
223 ** `(ice-9 vlist)', lists with constant-time random access; hash lists
224 ** `(system foreign)', foreign function interface
225 ** `(sxml match)', a pattern matcher for SXML
226 ** `(srfi srfi-9 gnu)', extensions to the SRFI-9 record library
227 ** `(system vm coverage)', a line-by-line code coverage library
228 ** `(web uri)', URI data type, parser, and unparser
229 ** `(web http)', HTTP header parsers and unparsers
230 ** `(web request)', HTTP request data type, reader, and writer
231 ** `(web response)', HTTP response data type, reader, and writer
232 ** `(web server)', Generic HTTP server
233 ** `(ice-9 poll)', a poll wrapper
234 ** `(web server http)', HTTP-over-TCP web server implementation
236 ** Replaced `(ice-9 match)' with Alex Shinn's compatible, hygienic matcher.
238 Guile's copy of Andrew K. Wright's `match' library has been replaced by
239 a compatible hygienic implementation by Alex Shinn. It is now
240 documented, see "Pattern Matching" in the manual.
242 Compared to Andrew K. Wright's `match', the new `match' lacks
243 `match-define', `match:error-control', `match:set-error-control',
244 `match:error', `match:set-error', and all structure-related procedures.
246 ** Imported statprof, SSAX, and texinfo modules from Guile-Lib
248 The statprof statistical profiler, the SSAX XML toolkit, and the texinfo
249 toolkit from Guile-Lib have been imported into Guile proper. See
250 "Standard Library" in the manual for more details.
252 ** Integration of lalr-scm, a parser generator
254 Guile has included Dominique Boucher's fine `lalr-scm' parser generator
255 as `(system base lalr)'. See "LALR(1) Parsing" in the manual, for more
258 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
260 ** Guile now can compile Scheme to bytecode for a custom virtual machine.
262 Compiled code loads much faster than Scheme source code, and runs around
263 3 or 4 times as fast, generating much less garbage in the process.
265 ** Evaluating Scheme code does not use the C stack.
267 Besides when compiling Guile itself, Guile no longer uses a recursive C
268 function as an evaluator. This obviates the need to check the C stack
269 pointer for overflow. Continuations still capture the C stack, however.
271 ** New environment variables: GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH,
272 GUILE_SYSTEM_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH
274 GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH is for compiled files what GUILE_LOAD_PATH is
275 for source files. It is a different path, however, because compiled
276 files are architecture-specific. GUILE_SYSTEM_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH is like
279 ** New read-eval-print loop (REPL) implementation
281 Running Guile with no arguments drops the user into the new REPL. See
282 "Using Guile Interactively" in the manual, for more information.
284 ** Remove old Emacs interface
286 Guile had an unused `--emacs' command line argument that was supposed to
287 help when running Guile inside Emacs. This option has been removed, and
288 the helper functions `named-module-use!' and `load-emacs-interface' have
291 ** Add `(system repl server)' module and `--listen' command-line argument
293 The `(system repl server)' module exposes procedures to listen on
294 sockets for connections, and serve REPLs to those clients. The --listen
295 command-line argument allows any Guile program to thus be remotely
298 See "Invoking Guile" for more information on `--listen'.
300 ** Command line additions
302 The guile binary now supports a new switch "-x", which can be used to
303 extend the list of filename extensions tried when loading files
306 ** New reader options: `square-brackets' and `r6rs-hex-escapes'
308 The reader supports a new option (changeable via `read-options'),
309 `square-brackets', which instructs it to interpret square brackets as
310 parentheses. This option is on by default.
312 When the new `r6rs-hex-escapes' reader option is enabled, the reader
313 will recognize string escape sequences as defined in R6RS. R6RS string
314 escape sequences are incompatible with Guile's existing escapes, though,
315 so this option is off by default.
317 ** Function profiling and tracing at the REPL
319 The `,profile FORM' REPL meta-command can now be used to statistically
320 profile execution of a form, to see which functions are taking the most
321 time. See `,help profile' for more information.
323 Similarly, `,trace FORM' traces all function applications that occur
324 during the execution of `FORM'. See `,help trace' for more information.
326 ** Recursive debugging REPL on error
328 When Guile sees an error at the REPL, instead of saving the stack, Guile
329 will directly enter a recursive REPL in the dynamic context of the
330 error. See "Error Handling" in the manual, for more information.
332 A recursive REPL is the same as any other REPL, except that it
333 has been augmented with debugging information, so that one can inspect
334 the context of the error. The debugger has been integrated with the REPL
335 via a set of debugging meta-commands.
337 For example, one may access a backtrace with `,backtrace' (or
338 `,bt'). See "Interactive Debugging" in the manual, for more
341 ** New `guile-tools' commands: `compile', `disassemble'
343 Pass the `--help' command-line option to these commands for more
346 ** Guile now adds its install prefix to the LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH
348 Users may now install Guile to nonstandard prefixes and just run
349 `/path/to/bin/guile', instead of also having to set LTDL_LIBRARY_PATH to
350 include `/path/to/lib'.
352 ** Guile's Emacs integration is now more keyboard-friendly
354 Backtraces may now be disclosed with the keyboard in addition to the
357 ** Load path change: search in version-specific paths before site paths
359 When looking for a module, Guile now searches first in Guile's
360 version-specific path (the library path), *then* in the site dir. This
361 allows Guile's copy of SSAX to override any Guile-Lib copy the user has
362 installed. Also it should cut the number of `stat' system calls by half,
365 ** Value history in the REPL on by default
367 By default, the REPL will save computed values in variables like `$1',
368 `$2', and the like. There are programmatic and interactive interfaces to
369 control this. See "Value History" in the manual, for more information.
371 ** Readline tab completion for arguments
373 When readline is enabled, tab completion works for arguments too, not
374 just for the operator position.
376 ** Expression-oriented readline history
378 Guile's readline history now tries to operate on expressions instead of
379 input lines. Let us know what you think!
381 ** Interactive Guile follows GNU conventions
383 As recommended by the GPL, Guile now shows a brief copyright and
384 warranty disclaimer on startup, along with pointers to more information.
386 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
388 ** Support for R6RS libraries
390 The `library' and `import' forms from the latest Scheme report have been
391 added to Guile, in such a way that R6RS libraries share a namespace with
392 Guile modules. R6RS modules may import Guile modules, and are available
393 for Guile modules to import via use-modules and all the rest. See "R6RS
394 Libraries" in the manual for more information.
396 ** Implementations of R6RS libraries
398 Guile now has implementations for all of the libraries defined in the
399 R6RS. Thanks to Julian Graham for this excellent hack. See "R6RS
400 Standard Libraries" in the manual for a full list of libraries.
402 ** Partial R6RS compatibility
404 Guile now has enough support for R6RS to run a reasonably large subset
407 Guile is not fully R6RS compatible. Many incompatibilities are simply
408 bugs, though some parts of Guile will remain R6RS-incompatible for the
409 foreseeable future. See "R6RS Incompatibilities" in the manual, for more
412 Please contact bug-guile@gnu.org if you have found an issue not
413 mentioned in that compatibility list.
415 ** New implementation of `primitive-eval'
417 Guile's `primitive-eval' is now implemented in Scheme. Actually there is
418 still a C evaluator, used when building a fresh Guile to interpret the
419 compiler, so we can compile eval.scm. Thereafter all calls to
420 primitive-eval are implemented by VM-compiled code.
422 This allows all of Guile's procedures, be they interpreted or compiled,
423 to execute on the same stack, unifying multiple-value return semantics,
424 providing for proper tail recursion between interpreted and compiled
425 code, and simplifying debugging.
427 As part of this change, the evaluator no longer mutates the internal
428 representation of the code being evaluated in a thread-unsafe manner.
430 There are two negative aspects of this change, however. First, Guile
431 takes a lot longer to compile now. Also, there is less debugging
432 information available for debugging interpreted code. We hope to improve
433 both of these situations.
435 There are many changes to the internal C evalator interface, but all
436 public interfaces should be the same. See the ChangeLog for details. If
437 we have inadvertantly changed an interface that you were using, please
438 contact bug-guile@gnu.org.
440 ** Procedure removed: `the-environment'
442 This procedure was part of the interpreter's execution model, and does
443 not apply to the compiler.
445 ** No more `local-eval'
447 `local-eval' used to exist so that one could evaluate code in the
448 lexical context of a function. Since there is no way to get the lexical
449 environment any more, as that concept has no meaning for the compiler,
450 and a different meaning for the interpreter, we have removed the
453 If you think you need `local-eval', you should probably implement your
454 own metacircular evaluator. It will probably be as fast as Guile's
457 ** Scheme source files will now be compiled automatically.
459 If a compiled .go file corresponding to a .scm file is not found or is
460 not fresh, the .scm file will be compiled on the fly, and the resulting
461 .go file stored away. An advisory note will be printed on the console.
463 Note that this mechanism depends on the timestamp of the .go file being
464 newer than that of the .scm file; if the .scm or .go files are moved
465 after installation, care should be taken to preserve their original
468 Autocompiled files will be stored in the $XDG_CACHE_HOME/guile/ccache
469 directory, where $XDG_CACHE_HOME defaults to ~/.cache. This directory
470 will be created if needed.
472 To inhibit autocompilation, set the GUILE_AUTO_COMPILE environment
473 variable to 0, or pass --no-autocompile on the Guile command line.
475 ** New POSIX procedures: `getrlimit' and `setrlimit'
477 Note however that the interface of these functions is likely to change
478 in the next prerelease.
480 ** New POSIX procedure: `getsid'
482 Scheme binding for the `getsid' C library call.
484 ** New POSIX procedure: `getaddrinfo'
486 Scheme binding for the `getaddrinfo' C library function.
488 ** Multicast socket options
490 Support was added for the IP_MULTICAST_TTL and IP_MULTICAST_IF socket
491 options. See "Network Sockets and Communication" in the manual, for
494 ** New GNU procedures: `setaffinity' and `getaffinity'.
496 See "Processes" in the manual, for more information.
498 ** New procedures: `compose', `negate', and `const'
500 See "Higher-Order Functions" in the manual, for more information.
502 ** New procedure in `(oops goops)': `method-formals'
504 ** New procedures in (ice-9 session): `add-value-help-handler!',
505 `remove-value-help-handler!', `add-name-help-handler!'
506 `remove-name-help-handler!', `procedure-arguments'
508 The value and name help handlers provide some minimal extensibility to
509 the help interface. Guile-lib's `(texinfo reflection)' uses them, for
510 example, to make stexinfo help documentation available. See those
511 procedures' docstrings for more information.
513 `procedure-arguments' describes the arguments that a procedure can take,
514 combining arity and formals. For example:
516 (procedure-arguments resolve-interface)
517 => ((required . (name)) (rest . args))
519 Additionally, `module-commentary' is now publically exported from
522 ** Removed: `procedure->memoizing-macro', `procedure->syntax'
524 These procedures created primitive fexprs for the old evaluator, and are
525 no longer supported. If you feel that you need these functions, you
526 probably need to write your own metacircular evaluator (which will
527 probably be as fast as Guile's, anyway).
529 ** New language: ECMAScript
531 Guile now ships with one other high-level language supported,
532 ECMAScript. The goal is to support all of version 3.1 of the standard,
533 but not all of the libraries are there yet. This support is not yet
534 documented; ask on the mailing list if you are interested.
536 ** New language: Brainfuck
538 Brainfuck is a toy language that closely models Turing machines. Guile's
539 brainfuck compiler is meant to be an example of implementing other
540 languages. See the manual for details, or
541 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck for more information about the
542 Brainfuck language itself.
544 ** New language: Elisp
546 Guile now has an experimental Emacs Lisp compiler and runtime. You can
547 now switch to Elisp at the repl: `,language elisp'. All kudos to Daniel
548 Kraft and Brian Templeton, and all bugs to bug-guile@gnu.org.
550 ** Better documentation infrastructure for macros
552 It is now possible to introspect on the type of a macro, e.g.
553 syntax-rules, identifier-syntax, etc, and extract information about that
554 macro, such as the syntax-rules patterns or the defmacro arguments.
555 `(texinfo reflection)' takes advantage of this to give better macro
558 ** Support for arbitrary procedure metadata
560 Building on its support for docstrings, Guile now supports multiple
561 docstrings, adding them to the tail of a compiled procedure's
562 properties. For example:
568 (procedure-properties foo)
569 => ((name . foo) (documentation . "one") (documentation . "two"))
571 Also, vectors of pairs are now treated as additional metadata entries:
574 #((quz . #f) (docstring . "xyzzy"))
576 (procedure-properties bar)
577 => ((name . bar) (quz . #f) (docstring . "xyzzy"))
579 This allows arbitrary literals to be embedded as metadata in a compiled
582 ** The psyntax expander now knows how to interpret the @ and @@ special
585 ** The psyntax expander is now hygienic with respect to modules.
587 Free variables in a macro are scoped in the module that the macro was
588 defined in, not in the module the macro is used in. For example, code
591 (define-module (foo) #:export (bar))
592 (define (helper x) ...)
594 (syntax-rules () ((_ x) (helper x))))
596 (define-module (baz) #:use-module (foo))
599 It used to be you had to export `helper' from `(foo)' as well.
600 Thankfully, this has been fixed.
602 ** Support for version information in Guile's `module' form
604 Guile modules now have a `#:version' field. See "R6RS Version
605 References", "General Information about Modules", "Using Guile Modules",
606 and "Creating Guile Modules" in the manual for more information.
608 ** Support for renaming bindings on module export
610 Wherever Guile accepts a symbol as an argument to specify a binding to
611 export, it now also accepts a pair of symbols, indicating that a binding
612 should be renamed on export. See "Creating Guile Modules" in the manual
613 for more information.
615 ** New procedure: `module-export-all!'
617 This procedure exports all current and future bindings from a module.
618 Use as `(module-export-all! (current-module))'.
620 ** New procedure `reload-module', and `,reload' REPL command
622 See "Module System Reflection" and "Module Commands" in the manual, for
625 ** `eval-case' has been deprecated, and replaced by `eval-when'.
627 The semantics of `eval-when' are easier to understand. See "Eval When"
628 in the manual, for more information.
630 ** Guile is now more strict about prohibiting definitions in expression
633 Although previous versions of Guile accepted it, the following
634 expression is not valid, in R5RS or R6RS:
636 (if test (define foo 'bar) (define foo 'baz))
638 In this specific case, it would be better to do:
640 (define foo (if test 'bar 'baz))
642 It is certainly possible to circumvent this resriction with e.g.
643 `(module-define! (current-module) 'foo 'baz)'. We would appreciate
644 feedback about this change (a consequence of using psyntax as the
645 default expander), and may choose to revisit this situation before 2.0
646 in response to user feedback.
648 ** Support for `letrec*'
650 Guile now supports `letrec*', a recursive lexical binding operator in
651 which the identifiers are bound in order. See "Local Bindings" in the
652 manual, for more details.
654 ** Internal definitions now expand to `letrec*'
656 Following the R6RS, internal definitions now expand to letrec* instead
657 of letrec. The following program is invalid for R5RS, but valid for
662 (define baz (+ bar 20))
665 ;; R5RS and Guile <= 1.8:
666 (foo) => Unbound variable: bar
667 ;; R6RS and Guile >= 2.0:
670 This change should not affect correct R5RS programs, or programs written
671 in earlier Guile dialects.
673 ** Macro expansion produces structures instead of s-expressions
675 In the olden days, macroexpanding an s-expression would yield another
676 s-expression. Though the lexical variables were renamed, expansions of
677 core forms like `if' and `begin' were still non-hygienic, as they relied
678 on the toplevel definitions of `if' et al being the conventional ones.
680 The solution is to expand to structures instead of s-expressions. There
681 is an `if' structure, a `begin' structure, a `toplevel-ref' structure,
682 etc. The expander already did this for compilation, producing Tree-IL
683 directly; it has been changed now to do so when expanding for the
686 ** Defmacros must now produce valid Scheme expressions.
688 It used to be that defmacros could unquote in Scheme values, as a way of
689 supporting partial evaluation, and avoiding some hygiene issues. For
692 (define (helper x) ...)
693 (define-macro (foo bar)
696 Assuming this macro is in the `(baz)' module, the direct translation of
699 (define (helper x) ...)
700 (define-macro (foo bar)
701 `((@@ (baz) helper) ,bar))
703 Of course, one could just use a hygienic macro instead:
707 ((_ bar) (helper bar))))
709 ** Guile's psyntax now supports docstrings and internal definitions.
711 The following Scheme is not strictly legal:
718 However its intent is fairly clear. Guile interprets "bar" to be the
719 docstring of `foo', and the definition of `baz' is still in definition
722 ** Support for settable identifier syntax
724 Following the R6RS, "variable transformers" are settable
725 identifier-syntax. See "Identifier macros" in the manual, for more
728 ** syntax-case treats `_' as a placeholder
730 Following R6RS, a `_' in a syntax-rules or syntax-case pattern matches
731 anything, and binds no pattern variables. Unlike the R6RS, Guile also
732 permits `_' to be in the literals list for a pattern.
734 ** Macros need to be defined before their first use.
736 It used to be that with lazy memoization, this might work:
740 (define-macro (ref x) x)
743 But now, the body of `foo' is interpreted to mean a call to the toplevel
744 `ref' function, instead of a macro expansion. The solution is to define
745 macros before code that uses them.
747 ** Functions needed by macros at expand-time need to be present at
750 For example, this code will work at the REPL:
752 (define (double-helper x) (* x x))
753 (define-macro (double-literal x) (double-helper x))
754 (double-literal 2) => 4
756 But it will not work when a file is compiled, because the definition of
757 `double-helper' is not present at expand-time. The solution is to wrap
758 the definition of `double-helper' in `eval-when':
760 (eval-when (load compile eval)
761 (define (double-helper x) (* x x)))
762 (define-macro (double-literal x) (double-helper x))
763 (double-literal 2) => 4
765 See the documentation for eval-when for more information.
767 ** `macroexpand' produces structures, not S-expressions.
769 Given the need to maintain referential transparency, both lexically and
770 modular, the result of expanding Scheme expressions is no longer itself
771 an s-expression. If you want a human-readable approximation of the
772 result of `macroexpand', call `tree-il->scheme' from `(language
775 ** Removed function: `macroexpand-1'
777 It is unclear how to implement `macroexpand-1' with syntax-case, though
778 PLT Scheme does prove that it is possible.
780 ** New reader macros: #' #` #, #,@
782 These macros translate, respectively, to `syntax', `quasisyntax',
783 `unsyntax', and `unsyntax-splicing'. See the R6RS for more information.
784 These reader macros may be overridden by `read-hash-extend'.
786 ** Incompatible change to #'
788 Guile did have a #' hash-extension, by default, which just returned the
789 subsequent datum: #'foo => foo. In the unlikely event that anyone
790 actually used this, this behavior may be reinstated via the
791 `read-hash-extend' mechanism.
793 ** Scheme expresssions may be commented out with #;
795 #; comments out an entire expression. See SRFI-62 or the R6RS for more
798 ** Prompts: Delimited, composable continuations
800 Guile now has prompts as part of its primitive language. See "Prompts"
801 in the manual, for more information.
803 Expressions entered in at the REPL, or from the command line, are
804 surrounded by a prompt with the default prompt tag.
806 ** `make-stack' with a tail-called procedural narrowing argument no longer
807 works (with compiled procedures)
809 It used to be the case that a captured stack could be narrowed to select
810 calls only up to or from a certain procedure, even if that procedure
811 already tail-called another procedure. This was because the debug
812 information from the original procedure was kept on the stack.
814 Now with the new compiler, the stack only contains active frames from
815 the current continuation. A narrow to a procedure that is not in the
816 stack will result in an empty stack. To fix this, narrow to a procedure
817 that is active in the current continuation, or narrow to a specific
818 number of stack frames.
820 ** Backtraces through compiled procedures only show procedures that are
821 active in the current continuation
823 Similarly to the previous issue, backtraces in compiled code may be
824 different from backtraces in interpreted code. There are no semantic
825 differences, however. Please mail bug-guile@gnu.org if you see any
826 deficiencies with Guile's backtraces.
828 ** New macro: `current-source-location'
830 The macro returns the current source location (to be documented).
832 ** syntax-rules and syntax-case macros now propagate source information
833 through to the expanded code
835 This should result in better backtraces.
837 ** The currying behavior of `define' has been removed.
839 Before, `(define ((f a) b) (* a b))' would translate to
841 (define f (lambda (a) (lambda (b) (* a b))))
843 Now a syntax error is signaled, as this syntax is not supported by
844 default. Use the `(ice-9 curried-definitions)' module to get back the
847 ** New procedure, `define!'
849 `define!' is a procedure that takes two arguments, a symbol and a value,
850 and binds the value to the symbol in the current module. It's useful to
851 programmatically make definitions in the current module, and is slightly
852 less verbose than `module-define!'.
854 ** All modules have names now
856 Before, you could have anonymous modules: modules without names. Now,
857 because of hygiene and macros, all modules have names. If a module was
858 created without a name, the first time `module-name' is called on it, a
859 fresh name will be lazily generated for it.
861 ** The module namespace is now separate from the value namespace
863 It was a little-known implementation detail of Guile's module system
864 that it was built on a single hierarchical namespace of values -- that
865 if there was a module named `(foo bar)', then in the module named
866 `(foo)' there was a binding from `bar' to the `(foo bar)' module.
868 This was a neat trick, but presented a number of problems. One problem
869 was that the bindings in a module were not apparent from the module
870 itself; perhaps the `(foo)' module had a private binding for `bar', and
871 then an external contributor defined `(foo bar)'. In the end there can
872 be only one binding, so one of the two will see the wrong thing, and
873 produce an obtuse error of unclear provenance.
875 Also, the public interface of a module was also bound in the value
876 namespace, as `%module-public-interface'. This was a hack from the early
877 days of Guile's modules.
879 Both of these warts have been fixed by the addition of fields in the
880 `module' data type. Access to modules and their interfaces from the
881 value namespace has been deprecated, and all accessors use the new
882 record accessors appropriately.
884 When Guile is built with support for deprecated code, as is the default,
885 the value namespace is still searched for modules and public interfaces,
886 and a deprecation warning is raised as appropriate.
888 Finally, to support lazy loading of modules as one used to be able to do
889 with module binder procedures, Guile now has submodule binders, called
890 if a given submodule is not found. See boot-9.scm for more information.
892 ** New procedures: module-ref-submodule, module-define-submodule,
893 nested-ref-module, nested-define-module!, local-ref-module,
896 These new accessors are like their bare variants, but operate on
897 namespaces instead of values.
899 ** The (app modules) module tree is officially deprecated
901 It used to be that one could access a module named `(foo bar)' via
902 `(nested-ref the-root-module '(app modules foo bar))'. The `(app
903 modules)' bit was a never-used and never-documented abstraction, and has
904 been deprecated. See the following mail for a full discussion:
906 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2010-04/msg00168.html
908 The `%app' binding is also deprecated.
910 ** `module-filename' field and accessor
912 Modules now record the file in which they are defined. This field may be
913 accessed with the new `module-filename' procedure.
915 ** Modules load within a known environment
917 It takes a few procedure calls to define a module, and those procedure
918 calls need to be in scope. Now we ensure that the current module when
919 loading a module is one that has the needed bindings, instead of relying
922 ** Many syntax errors have different texts now
924 Syntax errors still throw to the `syntax-error' key, but the arguments
925 are often different now. Perhaps in the future, Guile will switch to
926 using standard SRFI-35 conditions.
928 ** Returning multiple values to compiled code will silently truncate the
929 values to the expected number
931 For example, the interpreter would raise an error evaluating the form,
932 `(+ (values 1 2) (values 3 4))', because it would see the operands as
933 being two compound "values" objects, to which `+' does not apply.
935 The compiler, on the other hand, receives multiple values on the stack,
936 not as a compound object. Given that it must check the number of values
937 anyway, if too many values are provided for a continuation, it chooses
938 to truncate those values, effectively evaluating `(+ 1 3)' instead.
940 The idea is that the semantics that the compiler implements is more
941 intuitive, and the use of the interpreter will fade out with time.
942 This behavior is allowed both by the R5RS and the R6RS.
944 ** Multiple values in compiled code are not represented by compound
947 This change may manifest itself in the following situation:
949 (let ((val (foo))) (do-something) val)
951 In the interpreter, if `foo' returns multiple values, multiple values
952 are produced from the `let' expression. In the compiler, those values
953 are truncated to the first value, and that first value is returned. In
954 the compiler, if `foo' returns no values, an error will be raised, while
955 the interpreter would proceed.
957 Both of these behaviors are allowed by R5RS and R6RS. The compiler's
958 behavior is more correct, however. If you wish to preserve a potentially
959 multiply-valued return, you will need to set up a multiple-value
960 continuation, using `call-with-values'.
962 ** Defmacros are now implemented in terms of syntax-case.
964 The practical ramification of this is that the `defmacro?' predicate has
965 been removed, along with `defmacro-transformer', `macro-table',
966 `xformer-table', `assert-defmacro?!', `set-defmacro-transformer!' and
967 `defmacro:transformer'. This is because defmacros are simply macros. If
968 any of these procedures provided useful facilities to you, we encourage
969 you to contact the Guile developers.
971 ** Hygienic macros documented as the primary syntactic extension mechanism.
973 The macro documentation was finally fleshed out with some documentation
974 on `syntax-rules' and `syntax-case' macros, and other parts of the macro
975 expansion process. See "Macros" in the manual, for details.
977 ** psyntax is now the default expander
979 Scheme code is now expanded by default by the psyntax hygienic macro
980 expander. Expansion is performed completely before compilation or
983 Notably, syntax errors will be signalled before interpretation begins.
984 In the past, many syntax errors were only detected at runtime if the
985 code in question was memoized.
987 As part of its expansion, psyntax renames all lexically-bound
988 identifiers. Original identifier names are preserved and given to the
989 compiler, but the interpreter will see the renamed variables, e.g.,
990 `x432' instead of `x'.
992 Note that the psyntax that Guile uses is a fork, as Guile already had
993 modules before incompatible modules were added to psyntax -- about 10
994 years ago! Thus there are surely a number of bugs that have been fixed
995 in psyntax since then. If you find one, please notify bug-guile@gnu.org.
997 ** syntax-rules and syntax-case are available by default.
999 There is no longer any need to import the `(ice-9 syncase)' module
1000 (which is now deprecated). The expander may be invoked directly via
1001 `macroexpand', though it is normally searched for via the current module
1004 Also, the helper routines for syntax-case are available in the default
1005 environment as well: `syntax->datum', `datum->syntax',
1006 `bound-identifier=?', `free-identifier=?', `generate-temporaries',
1007 `identifier?', and `syntax-violation'. See the R6RS for documentation.
1009 ** Tail patterns in syntax-case
1011 Guile has pulled in some more recent changes from the psyntax portable
1012 syntax expander, to implement support for "tail patterns". Such patterns
1013 are supported by syntax-rules and syntax-case. This allows a syntax-case
1014 match clause to have ellipses, then a pattern at the end. For example:
1017 (syntax-rules (else)
1018 ((_ val match-clause ... (else e e* ...))
1021 Note how there is MATCH-CLAUSE, which is ellipsized, then there is a
1022 tail pattern for the else clause. Thanks to Andreas Rottmann for the
1023 patch, and Kent Dybvig for the code.
1025 ** Lexical bindings introduced by hygienic macros may not be referenced
1026 by nonhygienic macros.
1028 If a lexical binding is introduced by a hygienic macro, it may not be
1029 referenced by a nonhygienic macro. For example, this works:
1032 (define-macro (bind-x val body)
1033 `(let ((x ,val)) ,body))
1034 (define-macro (ref x)
1036 (bind-x 10 (ref x)))
1041 (define-syntax bind-x
1043 ((_ val body) (let ((x val)) body))))
1044 (define-macro (ref x)
1046 (bind-x 10 (ref x)))
1048 It is not normal to run into this situation with existing code. However,
1049 if you have defmacros that expand to hygienic macros, it is possible to
1050 run into situations like this. For example, if you have a defmacro that
1051 generates a `while' expression, the `break' bound by the `while' may not
1052 be visible within other parts of your defmacro. The solution is to port
1053 from defmacros to syntax-rules or syntax-case.
1055 ** Macros may no longer be referenced as first-class values.
1057 In the past, you could evaluate e.g. `if', and get its macro value. Now,
1058 expanding this form raises a syntax error.
1060 Macros still /exist/ as first-class values, but they must be
1061 /referenced/ via the module system, e.g. `(module-ref (current-module)
1064 ** Macros may now have docstrings.
1066 `object-documentation' from `(ice-9 documentation)' may be used to
1067 retrieve the docstring, once you have a macro value -- but see the above
1068 note about first-class macros. Docstrings are associated with the syntax
1069 transformer procedures.
1071 ** `case-lambda' is now available in the default environment.
1073 The binding in the default environment is equivalent to the one from the
1074 `(srfi srfi-16)' module. Use the srfi-16 module explicitly if you wish
1075 to maintain compatibility with Guile 1.8 and earlier.
1077 ** Procedures may now have more than one arity.
1079 This can be the case, for example, in case-lambda procedures. The
1080 arities of compiled procedures may be accessed via procedures from the
1081 `(system vm program)' module; see "Compiled Procedures", "Optional
1082 Arguments", and "Case-lambda" in the manual.
1084 ** Deprecate arity access via (procedure-properties proc 'arity)
1086 Instead of accessing a procedure's arity as a property, use the new
1087 `procedure-minimum-arity' function, which gives the most permissive
1088 arity that the the function has, in the same format as the old arity
1091 ** `lambda*' and `define*' are now available in the default environment
1093 As with `case-lambda', `(ice-9 optargs)' continues to be supported, for
1094 compatibility purposes. No semantic change has been made (we hope).
1095 Optional and keyword arguments now dispatch via special VM operations,
1096 without the need to cons rest arguments, making them very fast.
1098 ** New function, `truncated-print', with `format' support
1100 `(ice-9 pretty-print)' now exports `truncated-print', a printer that
1101 will ensure that the output stays within a certain width, truncating the
1102 output in what is hopefully an intelligent manner. See the manual for
1105 There is a new `format' specifier, `~@y', for doing a truncated
1106 print (as opposed to `~y', which does a pretty-print). See the `format'
1107 documentation for more details.
1109 ** Better pretty-printing
1111 Indentation recognizes more special forms, like `syntax-case', and read
1112 macros like `quote' are printed better.
1114 ** Passing a number as the destination of `format' is deprecated
1116 The `format' procedure in `(ice-9 format)' now emits a deprecation
1117 warning if a number is passed as its first argument.
1119 ** SRFI-4 vectors reimplemented in terms of R6RS bytevectors
1121 Guile now implements SRFI-4 vectors using bytevectors. Often when you
1122 have a numeric vector, you end up wanting to write its bytes somewhere,
1123 or have access to the underlying bytes, or read in bytes from somewhere
1124 else. Bytevectors are very good at this sort of thing. But the SRFI-4
1125 APIs are nicer to use when doing number-crunching, because they are
1126 addressed by element and not by byte.
1128 So as a compromise, Guile allows all bytevector functions to operate on
1129 numeric vectors. They address the underlying bytes in the native
1130 endianness, as one would expect.
1132 Following the same reasoning, that it's just bytes underneath, Guile
1133 also allows uniform vectors of a given type to be accessed as if they
1134 were of any type. One can fill a u32vector, and access its elements with
1135 u8vector-ref. One can use f64vector-ref on bytevectors. It's all the
1138 In this way, uniform numeric vectors may be written to and read from
1139 input/output ports using the procedures that operate on bytevectors.
1141 Calls to SRFI-4 accessors (ref and set functions) from Scheme are now
1142 inlined to the VM instructions for bytevector access.
1144 See "SRFI-4" in the manual, for more information.
1146 ** Nonstandard SRFI-4 procedures now available from `(srfi srfi-4 gnu)'
1148 Guile's `(srfi srfi-4)' now only exports those srfi-4 procedures that
1149 are part of the standard. Complex uniform vectors and the
1150 `any->FOOvector' family are now available only from `(srfi srfi-4 gnu)'.
1152 Guile's default environment imports `(srfi srfi-4)', and probably should
1153 import `(srfi srfi-4 gnu)' as well.
1155 See "SRFI-4 Extensions" in the manual, for more information.
1157 ** New syntax: include-from-path.
1159 `include-from-path' is like `include', except it looks for its file in
1160 the load path. It can be used to compile other files into a file.
1162 ** New syntax: quasisyntax.
1164 `quasisyntax' is to `syntax' as `quasiquote' is to `quote'. See the R6RS
1165 documentation for more information. Thanks to Andre van Tonder for the
1168 ** `*unspecified*' is identifier syntax
1170 `*unspecified*' is no longer a variable, so it is optimized properly by
1171 the compiler, and is not `set!'-able.
1173 ** Unicode characters
1175 Unicode characters may be entered in octal format via e.g. `#\454', or
1176 created via (integer->char 300). A hex external representation will
1177 probably be introduced at some point.
1181 Internally, strings are now represented either in the `latin-1'
1182 encoding, one byte per character, or in UTF-32, with four bytes per
1183 character. Strings manage their own allocation, switching if needed.
1185 Extended characters may be written in a literal string using the
1186 hexadecimal escapes `\xXX', `\uXXXX', or `\UXXXXXX', for 8-bit, 16-bit,
1187 or 24-bit codepoints, respectively, or entered directly in the native
1188 encoding of the port on which the string is read.
1192 One may now use U+03BB (GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMBDA) as an identifier.
1194 ** Support for non-ASCII source code files
1196 The default reader now handles source code files for some of the
1197 non-ASCII character encodings, such as UTF-8. A non-ASCII source file
1198 should have an encoding declaration near the top of the file. Also,
1199 there is a new function, `file-encoding', that scans a port for a coding
1200 declaration. See the section of the manual entitled, "Character Encoding
1203 The pre-1.9.3 reader handled 8-bit clean but otherwise unspecified source
1204 code. This use is now discouraged. Binary input and output is
1205 currently supported by opening ports in the ISO-8859-1 locale.
1207 ** Support for locale transcoding when reading from and writing to ports
1209 Ports now have an associated character encoding, and port read and write
1210 operations do conversion to and from locales automatically. Ports also
1211 have an associated strategy for how to deal with locale conversion
1214 See the documentation in the manual for the four new support functions,
1215 `set-port-encoding!', `port-encoding', `set-port-conversion-strategy!',
1216 and `port-conversion-strategy'.
1218 ** String and SRFI-13 functions can operate on Unicode strings
1220 ** Unicode support for SRFI-14 character sets
1222 The default character sets are no longer locale dependent and contain
1223 characters from the whole Unicode range. There is a new predefined
1224 character set, `char-set:designated', which contains all assigned
1225 Unicode characters. There is a new debugging function, `%char-set-dump'.
1227 ** Character functions operate on Unicode characters
1229 `char-upcase' and `char-downcase' use default Unicode casing rules.
1230 Character comparisons such as `char<?' and `char-ci<?' now sort based on
1231 Unicode code points.
1233 ** Global variables `scm_charnames' and `scm_charnums' are removed
1235 These variables contained the names of control characters and were
1236 used when writing characters. While these were global, they were
1237 never intended to be public API. They have been replaced with private
1240 ** EBCDIC support is removed
1242 There was an EBCDIC compile flag that altered some of the character
1243 processing. It appeared that full EBCDIC support was never completed
1244 and was unmaintained.
1246 ** Compile-time warnings
1248 Guile can warn about potentially unbound free variables. Pass the
1249 -Wunbound-variable on the `guile-tools compile' command line, or add
1250 `#:warnings '(unbound-variable)' to your `compile' or `compile-file'
1251 invocation. Warnings are also enabled by default for expressions entered
1254 Guile can also warn when you pass the wrong number of arguments to a
1255 procedure, with -Warity-mismatch, or `arity-mismatch' in the
1256 `#:warnings' as above.
1258 Other warnings include `-Wunused-variable' and `-Wunused-toplevel', to
1259 warn about unused local or global (top-level) variables, and `-Wformat',
1260 to check for various errors related to the `format' procedure.
1262 ** A new `memoize-symbol' evaluator trap has been added.
1264 This trap can be used for efficiently implementing a Scheme code
1267 ** Duplicate bindings among used modules are resolved lazily.
1269 This slightly improves program startup times.
1271 ** New thread cancellation and thread cleanup API
1273 See `cancel-thread', `set-thread-cleanup!', and `thread-cleanup'.
1275 ** New threads are in `(guile-user)' by default, not `(guile)'
1277 It used to be that a new thread entering Guile would do so in the
1278 `(guile)' module, unless this was the first time Guile was initialized,
1279 in which case it was `(guile-user)'. This has been fixed to have all
1280 new threads unknown to Guile default to `(guile-user)'.
1282 ** GOOPS dispatch in scheme
1284 As an implementation detail, GOOPS dispatch is no longer implemented by
1285 special evaluator bytecodes, but rather directly via a Scheme function
1286 associated with an applicable struct. There is some VM support for the
1287 underlying primitives, like `class-of'.
1289 This change will in the future allow users to customize generic function
1290 dispatch without incurring a performance penalty, and allow us to
1291 implement method combinations.
1293 ** Applicable struct support
1295 One may now make structs from Scheme that may be applied as procedures.
1296 To do so, make a struct whose vtable is `<applicable-struct-vtable>'.
1297 That struct will be the vtable of your applicable structs; instances of
1298 that new struct are assumed to have the procedure in their first slot.
1299 `<applicable-struct-vtable>' is like Common Lisp's
1300 `funcallable-standard-class'. Likewise there is
1301 `<applicable-struct-with-setter-vtable>', which looks for the setter in
1302 the second slot. This needs to be better documented.
1306 GOOPS had a number of concepts that were relevant to the days of Tcl,
1307 but not any more: operators and entities, mainly. These objects were
1308 never documented, and it is unlikely that they were ever used. Operators
1309 were a kind of generic specific to the Tcl support. Entities were
1310 replaced by applicable structs, mentioned above.
1312 ** New struct slot allocation: "hidden"
1314 A hidden slot is readable and writable, but will not be initialized by a
1315 call to make-struct. For example in your layout you would say "ph"
1316 instead of "pw". Hidden slots are useful for adding new slots to a
1317 vtable without breaking existing invocations to make-struct.
1319 ** eqv? not a generic
1321 One used to be able to extend `eqv?' as a primitive-generic, but no
1322 more. Because `eqv?' is in the expansion of `case' (via `memv'), which
1323 should be able to compile to static dispatch tables, it doesn't make
1324 sense to allow extensions that would subvert this optimization.
1326 ** `inet-ntop' and `inet-pton' are always available.
1328 Guile now use a portable implementation of `inet_pton'/`inet_ntop', so
1329 there is no more need to use `inet-aton'/`inet-ntoa'. The latter
1330 functions are deprecated.
1332 ** New primitive: `tmpfile'.
1334 See "File System" in the manual.
1336 ** Random generator state may be serialized to a datum
1338 `random-state->datum' will serialize a random state to a datum, which
1339 may be written out, read back in later, and revivified using
1340 `datum->random-state'. See "Random" in the manual, for more details.
1342 ** Fix random number generator on 64-bit platforms
1344 There was a nasty bug on 64-bit platforms in which asking for a random
1345 integer with a range between 2**32 and 2**64 caused a segfault. After
1346 many embarrassing iterations, this was fixed.
1348 ** Fast bit operations.
1350 The bit-twiddling operations `ash', `logand', `logior', and `logxor' now
1351 have dedicated bytecodes. Guile is not just for symbolic computation,
1352 it's for number crunching too.
1354 ** Faster SRFI-9 record access
1356 SRFI-9 records are now implemented directly on top of Guile's structs,
1357 and their accessors are defined in such a way that normal call-sites
1358 inline to special VM opcodes, while still allowing for the general case
1359 (e.g. passing a record accessor to `apply').
1361 ** R6RS block comment support
1363 Guile now supports R6RS nested block comments. The start of a comment is
1364 marked with `#|', and the end with `|#'.
1366 ** `guile-2' cond-expand feature
1368 To test if your code is running under Guile 2.0 (or its alpha releases),
1369 test for the `guile-2' cond-expand feature. Like this:
1371 (cond-expand (guile-2 (eval-when (compile)
1372 ;; This must be evaluated at compile time.
1373 (fluid-set! current-reader my-reader)))
1375 ;; Earlier versions of Guile do not have a
1376 ;; separate compilation phase.
1377 (fluid-set! current-reader my-reader)))
1379 ** New global variables: %load-compiled-path, %load-compiled-extensions
1381 These are analogous to %load-path and %load-extensions.
1383 ** New fluid: `%file-port-name-canonicalization'
1385 This fluid parameterizes the file names that are associated with file
1386 ports. If %file-port-name-canonicalization is 'absolute, then file names
1387 are canonicalized to be absolute paths. If it is 'relative, then the
1388 name is canonicalized, but any prefix corresponding to a member of
1389 `%load-path' is stripped off. Otherwise the names are passed through
1392 In addition, the `compile-file' and `compile-and-load' procedures bind
1393 %file-port-name-canonicalization to their `#:canonicalization' keyword
1394 argument, which defaults to 'relative. In this way, one might compile
1395 "../module/ice-9/boot-9.scm", but the path that gets residualized into
1396 the .go is "ice-9/boot-9.scm".
1398 ** New procedure, `make-promise'
1400 `(make-promise (lambda () foo))' is equivalent to `(delay foo)'.
1402 ** `defined?' may accept a module as its second argument
1404 Previously it only accepted internal structures from the evaluator.
1406 ** New entry into %guile-build-info: `ccachedir'
1408 ** Fix bug in `module-bound?'.
1410 `module-bound?' was returning true if a module did have a local
1411 variable, but one that was unbound, but another imported module bound
1412 the variable. This was an error, and was fixed.
1414 ** `(ice-9 syncase)' has been deprecated.
1416 As syntax-case is available by default, importing `(ice-9 syncase)' has
1417 no effect, and will trigger a deprecation warning.
1419 ** New readline history functions
1421 The (ice-9 readline) module now provides add-history, read-history,
1422 write-history and clear-history, which wrap the corresponding GNU
1423 History library functions.
1425 ** Removed deprecated uniform array procedures:
1426 dimensions->uniform-array, list->uniform-array, array-prototype
1428 Instead, use make-typed-array, list->typed-array, or array-type,
1431 ** Deprecate the old `scm-style-repl'
1433 The following bindings from boot-9 are now found in `(ice-9
1434 scm-style-repl)': `scm-style-repl', `error-catching-loop',
1435 `error-catching-repl', `bad-throw', `scm-repl-silent'
1436 `assert-repl-silence', `repl-print-unspecified',
1437 `assert-repl-print-unspecified', `scm-repl-verbose',
1438 `assert-repl-verbosity', `scm-repl-prompt', `set-repl-prompt!', `repl',
1439 `default-pre-unwind-handler', `handle-system-error',
1441 The following bindings have been deprecated, with no replacement:
1442 `pre-unwind-handler-dispatch'.
1444 The following bindings have been totally removed:
1445 `before-signal-stack'.
1447 Deprecated forwarding shims have been installed so that users that
1448 expect these bindings in the main namespace will still work, but receive
1449 a deprecation warning.
1451 ** `set-batch-mode?!' replaced by `ensure-batch-mode!'
1453 "Batch mode" is a flag used to tell a program that it is not running
1454 interactively. One usually turns it on after a fork. It may not be
1455 turned off. `ensure-batch-mode!' deprecates the old `set-batch-mode?!',
1456 because it is a better interface, as it can only turn on batch mode, not
1459 ** Deprecate `save-stack', `the-last-stack'
1461 It used to be that the way to debug programs in Guile was to capture the
1462 stack at the time of error, drop back to the REPL, then debug that
1463 stack. But this approach didn't compose, was tricky to get right in the
1464 presence of threads, and was not very powerful.
1466 So `save-stack', `stack-saved?', and `the-last-stack' have been moved to
1467 `(ice-9 save-stack)', with deprecated bindings left in the root module.
1469 ** `top-repl' has its own module
1471 The `top-repl' binding, called with Guile is run interactively, is now
1472 is its own module, `(ice-9 top-repl)'. A deprecated forwarding shim was
1473 left in the default environment.
1475 ** `display-error' takes a frame
1477 The `display-error' / `scm_display_error' helper now takes a frame as an
1478 argument instead of a stack. Stacks are still supported in deprecated
1479 builds. Additionally, `display-error' will again source location
1480 information for the error.
1482 ** No more `(ice-9 debug)'
1484 This module had some debugging helpers that are no longer applicable to
1485 the current debugging model. Importing this module will produce a
1486 deprecation warning. Users should contact bug-guile for support.
1488 ** Remove obsolete debug-options
1490 Removed `breakpoints', `trace', `procnames', `indent', `frames',
1491 `maxdepth', and `debug' debug-options.
1493 ** `backtrace' debug option on by default
1495 Given that Guile 2.0 can always give you a backtrace, backtraces are now
1498 ** `turn-on-debugging' deprecated
1500 ** Remove obsolete print-options
1502 The `source' and `closure-hook' print options are obsolete, and have
1505 ** Remove obsolete read-options
1507 The "elisp-strings" and "elisp-vectors" read options were unused and
1508 obsolete, so they have been removed.
1510 ** Remove eval-options and trap-options
1512 Eval-options and trap-options are obsolete with the new VM and
1515 ** Remove (ice-9 debugger) and (ice-9 debugging)
1517 See "Traps" and "Interactive Debugging" in the manual, for information
1518 on their replacements.
1520 ** Remove the GDS Emacs integration
1522 See "Using Guile in Emacs" in the manual, for info on how we think you
1523 should use Guile with Emacs.
1525 ** Deprecated: `lazy-catch'
1527 `lazy-catch' was a form that captured the stack at the point of a
1528 `throw', but the dynamic state at the point of the `catch'. It was a bit
1529 crazy. Please change to use `catch', possibly with a throw-handler, or
1530 `with-throw-handler'.
1532 ** Deprecated `@bind' syntax
1534 `@bind' was part of an older implementation of the Emacs Lisp language,
1535 and is no longer used.
1537 ** Miscellaneous other deprecations
1539 `apply-to-args', `has-suffix?', `scheme-file-suffix'
1540 `get-option', `for-next-option', `display-usage-report',
1541 `transform-usage-lambda', `collect', `set-batch-mode?!',
1543 `cuserid' has been deprecated, as it only returns 8 bytes of a user's
1544 login. Use `(passwd:name (getpwuid (geteuid)))' instead.
1546 ** Add support for unbound fluids
1548 See `make-unbound-fluid', `fluid-unset!', and `fluid-bound?' in the
1551 ** Add `variable-unset!'
1553 See "Variables" in the manual, for more details.
1555 ** Last but not least, the `λ' macro can be used in lieu of `lambda'
1557 * Changes to the C interface
1559 ** Guile now uses libgc, the Boehm-Demers-Weiser garbage collector
1561 The semantics of `scm_gc_malloc ()' have been changed, in a
1562 backward-compatible way. A new allocation routine,
1563 `scm_gc_malloc_pointerless ()', was added.
1565 Libgc is a conservative GC, which we hope will make interaction with C
1566 code easier and less error-prone.
1568 ** New procedures: `scm_to_latin1_stringn', `scm_from_latin1_stringn'
1570 Use these procedures when you know you have latin1-encoded or
1571 ASCII-encoded strings.
1573 ** New procedures: `scm_to_stringn', `scm_from_stringn'
1575 Use these procedures if you want to encode or decode from a particular
1578 ** New type definitions for `scm_t_intptr' and friends.
1580 `SCM_T_UINTPTR_MAX', `SCM_T_INTPTR_MIN', `SCM_T_INTPTR_MAX',
1581 `SIZEOF_SCM_T_BITS', `scm_t_intptr' and `scm_t_uintptr' are now
1582 available to C. Have fun!
1584 ** The GH interface (deprecated in version 1.6, 2001) was removed.
1586 ** Internal `scm_i_' functions now have "hidden" linkage with GCC/ELF
1588 This makes these internal functions technically not callable from
1591 ** Functions for handling `scm_option' now no longer require an argument
1592 indicating length of the `scm_t_option' array.
1594 ** Procedures-with-setters are now implemented using applicable structs
1596 From a user's perspective this doesn't mean very much. But if, for some
1597 odd reason, you used the SCM_PROCEDURE_WITH_SETTER_P, SCM_PROCEDURE, or
1598 SCM_SETTER macros, know that they're deprecated now. Also, scm_tc7_pws
1601 ** Remove old evaluator closures
1603 There used to be ranges of typecodes allocated to interpreted data
1604 structures, but that it no longer the case, given that interpreted
1605 procedure are now just regular VM closures. As a result, there is a
1606 newly free tc3, and a number of removed macros. See the ChangeLog for
1609 ** Primitive procedures are now VM trampoline procedures
1611 It used to be that there were something like 12 different typecodes
1612 allocated to primitive procedures, each with its own calling convention.
1613 Now there is only one, the gsubr. This may affect user code if you were
1614 defining a procedure using scm_c_make_subr rather scm_c_make_gsubr. The
1615 solution is to switch to use scm_c_make_gsubr. This solution works well
1616 both with the old 1.8 and and with the current 1.9 branch.
1618 Guile's old evaluator used to have special cases for applying "gsubrs",
1619 primitive procedures with specified numbers of required, optional, and
1620 rest arguments. Now, however, Guile represents gsubrs as normal VM
1621 procedures, with appropriate bytecode to parse out the correct number of
1622 arguments, including optional and rest arguments, and then with a
1623 special bytecode to apply the gsubr.
1625 This allows primitive procedures to appear on the VM stack, allowing
1626 them to be accurately counted in profiles. Also they now have more
1627 debugging information attached to them -- their number of arguments, for
1628 example. In addition, the VM can completely inline the application
1629 mechanics, allowing for faster primitive calls.
1631 However there are some changes on the C level. There is no more
1632 `scm_tc7_gsubr' or `scm_tcs_subrs' typecode for primitive procedures, as
1633 they are just VM procedures. Likewise the macros `SCM_GSUBR_TYPE',
1634 `SCM_GSUBR_MAKTYPE', `SCM_GSUBR_REQ', `SCM_GSUBR_OPT', and
1635 `SCM_GSUBR_REST' are gone, as are `SCM_SUBR_META_INFO', `SCM_SUBR_PROPS'
1636 `SCM_SET_SUBR_GENERIC_LOC', and `SCM_SUBR_ARITY_TO_TYPE'.
1638 Perhaps more significantly, `scm_c_make_subr',
1639 `scm_c_make_subr_with_generic', `scm_c_define_subr', and
1640 `scm_c_define_subr_with_generic'. They all operated on subr typecodes,
1641 and there are no more subr typecodes. Use the scm_c_make_gsubr family
1644 Normal users of gsubrs should not be affected, though, as the
1645 scm_c_make_gsubr family still is the correct way to create primitive
1648 ** Remove deprecated array C interfaces
1650 Removed the deprecated array functions `scm_i_arrayp',
1651 `scm_i_array_ndim', `scm_i_array_mem', `scm_i_array_v',
1652 `scm_i_array_base', `scm_i_array_dims', and the deprecated macros
1653 `SCM_ARRAYP', `SCM_ARRAY_NDIM', `SCM_ARRAY_CONTP', `SCM_ARRAY_MEM',
1654 `SCM_ARRAY_V', `SCM_ARRAY_BASE', and `SCM_ARRAY_DIMS'.
1656 ** Remove unused snarf macros
1658 `SCM_DEFINE1', `SCM_PRIMITIVE_GENERIC_1', `SCM_PROC1, and `SCM_GPROC1'
1659 are no more. Use SCM_DEFINE or SCM_PRIMITIVE_GENERIC instead.
1661 ** New functions: `scm_call_n', `scm_c_run_hookn'
1663 `scm_call_n' applies to apply a function to an array of arguments.
1664 `scm_c_run_hookn' runs a hook with an array of arguments.
1666 ** Some SMOB types changed to have static typecodes
1668 Fluids, dynamic states, and hash tables used to be SMOB objects, but now
1669 they have statically allocated tc7 typecodes.
1671 ** Preparations for changing SMOB representation
1673 If things go right, we'll be changing the SMOB representation soon. To
1674 that end, we did a lot of cleanups to calls to e.g. SCM_CELL_WORD_2(x) when
1675 the code meant SCM_SMOB_DATA_2(x); user code will need similar changes
1676 in the future. Code accessing SMOBs using SCM_CELL macros was never
1677 correct, but until now things still worked. Users should be aware of
1680 ** Changed invocation mechanics of applicable SMOBs
1682 Guile's old evaluator used to have special cases for applying SMOB
1683 objects. Now, with the VM, when Guile sees a SMOB, it looks up a VM
1684 trampoline procedure for it, and use the normal mechanics to apply the
1685 trampoline. This simplifies procedure application in the normal,
1688 The upshot is that the mechanics used to apply a SMOB are different from
1689 1.8. Descriptors no longer have `apply_0', `apply_1', `apply_2', and
1690 `apply_3' functions, and the macros SCM_SMOB_APPLY_0 and friends are now
1691 deprecated. Just use the scm_call_0 family of procedures.
1693 ** Removed support shlibs for SRFIs 1, 4, 13, 14, and 60
1695 Though these SRFI support libraries did expose API, they encoded a
1696 strange version string into their library names. That version was never
1697 programmatically exported, so there was no way people could use the
1700 This was a fortunate oversight, as it allows us to remove the need for
1701 extra, needless shared libraries --- the C support code for SRFIs 4, 13,
1702 and 14 was already in core --- and allow us to incrementally return the
1703 SRFI implementation to Scheme.
1705 ** New C function: scm_module_public_interface
1707 This procedure corresponds to Scheme's `module-public-interface'.
1709 ** Undeprecate `scm_the_root_module ()'
1711 It's useful to be able to get the root module from C without doing a
1714 ** Inline vector allocation
1716 Instead of having vectors point out into the heap for their data, their
1717 data is now allocated inline to the vector object itself. The same is
1718 true for bytevectors, by default, though there is an indirection
1719 available which should allow for making a bytevector from an existing
1722 ** New struct constructors that don't involve making lists
1724 `scm_c_make_struct' and `scm_c_make_structv' are new varargs and array
1725 constructors, respectively, for structs. You might find them useful.
1729 In Guile 1.8, there were debugging frames on the C stack. Now there is
1730 no more need to explicitly mark the stack in this way, because Guile has
1731 a VM stack that it knows how to walk, which simplifies the C API
1732 considerably. See the ChangeLog for details; the relevant interface is
1733 in libguile/stacks.h. The Scheme API has not been changed significantly.
1735 ** Removal of Guile's primitive object system.
1737 There were a number of pieces in `objects.[ch]' that tried to be a
1738 minimal object system, but were never documented, and were quickly
1739 obseleted by GOOPS' merge into Guile proper. So `scm_make_class_object',
1740 `scm_make_subclass_object', `scm_metaclass_standard', and like symbols
1741 from objects.h are no more. In the very unlikely case in which these
1742 were useful to you, we urge you to contact guile-devel.
1746 Actually the future is still in the state that it was, is, and ever
1747 shall be, Amen, except that `futures.c' and `futures.h' are no longer a
1748 part of it. These files were experimental, never compiled, and would be
1749 better implemented in Scheme anyway. In the future, that is.
1751 ** Deprecate trampolines
1753 There used to be C functions `scm_trampoline_0', `scm_trampoline_1', and
1754 so on. The point was to do some precomputation on the type of the
1755 procedure, then return a specialized "call" procedure. However this
1756 optimization wasn't actually an optimization, so it is now deprecated.
1757 Just use `scm_call_0', etc instead.
1759 ** Deprecated `scm_badargsp'
1761 This function is unused in Guile, but was part of its API.
1763 ** Better support for Lisp `nil'.
1765 The bit representation of `nil' has been tweaked so that it is now very
1766 efficient to check e.g. if a value is equal to Scheme's end-of-list or
1767 Lisp's nil. Additionally there are a heap of new, specific predicates
1768 like scm_is_null_or_nil.
1770 ** Better integration of Lisp `nil'.
1772 `scm_is_boolean', `scm_is_false', and `scm_is_null' all return true now
1773 for Lisp's `nil'. This shouldn't affect any Scheme code at this point,
1774 but when we start to integrate more with Emacs, it is possible that we
1775 break code that assumes that, for example, `(not x)' implies that `x' is
1776 `eq?' to `#f'. This is not a common assumption. Refactoring affected
1777 code to rely on properties instead of identities will improve code
1778 correctness. See "Nil" in the manual, for more details.
1780 ** Support for static allocation of strings, symbols, and subrs.
1782 Calls to snarfing CPP macros like SCM_DEFINE macro will now allocate
1783 much of their associated data as static variables, reducing Guile's
1786 ** `scm_stat' has an additional argument, `exception_on_error'
1787 ** `scm_primitive_load_path' has an additional argument `exception_on_not_found'
1789 ** `scm_set_port_seek' and `scm_set_port_truncate' use the `scm_t_off' type
1791 Previously they would use the `off_t' type, which is fragile since its
1792 definition depends on the application's value for `_FILE_OFFSET_BITS'.
1794 ** The `long_long' C type, deprecated in 1.8, has been removed
1796 ** Removed deprecated uniform array procedures: scm_make_uve,
1797 scm_array_prototype, scm_list_to_uniform_array,
1798 scm_dimensions_to_uniform_array, scm_make_ra, scm_shap2ra, scm_cvref,
1799 scm_ra_set_contp, scm_aind, scm_raprin1
1801 These functions have been deprecated since early 2005.
1803 * Changes to the distribution
1805 ** Guile's license is now LGPLv3+
1807 In other words the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 3 or
1808 later (at the discretion of each person that chooses to redistribute
1813 Guile's build is visually quieter, due to the use of Automake 1.11's
1814 AM_SILENT_RULES. Build as `make V=1' to see all of the output.
1816 ** GOOPS documentation folded into Guile reference manual
1818 GOOPS, Guile's object system, used to be documented in separate manuals.
1819 This content is now included in Guile's manual directly.
1821 ** `guile-config' will be deprecated in favor of `pkg-config'
1823 `guile-config' has been rewritten to get its information from
1824 `pkg-config', so this should be a transparent change. Note however that
1825 guile.m4 has yet to be modified to call pkg-config instead of
1828 ** Guile now provides `guile-2.0.pc' instead of `guile-1.8.pc'
1830 Programs that use `pkg-config' to find Guile or one of its Autoconf
1831 macros should now require `guile-2.0' instead of `guile-1.8'.
1833 ** New installation directory: $(pkglibdir)/1.9/ccache
1835 If $(libdir) is /usr/lib, for example, Guile will install its .go files
1836 to /usr/lib/guile/1.9/ccache. These files are architecture-specific.
1838 ** Parallel installability fixes
1840 Guile now installs its header files to a effective-version-specific
1841 directory, and includes the effective version (e.g. 2.0) in the library
1842 name (e.g. libguile-2.0.so).
1844 This change should be transparent to users, who should detect Guile via
1845 the guile.m4 macro, or the guile-2.0.pc pkg-config file. It will allow
1846 parallel installs for multiple versions of Guile development
1849 ** Dynamically loadable extensions may be placed in a Guile-specific path
1851 Before, Guile only searched the system library paths for extensions
1852 (e.g. /usr/lib), which meant that the names of Guile extensions had to
1853 be globally unique. Installing them to a Guile-specific extensions
1854 directory is cleaner. Use `pkg-config --variable=extensiondir
1855 guile-2.0' to get the location of the extensions directory.
1857 ** User Scheme code may be placed in a version-specific path
1859 Before, there was only one way to install user Scheme code to a
1860 version-specific Guile directory: install to Guile's own path,
1861 e.g. /usr/share/guile/2.0. The site directory,
1862 e.g. /usr/share/guile/site, was unversioned. This has been changed to
1863 add a version-specific site directory, e.g. /usr/share/guile/site/2.0,
1864 searched before the global site directory.
1866 ** New dependency: libgc
1868 See http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Hans_Boehm/gc/, for more information.
1870 ** New dependency: GNU libunistring
1872 See http://www.gnu.org/software/libunistring/, for more information. Our
1873 Unicode support uses routines from libunistring.
1875 ** New dependency: libffi
1877 See http://sourceware.org/libffi/, for more information.
1881 Changes in 1.8.8 (since 1.8.7)
1885 ** Fix possible buffer overruns when parsing numbers
1886 ** Avoid clash with system setjmp/longjmp on IA64
1887 ** Fix `wrong type arg' exceptions with IPv6 addresses
1890 Changes in 1.8.7 (since 1.8.6)
1892 * New modules (see the manual for details)
1894 ** `(srfi srfi-98)', an interface to access environment variables
1898 ** Fix compilation with `--disable-deprecated'
1899 ** Fix %fast-slot-ref/set!, to avoid possible segmentation fault
1900 ** Fix MinGW build problem caused by HAVE_STRUCT_TIMESPEC confusion
1901 ** Fix build problem when scm_t_timespec is different from struct timespec
1902 ** Fix build when compiled with -Wundef -Werror
1903 ** More build fixes for `alphaev56-dec-osf5.1b' (Tru64)
1904 ** Build fixes for `powerpc-ibm-aix5.3.0.0' (AIX 5.3)
1905 ** With GCC, always compile with `-mieee' on `alpha*' and `sh*'
1906 ** Better diagnose broken `(strftime "%z" ...)' in `time.test' (bug #24130)
1907 ** Fix parsing of SRFI-88/postfix keywords longer than 128 characters
1908 ** Fix reading of complex numbers where both parts are inexact decimals
1910 ** Allow @ macro to work with (ice-9 syncase)
1912 Previously, use of the @ macro in a module whose code is being
1913 transformed by (ice-9 syncase) would cause an "Invalid syntax" error.
1914 Now it works as you would expect (giving the value of the specified
1917 ** Have `scm_take_locale_symbol ()' return an interned symbol (bug #25865)
1920 Changes in 1.8.6 (since 1.8.5)
1922 * New features (see the manual for details)
1924 ** New convenience function `scm_c_symbol_length ()'
1926 ** Single stepping through code from Emacs
1928 When you use GDS to evaluate Scheme code from Emacs, you can now use
1929 `C-u' to indicate that you want to single step through that code. See
1930 `Evaluating Scheme Code' in the manual for more details.
1932 ** New "guile(1)" man page!
1934 * Changes to the distribution
1936 ** Automake's `AM_MAINTAINER_MODE' is no longer used
1938 Thus, the `--enable-maintainer-mode' configure option is no longer
1939 available: Guile is now always configured in "maintainer mode".
1941 ** `ChangeLog' files are no longer updated
1943 Instead, changes are detailed in the version control system's logs. See
1944 the top-level `ChangeLog' files for details.
1949 ** `symbol->string' now returns a read-only string, as per R5RS
1950 ** Fix incorrect handling of the FLAGS argument of `fold-matches'
1951 ** `guile-config link' now prints `-L$libdir' before `-lguile'
1952 ** Fix memory corruption involving GOOPS' `class-redefinition'
1953 ** Fix possible deadlock in `mutex-lock'
1954 ** Fix build issue on Tru64 and ia64-hp-hpux11.23 (`SCM_UNPACK' macro)
1955 ** Fix build issue on mips, mipsel, powerpc and ia64 (stack direction)
1956 ** Fix build issue on hppa2.0w-hp-hpux11.11 (`dirent64' and `readdir64_r')
1957 ** Fix build issue on i386-unknown-freebsd7.0 ("break strict-aliasing rules")
1958 ** Fix misleading output from `(help rationalize)'
1959 ** Fix build failure on Debian hppa architecture (bad stack growth detection)
1960 ** Fix `gcd' when called with a single, negative argument.
1961 ** Fix `Stack overflow' errors seen when building on some platforms
1962 ** Fix bug when `scm_with_guile ()' was called several times from the
1964 ** The handler of SRFI-34 `with-exception-handler' is now invoked in the
1965 dynamic environment of the call to `raise'
1966 ** Fix potential deadlock in `make-struct'
1967 ** Fix compilation problem with libltdl from Libtool 2.2.x
1968 ** Fix sloppy bound checking in `string-{ref,set!}' with the empty string
1971 Changes in 1.8.5 (since 1.8.4)
1973 * Infrastructure changes
1975 ** Guile repository switched from CVS to Git
1977 The new repository can be accessed using
1978 "git-clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/guile.git", or can be browsed on-line at
1979 http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=guile.git . See `README' for details.
1981 ** Add support for `pkg-config'
1983 See "Autoconf Support" in the manual for details.
1985 * New modules (see the manual for details)
1989 * New features (see the manual for details)
1991 ** New `postfix' read option, for SRFI-88 keyword syntax
1992 ** Some I/O primitives have been inlined, which improves I/O performance
1993 ** New object-based traps infrastructure
1995 This is a GOOPS-based infrastructure that builds on Guile's low-level
1996 evaluator trap calls and facilitates the development of debugging
1997 features like single-stepping, breakpoints, tracing and profiling.
1998 See the `Traps' node of the manual for details.
2000 ** New support for working on Guile code from within Emacs
2002 Guile now incorporates the `GDS' library (previously distributed
2003 separately) for working on Guile code from within Emacs. See the
2004 `Using Guile In Emacs' node of the manual for details.
2008 ** `scm_add_slot ()' no longer segfaults (fixes bug #22369)
2009 ** Fixed `(ice-9 match)' for patterns like `((_ ...) ...)'
2011 Previously, expressions like `(match '((foo) (bar)) (((_ ...) ...) #t))'
2012 would trigger an unbound variable error for `match:andmap'.
2014 ** `(oop goops describe)' now properly provides the `describe' feature
2015 ** Fixed `args-fold' from `(srfi srfi-37)'
2017 Previously, parsing short option names of argument-less options would
2018 lead to a stack overflow.
2020 ** `(srfi srfi-35)' is now visible through `cond-expand'
2021 ** Fixed type-checking for the second argument of `eval'
2022 ** Fixed type-checking for SRFI-1 `partition'
2023 ** Fixed `struct-ref' and `struct-set!' on "light structs"
2024 ** Honor struct field access rights in GOOPS
2025 ** Changed the storage strategy of source properties, which fixes a deadlock
2026 ** Allow compilation of Guile-using programs in C99 mode with GCC 4.3 and later
2027 ** Fixed build issue for GNU/Linux on IA64
2028 ** Fixed build issues on NetBSD 1.6
2029 ** Fixed build issue on Solaris 2.10 x86_64
2030 ** Fixed build issue with DEC/Compaq/HP's compiler
2031 ** Fixed `scm_from_complex_double' build issue on FreeBSD
2032 ** Fixed `alloca' build issue on FreeBSD 6
2033 ** Removed use of non-portable makefile constructs
2034 ** Fixed shadowing of libc's <random.h> on Tru64, which broke compilation
2035 ** Make sure all tests honor `$TMPDIR'
2038 Changes in 1.8.4 (since 1.8.3)
2042 ** CR (ASCII 0x0d) is (again) recognized as a token delimiter by the reader
2043 ** Fixed a segmentation fault which occurred when displaying the
2044 backtrace of a stack with a promise object (made by `delay') in it.
2045 ** Make `accept' leave guile mode while blocking
2046 ** `scm_c_read ()' and `scm_c_write ()' now type-check their port argument
2047 ** Fixed a build problem on AIX (use of func_data identifier)
2048 ** Fixed a segmentation fault which occurred when hashx-ref or hashx-set! was
2049 called with an associator proc that returns neither a pair nor #f.
2050 ** Secondary threads now always return a valid module for (current-module).
2051 ** Avoid MacOS build problems caused by incorrect combination of "64"
2052 system and library calls.
2053 ** `guile-snarf' now honors `$TMPDIR'
2054 ** `guile-config compile' now reports CPPFLAGS used at compile-time
2055 ** Fixed build with Sun Studio (Solaris 9)
2056 ** Fixed wrong-type-arg errors when creating zero length SRFI-4
2057 uniform vectors on AIX.
2058 ** Fixed a deadlock that occurs upon GC with multiple threads.
2059 ** Fixed compile problem with GCC on Solaris and AIX (use of _Complex_I)
2060 ** Fixed autotool-derived build problems on AIX 6.1.
2061 ** Fixed NetBSD/alpha support
2062 ** Fixed MacOS build problem caused by use of rl_get_keymap(_name)
2064 * New modules (see the manual for details)
2068 * Documentation fixes and improvements
2070 ** Removed premature breakpoint documentation
2072 The features described are not available in the series of 1.8.x
2073 releases, so the documentation was misleading and has been removed.
2075 ** More about Guile's default *random-state* variable
2077 ** GOOPS: more about how to use `next-method'
2079 * Changes to the distribution
2081 ** Corrected a few files that referred incorrectly to the old GPL + special exception licence
2083 In fact Guile since 1.8.0 has been licensed with the GNU Lesser
2084 General Public License, and the few incorrect files have now been
2085 fixed to agree with the rest of the Guile distribution.
2087 ** Removed unnecessary extra copies of COPYING*
2089 The distribution now contains a single COPYING.LESSER at its top level.
2092 Changes in 1.8.3 (since 1.8.2)
2094 * New modules (see the manual for details)
2101 ** The `(ice-9 slib)' module now works as expected
2102 ** Expressions like "(set! 'x #t)" no longer yield a crash
2103 ** Warnings about duplicate bindings now go to stderr
2104 ** A memory leak in `make-socket-address' was fixed
2105 ** Alignment issues (e.g., on SPARC) in network routines were fixed
2106 ** A threading issue that showed up at least on NetBSD was fixed
2107 ** Build problems on Solaris and IRIX fixed
2109 * Implementation improvements
2111 ** The reader is now faster, which reduces startup time
2112 ** Procedures returned by `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' are faster
2115 Changes in 1.8.2 (since 1.8.1):
2117 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
2119 ** set-program-arguments
2122 * Incompatible changes
2124 ** The body of a top-level `define' no longer sees the binding being created
2126 In a top-level `define', the binding being created is no longer visible
2127 from the `define' body. This breaks code like
2128 "(define foo (begin (set! foo 1) (+ foo 1)))", where `foo' is now
2129 unbound in the body. However, such code was not R5RS-compliant anyway,
2134 ** Fractions were not `equal?' if stored in unreduced form.
2135 (A subtle problem, since printing a value reduced it, making it work.)
2136 ** srfi-60 `copy-bit' failed on 64-bit systems
2137 ** "guile --use-srfi" option at the REPL can replace core functions
2138 (Programs run with that option were ok, but in the interactive REPL
2139 the core bindings got priority, preventing SRFI replacements or
2141 ** `regexp-exec' doesn't abort() on #\nul in the input or bad flags arg
2142 ** `kill' on mingw throws an error for a PID other than oneself
2143 ** Procedure names are attached to procedure-with-setters
2144 ** Array read syntax works with negative lower bound
2145 ** `array-in-bounds?' fix if an array has different lower bounds on each index
2146 ** `*' returns exact 0 for "(* inexact 0)"
2147 This follows what it always did for "(* 0 inexact)".
2148 ** SRFI-19: Value returned by `(current-time time-process)' was incorrect
2149 ** SRFI-19: `date->julian-day' did not account for timezone offset
2150 ** `ttyname' no longer crashes when passed a non-tty argument
2151 ** `inet-ntop' no longer crashes on SPARC when passed an `AF_INET' address
2152 ** Small memory leaks have been fixed in `make-fluid' and `add-history'
2153 ** GOOPS: Fixed a bug in `method-more-specific?'
2154 ** Build problems on Solaris fixed
2155 ** Build problems on HP-UX IA64 fixed
2156 ** Build problems on MinGW fixed
2159 Changes in 1.8.1 (since 1.8.0):
2161 * LFS functions are now used to access 64-bit files on 32-bit systems.
2163 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
2165 ** primitive-_exit - [Scheme] the-root-module
2166 ** scm_primitive__exit - [C]
2167 ** make-completion-function - [Scheme] (ice-9 readline)
2168 ** scm_c_locale_stringn_to_number - [C]
2169 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse [C]
2170 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse_x [C]
2178 ** Build problems have been fixed on MacOS, SunOS, and QNX.
2180 ** `strftime' fix sign of %z timezone offset.
2182 ** A one-dimensional array can now be 'equal?' to a vector.
2184 ** Structures, records, and SRFI-9 records can now be compared with `equal?'.
2186 ** SRFI-14 standard char sets are recomputed upon a successful `setlocale'.
2188 ** `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' now have strict type checks.
2190 Record accessor and modifier procedures now throw an error if the
2191 record type of the record they're given is not the type expected.
2192 (Previously accessors returned #f and modifiers silently did nothing).
2194 ** It is now OK to use both autoload and use-modules on a given module.
2196 ** `apply' checks the number of arguments more carefully on "0 or 1" funcs.
2198 Previously there was no checking on primatives like make-vector that
2199 accept "one or two" arguments. Now there is.
2201 ** The srfi-1 assoc function now calls its equality predicate properly.
2203 Previously srfi-1 assoc would call the equality predicate with the key
2204 last. According to the SRFI, the key should be first.
2206 ** A bug in n-par-for-each and n-for-each-par-map has been fixed.
2208 ** The array-set! procedure no longer segfaults when given a bit vector.
2210 ** Bugs in make-shared-array have been fixed.
2212 ** string<? and friends now follow char<? etc order on 8-bit chars.
2214 ** The format procedure now handles inf and nan values for ~f correctly.
2216 ** exact->inexact should no longer overflow when given certain large fractions.
2218 ** srfi-9 accessor and modifier procedures now have strict record type checks.
2220 This matches the srfi-9 specification.
2222 ** (ice-9 ftw) procedures won't ignore different files with same inode number.
2224 Previously the (ice-9 ftw) procedures would ignore any file that had
2225 the same inode number as a file they had already seen, even if that
2226 file was on a different device.
2229 Changes in 1.8.0 (changes since the 1.6.x series):
2231 * Changes to the distribution
2233 ** Guile is now licensed with the GNU Lesser General Public License.
2235 ** The manual is now licensed with the GNU Free Documentation License.
2237 ** Guile now requires GNU MP (http://swox.com/gmp).
2239 Guile now uses the GNU MP library for arbitrary precision arithmetic.
2241 ** Guile now has separate private and public configuration headers.
2243 That is, things like HAVE_STRING_H no longer leak from Guile's
2246 ** Guile now provides and uses an "effective" version number.
2248 Guile now provides scm_effective_version and effective-version
2249 functions which return the "effective" version number. This is just
2250 the normal full version string without the final micro-version number,
2251 so the current effective-version is "1.8". The effective version
2252 should remain unchanged during a stable series, and should be used for
2253 items like the versioned share directory name
2254 i.e. /usr/share/guile/1.8.
2256 Providing an unchanging version number during a stable release for
2257 things like the versioned share directory can be particularly
2258 important for Guile "add-on" packages, since it provides a directory
2259 that they can install to that won't be changed out from under them
2260 with each micro release during a stable series.
2262 ** Thread implementation has changed.
2264 When you configure "--with-threads=null", you will get the usual
2265 threading API (call-with-new-thread, make-mutex, etc), but you can't
2266 actually create new threads. Also, "--with-threads=no" is now
2267 equivalent to "--with-threads=null". This means that the thread API
2268 is always present, although you might not be able to create new
2271 When you configure "--with-threads=pthreads" or "--with-threads=yes",
2272 you will get threads that are implemented with the portable POSIX
2273 threads. These threads can run concurrently (unlike the previous
2274 "coop" thread implementation), but need to cooperate for things like
2277 The default is "pthreads", unless your platform doesn't have pthreads,
2278 in which case "null" threads are used.
2280 See the manual for details, nodes "Initialization", "Multi-Threading",
2281 "Blocking", and others.
2283 ** There is the new notion of 'discouraged' features.
2285 This is a milder form of deprecation.
2287 Things that are discouraged should not be used in new code, but it is
2288 OK to leave them in old code for now. When a discouraged feature is
2289 used, no warning message is printed like there is for 'deprecated'
2290 features. Also, things that are merely discouraged are nevertheless
2291 implemented efficiently, while deprecated features can be very slow.
2293 You can omit discouraged features from libguile by configuring it with
2294 the '--disable-discouraged' option.
2296 ** Deprecation warnings can be controlled at run-time.
2298 (debug-enable 'warn-deprecated) switches them on and (debug-disable
2299 'warn-deprecated) switches them off.
2301 ** Support for SRFI 61, extended cond syntax for multiple values has
2304 This SRFI is always available.
2306 ** Support for require-extension, SRFI-55, has been added.
2308 The SRFI-55 special form `require-extension' has been added. It is
2309 available at startup, and provides a portable way to load Scheme
2310 extensions. SRFI-55 only requires support for one type of extension,
2311 "srfi"; so a set of SRFIs may be loaded via (require-extension (srfi 1
2314 ** New module (srfi srfi-26) provides support for `cut' and `cute'.
2316 The (srfi srfi-26) module is an implementation of SRFI-26 which
2317 provides the `cut' and `cute' syntax. These may be used to specialize
2318 parameters without currying.
2320 ** New module (srfi srfi-31)
2322 This is an implementation of SRFI-31 which provides a special form
2323 `rec' for recursive evaluation.
2325 ** The modules (srfi srfi-13), (srfi srfi-14) and (srfi srfi-4) have
2326 been merged with the core, making their functionality always
2329 The modules are still available, tho, and you could use them together
2330 with a renaming import, for example.
2332 ** Guile no longer includes its own version of libltdl.
2334 The official version is good enough now.
2336 ** The --enable-htmldoc option has been removed from 'configure'.
2338 Support for translating the documentation into HTML is now always
2339 provided. Use 'make html'.
2341 ** New module (ice-9 serialize):
2343 (serialize FORM1 ...) and (parallelize FORM1 ...) are useful when you
2344 don't trust the thread safety of most of your program, but where you
2345 have some section(s) of code which you consider can run in parallel to
2346 other sections. See ice-9/serialize.scm for more information.
2348 ** The configure option '--disable-arrays' has been removed.
2350 Support for arrays and uniform numeric arrays is now always included
2353 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2355 ** New command line option `-L'.
2357 This option adds a directory to the front of the load path.
2359 ** New command line option `--no-debug'.
2361 Specifying `--no-debug' on the command line will keep the debugging
2362 evaluator turned off, even for interactive sessions.
2364 ** User-init file ~/.guile is now loaded with the debugging evaluator.
2366 Previously, the normal evaluator would have been used. Using the
2367 debugging evaluator gives better error messages.
2369 ** The '-e' option now 'read's its argument.
2371 This is to allow the new '(@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)' construct to
2372 be used with '-e'. For example, you can now write a script like
2375 exec guile -e '(@ (demo) main)' -s "$0" "$@"
2378 (define-module (demo)
2382 (format #t "Demo: ~a~%" args))
2385 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2387 ** Guardians have changed back to their original semantics
2389 Guardians now behave like described in the paper by Dybvig et al. In
2390 particular, they no longer make guarantees about the order in which
2391 they return objects, and they can no longer be greedy.
2393 They no longer drop cyclic data structures.
2395 The C function scm_make_guardian has been changed incompatibly and no
2396 longer takes the 'greedy_p' argument.
2398 ** New function hashx-remove!
2400 This function completes the set of 'hashx' functions.
2402 ** The concept of dynamic roots has been factored into continuation
2403 barriers and dynamic states.
2405 Each thread has a current dynamic state that carries the values of the
2406 fluids. You can create and copy dynamic states and use them as the
2407 second argument for 'eval'. See "Fluids and Dynamic States" in the
2410 To restrict the influence that captured continuations can have on the
2411 control flow, you can errect continuation barriers. See "Continuation
2412 Barriers" in the manual.
2414 The function call-with-dynamic-root now essentially temporarily
2415 installs a new dynamic state and errects a continuation barrier.
2417 ** The default load path no longer includes "." at the end.
2419 Automatically loading modules from the current directory should not
2420 happen by default. If you want to allow it in a more controlled
2421 manner, set the environment variable GUILE_LOAD_PATH or the Scheme
2422 variable %load-path.
2424 ** The uniform vector and array support has been overhauled.
2426 It now complies with SRFI-4 and the weird prototype based uniform
2427 array creation has been deprecated. See the manual for more details.
2429 Some non-compatible changes have been made:
2430 - characters can no longer be stored into byte arrays.
2431 - strings and bit vectors are no longer considered to be uniform numeric
2433 - array-rank throws an error for non-arrays instead of returning zero.
2434 - array-ref does no longer accept non-arrays when no indices are given.
2436 There is the new notion of 'generalized vectors' and corresponding
2437 procedures like 'generalized-vector-ref'. Generalized vectors include
2438 strings, bitvectors, ordinary vectors, and uniform numeric vectors.
2440 Arrays use generalized vectors as their storage, so that you still
2441 have arrays of characters, bits, etc. However, uniform-array-read!
2442 and uniform-array-write can no longer read/write strings and
2445 ** There is now support for copy-on-write substrings, mutation-sharing
2446 substrings and read-only strings.
2448 Three new procedures are related to this: substring/shared,
2449 substring/copy, and substring/read-only. See the manual for more
2452 ** Backtraces will now highlight the value that caused the error.
2454 By default, these values are enclosed in "{...}", such as in this
2463 <unnamed port>:1:1: In procedure car in expression (car (quote a)):
2464 <unnamed port>:1:1: Wrong type (expecting pair): a
2465 ABORT: (wrong-type-arg)
2467 The prefix and suffix used for highlighting can be set via the two new
2468 printer options 'highlight-prefix' and 'highlight-suffix'. For
2469 example, putting this into ~/.guile will output the bad value in bold
2470 on an ANSI terminal:
2472 (print-set! highlight-prefix "\x1b[1m")
2473 (print-set! highlight-suffix "\x1b[22m")
2476 ** 'gettext' support for internationalization has been added.
2478 See the manual for details.
2480 ** New syntax '@' and '@@':
2482 You can now directly refer to variables exported from a module by
2485 (@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)
2487 For example (@ (ice-9 pretty-print) pretty-print) will directly access
2488 the pretty-print variable exported from the (ice-9 pretty-print)
2489 module. You don't need to 'use' that module first. You can also use
2490 '@' as a target of 'set!', as in (set! (@ mod var) val).
2492 The related syntax (@@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME) works just like '@',
2493 but it can also access variables that have not been exported. It is
2494 intended only for kluges and temporary fixes and for debugging, not
2497 ** Keyword syntax has been made more disciplined.
2499 Previously, the name of a keyword was read as a 'token' but printed as
2500 a symbol. Now, it is read as a general Scheme datum which must be a
2511 ERROR: In expression (a b c):
2515 ERROR: Unbound variable: foo
2520 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): 12
2524 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): (a b c)
2528 ** The printing of symbols that might look like keywords can be
2531 The new printer option 'quote-keywordish-symbols' controls how symbols
2532 are printed that have a colon as their first or last character. The
2533 default now is to only quote a symbol with #{...}# when the read
2534 option 'keywords' is not '#f'. Thus:
2536 guile> (define foo (string->symbol ":foo"))
2537 guile> (read-set! keywords #f)
2540 guile> (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
2543 guile> (print-set! quote-keywordish-symbols #f)
2547 ** 'while' now provides 'break' and 'continue'
2549 break and continue were previously bound in a while loop, but not
2550 documented, and continue didn't quite work properly. The undocumented
2551 parameter to break which gave a return value for the while has been
2554 ** 'call-with-current-continuation' is now also available under the name
2557 ** The module system now checks for duplicate bindings.
2559 The module system now can check for name conflicts among imported
2562 The behavior can be controlled by specifying one or more 'duplicates'
2563 handlers. For example, to make Guile return an error for every name
2566 (define-module (foo)
2571 The new default behavior of the module system when a name collision
2572 has been detected is to
2574 1. Give priority to bindings marked as a replacement.
2575 2. Issue a warning (different warning if overriding core binding).
2576 3. Give priority to the last encountered binding (this corresponds to
2579 If you want the old behavior back without replacements or warnings you
2582 (default-duplicate-binding-handler 'last)
2584 to your .guile init file.
2586 ** New define-module option: :replace
2588 :replace works as :export, but, in addition, marks the binding as a
2591 A typical example is `format' in (ice-9 format) which is a replacement
2592 for the core binding `format'.
2594 ** Adding prefixes to imported bindings in the module system
2596 There is now a new :use-module option :prefix. It can be used to add
2597 a prefix to all imported bindings.
2599 (define-module (foo)
2600 :use-module ((bar) :prefix bar:))
2602 will import all bindings exported from bar, but rename them by adding
2605 ** Conflicting generic functions can be automatically merged.
2607 When two imported bindings conflict and they are both generic
2608 functions, the two functions can now be merged automatically. This is
2609 activated with the 'duplicates' handler 'merge-generics'.
2611 ** New function: effective-version
2613 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
2614 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
2615 to the distribution" above.
2617 ** New threading functions: parallel, letpar, par-map, and friends
2619 These are convenient ways to run calculations in parallel in new
2620 threads. See "Parallel forms" in the manual for details.
2622 ** New function 'try-mutex'.
2624 This function will attempt to lock a mutex but will return immediately
2625 instead of blocking and indicate failure.
2627 ** Waiting on a condition variable can have a timeout.
2629 The function 'wait-condition-variable' now takes a third, optional
2630 argument that specifies the point in time where the waiting should be
2633 ** New function 'broadcast-condition-variable'.
2635 ** New functions 'all-threads' and 'current-thread'.
2637 ** Signals and system asyncs work better with threads.
2639 The function 'sigaction' now takes a fourth, optional, argument that
2640 specifies the thread that the handler should run in. When the
2641 argument is omitted, the handler will run in the thread that called
2644 Likewise, 'system-async-mark' takes a second, optional, argument that
2645 specifies the thread that the async should run in. When it is
2646 omitted, the async will run in the thread that called
2647 'system-async-mark'.
2649 C code can use the new functions scm_sigaction_for_thread and
2650 scm_system_async_mark_for_thread to pass the new thread argument.
2652 When a thread blocks on a mutex, a condition variable or is waiting
2653 for IO to be possible, it will still execute system asyncs. This can
2654 be used to interrupt such a thread by making it execute a 'throw', for
2657 ** The function 'system-async' is deprecated.
2659 You can now pass any zero-argument procedure to 'system-async-mark'.
2660 The function 'system-async' will just return its argument unchanged
2663 ** New functions 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' and
2664 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
2666 The expression (call-with-blocked-asyncs PROC) will call PROC and will
2667 block execution of system asyncs for the current thread by one level
2668 while PROC runs. Likewise, call-with-unblocked-asyncs will call a
2669 procedure and will unblock the execution of system asyncs by one
2670 level for the current thread.
2672 Only system asyncs are affected by these functions.
2674 ** The functions 'mask-signals' and 'unmask-signals' are deprecated.
2676 Use 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' or 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
2677 instead. Those functions are easier to use correctly and can be
2680 ** New function 'unsetenv'.
2682 ** New macro 'define-syntax-public'.
2684 It works like 'define-syntax' and also exports the defined macro (but
2687 ** There is support for Infinity and NaNs.
2689 Following PLT Scheme, Guile can now work with infinite numbers, and
2692 There is new syntax for numbers: "+inf.0" (infinity), "-inf.0"
2693 (negative infinity), "+nan.0" (not-a-number), and "-nan.0" (same as
2694 "+nan.0"). These numbers are inexact and have no exact counterpart.
2696 Dividing by an inexact zero returns +inf.0 or -inf.0, depending on the
2697 sign of the dividend. The infinities are integers, and they answer #t
2698 for both 'even?' and 'odd?'. The +nan.0 value is not an integer and is
2699 not '=' to itself, but '+nan.0' is 'eqv?' to itself.
2710 ERROR: Numerical overflow
2712 Two new predicates 'inf?' and 'nan?' can be used to test for the
2715 ** Inexact zero can have a sign.
2717 Guile can now distinguish between plus and minus inexact zero, if your
2718 platform supports this, too. The two zeros are equal according to
2719 '=', but not according to 'eqv?'. For example
2730 ** Guile now has exact rationals.
2732 Guile can now represent fractions such as 1/3 exactly. Computing with
2733 them is also done exactly, of course:
2738 ** 'floor', 'ceiling', 'round' and 'truncate' now return exact numbers
2739 for exact arguments.
2741 For example: (floor 2) now returns an exact 2 where in the past it
2742 returned an inexact 2.0. Likewise, (floor 5/4) returns an exact 1.
2744 ** inexact->exact no longer returns only integers.
2746 Without exact rationals, the closest exact number was always an
2747 integer, but now inexact->exact returns the fraction that is exactly
2748 equal to a floating point number. For example:
2750 (inexact->exact 1.234)
2751 => 694680242521899/562949953421312
2753 When you want the old behavior, use 'round' explicitly:
2755 (inexact->exact (round 1.234))
2758 ** New function 'rationalize'.
2760 This function finds a simple fraction that is close to a given real
2761 number. For example (and compare with inexact->exact above):
2763 (rationalize (inexact->exact 1.234) 1/2000)
2766 Note that, as required by R5RS, rationalize returns only then an exact
2767 result when both its arguments are exact.
2769 ** 'odd?' and 'even?' work also for inexact integers.
2771 Previously, (odd? 1.0) would signal an error since only exact integers
2772 were recognized as integers. Now (odd? 1.0) returns #t, (odd? 2.0)
2773 returns #f and (odd? 1.5) signals an error.
2775 ** Guile now has uninterned symbols.
2777 The new function 'make-symbol' will return an uninterned symbol. This
2778 is a symbol that is unique and is guaranteed to remain unique.
2779 However, uninterned symbols can not yet be read back in.
2781 Use the new function 'symbol-interned?' to check whether a symbol is
2784 ** pretty-print has more options.
2786 The function pretty-print from the (ice-9 pretty-print) module can now
2787 also be invoked with keyword arguments that control things like
2788 maximum output width. See the manual for details.
2790 ** Variables have no longer a special behavior for `equal?'.
2792 Previously, comparing two variables with `equal?' would recursivly
2793 compare their values. This is no longer done. Variables are now only
2794 `equal?' if they are `eq?'.
2796 ** `(begin)' is now valid.
2798 You can now use an empty `begin' form. It will yield #<unspecified>
2799 when evaluated and simply be ignored in a definition context.
2801 ** Deprecated: procedure->macro
2803 Change your code to use 'define-macro' or r5rs macros. Also, be aware
2804 that macro expansion will not be done during evaluation, but prior to
2807 ** Soft ports now allow a `char-ready?' procedure
2809 The vector argument to `make-soft-port' can now have a length of
2810 either 5 or 6. (Previously the length had to be 5.) The optional 6th
2811 element is interpreted as an `input-waiting' thunk -- i.e. a thunk
2812 that returns the number of characters that can be read immediately
2813 without the soft port blocking.
2815 ** Deprecated: undefine
2817 There is no replacement for undefine.
2819 ** The functions make-keyword-from-dash-symbol and keyword-dash-symbol
2820 have been discouraged.
2822 They are relics from a time where a keyword like #:foo was used
2823 directly as a Tcl option "-foo" and thus keywords were internally
2824 stored as a symbol with a starting dash. We now store a symbol
2827 Use symbol->keyword and keyword->symbol instead.
2829 ** The `cheap' debug option is now obsolete
2831 Evaluator trap calls are now unconditionally "cheap" - in other words,
2832 they pass a debug object to the trap handler rather than a full
2833 continuation. The trap handler code can capture a full continuation
2834 by using `call-with-current-continuation' in the usual way, if it so
2837 The `cheap' option is retained for now so as not to break existing
2838 code which gets or sets it, but setting it now has no effect. It will
2839 be removed in the next major Guile release.
2841 ** Evaluator trap calls now support `tweaking'
2843 `Tweaking' means that the trap handler code can modify the Scheme
2844 expression that is about to be evaluated (in the case of an
2845 enter-frame trap) or the value that is being returned (in the case of
2846 an exit-frame trap). The trap handler code indicates that it wants to
2847 do this by returning a pair whose car is the symbol 'instead and whose
2848 cdr is the modified expression or return value.
2850 * Changes to the C interface
2852 ** The functions scm_hash_fn_remove_x and scm_hashx_remove_x no longer
2853 take a 'delete' function argument.
2855 This argument makes no sense since the delete function is used to
2856 remove a pair from an alist, and this must not be configurable.
2858 This is an incompatible change.
2860 ** The GH interface is now subject to the deprecation mechanism
2862 The GH interface has been deprecated for quite some time but now it is
2863 actually removed from Guile when it is configured with
2864 --disable-deprecated.
2866 See the manual "Transitioning away from GH" for more information.
2868 ** A new family of functions for converting between C values and
2869 Scheme values has been added.
2871 These functions follow a common naming scheme and are designed to be
2872 easier to use, thread-safe and more future-proof than the older
2875 - int scm_is_* (...)
2877 These are predicates that return a C boolean: 1 or 0. Instead of
2878 SCM_NFALSEP, you can now use scm_is_true, for example.
2880 - <type> scm_to_<type> (SCM val, ...)
2882 These are functions that convert a Scheme value into an appropriate
2883 C value. For example, you can use scm_to_int to safely convert from
2886 - SCM scm_from_<type> (<type> val, ...)
2888 These functions convert from a C type to a SCM value; for example,
2889 scm_from_int for ints.
2891 There is a huge number of these functions, for numbers, strings,
2892 symbols, vectors, etc. They are documented in the reference manual in
2893 the API section together with the types that they apply to.
2895 ** New functions for dealing with complex numbers in C have been added.
2897 The new functions are scm_c_make_rectangular, scm_c_make_polar,
2898 scm_c_real_part, scm_c_imag_part, scm_c_magnitude and scm_c_angle.
2899 They work like scm_make_rectangular etc but take or return doubles
2902 ** The function scm_make_complex has been discouraged.
2904 Use scm_c_make_rectangular instead.
2906 ** The INUM macros have been deprecated.
2908 A lot of code uses these macros to do general integer conversions,
2909 although the macros only work correctly with fixnums. Use the
2910 following alternatives.
2912 SCM_INUMP -> scm_is_integer or similar
2913 SCM_NINUMP -> !scm_is_integer or similar
2914 SCM_MAKINUM -> scm_from_int or similar
2915 SCM_INUM -> scm_to_int or similar
2917 SCM_VALIDATE_INUM_* -> Do not use these; scm_to_int, etc. will
2918 do the validating for you.
2920 ** The scm_num2<type> and scm_<type>2num functions and scm_make_real
2921 have been discouraged.
2923 Use the newer scm_to_<type> and scm_from_<type> functions instead for
2924 new code. The functions have been discouraged since they don't fit
2927 ** The 'boolean' macros SCM_FALSEP etc have been discouraged.
2929 They have strange names, especially SCM_NFALSEP, and SCM_BOOLP
2930 evaluates its argument twice. Use scm_is_true, etc. instead for new
2933 ** The macro SCM_EQ_P has been discouraged.
2935 Use scm_is_eq for new code, which fits better into the naming
2938 ** The macros SCM_CONSP, SCM_NCONSP, SCM_NULLP, and SCM_NNULLP have
2941 Use the function scm_is_pair or scm_is_null instead.
2943 ** The functions scm_round and scm_truncate have been deprecated and
2944 are now available as scm_c_round and scm_c_truncate, respectively.
2946 These functions occupy the names that scm_round_number and
2947 scm_truncate_number should have.
2949 ** The functions scm_c_string2str, scm_c_substring2str, and
2950 scm_c_symbol2str have been deprecated.
2952 Use scm_to_locale_stringbuf or similar instead, maybe together with
2955 ** New functions scm_c_make_string, scm_c_string_length,
2956 scm_c_string_ref, scm_c_string_set_x, scm_c_substring,
2957 scm_c_substring_shared, scm_c_substring_copy.
2959 These are like scm_make_string, scm_length, etc. but are slightly
2960 easier to use from C.
2962 ** The macros SCM_STRINGP, SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_STRING_LENGTH,
2963 SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, and SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH have been deprecated.
2965 They export too many assumptions about the implementation of strings
2966 and symbols that are no longer true in the presence of
2967 mutation-sharing substrings and when Guile switches to some form of
2970 When working with strings, it is often best to use the normal string
2971 functions provided by Guile, such as scm_c_string_ref,
2972 scm_c_string_set_x, scm_string_append, etc. Be sure to look in the
2973 manual since many more such functions are now provided than
2976 When you want to convert a SCM string to a C string, use the
2977 scm_to_locale_string function or similar instead. For symbols, use
2978 scm_symbol_to_string and then work with that string. Because of the
2979 new string representation, scm_symbol_to_string does not need to copy
2980 and is thus quite efficient.
2982 ** Some string, symbol and keyword functions have been discouraged.
2984 They don't fit into the uniform naming scheme and are not explicit
2985 about the character encoding.
2987 Replace according to the following table:
2989 scm_allocate_string -> scm_c_make_string
2990 scm_take_str -> scm_take_locale_stringn
2991 scm_take0str -> scm_take_locale_string
2992 scm_mem2string -> scm_from_locale_stringn
2993 scm_str2string -> scm_from_locale_string
2994 scm_makfrom0str -> scm_from_locale_string
2995 scm_mem2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symboln
2996 scm_mem2uninterned_symbol -> scm_from_locale_stringn + scm_make_symbol
2997 scm_str2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symbol
2999 SCM_SYMBOL_HASH -> scm_hashq
3000 SCM_SYMBOL_INTERNED_P -> scm_symbol_interned_p
3002 scm_c_make_keyword -> scm_from_locale_keyword
3004 ** The functions scm_keyword_to_symbol and sym_symbol_to_keyword are
3005 now also available to C code.
3007 ** SCM_KEYWORDP and SCM_KEYWORDSYM have been deprecated.
3009 Use scm_is_keyword and scm_keyword_to_symbol instead, but note that
3010 the latter returns the true name of the keyword, not the 'dash name',
3011 as SCM_KEYWORDSYM used to do.
3013 ** A new way to access arrays in a thread-safe and efficient way has
3016 See the manual, node "Accessing Arrays From C".
3018 ** The old uniform vector and bitvector implementations have been
3019 unceremoniously removed.
3021 This implementation exposed the details of the tagging system of
3022 Guile. Use the new C API explained in the manual in node "Uniform
3023 Numeric Vectors" and "Bit Vectors", respectively.
3025 The following macros are gone: SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE,
3026 SCM_UVECTOR_MAXLENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_UVECTOR_TAG,
3027 SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVECTOR_P, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE,
3028 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
3029 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_BITVECTOR_TAG,
3030 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVEC_REF, SCM_BITVEC_SET,
3033 ** The macros dealing with vectors have been deprecated.
3035 Use the new functions scm_is_vector, scm_vector_elements,
3036 scm_vector_writable_elements, etc, or scm_is_simple_vector,
3037 SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_REF, SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_SET, etc instead. See the
3038 manual for more details.
3040 Deprecated are SCM_VECTORP, SCM_VELTS, SCM_VECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
3041 SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_REF, SCM_VECTOR_SET, SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS.
3043 The following macros have been removed: SCM_VECTOR_BASE,
3044 SCM_SET_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_MAKE_VECTOR_TAG, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH,
3045 SCM_VELTS_AS_STACKITEMS, SCM_SETVELTS, SCM_GC_WRITABLE_VELTS.
3047 ** Some C functions and macros related to arrays have been deprecated.
3049 Migrate according to the following table:
3051 scm_make_uve -> scm_make_typed_array, scm_make_u8vector etc.
3052 scm_make_ra -> scm_make_array
3053 scm_shap2ra -> scm_make_array
3054 scm_cvref -> scm_c_generalized_vector_ref
3055 scm_ra_set_contp -> do not use
3056 scm_aind -> scm_array_handle_pos
3057 scm_raprin1 -> scm_display or scm_write
3059 SCM_ARRAYP -> scm_is_array
3060 SCM_ARRAY_NDIM -> scm_c_array_rank
3061 SCM_ARRAY_DIMS -> scm_array_handle_dims
3062 SCM_ARRAY_CONTP -> do not use
3063 SCM_ARRAY_MEM -> do not use
3064 SCM_ARRAY_V -> scm_array_handle_elements or similar
3065 SCM_ARRAY_BASE -> do not use
3067 ** SCM_CELL_WORD_LOC has been deprecated.
3069 Use the new macro SCM_CELL_OBJECT_LOC instead, which returns a pointer
3070 to a SCM, as opposed to a pointer to a scm_t_bits.
3072 This was done to allow the correct use of pointers into the Scheme
3073 heap. Previously, the heap words were of type scm_t_bits and local
3074 variables and function arguments were of type SCM, making it
3075 non-standards-conformant to have a pointer that can point to both.
3077 ** New macros SCM_SMOB_DATA_2, SCM_SMOB_DATA_3, etc.
3079 These macros should be used instead of SCM_CELL_WORD_2/3 to access the
3080 second and third words of double smobs. Likewise for
3081 SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_2 and SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_3.
3083 Also, there is SCM_SMOB_FLAGS and SCM_SET_SMOB_FLAGS that should be
3084 used to get and set the 16 exra bits in the zeroth word of a smob.
3086 And finally, there is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT and SCM_SMOB_SET_OBJECT for
3087 accesing the first immediate word of a smob as a SCM value, and there
3088 is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_LOC for getting a pointer to the first immediate
3089 smob word. Like wise for SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_2, etc.
3091 ** New way to deal with non-local exits and re-entries.
3093 There is a new set of functions that essentially do what
3094 scm_internal_dynamic_wind does, but in a way that is more convenient
3095 for C code in some situations. Here is a quick example of how to
3096 prevent a potential memory leak:
3103 scm_dynwind_begin (0);
3105 mem = scm_malloc (100);
3106 scm_dynwind_unwind_handler (free, mem, SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY);
3108 /* MEM would leak if BAR throws an error.
3109 SCM_DYNWIND_UNWIND_HANDLER frees it nevertheless.
3116 /* Because of SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY, MEM will be freed by
3117 SCM_DYNWIND_END as well.
3121 For full documentation, see the node "Dynamic Wind" in the manual.
3123 ** New function scm_dynwind_free
3125 This function calls 'free' on a given pointer when a dynwind context
3126 is left. Thus the call to scm_dynwind_unwind_handler above could be
3127 replaced with simply scm_dynwind_free (mem).
3129 ** New functions scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
3130 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs
3132 Like scm_call_with_blocked_asyncs etc. but for C functions.
3134 ** New functions scm_dynwind_block_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs
3136 In addition to scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs you can now also use
3137 scm_dynwind_block_asyncs in a 'dynwind context' (see above). Likewise for
3138 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs.
3140 ** The macros SCM_DEFER_INTS, SCM_ALLOW_INTS, SCM_REDEFER_INTS,
3141 SCM_REALLOW_INTS have been deprecated.
3143 They do no longer fulfill their original role of blocking signal
3144 delivery. Depending on what you want to achieve, replace a pair of
3145 SCM_DEFER_INTS and SCM_ALLOW_INTS with a dynwind context that locks a
3146 mutex, blocks asyncs, or both. See node "Critical Sections" in the
3149 ** The value 'scm_mask_ints' is no longer writable.
3151 Previously, you could set scm_mask_ints directly. This is no longer
3152 possible. Use scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
3153 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs instead.
3155 ** New way to temporarily set the current input, output or error ports
3157 C code can now use scm_dynwind_current_<foo>_port in a 'dynwind
3158 context' (see above). <foo> is one of "input", "output" or "error".
3160 ** New way to temporarily set fluids
3162 C code can now use scm_dynwind_fluid in a 'dynwind context' (see
3163 above) to temporarily set the value of a fluid.
3165 ** New types scm_t_intmax and scm_t_uintmax.
3167 On platforms that have them, these types are identical to intmax_t and
3168 uintmax_t, respectively. On other platforms, they are identical to
3169 the largest integer types that Guile knows about.
3171 ** The functions scm_unmemocopy and scm_unmemoize have been removed.
3173 You should not have used them.
3175 ** Many public #defines with generic names have been made private.
3177 #defines with generic names like HAVE_FOO or SIZEOF_FOO have been made
3178 private or renamed with a more suitable public name.
3180 ** The macro SCM_TYP16S has been deprecated.
3182 This macro is not intended for public use.
3184 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_INEXACTP has been deprecated.
3186 Use scm_is_true (scm_inexact_p (...)) instead.
3188 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_REALP has been deprecated.
3190 Use scm_is_real instead.
3192 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_COMPLEXP has been deprecated.
3194 Use scm_is_complex instead.
3196 ** Some preprocessor defines have been deprecated.
3198 These defines indicated whether a certain feature was present in Guile
3199 or not. Going forward, assume that the features are always present.
3201 The macros are: USE_THREADS, GUILE_ISELECT, READER_EXTENSIONS,
3202 DEBUG_EXTENSIONS, DYNAMIC_LINKING.
3204 The following macros have been removed completely: MEMOIZE_LOCALS,
3205 SCM_RECKLESS, SCM_CAUTIOUS.
3207 ** The preprocessor define STACK_DIRECTION has been deprecated.
3209 There should be no need to know about the stack direction for ordinary
3212 ** New function: scm_effective_version
3214 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
3215 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
3216 to the distribution" above.
3218 ** The function scm_call_with_new_thread has a new prototype.
3220 Instead of taking a list with the thunk and handler, these two
3221 arguments are now passed directly:
3223 SCM scm_call_with_new_thread (SCM thunk, SCM handler);
3225 This is an incompatible change.
3227 ** New snarfer macro SCM_DEFINE_PUBLIC.
3229 This is like SCM_DEFINE, but also calls scm_c_export for the defined
3230 function in the init section.
3232 ** The snarfer macro SCM_SNARF_INIT is now officially supported.
3234 ** Garbage collector rewrite.
3236 The garbage collector is cleaned up a lot, and now uses lazy
3237 sweeping. This is reflected in the output of (gc-stats); since cells
3238 are being freed when they are allocated, the cells-allocated field
3239 stays roughly constant.
3241 For malloc related triggers, the behavior is changed. It uses the same
3242 heuristic as the cell-triggered collections. It may be tuned with the
3243 environment variables GUILE_MIN_YIELD_MALLOC. This is the percentage
3244 for minimum yield of malloc related triggers. The default is 40.
3245 GUILE_INIT_MALLOC_LIMIT sets the initial trigger for doing a GC. The
3248 Debugging operations for the freelist have been deprecated, along with
3249 the C variables that control garbage collection. The environment
3250 variables GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE, GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2,
3251 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1, and GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2 should be used.
3253 For understanding the memory usage of a GUILE program, the routine
3254 gc-live-object-stats returns an alist containing the number of live
3255 objects for every type.
3258 ** The function scm_definedp has been renamed to scm_defined_p
3260 The name scm_definedp is deprecated.
3262 ** The struct scm_cell type has been renamed to scm_t_cell
3264 This is in accordance to Guile's naming scheme for types. Note that
3265 the name scm_cell is now used for a function that allocates and
3266 initializes a new cell (see below).
3268 ** New functions for memory management
3270 A new set of functions for memory management has been added since the
3271 old way (scm_must_malloc, scm_must_free, etc) was error prone and
3272 indeed, Guile itself contained some long standing bugs that could
3273 cause aborts in long running programs.
3275 The new functions are more symmetrical and do not need cooperation
3276 from smob free routines, among other improvements.
3278 The new functions are scm_malloc, scm_realloc, scm_calloc, scm_strdup,
3279 scm_strndup, scm_gc_malloc, scm_gc_calloc, scm_gc_realloc,
3280 scm_gc_free, scm_gc_register_collectable_memory, and
3281 scm_gc_unregister_collectable_memory. Refer to the manual for more
3282 details and for upgrading instructions.
3284 The old functions for memory management have been deprecated. They
3285 are: scm_must_malloc, scm_must_realloc, scm_must_free,
3286 scm_must_strdup, scm_must_strndup, scm_done_malloc, scm_done_free.
3288 ** Declarations of exported features are marked with SCM_API.
3290 Every declaration of a feature that belongs to the exported Guile API
3291 has been marked by adding the macro "SCM_API" to the start of the
3292 declaration. This macro can expand into different things, the most
3293 common of which is just "extern" for Unix platforms. On Win32, it can
3294 be used to control which symbols are exported from a DLL.
3296 If you `#define SCM_IMPORT' before including <libguile.h>, SCM_API
3297 will expand into "__declspec (dllimport) extern", which is needed for
3298 linking to the Guile DLL in Windows.
3300 There are also SCM_RL_IMPORT, SCM_SRFI1314_IMPORT, and
3301 SCM_SRFI4_IMPORT, for the corresponding libraries.
3303 ** SCM_NEWCELL and SCM_NEWCELL2 have been deprecated.
3305 Use the new functions scm_cell and scm_double_cell instead. The old
3306 macros had problems because with them allocation and initialization
3307 was separated and the GC could sometimes observe half initialized
3308 cells. Only careful coding by the user of SCM_NEWCELL and
3309 SCM_NEWCELL2 could make this safe and efficient.
3311 ** CHECK_ENTRY, CHECK_APPLY and CHECK_EXIT have been deprecated.
3313 Use the variables scm_check_entry_p, scm_check_apply_p and scm_check_exit_p
3316 ** SRCBRKP has been deprecated.
3318 Use scm_c_source_property_breakpoint_p instead.
3320 ** Deprecated: scm_makmacro
3322 Change your code to use either scm_makmmacro or to define macros in
3323 Scheme, using 'define-macro'.
3325 ** New function scm_c_port_for_each.
3327 This function is like scm_port_for_each but takes a pointer to a C
3328 function as the callback instead of a SCM value.
3330 ** The names scm_internal_select, scm_thread_sleep, and
3331 scm_thread_usleep have been discouraged.
3333 Use scm_std_select, scm_std_sleep, scm_std_usleep instead.
3335 ** The GC can no longer be blocked.
3337 The global flags scm_gc_heap_lock and scm_block_gc have been removed.
3338 The GC can now run (partially) concurrently with other code and thus
3339 blocking it is not well defined.
3341 ** Many definitions have been removed that were previously deprecated.
3343 scm_lisp_nil, scm_lisp_t, s_nil_ify, scm_m_nil_ify, s_t_ify,
3344 scm_m_t_ify, s_0_cond, scm_m_0_cond, s_0_ify, scm_m_0_ify, s_1_ify,
3345 scm_m_1_ify, scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2,
3346 scm_tc16_allocated, SCM_SET_SYMBOL_HASH, SCM_IM_NIL_IFY, SCM_IM_T_IFY,
3347 SCM_IM_0_COND, SCM_IM_0_IFY, SCM_IM_1_IFY, SCM_GC_SET_ALLOCATED,
3348 scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL, SCM_INT_SIGNAL,
3349 SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL, SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL,
3350 SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD, SCM_ORD_SIG,
3351 SCM_NUM_SIGS, scm_top_level_lookup_closure_var,
3352 *top-level-lookup-closure*, scm_system_transformer, scm_eval_3,
3353 scm_eval2, root_module_lookup_closure, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
3354 SCM_RWSTRINGP, scm_read_only_string_p, scm_make_shared_substring,
3355 scm_tc7_substring, sym_huh, SCM_VARVCELL, SCM_UDVARIABLEP,
3356 SCM_DEFVARIABLEP, scm_mkbig, scm_big2inum, scm_adjbig, scm_normbig,
3357 scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl, SCM_FIXNUM_BIT,
3358 SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_SLOPPY_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET,
3359 SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_ROLENGTH,
3360 SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
3361 scm_sym2vcell, scm_intern, scm_intern0, scm_sysintern, scm_sysintern0,
3362 scm_sysintern0_no_module_lookup, scm_init_symbols_deprecated,
3363 scm_vector_set_length_x, scm_contregs, scm_debug_info,
3364 scm_debug_frame, SCM_DSIDEVAL, SCM_CONST_LONG, SCM_VCELL,
3365 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL, SCM_VCELL_INIT, SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL_INIT,
3366 SCM_HUGE_LENGTH, SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING,
3367 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY, SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY,
3368 SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, DIGITS, scm_small_istr2int, scm_istr2int,
3369 scm_istr2flo, scm_istring2number, scm_istr2int, scm_istr2flo,
3370 scm_istring2number, scm_vtable_index_vcell, scm_si_vcell, SCM_ECONSP,
3371 SCM_NECONSP, SCM_GLOC_VAR, SCM_GLOC_VAL, SCM_GLOC_SET_VAL,
3372 SCM_GLOC_VAL_LOC, scm_make_gloc, scm_gloc_p, scm_tc16_variable,
3373 SCM_CHARS, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH.
3375 * Changes to bundled modules
3379 Using the (ice-9 debug) module no longer automatically switches Guile
3380 to use the debugging evaluator. If you want to switch to the
3381 debugging evaluator (which is needed for backtrace information if you
3382 hit an error), please add an explicit "(debug-enable 'debug)" to your
3383 code just after the code to use (ice-9 debug).
3386 Changes since Guile 1.4:
3388 * Changes to the distribution
3390 ** A top-level TODO file is included.
3392 ** Guile now uses a versioning scheme similar to that of the Linux kernel.
3394 Guile now always uses three numbers to represent the version,
3395 i.e. "1.6.5". The first number, 1, is the major version number, the
3396 second number, 6, is the minor version number, and the third number,
3397 5, is the micro version number. Changes in major version number
3398 indicate major changes in Guile.
3400 Minor version numbers that are even denote stable releases, and odd
3401 minor version numbers denote development versions (which may be
3402 unstable). The micro version number indicates a minor sub-revision of
3403 a given MAJOR.MINOR release.
3405 In keeping with the new scheme, (minor-version) and scm_minor_version
3406 no longer return everything but the major version number. They now
3407 just return the minor version number. Two new functions
3408 (micro-version) and scm_micro_version have been added to report the
3409 micro version number.
3411 In addition, ./GUILE-VERSION now defines GUILE_MICRO_VERSION.
3413 ** New preprocessor definitions are available for checking versions.
3415 version.h now #defines SCM_MAJOR_VERSION, SCM_MINOR_VERSION, and
3416 SCM_MICRO_VERSION to the appropriate integer values.
3418 ** Guile now actively warns about deprecated features.
3420 The new configure option `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' and the
3421 environment variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED control this mechanism.
3422 See INSTALL and README for more information.
3424 ** Guile is much more likely to work on 64-bit architectures.
3426 Guile now compiles and passes "make check" with only two UNRESOLVED GC
3427 cases on Alpha and ia64 based machines now. Thanks to John Goerzen
3428 for the use of a test machine, and thanks to Stefan Jahn for ia64
3431 ** New functions: setitimer and getitimer.
3433 These implement a fairly direct interface to the libc functions of the
3436 ** The #. reader extension is now disabled by default.
3438 For safety reasons, #. evaluation is disabled by default. To
3439 re-enable it, set the fluid read-eval? to #t. For example:
3441 (fluid-set! read-eval? #t)
3443 but make sure you realize the potential security risks involved. With
3444 read-eval? enabled, reading a data file from an untrusted source can
3447 ** New SRFI modules have been added:
3449 SRFI-0 `cond-expand' is now supported in Guile, without requiring
3452 (srfi srfi-1) is a library containing many useful pair- and list-processing
3455 (srfi srfi-2) exports and-let*.
3457 (srfi srfi-4) implements homogeneous numeric vector datatypes.
3459 (srfi srfi-6) is a dummy module for now, since guile already provides
3460 all of the srfi-6 procedures by default: open-input-string,
3461 open-output-string, get-output-string.
3463 (srfi srfi-8) exports receive.
3465 (srfi srfi-9) exports define-record-type.
3467 (srfi srfi-10) exports define-reader-ctor and implements the reader
3470 (srfi srfi-11) exports let-values and let*-values.
3472 (srfi srfi-13) implements the SRFI String Library.
3474 (srfi srfi-14) implements the SRFI Character-Set Library.
3476 (srfi srfi-17) implements setter and getter-with-setter and redefines
3477 some accessor procedures as procedures with getters. (such as car,
3478 cdr, vector-ref etc.)
3480 (srfi srfi-19) implements the SRFI Time/Date Library.
3482 ** New scripts / "executable modules"
3484 Subdirectory "scripts" contains Scheme modules that are packaged to
3485 also be executable as scripts. At this time, these scripts are available:
3494 See README there for more info.
3496 These scripts can be invoked from the shell with the new program
3497 "guile-tools", which keeps track of installation directory for you.
3500 $ guile-tools display-commentary srfi/*.scm
3502 guile-tools is copied to the standard $bindir on "make install".
3504 ** New module (ice-9 stack-catch):
3506 stack-catch is like catch, but saves the current state of the stack in
3507 the fluid the-last-stack. This fluid can be useful when using the
3508 debugger and when re-throwing an error.
3510 ** The module (ice-9 and-let*) has been renamed to (ice-9 and-let-star)
3512 This has been done to prevent problems on lesser operating systems
3513 that can't tolerate `*'s in file names. The exported macro continues
3514 to be named `and-let*', of course.
3516 On systems that support it, there is also a compatibility module named
3517 (ice-9 and-let*). It will go away in the next release.
3519 ** New modules (oop goops) etc.:
3522 (oop goops describe)
3524 (oop goops active-slot)
3525 (oop goops composite-slot)
3527 The Guile Object Oriented Programming System (GOOPS) has been
3528 integrated into Guile. For further information, consult the GOOPS
3529 manual and tutorial in the `doc' directory.
3531 ** New module (ice-9 rdelim).
3533 This exports the following procedures which were previously defined
3534 in the default environment:
3536 read-line read-line! read-delimited read-delimited! %read-delimited!
3537 %read-line write-line
3539 For backwards compatibility the definitions are still imported into the
3540 default environment in this version of Guile. However you should add:
3542 (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim))
3544 to any program which uses the definitions, since this may change in
3547 Alternatively, if guile-scsh is installed, the (scsh rdelim) module
3548 can be used for similar functionality.
3550 ** New module (ice-9 rw)
3552 This is a subset of the (scsh rw) module from guile-scsh. Currently
3553 it defines two procedures:
3555 *** New function: read-string!/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
3557 Read characters from a port or file descriptor into a string STR.
3558 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
3559 fport. This procedure is scsh-compatible and can efficiently read
3562 *** New function: write-string/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
3564 Write characters from a string STR to a port or file descriptor.
3565 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
3566 fport. This procedure is mostly compatible and can efficiently
3567 write large strings.
3569 ** New module (ice-9 match)
3571 This module includes Andrew K. Wright's pattern matcher. See
3572 ice-9/match.scm for brief description or
3574 http://www.star-lab.com/wright/code.html
3576 for complete documentation.
3578 ** New module (ice-9 buffered-input)
3580 This module provides procedures to construct an input port from an
3581 underlying source of input that reads and returns its input in chunks.
3582 The underlying input source is a Scheme procedure, specified by the
3583 caller, which the port invokes whenever it needs more input.
3585 This is useful when building an input port whose back end is Readline
3586 or a UI element such as the GtkEntry widget.
3590 The reference and tutorial documentation that was previously
3591 distributed separately, as `guile-doc', is now included in the core
3592 Guile distribution. The documentation consists of the following
3595 - The Guile Tutorial (guile-tut.texi) contains a tutorial introduction
3598 - The Guile Reference Manual (guile.texi) contains (or is intended to
3599 contain) reference documentation on all aspects of Guile.
3601 - The GOOPS Manual (goops.texi) contains both tutorial-style and
3602 reference documentation for using GOOPS, Guile's Object Oriented
3605 - The Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
3608 See the README file in the `doc' directory for more details.
3610 ** There are a couple of examples in the examples/ directory now.
3612 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3614 ** New command line option `--use-srfi'
3616 Using this option, SRFI modules can be loaded on startup and be
3617 available right from the beginning. This makes programming portable
3618 Scheme programs easier.
3620 The option `--use-srfi' expects a comma-separated list of numbers,
3621 each representing a SRFI number to be loaded into the interpreter
3622 before starting evaluating a script file or the REPL. Additionally,
3623 the feature identifier for the loaded SRFIs is recognized by
3624 `cond-expand' when using this option.
3627 $ guile --use-srfi=8,13
3628 guile> (receive (x z) (values 1 2) (+ 1 2))
3630 guile> (string-pad "bla" 20)
3633 ** Guile now always starts up in the `(guile-user)' module.
3635 Previously, scripts executed via the `-s' option would run in the
3636 `(guile)' module and the repl would run in the `(guile-user)' module.
3637 Now every user action takes place in the `(guile-user)' module by
3640 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3642 ** Character classifiers work for non-ASCII characters.
3644 The predicates `char-alphabetic?', `char-numeric?',
3645 `char-whitespace?', `char-lower?', `char-upper?' and `char-is-both?'
3646 no longer check whether their arguments are ASCII characters.
3647 Previously, a character would only be considered alphabetic when it
3648 was also ASCII, for example.
3650 ** Previously deprecated Scheme functions have been removed:
3652 tag - no replacement.
3653 fseek - replaced by seek.
3654 list* - replaced by cons*.
3656 ** It's now possible to create modules with controlled environments
3660 (use-modules (ice-9 safe))
3661 (define m (make-safe-module))
3662 ;;; m will now be a module containing only a safe subset of R5RS
3663 (eval '(+ 1 2) m) --> 3
3664 (eval 'load m) --> ERROR: Unbound variable: load
3666 ** Evaluation of "()", the empty list, is now an error.
3668 Previously, the expression "()" evaluated to the empty list. This has
3669 been changed to signal a "missing expression" error. The correct way
3670 to write the empty list as a literal constant is to use quote: "'()".
3672 ** New concept of `Guile Extensions'.
3674 A Guile Extension is just a ordinary shared library that can be linked
3675 at run-time. We found it advantageous to give this simple concept a
3676 dedicated name to distinguish the issues related to shared libraries
3677 from the issues related to the module system.
3679 *** New function: load-extension
3681 Executing (load-extension lib init) is mostly equivalent to
3683 (dynamic-call init (dynamic-link lib))
3685 except when scm_register_extension has been called previously.
3686 Whenever appropriate, you should use `load-extension' instead of
3687 dynamic-link and dynamic-call.
3689 *** New C function: scm_c_register_extension
3691 This function registers a initialization function for use by
3692 `load-extension'. Use it when you don't want specific extensions to
3693 be loaded as shared libraries (for example on platforms that don't
3694 support dynamic linking).
3696 ** Auto-loading of compiled-code modules is deprecated.
3698 Guile used to be able to automatically find and link a shared
3699 library to satisfy requests for a module. For example, the module
3700 `(foo bar)' could be implemented by placing a shared library named
3701 "foo/libbar.so" (or with a different extension) in a directory on the
3704 This has been found to be too tricky, and is no longer supported. The
3705 shared libraries are now called "extensions". You should now write a
3706 small Scheme file that calls `load-extension' to load the shared
3707 library and initialize it explicitly.
3709 The shared libraries themselves should be installed in the usual
3710 places for shared libraries, with names like "libguile-foo-bar".
3712 For example, place this into a file "foo/bar.scm"
3714 (define-module (foo bar))
3716 (load-extension "libguile-foo-bar" "foobar_init")
3718 ** Backward incompatible change: eval EXP ENVIRONMENT-SPECIFIER
3720 `eval' is now R5RS, that is it takes two arguments.
3721 The second argument is an environment specifier, i.e. either
3723 (scheme-report-environment 5)
3724 (null-environment 5)
3725 (interaction-environment)
3731 ** The module system has been made more disciplined.
3733 The function `eval' will save and restore the current module around
3734 the evaluation of the specified expression. While this expression is
3735 evaluated, `(current-module)' will now return the right module, which
3736 is the module specified as the second argument to `eval'.
3738 A consequence of this change is that `eval' is not particularly
3739 useful when you want allow the evaluated code to change what module is
3740 designated as the current module and have this change persist from one
3741 call to `eval' to the next. The read-eval-print-loop is an example
3742 where `eval' is now inadequate. To compensate, there is a new
3743 function `primitive-eval' that does not take a module specifier and
3744 that does not save/restore the current module. You should use this
3745 function together with `set-current-module', `current-module', etc
3746 when you want to have more control over the state that is carried from
3747 one eval to the next.
3749 Additionally, it has been made sure that forms that are evaluated at
3750 the top level are always evaluated with respect to the current module.
3751 Previously, subforms of top-level forms such as `begin', `case',
3752 etc. did not respect changes to the current module although these
3753 subforms are at the top-level as well.
3755 To prevent strange behavior, the forms `define-module',
3756 `use-modules', `use-syntax', and `export' have been restricted to only
3757 work on the top level. The forms `define-public' and
3758 `defmacro-public' only export the new binding on the top level. They
3759 behave just like `define' and `defmacro', respectively, when they are
3760 used in a lexical environment.
3762 Also, `export' will no longer silently re-export bindings imported
3763 from a used module. It will emit a `deprecation' warning and will
3764 cease to perform any re-export in the next version. If you actually
3765 want to re-export bindings, use the new `re-export' in place of
3766 `export'. The new `re-export' will not make copies of variables when
3767 rexporting them, as `export' did wrongly.
3769 ** Module system now allows selection and renaming of imported bindings
3771 Previously, when using `use-modules' or the `#:use-module' clause in
3772 the `define-module' form, all the bindings (association of symbols to
3773 values) for imported modules were added to the "current module" on an
3774 as-is basis. This has been changed to allow finer control through two
3775 new facilities: selection and renaming.
3777 You can now select which of the imported module's bindings are to be
3778 visible in the current module by using the `:select' clause. This
3779 clause also can be used to rename individual bindings. For example:
3781 ;; import all bindings no questions asked
3782 (use-modules (ice-9 common-list))
3784 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them;
3785 ;; the current module sees: every some zonk-y zonk-n
3786 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
3788 (remove-if . zonk-y)
3789 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))))
3791 You can also programmatically rename all selected bindings using the
3792 `:renamer' clause, which specifies a proc that takes a symbol and
3793 returns another symbol. Because it is common practice to use a prefix,
3794 we now provide the convenience procedure `symbol-prefix-proc'. For
3797 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
3798 ;; and all four w/ prefix "CL:";
3799 ;; the current module sees: CL:every CL:some CL:zonk-y CL:zonk-n
3800 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
3802 (remove-if . zonk-y)
3803 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
3804 :renamer (symbol-prefix-proc 'CL:)))
3806 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
3807 ;; and all four by upcasing.
3808 ;; the current module sees: EVERY SOME ZONK-Y ZONK-N
3809 (define (upcase-symbol sym)
3810 (string->symbol (string-upcase (symbol->string sym))))
3812 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
3814 (remove-if . zonk-y)
3815 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
3816 :renamer upcase-symbol))
3818 Note that programmatic renaming is done *after* individual renaming.
3819 Also, the above examples show `use-modules', but the same facilities are
3820 available for the `#:use-module' clause of `define-module'.
3822 See manual for more info.
3824 ** The semantics of guardians have changed.
3826 The changes are for the most part compatible. An important criterion
3827 was to keep the typical usage of guardians as simple as before, but to
3828 make the semantics safer and (as a result) more useful.
3830 *** All objects returned from guardians are now properly alive.
3832 It is now guaranteed that any object referenced by an object returned
3833 from a guardian is alive. It's now impossible for a guardian to
3834 return a "contained" object before its "containing" object.
3836 One incompatible (but probably not very important) change resulting
3837 from this is that it is no longer possible to guard objects that
3838 indirectly reference themselves (i.e. are parts of cycles). If you do
3839 so accidentally, you'll get a warning.
3841 *** There are now two types of guardians: greedy and sharing.
3843 If you call (make-guardian #t) or just (make-guardian), you'll get a
3844 greedy guardian, and for (make-guardian #f) a sharing guardian.
3846 Greedy guardians are the default because they are more "defensive".
3847 You can only greedily guard an object once. If you guard an object
3848 more than once, once in a greedy guardian and the rest of times in
3849 sharing guardians, then it is guaranteed that the object won't be
3850 returned from sharing guardians as long as it is greedily guarded
3853 Guardians returned by calls to `make-guardian' can now take one more
3854 optional parameter, which says whether to throw an error in case an
3855 attempt is made to greedily guard an object that is already greedily
3856 guarded. The default is true, i.e. throw an error. If the parameter
3857 is false, the guardian invocation returns #t if guarding was
3858 successful and #f if it wasn't.
3860 Also, since greedy guarding is, in effect, a side-effecting operation
3861 on objects, a new function is introduced: `destroy-guardian!'.
3862 Invoking this function on a guardian renders it unoperative and, if
3863 the guardian is greedy, clears the "greedily guarded" property of the
3864 objects that were guarded by it, thus undoing the side effect.
3866 Note that all this hair is hardly very important, since guardian
3867 objects are usually permanent.
3869 ** Continuations created by call-with-current-continuation now accept
3870 any number of arguments, as required by R5RS.
3872 ** New function `issue-deprecation-warning'
3874 This function is used to display the deprecation messages that are
3875 controlled by GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION as explained in the README.
3878 (issue-deprecation-warning "`id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.")
3882 ;; `id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.
3887 ** New syntax `begin-deprecated'
3889 When deprecated features are included (as determined by the configure
3890 option --enable-deprecated), `begin-deprecated' is identical to
3891 `begin'. When deprecated features are excluded, it always evaluates
3892 to `#f', ignoring the body forms.
3894 ** New function `make-object-property'
3896 This function returns a new `procedure with setter' P that can be used
3897 to attach a property to objects. When calling P as
3901 where `obj' is any kind of object, it attaches `val' to `obj' in such
3902 a way that it can be retrieved by calling P as
3906 This function will replace procedure properties, symbol properties and
3907 source properties eventually.
3909 ** Module (ice-9 optargs) now uses keywords instead of `#&'.
3911 Instead of #&optional, #&key, etc you should now use #:optional,
3912 #:key, etc. Since #:optional is a keyword, you can write it as just
3913 :optional when (read-set! keywords 'prefix) is active.
3915 The old reader syntax `#&' is still supported, but deprecated. It
3916 will be removed in the next release.
3918 ** New define-module option: pure
3920 Tells the module system not to include any bindings from the root
3925 (define-module (totally-empty-module)
3928 ** New define-module option: export NAME1 ...
3930 Export names NAME1 ...
3932 This option is required if you want to be able to export bindings from
3933 a module which doesn't import one of `define-public' or `export'.
3937 (define-module (foo)
3939 :use-module (ice-9 r5rs)
3942 ;;; Note that we're pure R5RS below this point!
3947 ** New function: object->string OBJ
3949 Return a Scheme string obtained by printing a given object.
3951 ** New function: port? X
3953 Returns a boolean indicating whether X is a port. Equivalent to
3954 `(or (input-port? X) (output-port? X))'.
3956 ** New function: file-port?
3958 Determines whether a given object is a port that is related to a file.
3960 ** New function: port-for-each proc
3962 Apply PROC to each port in the Guile port table in turn. The return
3963 value is unspecified. More specifically, PROC is applied exactly once
3964 to every port that exists in the system at the time PORT-FOR-EACH is
3965 invoked. Changes to the port table while PORT-FOR-EACH is running
3966 have no effect as far as PORT-FOR-EACH is concerned.
3968 ** New function: dup2 oldfd newfd
3970 A simple wrapper for the `dup2' system call. Copies the file
3971 descriptor OLDFD to descriptor number NEWFD, replacing the
3972 previous meaning of NEWFD. Both OLDFD and NEWFD must be integers.
3973 Unlike for dup->fdes or primitive-move->fdes, no attempt is made
3974 to move away ports which are using NEWFD. The return value is
3977 ** New function: close-fdes fd
3979 A simple wrapper for the `close' system call. Close file
3980 descriptor FD, which must be an integer. Unlike close (*note
3981 close: Ports and File Descriptors.), the file descriptor will be
3982 closed even if a port is using it. The return value is
3985 ** New function: crypt password salt
3987 Encrypts `password' using the standard unix password encryption
3990 ** New function: chroot path
3992 Change the root directory of the running process to `path'.
3994 ** New functions: getlogin, cuserid
3996 Return the login name or the user name of the current effective user
3999 ** New functions: getpriority which who, setpriority which who prio
4001 Get or set the priority of the running process.
4003 ** New function: getpass prompt
4005 Read a password from the terminal, first displaying `prompt' and
4008 ** New function: flock file operation
4010 Set/remove an advisory shared or exclusive lock on `file'.
4012 ** New functions: sethostname name, gethostname
4014 Set or get the hostname of the machine the current process is running
4017 ** New function: mkstemp! tmpl
4019 mkstemp creates a new unique file in the file system and returns a
4020 new buffered port open for reading and writing to the file. TMPL
4021 is a string specifying where the file should be created: it must
4022 end with `XXXXXX' and will be changed in place to return the name
4023 of the temporary file.
4025 ** New function: open-input-string string
4027 Return an input string port which delivers the characters from
4028 `string'. This procedure, together with `open-output-string' and
4029 `get-output-string' implements SRFI-6.
4031 ** New function: open-output-string
4033 Return an output string port which collects all data written to it.
4034 The data can then be retrieved by `get-output-string'.
4036 ** New function: get-output-string
4038 Return the contents of an output string port.
4040 ** New function: identity
4042 Return the argument.
4044 ** socket, connect, accept etc., now have support for IPv6. IPv6 addresses
4045 are represented in Scheme as integers with normal host byte ordering.
4047 ** New function: inet-pton family address
4049 Convert a printable string network address into an integer. Note that
4050 unlike the C version of this function, the result is an integer with
4051 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
4054 (inet-pton AF_INET "127.0.0.1") => 2130706433
4055 (inet-pton AF_INET6 "::1") => 1
4057 ** New function: inet-ntop family address
4059 Convert an integer network address into a printable string. Note that
4060 unlike the C version of this function, the input is an integer with
4061 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
4064 (inet-ntop AF_INET 2130706433) => "127.0.0.1"
4065 (inet-ntop AF_INET6 (- (expt 2 128) 1)) =>
4066 ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
4070 Use `identity' instead.
4076 ** Deprecated: return-it
4080 ** Deprecated: string-character-length
4082 Use `string-length' instead.
4084 ** Deprecated: flags
4086 Use `logior' instead.
4088 ** Deprecated: close-all-ports-except.
4090 This was intended for closing ports in a child process after a fork,
4091 but it has the undesirable side effect of flushing buffers.
4092 port-for-each is more flexible.
4094 ** The (ice-9 popen) module now attempts to set up file descriptors in
4095 the child process from the current Scheme ports, instead of using the
4096 current values of file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 in the parent process.
4098 ** Removed function: builtin-weak-bindings
4100 There is no such concept as a weak binding any more.
4102 ** Removed constants: bignum-radix, scm-line-incrementors
4104 ** define-method: New syntax mandatory.
4106 The new method syntax is now mandatory:
4108 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ...) BODY ...)
4109 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ... . REST-ARG) BODY ...)
4111 ARG-SPEC ::= ARG-NAME | (ARG-NAME TYPE)
4112 REST-ARG ::= ARG-NAME
4114 If you have old code using the old syntax, import
4115 (oop goops old-define-method) before (oop goops) as in:
4117 (use-modules (oop goops old-define-method) (oop goops))
4119 ** Deprecated function: builtin-variable
4120 Removed function: builtin-bindings
4122 There is no longer a distinction between builtin or other variables.
4123 Use module system operations for all variables.
4125 ** Lazy-catch handlers are no longer allowed to return.
4127 That is, a call to `throw', `error', etc is now guaranteed to not
4130 ** Bugfixes for (ice-9 getopt-long)
4132 This module is now tested using test-suite/tests/getopt-long.test.
4133 The following bugs have been fixed:
4135 *** Parsing for options that are specified to have `optional' args now checks
4136 if the next element is an option instead of unconditionally taking it as the
4139 *** An error is now thrown for `--opt=val' when the option description
4140 does not specify `(value #t)' or `(value optional)'. This condition used to
4141 be accepted w/o error, contrary to the documentation.
4143 *** The error message for unrecognized options is now more informative.
4144 It used to be "not a record", an artifact of the implementation.
4146 *** The error message for `--opt' terminating the arg list (no value), when
4147 `(value #t)' is specified, is now more informative. It used to be "not enough
4150 *** "Clumped" single-char args now preserve trailing string, use it as arg.
4151 The expansion used to be like so:
4153 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "--xyz")
4155 Note that the "5d" is dropped. Now it is like so:
4157 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "5d" "--xyz")
4159 This enables single-char options to have adjoining arguments as long as their
4160 constituent characters are not potential single-char options.
4162 ** (ice-9 session) procedure `arity' now works with (ice-9 optargs) `lambda*'
4164 The `lambda*' and derivative forms in (ice-9 optargs) now set a procedure
4165 property `arglist', which can be retrieved by `arity'. The result is that
4166 `arity' can give more detailed information than before:
4170 guile> (use-modules (ice-9 optargs))
4171 guile> (define* (foo #:optional a b c) a)
4173 0 or more arguments in `lambda*:G0'.
4178 3 optional arguments: `a', `b' and `c'.
4179 guile> (define* (bar a b #:key c d #:allow-other-keys) a)
4181 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 2 keyword arguments: `c'
4182 and `d', other keywords allowed.
4183 guile> (define* (baz a b #:optional c #:rest r) a)
4185 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 1 optional argument: `c',
4188 * Changes to the C interface
4190 ** Types have been renamed from scm_*_t to scm_t_*.
4192 This has been done for POSIX sake. It reserves identifiers ending
4193 with "_t". What a concept.
4195 The old names are still available with status `deprecated'.
4197 ** scm_t_bits (former scm_bits_t) is now a unsigned type.
4199 ** Deprecated features have been removed.
4203 SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP SCM_ICHRP, SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR
4204 SCM_SETJMPBUF SCM_NSTRINGP SCM_NRWSTRINGP SCM_NVECTORP SCM_DOUBLE_CELLP
4206 *** C Functions removed
4208 scm_sysmissing scm_tag scm_tc16_flo scm_tc_flo
4209 scm_fseek - replaced by scm_seek.
4210 gc-thunk - replaced by after-gc-hook.
4211 gh_int2scmb - replaced by gh_bool2scm.
4212 scm_tc_dblr - replaced by scm_tc16_real.
4213 scm_tc_dblc - replaced by scm_tc16_complex.
4214 scm_list_star - replaced by scm_cons_star.
4216 ** Deprecated: scm_makfromstr
4218 Use scm_mem2string instead.
4220 ** Deprecated: scm_make_shared_substring
4222 Explicit shared substrings will disappear from Guile.
4224 Instead, "normal" strings will be implemented using sharing
4225 internally, combined with a copy-on-write strategy.
4227 ** Deprecated: scm_read_only_string_p
4229 The concept of read-only strings will disappear in next release of
4232 ** Deprecated: scm_sloppy_memq, scm_sloppy_memv, scm_sloppy_member
4234 Instead, use scm_c_memq or scm_memq, scm_memv, scm_member.
4236 ** New functions: scm_call_0, scm_call_1, scm_call_2, scm_call_3
4238 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments. See "Fly
4239 Evaluation" in the manual.
4241 ** New functions: scm_apply_0, scm_apply_1, scm_apply_2, scm_apply_3
4243 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments and a list of
4244 further arguments. See "Fly Evaluation" in the manual.
4246 ** New functions: scm_list_1, scm_list_2, scm_list_3, scm_list_4, scm_list_5
4248 Create a list of the given number of elements. See "List
4249 Constructors" in the manual.
4251 ** Renamed function: scm_listify has been replaced by scm_list_n.
4253 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_LIST0, SCM_LIST1, SCM_LIST2, SCM_LIST3, SCM_LIST4,
4254 SCM_LIST5, SCM_LIST6, SCM_LIST7, SCM_LIST8, SCM_LIST9.
4256 Use functions scm_list_N instead.
4258 ** New function: scm_c_read (SCM port, void *buffer, scm_sizet size)
4260 Used by an application to read arbitrary number of bytes from a port.
4261 Same semantics as libc read, except that scm_c_read only returns less
4262 than SIZE bytes if at end-of-file.
4264 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
4266 ** New function: scm_c_write (SCM port, const void *ptr, scm_sizet size)
4268 Used by an application to write arbitrary number of bytes to an SCM
4269 port. Similar semantics as libc write. However, unlike libc
4270 write, scm_c_write writes the requested number of bytes and has no
4273 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
4275 ** New function: scm_init_guile ()
4277 In contrast to scm_boot_guile, scm_init_guile will return normally
4278 after initializing Guile. It is not available on all systems, tho.
4280 ** New functions: scm_str2symbol, scm_mem2symbol
4282 The function scm_str2symbol takes a const char* pointing to a zero-terminated
4283 field of characters and creates a scheme symbol object from that C string.
4284 The function scm_mem2symbol takes a const char* and a number of characters and
4285 creates a symbol from the characters in that memory area.
4287 ** New functions: scm_primitive_make_property
4288 scm_primitive_property_ref
4289 scm_primitive_property_set_x
4290 scm_primitive_property_del_x
4292 These functions implement a new way to deal with object properties.
4293 See libguile/properties.c for their documentation.
4295 ** New function: scm_done_free (long size)
4297 This function is the inverse of scm_done_malloc. Use it to report the
4298 amount of smob memory you free. The previous method, which involved
4299 calling scm_done_malloc with negative argument, was somewhat
4300 unintuitive (and is still available, of course).
4302 ** New function: scm_c_memq (SCM obj, SCM list)
4304 This function provides a fast C level alternative for scm_memq for the case
4305 that the list parameter is known to be a proper list. The function is a
4306 replacement for scm_sloppy_memq, but is stricter in its requirements on its
4307 list input parameter, since for anything else but a proper list the function's
4308 behaviour is undefined - it may even crash or loop endlessly. Further, for
4309 the case that the object is not found in the list, scm_c_memq returns #f which
4310 is similar to scm_memq, but different from scm_sloppy_memq's behaviour.
4312 ** New functions: scm_remember_upto_here_1, scm_remember_upto_here_2,
4313 scm_remember_upto_here
4315 These functions replace the function scm_remember.
4317 ** Deprecated function: scm_remember
4319 Use one of the new functions scm_remember_upto_here_1,
4320 scm_remember_upto_here_2 or scm_remember_upto_here instead.
4322 ** New function: scm_allocate_string
4324 This function replaces the function scm_makstr.
4326 ** Deprecated function: scm_makstr
4328 Use the new function scm_allocate_string instead.
4330 ** New global variable scm_gc_running_p introduced.
4332 Use this variable to find out if garbage collection is being executed. Up to
4333 now applications have used scm_gc_heap_lock to test if garbage collection was
4334 running, which also works because of the fact that up to know only the garbage
4335 collector has set this variable. But, this is an implementation detail that
4336 may change. Further, scm_gc_heap_lock is not set throughout gc, thus the use
4337 of this variable is (and has been) not fully safe anyway.
4339 ** New macros: SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH
4341 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
4343 ** New macros: SCM_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_CCLO_LENGTH, SCM_STACK_LENGTH,
4344 SCM_STRING_LENGTH, SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
4345 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH.
4347 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH.
4349 ** New macros: SCM_SET_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH,
4350 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
4351 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH
4353 Use these instead of SCM_SETLENGTH
4355 ** New macros: SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_CCLO_BASE,
4356 SCM_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_COMPLEX_MEM,
4359 Use these instead of SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS, SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS or
4362 ** New macros: SCM_SET_BIGNUM_BASE, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS,
4363 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE,
4366 Use these instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
4368 ** New macro: SCM_BITVECTOR_P
4370 ** New macro: SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X
4372 Use instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
4374 ** New macros: SCM_DIR_OPEN_P, SCM_DIR_FLAG_OPEN
4376 For directory objects, use these instead of SCM_OPDIRP and SCM_OPN.
4378 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_OUTOFRANGE, SCM_NALLOC, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL,
4379 SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL,
4380 SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD,
4381 SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS, SCM_SYMBOL_SLOTS, SCM_SLOTS, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
4382 SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_FREEP, SCM_NFREEP, SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS,
4383 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY,
4384 SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_HUGE_LENGTH,
4385 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
4386 SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_RWSTRINGP, SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, SCM_ROCHARS,
4387 SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_GC8MARKP,
4388 SCM_SETGC8MARK, SCM_CLRGC8MARK, SCM_GCTYP16, SCM_GCCDR, SCM_SUBR_DOC,
4389 SCM_OPDIRP, SCM_VALIDATE_OPDIR, SCM_WTA, RETURN_SCM_WTA, SCM_CONST_LONG,
4390 SCM_WNA, SCM_FUNC_NAME, SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_COPY,
4391 SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_DEF_COPY, SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP, SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP,
4392 SCM_SETAND_CDR, SCM_SETOR_CDR, SCM_SETAND_CAR, SCM_SETOR_CAR
4394 Use SCM_ASSERT_RANGE or SCM_VALIDATE_XXX_RANGE instead of SCM_OUTOFRANGE.
4395 Use scm_memory_error instead of SCM_NALLOC.
4396 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP.
4397 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR.
4398 Use SCM_FREE_CELL_P instead of SCM_FREEP/SCM_NFREEP
4399 Use a type specific accessor macro instead of SCM_CHARS/SCM_UCHARS.
4400 Use a type specific accessor instead of SCM(_|_RO|_HUGE_)LENGTH.
4401 Use SCM_VALIDATE_(SYMBOL|STRING) instead of SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING.
4402 Use SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
4403 Use SCM_STRINGP or SCM_SYMBOLP instead of SCM_ROSTRINGP.
4404 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_RWSTRINGP.
4405 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING.
4406 Use SCM_STRING_CHARS instead of SCM_ROCHARS.
4407 Use SCM_STRING_UCHARS instead of SCM_ROUCHARS.
4408 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETLENGTH.
4409 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
4410 Use a type specific length macro instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
4411 Use SCM_GCMARKP instead of SCM_GC8MARKP.
4412 Use SCM_SETGCMARK instead of SCM_SETGC8MARK.
4413 Use SCM_CLRGCMARK instead of SCM_CLRGC8MARK.
4414 Use SCM_TYP16 instead of SCM_GCTYP16.
4415 Use SCM_CDR instead of SCM_GCCDR.
4416 Use SCM_DIR_OPEN_P instead of SCM_OPDIRP.
4417 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of SCM_WTA.
4418 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of RETURN_SCM_WTA.
4419 Use SCM_VCELL_INIT instead of SCM_CONST_LONG.
4420 Use SCM_WRONG_NUM_ARGS instead of SCM_WNA.
4421 Use SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP.
4422 Use !SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP.
4424 ** Removed function: scm_struct_init
4426 ** Removed variable: scm_symhash_dim
4428 ** Renamed function: scm_make_cont has been replaced by
4429 scm_make_continuation, which has a different interface.
4431 ** Deprecated function: scm_call_catching_errors
4433 Use scm_catch or scm_lazy_catch from throw.[ch] instead.
4435 ** Deprecated function: scm_strhash
4437 Use scm_string_hash instead.
4439 ** Deprecated function: scm_vector_set_length_x
4441 Instead, create a fresh vector of the desired size and copy the contents.
4443 ** scm_gensym has changed prototype
4445 scm_gensym now only takes one argument.
4447 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc7_ssymbol, scm_tc7_msymbol, scm_tcs_symbols,
4450 There is now only a single symbol type scm_tc7_symbol.
4451 The tag scm_tc7_lvector was not used anyway.
4453 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe, scm_set_smob_mfpe.
4455 Use scm_make_smob_type and scm_set_smob_XXX instead.
4457 ** New function scm_set_smob_apply.
4459 This can be used to set an apply function to a smob type.
4461 ** Deprecated function: scm_strprint_obj
4463 Use scm_object_to_string instead.
4465 ** Deprecated function: scm_wta
4467 Use scm_wrong_type_arg, or another appropriate error signalling function
4470 ** Explicit support for obarrays has been deprecated.
4472 Use `scm_str2symbol' and the generic hashtable functions instead.
4474 ** The concept of `vcells' has been deprecated.
4476 The data type `variable' is now used exclusively. `Vcells' have been
4477 a low-level concept so you are likely not affected by this change.
4479 *** Deprecated functions: scm_sym2vcell, scm_sysintern,
4480 scm_sysintern0, scm_symbol_value0, scm_intern, scm_intern0.
4482 Use scm_c_define or scm_c_lookup instead, as appropriate.
4484 *** New functions: scm_c_module_lookup, scm_c_lookup,
4485 scm_c_module_define, scm_c_define, scm_module_lookup, scm_lookup,
4486 scm_module_define, scm_define.
4488 These functions work with variables instead of with vcells.
4490 ** New functions for creating and defining `subr's and `gsubr's.
4492 The new functions more clearly distinguish between creating a subr (or
4493 gsubr) object and adding it to the current module.
4495 These new functions are available: scm_c_make_subr, scm_c_define_subr,
4496 scm_c_make_subr_with_generic, scm_c_define_subr_with_generic,
4497 scm_c_make_gsubr, scm_c_define_gsubr, scm_c_make_gsubr_with_generic,
4498 scm_c_define_gsubr_with_generic.
4500 ** Deprecated functions: scm_make_subr, scm_make_subr_opt,
4501 scm_make_subr_with_generic, scm_make_gsubr,
4502 scm_make_gsubr_with_generic.
4504 Use the new ones from above instead.
4506 ** C interface to the module system has changed.
4508 While we suggest that you avoid as many explicit module system
4509 operations from C as possible for the time being, the C interface has
4510 been made more similar to the high-level Scheme module system.
4512 *** New functions: scm_c_define_module, scm_c_use_module,
4513 scm_c_export, scm_c_resolve_module.
4515 They mostly work like their Scheme namesakes. scm_c_define_module
4516 takes a function that is called a context where the new module is
4519 *** Deprecated functions: scm_the_root_module, scm_make_module,
4520 scm_ensure_user_module, scm_load_scheme_module.
4522 Use the new functions instead.
4524 ** Renamed function: scm_internal_with_fluids becomes
4527 scm_internal_with_fluids is available as a deprecated function.
4529 ** New function: scm_c_with_fluid.
4531 Just like scm_c_with_fluids, but takes one fluid and one value instead
4534 ** Deprecated typedefs: long_long, ulong_long.
4536 They are of questionable utility and they pollute the global
4539 ** Deprecated typedef: scm_sizet
4541 It is of questionable utility now that Guile requires ANSI C, and is
4544 ** Deprecated typedefs: scm_port_rw_active, scm_port,
4545 scm_ptob_descriptor, scm_debug_info, scm_debug_frame, scm_fport,
4546 scm_option, scm_rstate, scm_rng, scm_array, scm_array_dim.
4548 Made more compliant with the naming policy by adding a _t at the end.
4550 ** Deprecated functions: scm_mkbig, scm_big2num, scm_adjbig,
4551 scm_normbig, scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl
4553 With the exception of the mysterious scm_2ulong2big, they are still
4554 available under new names (scm_i_mkbig etc). These functions are not
4555 intended to be used in user code. You should avoid dealing with
4556 bignums directly, and should deal with numbers in general (which can
4559 ** Change in behavior: scm_num2long, scm_num2ulong
4561 The scm_num2[u]long functions don't any longer accept an inexact
4562 argument. This change in behavior is motivated by concordance with
4563 R5RS: It is more common that a primitive doesn't want to accept an
4564 inexact for an exact.
4566 ** New functions: scm_short2num, scm_ushort2num, scm_int2num,
4567 scm_uint2num, scm_size2num, scm_ptrdiff2num, scm_num2short,
4568 scm_num2ushort, scm_num2int, scm_num2uint, scm_num2ptrdiff,
4571 These are conversion functions between the various ANSI C integral
4572 types and Scheme numbers. NOTE: The scm_num2xxx functions don't
4573 accept an inexact argument.
4575 ** New functions: scm_float2num, scm_double2num,
4576 scm_num2float, scm_num2double.
4578 These are conversion functions between the two ANSI C float types and
4581 ** New number validation macros:
4582 SCM_NUM2{SIZE,PTRDIFF,SHORT,USHORT,INT,UINT}[_DEF]
4586 ** New functions: scm_gc_protect_object, scm_gc_unprotect_object
4588 These are just nicer-named old scm_protect_object and
4589 scm_unprotect_object.
4591 ** Deprecated functions: scm_protect_object, scm_unprotect_object
4593 ** New functions: scm_gc_[un]register_root, scm_gc_[un]register_roots
4595 These functions can be used to register pointers to locations that
4598 ** Deprecated function: scm_create_hook.
4600 Its sins are: misleading name, non-modularity and lack of general
4604 Changes since Guile 1.3.4:
4606 * Changes to the distribution
4608 ** Trees from nightly snapshots and CVS now require you to run autogen.sh.
4610 We've changed the way we handle generated files in the Guile source
4611 repository. As a result, the procedure for building trees obtained
4612 from the nightly FTP snapshots or via CVS has changed:
4613 - You must have appropriate versions of autoconf, automake, and
4614 libtool installed on your system. See README for info on how to
4615 obtain these programs.
4616 - Before configuring the tree, you must first run the script
4617 `autogen.sh' at the top of the source tree.
4619 The Guile repository used to contain not only source files, written by
4620 humans, but also some generated files, like configure scripts and
4621 Makefile.in files. Even though the contents of these files could be
4622 derived mechanically from other files present, we thought it would
4623 make the tree easier to build if we checked them into CVS.
4625 However, this approach means that minor differences between
4626 developer's installed tools and habits affected the whole team.
4627 So we have removed the generated files from the repository, and
4628 added the autogen.sh script, which will reconstruct them
4632 ** configure now has experimental options to remove support for certain
4635 --disable-arrays omit array and uniform array support
4636 --disable-posix omit posix interfaces
4637 --disable-networking omit networking interfaces
4638 --disable-regex omit regular expression interfaces
4640 These are likely to become separate modules some day.
4642 ** New configure option --enable-debug-freelist
4644 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
4645 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
4647 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
4648 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
4650 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
4651 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
4653 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
4654 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can
4655 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
4656 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
4658 ** New configure option --enable-debug-malloc
4660 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
4664 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
4665 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
4667 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
4669 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
4670 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
4672 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
4673 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
4674 number of objects of that kind.
4676 ** All includes are now referenced relative to the root directory
4678 Since some users have had problems with mixups between Guile and
4679 system headers, we have decided to always refer to Guile headers via
4680 their parent directories. This essentially creates a "private name
4681 space" for Guile headers. This means that the compiler only is given
4682 -I options for the root build and root source directory.
4684 ** Header files kw.h and genio.h have been removed.
4686 ** The module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) has been removed.
4688 ** New module (ice-9 documentation)
4690 Implements the interface to documentation strings associated with
4693 ** New module (ice-9 time)
4695 Provides a macro `time', which displays execution time of a given form.
4697 ** New module (ice-9 history)
4699 Loading this module enables value history in the repl.
4701 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
4703 ** New command line option --debug
4705 Start Guile with debugging evaluator and backtraces enabled.
4707 This is useful when debugging your .guile init file or scripts.
4709 ** New help facility
4711 Usage: (help NAME) gives documentation about objects named NAME (a symbol)
4712 (help REGEXP) ditto for objects with names matching REGEXP (a string)
4713 (help 'NAME) gives documentation for NAME, even if it is not an object
4714 (help ,EXPR) gives documentation for object returned by EXPR
4715 (help (my module)) gives module commentary for `(my module)'
4716 (help) gives this text
4718 `help' searches among bindings exported from loaded modules, while
4719 `apropos' searches among bindings visible from the "current" module.
4721 Examples: (help help)
4723 (help "output-string")
4725 ** `help' and `apropos' now prints full module names
4727 ** Dynamic linking now uses libltdl from the libtool package.
4729 The old system dependent code for doing dynamic linking has been
4730 replaced with calls to the libltdl functions which do all the hairy
4733 The major improvement is that you can now directly pass libtool
4734 library names like "libfoo.la" to `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-link'
4735 will be able to do the best shared library job you can get, via
4738 The way dynamic libraries are found has changed and is not really
4739 portable across platforms, probably. It is therefore recommended to
4740 use absolute filenames when possible.
4742 If you pass a filename without an extension to `dynamic-link', it will
4743 try a few appropriate ones. Thus, the most platform ignorant way is
4744 to specify a name like "libfoo", without any directories and
4747 ** Guile COOP threads are now compatible with LinuxThreads
4749 Previously, COOP threading wasn't possible in applications linked with
4750 Linux POSIX threads due to their use of the stack pointer to find the
4751 thread context. This has now been fixed with a workaround which uses
4752 the pthreads to allocate the stack.
4754 ** New primitives: `pkgdata-dir', `site-dir', `library-dir'
4756 ** Positions of erring expression in scripts
4758 With version 1.3.4, the location of the erring expression in Guile
4759 scipts is no longer automatically reported. (This should have been
4760 documented before the 1.3.4 release.)
4762 You can get this information by enabling recording of positions of
4763 source expressions and running the debugging evaluator. Put this at
4764 the top of your script (or in your "site" file):
4766 (read-enable 'positions)
4767 (debug-enable 'debug)
4769 ** Backtraces in scripts
4771 It is now possible to get backtraces in scripts.
4775 (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
4777 at the top of the script.
4779 (The first options enables the debugging evaluator.
4780 The second enables backtraces.)
4782 ** Part of module system symbol lookup now implemented in C
4784 The eval closure of most modules is now implemented in C. Since this
4785 was one of the bottlenecks for loading speed, Guile now loads code
4786 substantially faster than before.
4788 ** Attempting to get the value of an unbound variable now produces
4789 an exception with a key of 'unbound-variable instead of 'misc-error.
4791 ** The initial default output port is now unbuffered if it's using a
4792 tty device. Previously in this situation it was line-buffered.
4794 ** New hook: after-gc-hook
4796 after-gc-hook takes over the role of gc-thunk. This hook is run at
4797 the first SCM_TICK after a GC. (Thus, the code is run at the same
4798 point during evaluation as signal handlers.)
4800 Note that this hook should be used only for diagnostic and debugging
4801 purposes. It is not certain that it will continue to be well-defined
4802 when this hook is run in the future.
4804 C programmers: Note the new C level hooks scm_before_gc_c_hook,
4805 scm_before_sweep_c_hook, scm_after_gc_c_hook.
4807 ** Improvements to garbage collector
4809 Guile 1.4 has a new policy for triggering heap allocation and
4810 determining the sizes of heap segments. It fixes a number of problems
4813 1. The new policy can handle two separate pools of cells
4814 (2-word/4-word) better. (The old policy would run wild, allocating
4815 more and more memory for certain programs.)
4817 2. The old code would sometimes allocate far too much heap so that the
4818 Guile process became gigantic. The new code avoids this.
4820 3. The old code would sometimes allocate too little so that few cells
4821 were freed at GC so that, in turn, too much time was spent in GC.
4823 4. The old code would often trigger heap allocation several times in a
4824 row. (The new scheme predicts how large the segments needs to be
4825 in order not to need further allocation.)
4827 All in all, the new GC policy will make larger applications more
4830 The new GC scheme also is prepared for POSIX threading. Threads can
4831 allocate private pools of cells ("clusters") with just a single
4832 function call. Allocation of single cells from such a cluster can
4833 then proceed without any need of inter-thread synchronization.
4835 ** New environment variables controlling GC parameters
4837 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE Maximal segment size
4840 Allocation of 2-word cell heaps:
4842 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1 Size of initial heap segment in bytes
4845 GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1 Minimum number of freed cells at each
4846 GC in percent of total heap size
4849 Allocation of 4-word cell heaps
4850 (used for real numbers and misc other objects):
4852 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2
4854 (See entry "Way for application to customize GC parameters" under
4855 section "Changes to the scm_ interface" below.)
4857 ** Guile now implements reals using 4-word cells
4859 This speeds up computation with reals. (They were earlier allocated
4860 with `malloc'.) There is still some room for optimizations, however.
4862 ** Some further steps toward POSIX thread support have been taken
4864 *** Guile's critical sections (SCM_DEFER/ALLOW_INTS)
4865 don't have much effect any longer, and many of them will be removed in
4869 are only handled at the top of the evaluator loop, immediately after
4870 I/O, and in scm_equalp.
4872 *** The GC can allocate thread private pools of pairs.
4874 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
4876 ** close-input-port and close-output-port are now R5RS
4878 These procedures have been turned into primitives and have R5RS behaviour.
4880 ** New procedure: simple-format PORT MESSAGE ARG1 ...
4882 (ice-9 boot) makes `format' an alias for `simple-format' until possibly
4883 extended by the more sophisticated version in (ice-9 format)
4885 (simple-format port message . args)
4886 Write MESSAGE to DESTINATION, defaulting to `current-output-port'.
4887 MESSAGE can contain ~A (was %s) and ~S (was %S) escapes. When printed,
4888 the escapes are replaced with corresponding members of ARGS:
4889 ~A formats using `display' and ~S formats using `write'.
4890 If DESTINATION is #t, then use the `current-output-port',
4891 if DESTINATION is #f, then return a string containing the formatted text.
4892 Does not add a trailing newline."
4894 ** string-ref: the second argument is no longer optional.
4896 ** string, list->string: no longer accept strings in their arguments,
4897 only characters, for compatibility with R5RS.
4899 ** New procedure: port-closed? PORT
4900 Returns #t if PORT is closed or #f if it is open.
4902 ** Deprecated: list*
4904 The list* functionality is now provided by cons* (SRFI-1 compliant)
4906 ** New procedure: cons* ARG1 ARG2 ... ARGn
4908 Like `list', but the last arg provides the tail of the constructed list,
4909 returning (cons ARG1 (cons ARG2 (cons ... ARGn))).
4911 Requires at least one argument. If given one argument, that argument
4912 is returned as result.
4914 This function is called `list*' in some other Schemes and in Common LISP.
4916 ** Removed deprecated: serial-map, serial-array-copy!, serial-array-map!
4918 ** New procedure: object-documentation OBJECT
4920 Returns the documentation string associated with OBJECT. The
4921 procedure uses a caching mechanism so that subsequent lookups are
4924 Exported by (ice-9 documentation).
4926 ** module-name now returns full names of modules
4928 Previously, only the last part of the name was returned (`session' for
4929 `(ice-9 session)'). Ex: `(ice-9 session)'.
4931 * Changes to the gh_ interface
4933 ** Deprecated: gh_int2scmb
4935 Use gh_bool2scm instead.
4937 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4939 ** Guile primitives now carry docstrings!
4941 Thanks to Greg Badros!
4943 ** Guile primitives are defined in a new way: SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
4945 Now Guile primitives are defined using the SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
4946 macros and must contain a docstring that is extracted into foo.doc using a new
4947 guile-doc-snarf script (that uses guile-doc-snarf.awk).
4949 However, a major overhaul of these macros is scheduled for the next release of
4952 ** Guile primitives use a new technique for validation of arguments
4954 SCM_VALIDATE_* macros are defined to ease the redundancy and improve
4955 the readability of argument checking.
4957 ** All (nearly?) K&R prototypes for functions replaced with ANSI C equivalents.
4959 ** New macros: SCM_PACK, SCM_UNPACK
4961 Compose/decompose an SCM value.
4963 The SCM type is now treated as an abstract data type and may be defined as a
4964 long, a void* or as a struct, depending on the architecture and compile time
4965 options. This makes it easier to find several types of bugs, for example when
4966 SCM values are treated as integers without conversion. Values of the SCM type
4967 should be treated as "atomic" values. These macros are used when
4968 composing/decomposing an SCM value, either because you want to access
4969 individual bits, or because you want to treat it as an integer value.
4971 E.g., in order to set bit 7 in an SCM value x, use the expression
4973 SCM_PACK (SCM_UNPACK (x) | 0x80)
4975 ** The name property of hooks is deprecated.
4976 Thus, the use of SCM_HOOK_NAME and scm_make_hook_with_name is deprecated.
4978 You can emulate this feature by using object properties.
4980 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP, SCM_CRDY, SCM_ICHRP,
4981 SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR, SCM_SETJMPBUF, SCM_NSTRINGP, SCM_NRWSTRINGP,
4984 These macros will be removed in a future release of Guile.
4986 ** The following types, functions and macros from numbers.h are deprecated:
4987 scm_dblproc, SCM_UNEGFIXABLE, SCM_FLOBUFLEN, SCM_INEXP, SCM_CPLXP, SCM_REAL,
4988 SCM_IMAG, SCM_REALPART, scm_makdbl, SCM_SINGP, SCM_NUM2DBL, SCM_NO_BIGDIG
4990 ** Port internals: the rw_random variable in the scm_port structure
4991 must be set to non-zero in any random access port. In recent Guile
4992 releases it was only set for bidirectional random-access ports.
4994 ** Port internals: the seek ptob procedure is now responsible for
4995 resetting the buffers if required. The change was made so that in the
4996 special case of reading the current position (i.e., seek p 0 SEEK_CUR)
4997 the fport and strport ptobs can avoid resetting the buffers,
4998 in particular to avoid discarding unread chars. An existing port
4999 type can be fixed by adding something like the following to the
5000 beginning of the ptob seek procedure:
5002 if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_READ)
5003 scm_end_input (object);
5004 else if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_WRITE)
5005 ptob->flush (object);
5007 although to actually avoid resetting the buffers and discard unread
5008 chars requires further hacking that depends on the characteristics
5011 ** Deprecated functions: scm_fseek, scm_tag
5013 These functions are no longer used and will be removed in a future version.
5015 ** The scm_sysmissing procedure is no longer used in libguile.
5016 Unless it turns out to be unexpectedly useful to somebody, it will be
5017 removed in a future version.
5019 ** The format of error message strings has changed
5021 The two C procedures: scm_display_error and scm_error, as well as the
5022 primitive `scm-error', now use scm_simple_format to do their work.
5023 This means that the message strings of all code must be updated to use
5024 ~A where %s was used before, and ~S where %S was used before.
5026 During the period when there still are a lot of old Guiles out there,
5027 you might want to support both old and new versions of Guile.
5029 There are basically two methods to achieve this. Both methods use
5032 AC_CHECK_FUNCS(scm_simple_format)
5034 in your configure.in.
5036 Method 1: Use the string concatenation features of ANSI C's
5041 #ifdef HAVE_SCM_SIMPLE_FORMAT
5047 Then represent each of your error messages using a preprocessor macro:
5049 #define E_SPIDER_ERROR "There's a spider in your " ## FMT_S ## "!!!"
5053 (define fmt-s (if (defined? 'simple-format) "~S" "%S"))
5054 (define make-message string-append)
5056 (define e-spider-error (make-message "There's a spider in your " fmt-s "!!!"))
5058 Method 2: Use the oldfmt function found in doc/oldfmt.c.
5062 scm_misc_error ("picnic", scm_c_oldfmt0 ("There's a spider in your ~S!!!"),
5067 (scm-error 'misc-error "picnic" (oldfmt "There's a spider in your ~S!!!")
5071 ** Deprecated: coop_mutex_init, coop_condition_variable_init
5073 Don't use the functions coop_mutex_init and
5074 coop_condition_variable_init. They will change.
5076 Use scm_mutex_init and scm_cond_init instead.
5078 ** New function: int scm_cond_timedwait (scm_cond_t *COND, scm_mutex_t *MUTEX, const struct timespec *ABSTIME)
5079 `scm_cond_timedwait' atomically unlocks MUTEX and waits on
5080 COND, as `scm_cond_wait' does, but it also bounds the duration
5081 of the wait. If COND has not been signaled before time ABSTIME,
5082 the mutex MUTEX is re-acquired and `scm_cond_timedwait'
5083 returns the error code `ETIMEDOUT'.
5085 The ABSTIME parameter specifies an absolute time, with the same
5086 origin as `time' and `gettimeofday': an ABSTIME of 0 corresponds
5087 to 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970.
5089 ** New function: scm_cond_broadcast (scm_cond_t *COND)
5090 `scm_cond_broadcast' restarts all the threads that are waiting
5091 on the condition variable COND. Nothing happens if no threads are
5094 ** New function: scm_key_create (scm_key_t *KEY, void (*destr_function) (void *))
5095 `scm_key_create' allocates a new TSD key. The key is stored in
5096 the location pointed to by KEY. There is no limit on the number
5097 of keys allocated at a given time. The value initially associated
5098 with the returned key is `NULL' in all currently executing threads.
5100 The DESTR_FUNCTION argument, if not `NULL', specifies a destructor
5101 function associated with the key. When a thread terminates,
5102 DESTR_FUNCTION is called on the value associated with the key in
5103 that thread. The DESTR_FUNCTION is not called if a key is deleted
5104 with `scm_key_delete' or a value is changed with
5105 `scm_setspecific'. The order in which destructor functions are
5106 called at thread termination time is unspecified.
5108 Destructors are not yet implemented.
5110 ** New function: scm_setspecific (scm_key_t KEY, const void *POINTER)
5111 `scm_setspecific' changes the value associated with KEY in the
5112 calling thread, storing the given POINTER instead.
5114 ** New function: scm_getspecific (scm_key_t KEY)
5115 `scm_getspecific' returns the value currently associated with
5116 KEY in the calling thread.
5118 ** New function: scm_key_delete (scm_key_t KEY)
5119 `scm_key_delete' deallocates a TSD key. It does not check
5120 whether non-`NULL' values are associated with that key in the
5121 currently executing threads, nor call the destructor function
5122 associated with the key.
5124 ** New function: scm_c_hook_init (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *HOOK_DATA, scm_c_hook_type_t TYPE)
5126 Initialize a C level hook HOOK with associated HOOK_DATA and type
5127 TYPE. (See scm_c_hook_run ().)
5129 ** New function: scm_c_hook_add (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA, int APPENDP)
5131 Add hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA to HOOK. If APPENDP
5132 is true, add it last, otherwise first. The same FUNC can be added
5133 multiple times if FUNC_DATA differ and vice versa.
5135 ** New function: scm_c_hook_remove (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA)
5137 Remove hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA from HOOK. A
5138 function is only removed if both FUNC and FUNC_DATA matches.
5140 ** New function: void *scm_c_hook_run (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *DATA)
5142 Run hook HOOK passing DATA to the hook functions.
5144 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_NORMAL, all hook functions are run. The value
5145 returned is undefined.
5147 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_OR, hook functions are run until a function
5148 returns a non-NULL value. This value is returned as the result of
5149 scm_c_hook_run. If all functions return NULL, NULL is returned.
5151 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_AND, hook functions are run until a function
5152 returns a NULL value, and NULL is returned. If all functions returns
5153 a non-NULL value, the last value is returned.
5155 ** New C level GC hooks
5157 Five new C level hooks has been added to the garbage collector.
5159 scm_before_gc_c_hook
5162 are run before locking and after unlocking the heap. The system is
5163 thus in a mode where evaluation can take place. (Except that
5164 scm_before_gc_c_hook must not allocate new cells.)
5166 scm_before_mark_c_hook
5167 scm_before_sweep_c_hook
5168 scm_after_sweep_c_hook
5170 are run when the heap is locked. These are intended for extension of
5171 the GC in a modular fashion. Examples are the weaks and guardians
5174 ** Way for application to customize GC parameters
5176 The application can set up other default values for the GC heap
5177 allocation parameters
5179 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_1, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1,
5180 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2,
5181 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE,
5185 scm_default_init_heap_size_1, scm_default_min_yield_1,
5186 scm_default_init_heap_size_2, scm_default_min_yield_2,
5187 scm_default_max_segment_size
5189 respectively before callong scm_boot_guile.
5191 (See entry "New environment variables ..." in section
5192 "Changes to the stand-alone interpreter" above.)
5194 ** scm_protect_object/scm_unprotect_object now nest
5196 This means that you can call scm_protect_object multiple times on an
5197 object and count on the object being protected until
5198 scm_unprotect_object has been call the same number of times.
5200 The functions also have better time complexity.
5202 Still, it is usually possible to structure the application in a way
5203 that you don't need to use these functions. For example, if you use a
5204 protected standard Guile list to keep track of live objects rather
5205 than some custom data type, objects will die a natural death when they
5206 are no longer needed.
5208 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc16_flo, scm_tc_flo, scm_tc_dblr, scm_tc_dblc
5210 Guile does not provide the float representation for inexact real numbers any
5211 more. Now, only doubles are used to represent inexact real numbers. Further,
5212 the tag names scm_tc_dblr and scm_tc_dblc have been changed to scm_tc16_real
5213 and scm_tc16_complex, respectively.
5215 ** Removed deprecated type scm_smobfuns
5217 ** Removed deprecated function scm_newsmob
5219 ** Warning: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe might become deprecated in a future release
5221 There is an ongoing discussion among the developers whether to
5222 deprecate `scm_make_smob_type_mfpe' or not. Please use the current
5223 standard interface (scm_make_smob_type, scm_set_smob_XXX) in new code
5224 until this issue has been settled.
5226 ** Removed deprecated type tag scm_tc16_kw
5228 ** Added type tag scm_tc16_keyword
5230 (This was introduced already in release 1.3.4 but was not documented
5233 ** gdb_print now prints "*** Guile not initialized ***" until Guile initialized
5235 * Changes to system call interfaces:
5237 ** The "select" procedure now tests port buffers for the ability to
5238 provide input or accept output. Previously only the underlying file
5239 descriptors were checked.
5241 ** New variable PIPE_BUF: the maximum number of bytes that can be
5242 atomically written to a pipe.
5244 ** If a facility is not available on the system when Guile is
5245 compiled, the corresponding primitive procedure will not be defined.
5246 Previously it would have been defined but would throw a system-error
5247 exception if called. Exception handlers which catch this case may
5248 need minor modification: an error will be thrown with key
5249 'unbound-variable instead of 'system-error. Alternatively it's
5250 now possible to use `defined?' to check whether the facility is
5253 ** Procedures which depend on the timezone should now give the correct
5254 result on systems which cache the TZ environment variable, even if TZ
5255 is changed without calling tzset.
5257 * Changes to the networking interfaces:
5259 ** New functions: htons, ntohs, htonl, ntohl: for converting short and
5260 long integers between network and host format. For now, it's not
5261 particularly convenient to do this kind of thing, but consider:
5263 (define write-network-long
5264 (lambda (value port)
5265 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
5266 (uniform-vector-set! v 0 (htonl value))
5267 (uniform-vector-write v port))))
5269 (define read-network-long
5271 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
5272 (uniform-vector-read! v port)
5273 (ntohl (uniform-vector-ref v 0)))))
5275 ** If inet-aton fails, it now throws an error with key 'misc-error
5276 instead of 'system-error, since errno is not relevant.
5278 ** Certain gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr failures now throw errors with
5279 specific keys instead of 'system-error. The latter is inappropriate
5280 since errno will not have been set. The keys are:
5281 'host-not-found, 'try-again, 'no-recovery and 'no-data.
5283 ** sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent: now take an
5284 optional argument STAYOPEN, which specifies whether the database
5285 remains open after a database entry is accessed randomly (e.g., using
5286 gethostbyname for the hosts database.) The default is #f. Previously
5290 Changes since Guile 1.3.2:
5292 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
5296 An initial version of the Guile debugger written by Chris Hanson has
5297 been added. The debugger is still under development but is included
5298 in the distribution anyway since it is already quite useful.
5304 after an error to enter the debugger. Type `help' inside the debugger
5305 for a description of available commands.
5307 If you prefer to have stack frames numbered and printed in
5308 anti-chronological order and prefer up in the stack to be down on the
5309 screen as is the case in gdb, you can put
5311 (debug-enable 'backwards)
5313 in your .guile startup file. (However, this means that Guile can't
5314 use indentation to indicate stack level.)
5316 The debugger is autoloaded into Guile at the first use.
5318 ** Further enhancements to backtraces
5320 There is a new debug option `width' which controls the maximum width
5321 on the screen of printed stack frames. Fancy printing parameters
5322 ("level" and "length" as in Common LISP) are adaptively adjusted for
5323 each stack frame to give maximum information while still fitting
5324 within the bounds. If the stack frame can't be made to fit by
5325 adjusting parameters, it is simply cut off at the end. This is marked
5328 ** Some modules are now only loaded when the repl is started
5330 The modules (ice-9 debug), (ice-9 session), (ice-9 threads) and (ice-9
5331 regex) are now loaded into (guile-user) only if the repl has been
5332 started. The effect is that the startup time for scripts has been
5333 reduced to 30% of what it was previously.
5335 Correctly written scripts load the modules they require at the top of
5336 the file and should not be affected by this change.
5338 ** Hooks are now represented as smobs
5340 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
5342 ** Readline support has changed again.
5344 The old (readline-activator) module is gone. Use (ice-9 readline)
5345 instead, which now contains all readline functionality. So the code
5346 to activate readline is now
5348 (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
5351 This should work at any time, including from the guile prompt.
5353 To avoid confusion about the terms of Guile's license, please only
5354 enable readline for your personal use; please don't make it the
5355 default for others. Here is why we make this rather odd-sounding
5358 Guile is normally licensed under a weakened form of the GNU General
5359 Public License, which allows you to link code with Guile without
5360 placing that code under the GPL. This exception is important to some
5363 However, since readline is distributed under the GNU General Public
5364 License, when you link Guile with readline, either statically or
5365 dynamically, you effectively change Guile's license to the strict GPL.
5366 Whenever you link any strictly GPL'd code into Guile, uses of Guile
5367 which are normally permitted become forbidden. This is a rather
5368 non-obvious consequence of the licensing terms.
5370 So, to make sure things remain clear, please let people choose for
5371 themselves whether to link GPL'd libraries like readline with Guile.
5373 ** regexp-substitute/global has changed slightly, but incompatibly.
5375 If you include a function in the item list, the string of the match
5376 object it receives is the same string passed to
5377 regexp-substitute/global, not some suffix of that string.
5378 Correspondingly, the match's positions are relative to the entire
5379 string, not the suffix.
5381 If the regexp can match the empty string, the way matches are chosen
5382 from the string has changed. regexp-substitute/global recognizes the
5383 same set of matches that list-matches does; see below.
5385 ** New function: list-matches REGEXP STRING [FLAGS]
5387 Return a list of match objects, one for every non-overlapping, maximal
5388 match of REGEXP in STRING. The matches appear in left-to-right order.
5389 list-matches only reports matches of the empty string if there are no
5390 other matches which begin on, end at, or include the empty match's
5393 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
5395 ** New function: fold-matches REGEXP STRING INIT PROC [FLAGS]
5397 For each match of REGEXP in STRING, apply PROC to the match object,
5398 and the last value PROC returned, or INIT for the first call. Return
5399 the last value returned by PROC. We apply PROC to the matches as they
5400 appear from left to right.
5402 This function recognizes matches according to the same criteria as
5405 Thus, you could define list-matches like this:
5407 (define (list-matches regexp string . flags)
5408 (reverse! (apply fold-matches regexp string '() cons flags)))
5410 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
5414 *** New function: hook? OBJ
5416 Return #t if OBJ is a hook, otherwise #f.
5418 *** New function: make-hook-with-name NAME [ARITY]
5420 Return a hook with name NAME and arity ARITY. The default value for
5421 ARITY is 0. The only effect of NAME is that it will appear when the
5422 hook object is printed to ease debugging.
5424 *** New function: hook-empty? HOOK
5426 Return #t if HOOK doesn't contain any procedures, otherwise #f.
5428 *** New function: hook->list HOOK
5430 Return a list of the procedures that are called when run-hook is
5433 ** `map' signals an error if its argument lists are not all the same length.
5435 This is the behavior required by R5RS, so this change is really a bug
5436 fix. But it seems to affect a lot of people's code, so we're
5437 mentioning it here anyway.
5439 ** Print-state handling has been made more transparent
5441 Under certain circumstances, ports are represented as a port with an
5442 associated print state. Earlier, this pair was represented as a pair
5443 (see "Some magic has been added to the printer" below). It is now
5444 indistinguishable (almost; see `get-print-state') from a port on the
5447 *** New function: port-with-print-state OUTPUT-PORT PRINT-STATE
5449 Return a new port with the associated print state PRINT-STATE.
5451 *** New function: get-print-state OUTPUT-PORT
5453 Return the print state associated with this port if it exists,
5454 otherwise return #f.
5456 *** New function: directory-stream? OBJECT
5458 Returns true iff OBJECT is a directory stream --- the sort of object
5459 returned by `opendir'.
5461 ** New function: using-readline?
5463 Return #t if readline is in use in the current repl.
5465 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
5467 Structs will be replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into Guile
5468 and use GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
5470 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5472 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
5474 The entire current struct interface (struct.c, struct.h) will be
5475 replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into libguile and use
5476 GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
5478 ** The internal representation of subr's has changed
5480 Instead of giving a hint to the subr name, the CAR field of the subr
5481 now contains an index to a subr entry in scm_subr_table.
5483 *** New variable: scm_subr_table
5485 An array of subr entries. A subr entry contains the name, properties
5486 and documentation associated with the subr. The properties and
5487 documentation slots are not yet used.
5489 ** A new scheme for "forwarding" calls to a builtin to a generic function
5491 It is now possible to extend the functionality of some Guile
5492 primitives by letting them defer a call to a GOOPS generic function on
5493 argument mismatch. This means that there is no loss of efficiency in
5498 (use-modules (oop goops)) ; Must be GOOPS version 0.2.
5499 (define-method + ((x <string>) (y <string>))
5500 (string-append x y))
5502 + will still be as efficient as usual in numerical calculations, but
5503 can also be used for concatenating strings.
5505 Who will be the first one to extend Guile's numerical tower to
5506 rationals? :) [OK, there a few other things to fix before this can
5507 be made in a clean way.]
5509 *** New snarf macros for defining primitives: SCM_GPROC, SCM_GPROC1
5511 New macro: SCM_GPROC (CNAME, SNAME, REQ, OPT, VAR, CFUNC, GENERIC)
5513 New macro: SCM_GPROC1 (CNAME, SNAME, TYPE, CFUNC, GENERIC)
5515 These do the same job as SCM_PROC and SCM_PROC1, but they also define
5516 a variable GENERIC which can be used by the dispatch macros below.
5518 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
5520 *** New macros for forwarding control to a generic on arg type error
5522 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_1 (GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
5524 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
5526 These correspond to the scm_wta function call, and have the same
5527 behaviour until the user has called the GOOPS primitive
5528 `enable-primitive-generic!'. After that, these macros will apply the
5529 generic function GENERIC to the argument(s) instead of calling
5532 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
5534 *** New macros for argument testing with generic dispatch
5536 New macro: SCM_GASSERT1 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
5538 New macro: SCM_GASSERT2 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
5540 These correspond to the SCM_ASSERT macro, but will defer control to
5541 GENERIC on error after `enable-primitive-generic!' has been called.
5543 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
5545 ** New function: SCM scm_eval_body (SCM body, SCM env)
5547 Evaluates the body of a special form.
5549 ** The internal representation of struct's has changed
5551 Previously, four slots were allocated for the procedure(s) of entities
5552 and operators. The motivation for this representation had to do with
5553 the structure of the evaluator, the wish to support tail-recursive
5554 generic functions, and efficiency. Since the generic function
5555 dispatch mechanism has changed, there is no longer a need for such an
5556 expensive representation, and the representation has been simplified.
5558 This should not make any difference for most users.
5560 ** GOOPS support has been cleaned up.
5562 Some code has been moved from eval.c to objects.c and code in both of
5563 these compilation units has been cleaned up and better structured.
5565 *** New functions for applying generic functions
5567 New function: SCM scm_apply_generic (GENERIC, ARGS)
5568 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_0 (GENERIC)
5569 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_1 (GENERIC, ARG1)
5570 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2)
5571 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_3 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, ARG3)
5573 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_named_hook
5575 It is now replaced by:
5577 ** New function: SCM scm_create_hook (const char *name, int arity)
5579 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
5580 binds a variable named NAME to it.
5582 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
5584 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module.
5585 This might change when we get the new module system.
5587 [The behaviour is identical to scm_make_named_hook.]
5591 Changes since Guile 1.3:
5593 * Changes to mailing lists
5595 ** Some of the Guile mailing lists have moved to sourceware.cygnus.com.
5597 See the README file to find current addresses for all the Guile
5600 * Changes to the distribution
5602 ** Readline support is no longer included with Guile by default.
5604 Based on the different license terms of Guile and Readline, we
5605 concluded that Guile should not *by default* cause the linking of
5606 Readline into an application program. Readline support is now offered
5607 as a separate module, which is linked into an application only when
5608 you explicitly specify it.
5610 Although Guile is GNU software, its distribution terms add a special
5611 exception to the usual GNU General Public License (GPL). Guile's
5612 license includes a clause that allows you to link Guile with non-free
5613 programs. We add this exception so as not to put Guile at a
5614 disadvantage vis-a-vis other extensibility packages that support other
5617 In contrast, the GNU Readline library is distributed under the GNU
5618 General Public License pure and simple. This means that you may not
5619 link Readline, even dynamically, into an application unless it is
5620 distributed under a free software license that is compatible the GPL.
5622 Because of this difference in distribution terms, an application that
5623 can use Guile may not be able to use Readline. Now users will be
5624 explicitly offered two independent decisions about the use of these
5627 You can activate the readline support by issuing
5629 (use-modules (readline-activator))
5632 from your ".guile" file, for example.
5634 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
5636 ** All builtins now print as primitives.
5637 Previously builtin procedures not belonging to the fundamental subr
5638 types printed as #<compiled closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>.
5639 Now, they print as #<primitive-procedure NAME>.
5641 ** Backtraces slightly more intelligible.
5642 gsubr-apply and macro transformer application frames no longer appear
5645 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
5647 ** Guile now correctly handles internal defines by rewriting them into
5648 their equivalent letrec. Previously, internal defines would
5649 incrementally add to the innermost environment, without checking
5650 whether the restrictions specified in RnRS were met. This lead to the
5651 correct behaviour when these restriction actually were met, but didn't
5652 catch all illegal uses. Such an illegal use could lead to crashes of
5653 the Guile interpreter or or other unwanted results. An example of
5654 incorrect internal defines that made Guile behave erratically:
5666 The problem with this example is that the definition of `c' uses the
5667 value of `b' directly. This confuses the meoization machine of Guile
5668 so that the second call of `b' (this time in a larger environment that
5669 also contains bindings for `c' and `d') refers to the binding of `c'
5670 instead of `a'. You could also make Guile crash with a variation on
5675 (define (b flag) (if flag a 1))
5676 (define c (1+ (b flag)))
5684 From now on, Guile will issue an `Unbound variable: b' error message
5689 A hook contains a list of functions which should be called on
5690 particular occasions in an existing program. Hooks are used for
5693 A window manager might have a hook before-window-map-hook. The window
5694 manager uses the function run-hooks to call all functions stored in
5695 before-window-map-hook each time a window is mapped. The user can
5696 store functions in the hook using add-hook!.
5698 In Guile, hooks are first class objects.
5700 *** New function: make-hook [N_ARGS]
5702 Return a hook for hook functions which can take N_ARGS arguments.
5703 The default value for N_ARGS is 0.
5705 (See also scm_make_named_hook below.)
5707 *** New function: add-hook! HOOK PROC [APPEND_P]
5709 Put PROC at the beginning of the list of functions stored in HOOK.
5710 If APPEND_P is supplied, and non-false, put PROC at the end instead.
5712 PROC must be able to take the number of arguments specified when the
5715 If PROC already exists in HOOK, then remove it first.
5717 *** New function: remove-hook! HOOK PROC
5719 Remove PROC from the list of functions in HOOK.
5721 *** New function: reset-hook! HOOK
5723 Clear the list of hook functions stored in HOOK.
5725 *** New function: run-hook HOOK ARG1 ...
5727 Run all hook functions stored in HOOK with arguments ARG1 ... .
5728 The number of arguments supplied must correspond to the number given
5729 when the hook was created.
5731 ** The function `dynamic-link' now takes optional keyword arguments.
5732 The only keyword argument that is currently defined is `:global
5733 BOOL'. With it, you can control whether the shared library will be
5734 linked in global mode or not. In global mode, the symbols from the
5735 linked library can be used to resolve references from other
5736 dynamically linked libraries. In non-global mode, the linked
5737 library is essentially invisible and can only be accessed via
5738 `dynamic-func', etc. The default is now to link in global mode.
5739 Previously, the default has been non-global mode.
5741 The `#:global' keyword is only effective on platforms that support
5742 the dlopen family of functions.
5744 ** New function `provided?'
5746 - Function: provided? FEATURE
5747 Return true iff FEATURE is supported by this installation of
5748 Guile. FEATURE must be a symbol naming a feature; the global
5749 variable `*features*' is a list of available features.
5751 ** Changes to the module (ice-9 expect):
5753 *** The expect-strings macro now matches `$' in a regular expression
5754 only at a line-break or end-of-file by default. Previously it would
5755 match the end of the string accumulated so far. The old behaviour
5756 can be obtained by setting the variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
5759 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
5760 for the regexp-exec flags. If `regexp/noteol' is included, then `$'
5761 in a regular expression will still match before a line-break or
5762 end-of-file. The default is `regexp/noteol'.
5764 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable
5765 `expect-strings-compile-flags' for the flags to be supplied to
5766 `make-regexp'. The default is `regexp/newline', which was previously
5769 *** The expect macro now supplies two arguments to a match procedure:
5770 the current accumulated string and a flag to indicate whether
5771 end-of-file has been reached. Previously only the string was supplied.
5772 If end-of-file is reached, the match procedure will be called an
5773 additional time with the same accumulated string as the previous call
5774 but with the flag set.
5776 ** New module (ice-9 format), implementing the Common Lisp `format' function.
5778 This code, and the documentation for it that appears here, was
5779 borrowed from SLIB, with minor adaptations for Guile.
5781 - Function: format DESTINATION FORMAT-STRING . ARGUMENTS
5782 An almost complete implementation of Common LISP format description
5783 according to the CL reference book `Common LISP' from Guy L.
5784 Steele, Digital Press. Backward compatible to most of the
5785 available Scheme format implementations.
5787 Returns `#t', `#f' or a string; has side effect of printing
5788 according to FORMAT-STRING. If DESTINATION is `#t', the output is
5789 to the current output port and `#t' is returned. If DESTINATION
5790 is `#f', a formatted string is returned as the result of the call.
5791 NEW: If DESTINATION is a string, DESTINATION is regarded as the
5792 format string; FORMAT-STRING is then the first argument and the
5793 output is returned as a string. If DESTINATION is a number, the
5794 output is to the current error port if available by the
5795 implementation. Otherwise DESTINATION must be an output port and
5798 FORMAT-STRING must be a string. In case of a formatting error
5799 format returns `#f' and prints a message on the current output or
5800 error port. Characters are output as if the string were output by
5801 the `display' function with the exception of those prefixed by a
5802 tilde (~). For a detailed description of the FORMAT-STRING syntax
5803 please consult a Common LISP format reference manual. For a test
5804 suite to verify this format implementation load `formatst.scm'.
5805 Please send bug reports to `lutzeb@cs.tu-berlin.de'.
5807 Note: `format' is not reentrant, i.e. only one `format'-call may
5808 be executed at a time.
5811 *** Format Specification (Format version 3.0)
5813 Please consult a Common LISP format reference manual for a detailed
5814 description of the format string syntax. For a demonstration of the
5815 implemented directives see `formatst.scm'.
5817 This implementation supports directive parameters and modifiers (`:'
5818 and `@' characters). Multiple parameters must be separated by a comma
5819 (`,'). Parameters can be numerical parameters (positive or negative),
5820 character parameters (prefixed by a quote character (`''), variable
5821 parameters (`v'), number of rest arguments parameter (`#'), empty and
5822 default parameters. Directive characters are case independent. The
5823 general form of a directive is:
5825 DIRECTIVE ::= ~{DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER,}[:][@]DIRECTIVE-CHARACTER
5827 DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER ::= [ [-|+]{0-9}+ | 'CHARACTER | v | # ]
5829 *** Implemented CL Format Control Directives
5831 Documentation syntax: Uppercase characters represent the
5832 corresponding control directive characters. Lowercase characters
5833 represent control directive parameter descriptions.
5836 Any (print as `display' does).
5840 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARA'
5844 S-expression (print as `write' does).
5848 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARS'
5854 print number sign always.
5857 print comma separated.
5859 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARD'
5865 print number sign always.
5868 print comma separated.
5870 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARX'
5876 print number sign always.
5879 print comma separated.
5881 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARO'
5887 print number sign always.
5890 print comma separated.
5892 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARB'
5897 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARR'
5901 print a number as a Roman numeral.
5904 print a number as an "old fashioned" Roman numeral.
5907 print a number as an ordinal English number.
5910 print a number as a cardinal English number.
5915 prints `y' and `ies'.
5918 as `~P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
5921 as `~@P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
5926 prints a character as the reader can understand it (i.e. `#\'
5930 prints a character as emacs does (eg. `^C' for ASCII 03).
5933 Fixed-format floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN).
5934 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHARF'
5936 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
5939 Exponential floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN`E'EE).
5940 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARE'
5942 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
5945 General floating-point (prints a flonum either fixed or
5947 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARG'
5949 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
5952 Dollars floating-point (prints a flonum in fixed with signs
5954 `~DIGITS,SCALE,WIDTH,PADCHAR$'
5956 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
5959 A sign is always printed and appears before the padding.
5962 The sign appears before the padding.
5970 print newline if not at the beginning of the output line.
5972 prints `~&' and then N-1 newlines.
5977 print N page separators.
5987 newline is ignored, white space left.
5990 newline is left, white space ignored.
5995 relative tabulation.
6001 Indirection (expects indirect arguments as a list).
6003 extracts indirect arguments from format arguments.
6006 Case conversion (converts by `string-downcase').
6008 converts by `string-capitalize'.
6011 converts by `string-capitalize-first'.
6014 converts by `string-upcase'.
6017 Argument Jumping (jumps 1 argument forward).
6019 jumps N arguments forward.
6022 jumps 1 argument backward.
6025 jumps N arguments backward.
6028 jumps to the 0th argument.
6031 jumps to the Nth argument (beginning from 0)
6033 `~[STR0~;STR1~;...~;STRN~]'
6034 Conditional Expression (numerical clause conditional).
6036 take argument from N.
6039 true test conditional.
6042 if-else-then conditional.
6048 default clause follows.
6051 Iteration (args come from the next argument (a list)).
6053 at most N iterations.
6056 args from next arg (a list of lists).
6059 args from the rest of arguments.
6062 args from the rest args (lists).
6073 aborts if N <= M <= K
6075 *** Not Implemented CL Format Control Directives
6078 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
6081 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
6087 (sorry I don't understand its semantics completely)
6089 *** Extended, Replaced and Additional Control Directives
6091 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHD'
6092 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHX'
6093 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHO'
6094 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHB'
6095 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHR'
6096 COMMAWIDTH is the number of characters between two comma
6100 print a R4RS complex number as `~F~@Fi' with passed parameters for
6104 Pretty print formatting of an argument for scheme code lists.
6110 Flushes the output if format DESTINATION is a port.
6113 Print a `#\space' character
6115 print N `#\space' characters.
6118 Print a `#\tab' character
6120 print N `#\tab' characters.
6123 Takes N as an integer representation for a character. No arguments
6124 are consumed. N is converted to a character by `integer->char'. N
6125 must be a positive decimal number.
6128 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
6129 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
6130 be processed by `read'.
6133 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
6134 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
6135 be processed by `read'.
6138 Prints information and a copyright notice on the format
6141 prints format version.
6144 may also print number strings, i.e. passing a number as a string
6145 and format it accordingly.
6147 *** Configuration Variables
6149 The format module exports some configuration variables to suit the
6150 systems and users needs. There should be no modification necessary for
6151 the configuration that comes with Guile. Format detects automatically
6152 if the running scheme system implements floating point numbers and
6155 format:symbol-case-conv
6156 Symbols are converted by `symbol->string' so the case type of the
6157 printed symbols is implementation dependent.
6158 `format:symbol-case-conv' is a one arg closure which is either
6159 `#f' (no conversion), `string-upcase', `string-downcase' or
6160 `string-capitalize'. (default `#f')
6162 format:iobj-case-conv
6163 As FORMAT:SYMBOL-CASE-CONV but applies for the representation of
6164 implementation internal objects. (default `#f')
6167 The character prefixing the exponent value in `~E' printing.
6170 *** Compatibility With Other Format Implementations
6176 Downward compatible except for padding support and `~A', `~S',
6177 `~P', `~X' uppercase printing. SLIB format 1.4 uses C-style
6178 `printf' padding support which is completely replaced by the CL
6179 `format' padding style.
6182 Downward compatible except for `~', which is not documented
6183 (ignores all characters inside the format string up to a newline
6184 character). (7.1 implements `~a', `~s', ~NEWLINE, `~~', `~%',
6185 numerical and variable parameters and `:/@' modifiers in the CL
6189 Downward compatible except for `~A' and `~S' which print in
6190 uppercase. (Elk implements `~a', `~s', `~~', and `~%' (no
6191 directive parameters or modifiers)).
6194 Downward compatible except for an optional destination parameter:
6195 S2C accepts a format call without a destination which returns a
6196 formatted string. This is equivalent to a #f destination in S2C.
6197 (S2C implements `~a', `~s', `~c', `~%', and `~~' (no directive
6198 parameters or modifiers)).
6201 ** Changes to string-handling functions.
6203 These functions were added to support the (ice-9 format) module, above.
6205 *** New function: string-upcase STRING
6206 *** New function: string-downcase STRING
6208 These are non-destructive versions of the existing string-upcase! and
6209 string-downcase! functions.
6211 *** New function: string-capitalize! STRING
6212 *** New function: string-capitalize STRING
6214 These functions convert the first letter of each word in the string to
6217 (string-capitalize "howdy there")
6220 As with the other functions, string-capitalize! modifies the string in
6221 place, while string-capitalize returns a modified copy of its argument.
6223 *** New function: string-ci->symbol STRING
6225 Return a symbol whose name is STRING, but having the same case as if
6226 the symbol had be read by `read'.
6228 Guile can be configured to be sensitive or insensitive to case
6229 differences in Scheme identifiers. If Guile is case-insensitive, all
6230 symbols are converted to lower case on input. The `string-ci->symbol'
6231 function returns a symbol whose name in STRING, transformed as Guile
6232 would if STRING were input.
6234 *** New function: substring-move! STRING1 START END STRING2 START
6236 Copy the substring of STRING1 from START (inclusive) to END
6237 (exclusive) to STRING2 at START. STRING1 and STRING2 may be the same
6238 string, and the source and destination areas may overlap; in all
6239 cases, the function behaves as if all the characters were copied
6242 *** Extended functions: substring-move-left! substring-move-right!
6244 These functions now correctly copy arbitrarily overlapping substrings;
6245 they are both synonyms for substring-move!.
6248 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-long), with the function `getopt-long'.
6250 getopt-long is a function for parsing command-line arguments in a
6251 manner consistent with other GNU programs.
6253 (getopt-long ARGS GRAMMAR)
6254 Parse the arguments ARGS according to the argument list grammar GRAMMAR.
6256 ARGS should be a list of strings. Its first element should be the
6257 name of the program; subsequent elements should be the arguments
6258 that were passed to the program on the command line. The
6259 `program-arguments' procedure returns a list of this form.
6261 GRAMMAR is a list of the form:
6262 ((OPTION (PROPERTY VALUE) ...) ...)
6264 Each OPTION should be a symbol. `getopt-long' will accept a
6265 command-line option named `--OPTION'.
6266 Each option can have the following (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs:
6268 (single-char CHAR) --- Accept `-CHAR' as a single-character
6269 equivalent to `--OPTION'. This is how to specify traditional
6271 (required? BOOL) --- If BOOL is true, the option is required.
6272 getopt-long will raise an error if it is not found in ARGS.
6273 (value BOOL) --- If BOOL is #t, the option accepts a value; if
6274 it is #f, it does not; and if it is the symbol
6275 `optional', the option may appear in ARGS with or
6277 (predicate FUNC) --- If the option accepts a value (i.e. you
6278 specified `(value #t)' for this option), then getopt
6279 will apply FUNC to the value, and throw an exception
6280 if it returns #f. FUNC should be a procedure which
6281 accepts a string and returns a boolean value; you may
6282 need to use quasiquotes to get it into GRAMMAR.
6284 The (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs may occur in any order, but each
6285 property may occur only once. By default, options do not have
6286 single-character equivalents, are not required, and do not take
6289 In ARGS, single-character options may be combined, in the usual
6290 Unix fashion: ("-x" "-y") is equivalent to ("-xy"). If an option
6291 accepts values, then it must be the last option in the
6292 combination; the value is the next argument. So, for example, using
6293 the following grammar:
6294 ((apples (single-char #\a))
6295 (blimps (single-char #\b) (value #t))
6296 (catalexis (single-char #\c) (value #t)))
6297 the following argument lists would be acceptable:
6298 ("-a" "-b" "bang" "-c" "couth") ("bang" and "couth" are the values
6299 for "blimps" and "catalexis")
6300 ("-ab" "bang" "-c" "couth") (same)
6301 ("-ac" "couth" "-b" "bang") (same)
6302 ("-abc" "couth" "bang") (an error, since `-b' is not the
6303 last option in its combination)
6305 If an option's value is optional, then `getopt-long' decides
6306 whether it has a value by looking at what follows it in ARGS. If
6307 the next element is a string, and it does not appear to be an
6308 option itself, then that string is the option's value.
6310 The value of a long option can appear as the next element in ARGS,
6311 or it can follow the option name, separated by an `=' character.
6312 Thus, using the same grammar as above, the following argument lists
6314 ("--apples" "Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
6315 ("--apples=Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
6316 ("--blimps" "Goodyear" "--apples=Braeburn")
6318 If the option "--" appears in ARGS, argument parsing stops there;
6319 subsequent arguments are returned as ordinary arguments, even if
6320 they resemble options. So, in the argument list:
6321 ("--apples" "Granny Smith" "--" "--blimp" "Goodyear")
6322 `getopt-long' will recognize the `apples' option as having the
6323 value "Granny Smith", but it will not recognize the `blimp'
6324 option; it will return the strings "--blimp" and "Goodyear" as
6325 ordinary argument strings.
6327 The `getopt-long' function returns the parsed argument list as an
6328 assocation list, mapping option names --- the symbols from GRAMMAR
6329 --- onto their values, or #t if the option does not accept a value.
6330 Unused options do not appear in the alist.
6332 All arguments that are not the value of any option are returned
6333 as a list, associated with the empty list.
6335 `getopt-long' throws an exception if:
6336 - it finds an unrecognized option in ARGS
6337 - a required option is omitted
6338 - an option that requires an argument doesn't get one
6339 - an option that doesn't accept an argument does get one (this can
6340 only happen using the long option `--opt=value' syntax)
6341 - an option predicate fails
6346 `((lockfile-dir (required? #t)
6349 (predicate ,file-is-directory?))
6350 (verbose (required? #f)
6353 (x-includes (single-char #\x))
6354 (rnet-server (single-char #\y)
6355 (predicate ,string?))))
6357 (getopt-long '("my-prog" "-vk" "/tmp" "foo1" "--x-includes=/usr/include"
6358 "--rnet-server=lamprod" "--" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
6360 => ((() "foo1" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
6361 (rnet-server . "lamprod")
6362 (x-includes . "/usr/include")
6363 (lockfile-dir . "/tmp")
6366 ** The (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) module is obsolete; use (ice-9 getopt-long).
6368 It will be removed in a few releases.
6370 ** New syntax: lambda*
6371 ** New syntax: define*
6372 ** New syntax: define*-public
6373 ** New syntax: defmacro*
6374 ** New syntax: defmacro*-public
6375 Guile now supports optional arguments.
6377 `lambda*', `define*', `define*-public', `defmacro*' and
6378 `defmacro*-public' are identical to the non-* versions except that
6379 they use an extended type of parameter list that has the following BNF
6380 syntax (parentheses are literal, square brackets indicate grouping,
6381 and `*', `+' and `?' have the usual meaning):
6383 ext-param-list ::= ( [identifier]* [#&optional [ext-var-decl]+]?
6384 [#&key [ext-var-decl]+ [#&allow-other-keys]?]?
6385 [[#&rest identifier]|[. identifier]]? ) | [identifier]
6387 ext-var-decl ::= identifier | ( identifier expression )
6389 The semantics are best illustrated with the following documentation
6390 and examples for `lambda*':
6393 lambda extended for optional and keyword arguments
6395 lambda* creates a procedure that takes optional arguments. These
6396 are specified by putting them inside brackets at the end of the
6397 paramater list, but before any dotted rest argument. For example,
6398 (lambda* (a b #&optional c d . e) '())
6399 creates a procedure with fixed arguments a and b, optional arguments c
6400 and d, and rest argument e. If the optional arguments are omitted
6401 in a call, the variables for them are unbound in the procedure. This
6402 can be checked with the bound? macro.
6404 lambda* can also take keyword arguments. For example, a procedure
6406 (lambda* (#&key xyzzy larch) '())
6407 can be called with any of the argument lists (#:xyzzy 11)
6408 (#:larch 13) (#:larch 42 #:xyzzy 19) (). Whichever arguments
6409 are given as keywords are bound to values.
6411 Optional and keyword arguments can also be given default values
6412 which they take on when they are not present in a call, by giving a
6413 two-item list in place of an optional argument, for example in:
6414 (lambda* (foo #&optional (bar 42) #&key (baz 73)) (list foo bar baz))
6415 foo is a fixed argument, bar is an optional argument with default
6416 value 42, and baz is a keyword argument with default value 73.
6417 Default value expressions are not evaluated unless they are needed
6418 and until the procedure is called.
6420 lambda* now supports two more special parameter list keywords.
6422 lambda*-defined procedures now throw an error by default if a
6423 keyword other than one of those specified is found in the actual
6424 passed arguments. However, specifying #&allow-other-keys
6425 immediately after the kyword argument declarations restores the
6426 previous behavior of ignoring unknown keywords. lambda* also now
6427 guarantees that if the same keyword is passed more than once, the
6428 last one passed is the one that takes effect. For example,
6429 ((lambda* (#&key (heads 0) (tails 0)) (display (list heads tails)))
6430 #:heads 37 #:tails 42 #:heads 99)
6431 would result in (99 47) being displayed.
6433 #&rest is also now provided as a synonym for the dotted syntax rest
6434 argument. The argument lists (a . b) and (a #&rest b) are equivalent in
6435 all respects to lambda*. This is provided for more similarity to DSSSL,
6436 MIT-Scheme and Kawa among others, as well as for refugees from other
6439 Further documentation may be found in the optargs.scm file itself.
6441 The optional argument module also exports the macros `let-optional',
6442 `let-optional*', `let-keywords', `let-keywords*' and `bound?'. These
6443 are not documented here because they may be removed in the future, but
6444 full documentation is still available in optargs.scm.
6446 ** New syntax: and-let*
6447 Guile now supports the `and-let*' form, described in the draft SRFI-2.
6449 Syntax: (land* (<clause> ...) <body> ...)
6450 Each <clause> should have one of the following forms:
6451 (<variable> <expression>)
6454 Each <variable> or <bound-variable> should be an identifier. Each
6455 <expression> should be a valid expression. The <body> should be a
6456 possibly empty sequence of expressions, like the <body> of a
6459 Semantics: A LAND* expression is evaluated by evaluating the
6460 <expression> or <bound-variable> of each of the <clause>s from
6461 left to right. The value of the first <expression> or
6462 <bound-variable> that evaluates to a false value is returned; the
6463 remaining <expression>s and <bound-variable>s are not evaluated.
6464 The <body> forms are evaluated iff all the <expression>s and
6465 <bound-variable>s evaluate to true values.
6467 The <expression>s and the <body> are evaluated in an environment
6468 binding each <variable> of the preceding (<variable> <expression>)
6469 clauses to the value of the <expression>. Later bindings
6470 shadow earlier bindings.
6472 Guile's and-let* macro was contributed by Michael Livshin.
6474 ** New sorting functions
6476 *** New function: sorted? SEQUENCE LESS?
6477 Returns `#t' when the sequence argument is in non-decreasing order
6478 according to LESS? (that is, there is no adjacent pair `... x y
6479 ...' for which `(less? y x)').
6481 Returns `#f' when the sequence contains at least one out-of-order
6482 pair. It is an error if the sequence is neither a list nor a
6485 *** New function: merge LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
6486 LIST1 and LIST2 are sorted lists.
6487 Returns the sorted list of all elements in LIST1 and LIST2.
6489 Assume that the elements a and b1 in LIST1 and b2 in LIST2 are "equal"
6490 in the sense that (LESS? x y) --> #f for x, y in {a, b1, b2},
6491 and that a < b1 in LIST1. Then a < b1 < b2 in the result.
6492 (Here "<" should read "comes before".)
6494 *** New procedure: merge! LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
6495 Merges two lists, re-using the pairs of LIST1 and LIST2 to build
6496 the result. If the code is compiled, and LESS? constructs no new
6497 pairs, no pairs at all will be allocated. The first pair of the
6498 result will be either the first pair of LIST1 or the first pair of
6501 *** New function: sort SEQUENCE LESS?
6502 Accepts either a list or a vector, and returns a new sequence
6503 which is sorted. The new sequence is the same type as the input.
6504 Always `(sorted? (sort sequence less?) less?)'. The original
6505 sequence is not altered in any way. The new sequence shares its
6506 elements with the old one; no elements are copied.
6508 *** New procedure: sort! SEQUENCE LESS
6509 Returns its sorted result in the original boxes. No new storage is
6510 allocated at all. Proper usage: (set! slist (sort! slist <))
6512 *** New function: stable-sort SEQUENCE LESS?
6513 Similar to `sort' but stable. That is, if "equal" elements are
6514 ordered a < b in the original sequence, they will have the same order
6517 *** New function: stable-sort! SEQUENCE LESS?
6518 Similar to `sort!' but stable.
6519 Uses temporary storage when sorting vectors.
6521 *** New functions: sort-list, sort-list!
6522 Added for compatibility with scsh.
6524 ** New built-in random number support
6526 *** New function: random N [STATE]
6527 Accepts a positive integer or real N and returns a number of the
6528 same type between zero (inclusive) and N (exclusive). The values
6529 returned have a uniform distribution.
6531 The optional argument STATE must be of the type produced by
6532 `copy-random-state' or `seed->random-state'. It defaults to the value
6533 of the variable `*random-state*'. This object is used to maintain the
6534 state of the pseudo-random-number generator and is altered as a side
6535 effect of the `random' operation.
6537 *** New variable: *random-state*
6538 Holds a data structure that encodes the internal state of the
6539 random-number generator that `random' uses by default. The nature
6540 of this data structure is implementation-dependent. It may be
6541 printed out and successfully read back in, but may or may not
6542 function correctly as a random-number state object in another
6545 *** New function: copy-random-state [STATE]
6546 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
6547 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
6548 If argument STATE is given, a copy of it is returned. Otherwise a
6549 copy of `*random-state*' is returned.
6551 *** New function: seed->random-state SEED
6552 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
6553 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
6554 SEED is a string or a number. A new state is generated and
6555 initialized using SEED.
6557 *** New function: random:uniform [STATE]
6558 Returns an uniformly distributed inexact real random number in the
6559 range between 0 and 1.
6561 *** New procedure: random:solid-sphere! VECT [STATE]
6562 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose
6563 squares is less than 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in
6564 space of dimension N = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are
6565 uniformly distributed within the unit N-shere. The sum of the
6566 squares of the numbers is returned. VECT can be either a vector
6567 or a uniform vector of doubles.
6569 *** New procedure: random:hollow-sphere! VECT [STATE]
6570 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose squares
6571 is equal to 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in space of
6572 dimension n = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are uniformly
6573 distributed over the surface of the unit n-shere. VECT can be either
6574 a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
6576 *** New function: random:normal [STATE]
6577 Returns an inexact real in a normal distribution with mean 0 and
6578 standard deviation 1. For a normal distribution with mean M and
6579 standard deviation D use `(+ M (* D (random:normal)))'.
6581 *** New procedure: random:normal-vector! VECT [STATE]
6582 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers which are independent and
6583 standard normally distributed (i.e., with mean 0 and variance 1).
6584 VECT can be either a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
6586 *** New function: random:exp STATE
6587 Returns an inexact real in an exponential distribution with mean 1.
6588 For an exponential distribution with mean U use (* U (random:exp)).
6590 ** The range of logand, logior, logxor, logtest, and logbit? have changed.
6592 These functions now operate on numbers in the range of a C unsigned
6595 These functions used to operate on numbers in the range of a C signed
6596 long; however, this seems inappropriate, because Guile integers don't
6599 ** New function: make-guardian
6600 This is an implementation of guardians as described in
6601 R. Kent Dybvig, Carl Bruggeman, and David Eby (1993) "Guardians in a
6602 Generation-Based Garbage Collector" ACM SIGPLAN Conference on
6603 Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1993
6604 ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/guardians.ps.gz
6606 ** New functions: delq1!, delv1!, delete1!
6607 These procedures behave similar to delq! and friends but delete only
6608 one object if at all.
6610 ** New function: unread-string STRING PORT
6611 Unread STRING to PORT, that is, push it back onto the port so that
6612 next read operation will work on the pushed back characters.
6614 ** unread-char can now be called multiple times
6615 If unread-char is called multiple times, the unread characters will be
6616 read again in last-in first-out order.
6618 ** the procedures uniform-array-read! and uniform-array-write! now
6619 work on any kind of port, not just ports which are open on a file.
6621 ** Now 'l' in a port mode requests line buffering.
6623 ** The procedure truncate-file now works on string ports as well
6624 as file ports. If the size argument is omitted, the current
6625 file position is used.
6627 ** new procedure: seek PORT/FDES OFFSET WHENCE
6628 The arguments are the same as for the old fseek procedure, but it
6629 works on string ports as well as random-access file ports.
6631 ** the fseek procedure now works on string ports, since it has been
6632 redefined using seek.
6634 ** the setvbuf procedure now uses a default size if mode is _IOFBF and
6635 size is not supplied.
6637 ** the newline procedure no longer flushes the port if it's not
6638 line-buffered: previously it did if it was the current output port.
6640 ** open-pipe and close-pipe are no longer primitive procedures, but
6641 an emulation can be obtained using `(use-modules (ice-9 popen))'.
6643 ** the freopen procedure has been removed.
6645 ** new procedure: drain-input PORT
6646 Drains PORT's read buffers (including any pushed-back characters)
6647 and returns the contents as a single string.
6649 ** New function: map-in-order PROC LIST1 LIST2 ...
6650 Version of `map' which guarantees that the procedure is applied to the
6651 lists in serial order.
6653 ** Renamed `serial-array-copy!' and `serial-array-map!' to
6654 `array-copy-in-order!' and `array-map-in-order!'. The old names are
6655 now obsolete and will go away in release 1.5.
6657 ** New syntax: collect BODY1 ...
6658 Version of `begin' which returns a list of the results of the body
6659 forms instead of the result of the last body form. In contrast to
6660 `begin', `collect' allows an empty body.
6662 ** New functions: read-history FILENAME, write-history FILENAME
6663 Read/write command line history from/to file. Returns #t on success
6664 and #f if an error occured.
6666 ** `ls' and `lls' in module (ice-9 ls) now handle no arguments.
6668 These procedures return a list of definitions available in the specified
6669 argument, a relative module reference. In the case of no argument,
6670 `(current-module)' is now consulted for definitions to return, instead
6671 of simply returning #f, the former behavior.
6673 ** The #/ syntax for lists is no longer supported.
6675 Earlier versions of Scheme accepted this syntax, but printed a
6678 ** Guile no longer consults the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable.
6680 Instead, you should set GUILE_LOAD_PATH to tell Guile where to find
6683 * Changes to the gh_ interface
6687 Now takes a second argument which is the result array. If this
6688 pointer is NULL, a new array is malloced (the old behaviour).
6690 ** gh_chars2byvect, gh_shorts2svect, gh_floats2fvect, gh_scm2chars,
6691 gh_scm2shorts, gh_scm2longs, gh_scm2floats
6695 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6697 ** Function: scm_make_named_hook (char* name, int n_args)
6699 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
6700 binds a variable named NAME to it.
6702 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
6704 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module. This
6705 might change when we get the new module system.
6707 ** The smob interface
6709 The interface for creating smobs has changed. For documentation, see
6710 data-rep.info (made from guile-core/doc/data-rep.texi).
6712 *** Deprecated function: SCM scm_newsmob (scm_smobfuns *)
6714 >>> This function will be removed in 1.3.4. <<<
6718 *** Function: SCM scm_make_smob_type (const char *name, scm_sizet size)
6719 This function adds a new smob type, named NAME, with instance size
6720 SIZE to the system. The return value is a tag that is used in
6721 creating instances of the type. If SIZE is 0, then no memory will
6722 be allocated when instances of the smob are created, and nothing
6723 will be freed by the default free function.
6725 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_mark (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
6726 This function sets the smob marking procedure for the smob type
6727 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
6728 `scm_make_smob_type'.
6730 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_free (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
6731 This function sets the smob freeing procedure for the smob type
6732 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
6733 `scm_make_smob_type'.
6735 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_print (tc, print)
6737 - Function: void scm_set_smob_print (long tc,
6738 scm_sizet (*print) (SCM,
6742 This function sets the smob printing procedure for the smob type
6743 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
6744 `scm_make_smob_type'.
6746 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_equalp (long tc, SCM (*equalp) (SCM, SCM))
6747 This function sets the smob equality-testing predicate for the
6748 smob type specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
6749 `scm_make_smob_type'.
6751 *** Macro: void SCM_NEWSMOB (SCM var, long tc, void *data)
6752 Make VALUE contain a smob instance of the type with type code TC and
6753 smob data DATA. VALUE must be previously declared as C type `SCM'.
6755 *** Macro: fn_returns SCM_RETURN_NEWSMOB (long tc, void *data)
6756 This macro expands to a block of code that creates a smob instance
6757 of the type with type code TC and smob data DATA, and returns that
6758 `SCM' value. It should be the last piece of code in a block.
6760 ** The interfaces for using I/O ports and implementing port types
6761 (ptobs) have changed significantly. The new interface is based on
6762 shared access to buffers and a new set of ptob procedures.
6764 *** scm_newptob has been removed
6768 *** Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (type_name, fill_buffer, write_flush)
6770 - Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (char *type_name,
6771 int (*fill_buffer) (SCM port),
6772 void (*write_flush) (SCM port));
6774 Similarly to the new smob interface, there is a set of function
6775 setters by which the user can customize the behaviour of his port
6776 type. See ports.h (scm_set_port_XXX).
6778 ** scm_strport_to_string: New function: creates a new string from
6779 a string port's buffer.
6781 ** Plug in interface for random number generators
6782 The variable `scm_the_rng' in random.c contains a value and three
6783 function pointers which together define the current random number
6784 generator being used by the Scheme level interface and the random
6785 number library functions.
6787 The user is free to replace the default generator with the generator
6790 *** Variable: size_t scm_the_rng.rstate_size
6791 The size of the random state type used by the current RNG
6794 *** Function: unsigned long scm_the_rng.random_bits (scm_rstate *STATE)
6795 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
6797 *** Function: void scm_the_rng.init_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE, chars *S, int N)
6798 Seed random state STATE using string S of length N.
6800 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_the_rng.copy_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE)
6801 Given random state STATE, return a malloced copy.
6804 The default RNG is the MWC (Multiply With Carry) random number
6805 generator described by George Marsaglia at the Department of
6806 Statistics and Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The
6807 Florida State University (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo).
6809 It uses 64 bits, has a period of 4578426017172946943 (4.6e18), and
6810 passes all tests in the DIEHARD test suite
6811 (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo/diehard.html). The generation of 32 bits
6812 costs one multiply and one add on platforms which either supports long
6813 longs (gcc does this on most systems) or have 64 bit longs. The cost
6814 is four multiply on other systems but this can be optimized by writing
6815 scm_i_uniform32 in assembler.
6817 These functions are provided through the scm_the_rng interface for use
6818 by libguile and the application.
6820 *** Function: unsigned long scm_i_uniform32 (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
6821 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
6822 Don't use this function directly. Instead go through the plugin
6823 interface (see "Plug in interface" above).
6825 *** Function: void scm_i_init_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE, char *SEED, int N)
6826 Initialize STATE using SEED of length N.
6828 *** Function: scm_i_rstate *scm_i_copy_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
6829 Return a malloc:ed copy of STATE. This function can easily be re-used
6830 in the interfaces to other RNGs.
6832 ** Random number library functions
6833 These functions use the current RNG through the scm_the_rng interface.
6834 It might be a good idea to use these functions from your C code so
6835 that only one random generator is used by all code in your program.
6837 The default random state is stored in:
6839 *** Variable: SCM scm_var_random_state
6840 Contains the vcell of the Scheme variable "*random-state*" which is
6841 used as default state by all random number functions in the Scheme
6846 double x = scm_c_uniform01 (SCM_RSTATE (SCM_CDR (scm_var_random_state)));
6848 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_default_rstate (void)
6849 This is a convenience function which returns the value of
6850 scm_var_random_state. An error message is generated if this value
6851 isn't a random state.
6853 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_make_rstate (char *SEED, int LENGTH)
6854 Make a new random state from the string SEED of length LENGTH.
6856 It is generally not a good idea to use multiple random states in a
6857 program. While subsequent random numbers generated from one random
6858 state are guaranteed to be reasonably independent, there is no such
6859 guarantee for numbers generated from different random states.
6861 *** Macro: unsigned long scm_c_uniform32 (scm_rstate *STATE)
6862 Return 32 random bits.
6864 *** Function: double scm_c_uniform01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
6865 Return a sample from the uniform(0,1) distribution.
6867 *** Function: double scm_c_normal01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
6868 Return a sample from the normal(0,1) distribution.
6870 *** Function: double scm_c_exp1 (scm_rstate *STATE)
6871 Return a sample from the exp(1) distribution.
6873 *** Function: unsigned long scm_c_random (scm_rstate *STATE, unsigned long M)
6874 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
6876 *** Function: SCM scm_c_random_bignum (scm_rstate *STATE, SCM M)
6877 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
6878 M must be a bignum object. The returned value may be an INUM.
6882 Changes in Guile 1.3 (released Monday, October 19, 1998):
6884 * Changes to the distribution
6886 ** We renamed the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable to GUILE_LOAD_PATH.
6887 To avoid conflicts, programs should name environment variables after
6888 themselves, except when there's a common practice establishing some
6891 For now, Guile supports both GUILE_LOAD_PATH and SCHEME_LOAD_PATH,
6892 giving the former precedence, and printing a warning message if the
6893 latter is set. Guile 1.4 will not recognize SCHEME_LOAD_PATH at all.
6895 ** The header files related to multi-byte characters have been removed.
6896 They were: libguile/extchrs.h and libguile/mbstrings.h. Any C code
6897 which referred to these explicitly will probably need to be rewritten,
6898 since the support for the variant string types has been removed; see
6901 ** The header files append.h and sequences.h have been removed. These
6902 files implemented non-R4RS operations which would encourage
6903 non-portable programming style and less easy-to-read code.
6905 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
6907 ** New procedures have been added to implement a "batch mode":
6909 *** Function: batch-mode?
6911 Returns a boolean indicating whether the interpreter is in batch
6914 *** Function: set-batch-mode?! ARG
6916 If ARG is true, switches the interpreter to batch mode. The `#f'
6917 case has not been implemented.
6919 ** Guile now provides full command-line editing, when run interactively.
6920 To use this feature, you must have the readline library installed.
6921 The Guile build process will notice it, and automatically include
6924 The readline library is available via anonymous FTP from any GNU
6925 mirror site; the canonical location is "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
6927 ** the-last-stack is now a fluid.
6929 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
6931 ** You can now use the `guile-config' utility to build programs that use Guile.
6933 Guile now includes a command-line utility called `guile-config', which
6934 can provide information about how to compile and link programs that
6937 *** `guile-config compile' prints any C compiler flags needed to use Guile.
6938 You should include this command's output on the command line you use
6939 to compile C or C++ code that #includes the Guile header files. It's
6940 usually just a `-I' flag to help the compiler find the Guile headers.
6943 *** `guile-config link' prints any linker flags necessary to link with Guile.
6945 This command writes to its standard output a list of flags which you
6946 must pass to the linker to link your code against the Guile library.
6947 The flags include '-lguile' itself, any other libraries the Guile
6948 library depends upon, and any `-L' flags needed to help the linker
6949 find those libraries.
6951 For example, here is a Makefile rule that builds a program named 'foo'
6952 from the object files ${FOO_OBJECTS}, and links them against Guile:
6955 ${CC} ${CFLAGS} ${FOO_OBJECTS} `guile-config link` -o foo
6957 Previous Guile releases recommended that you use autoconf to detect
6958 which of a predefined set of libraries were present on your system.
6959 It is more robust to use `guile-config', since it records exactly which
6960 libraries the installed Guile library requires.
6962 This was originally called `build-guile', but was renamed to
6963 `guile-config' before Guile 1.3 was released, to be consistent with
6964 the analogous script for the GTK+ GUI toolkit, which is called
6968 ** Use the GUILE_FLAGS macro in your configure.in file to find Guile.
6970 If you are using the GNU autoconf package to configure your program,
6971 you can use the GUILE_FLAGS autoconf macro to call `guile-config'
6972 (described above) and gather the necessary values for use in your
6975 The GUILE_FLAGS macro expands to configure script code which runs the
6976 `guile-config' script, to find out where Guile's header files and
6977 libraries are installed. It sets two variables, marked for
6978 substitution, as by AC_SUBST.
6980 GUILE_CFLAGS --- flags to pass to a C or C++ compiler to build
6981 code that uses Guile header files. This is almost always just a
6984 GUILE_LDFLAGS --- flags to pass to the linker to link a
6985 program against Guile. This includes `-lguile' for the Guile
6986 library itself, any libraries that Guile itself requires (like
6987 -lqthreads), and so on. It may also include a -L flag to tell the
6988 compiler where to find the libraries.
6990 GUILE_FLAGS is defined in the file guile.m4, in the top-level
6991 directory of the Guile distribution. You can copy it into your
6992 package's aclocal.m4 file, and then use it in your configure.in file.
6994 If you are using the `aclocal' program, distributed with GNU automake,
6995 to maintain your aclocal.m4 file, the Guile installation process
6996 installs guile.m4 where aclocal will find it. All you need to do is
6997 use GUILE_FLAGS in your configure.in file, and then run `aclocal';
6998 this will copy the definition of GUILE_FLAGS into your aclocal.m4
7002 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
7004 ** Multi-byte strings have been removed, as have multi-byte and wide
7005 ports. We felt that these were the wrong approach to
7006 internationalization support.
7008 ** New function: readline [PROMPT]
7009 Read a line from the terminal, and allow the user to edit it,
7010 prompting with PROMPT. READLINE provides a large set of Emacs-like
7011 editing commands, lets the user recall previously typed lines, and
7012 works on almost every kind of terminal, including dumb terminals.
7014 READLINE assumes that the cursor is at the beginning of the line when
7015 it is invoked. Thus, you can't print a prompt yourself, and then call
7016 READLINE; you need to package up your prompt as a string, pass it to
7017 the function, and let READLINE print the prompt itself. This is
7018 because READLINE needs to know the prompt's screen width.
7020 For Guile to provide this function, you must have the readline
7021 library, version 2.1 or later, installed on your system. Readline is
7022 available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in pub/gnu, or from
7023 any GNU mirror site.
7025 See also ADD-HISTORY function.
7027 ** New function: add-history STRING
7028 Add STRING as the most recent line in the history used by the READLINE
7029 command. READLINE does not add lines to the history itself; you must
7030 call ADD-HISTORY to make previous input available to the user.
7032 ** The behavior of the read-line function has changed.
7034 This function now uses standard C library functions to read the line,
7035 for speed. This means that it doesn not respect the value of
7036 scm-line-incrementors; it assumes that lines are delimited with
7039 (Note that this is read-line, the function that reads a line of text
7040 from a port, not readline, the function that reads a line from a
7041 terminal, providing full editing capabilities.)
7043 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style): Parse command-line arguments.
7045 This module provides some simple argument parsing. It exports one
7048 Function: getopt-gnu-style ARG-LS
7049 Parse a list of program arguments into an alist of option
7052 Each item in the list of program arguments is examined to see if
7053 it meets the syntax of a GNU long-named option. An argument like
7054 `--MUMBLE' produces an element of the form (MUMBLE . #t) in the
7055 returned alist, where MUMBLE is a keyword object with the same
7056 name as the argument. An argument like `--MUMBLE=FROB' produces
7057 an element of the form (MUMBLE . FROB), where FROB is a string.
7059 As a special case, the returned alist also contains a pair whose
7060 car is the symbol `rest'. The cdr of this pair is a list
7061 containing all the items in the argument list that are not options
7062 of the form mentioned above.
7064 The argument `--' is treated specially: all items in the argument
7065 list appearing after such an argument are not examined, and are
7066 returned in the special `rest' list.
7068 This function does not parse normal single-character switches.
7069 You will need to parse them out of the `rest' list yourself.
7071 ** The read syntax for byte vectors and short vectors has changed.
7073 Instead of #bytes(...), write #y(...).
7075 Instead of #short(...), write #h(...).
7077 This may seem nutty, but, like the other uniform vectors, byte vectors
7078 and short vectors want to have the same print and read syntax (and,
7079 more basic, want to have read syntax!). Changing the read syntax to
7080 use multiple characters after the hash sign breaks with the
7081 conventions used in R5RS and the conventions used for the other
7082 uniform vectors. It also introduces complexity in the current reader,
7083 both on the C and Scheme levels. (The Right solution is probably to
7084 change the syntax and prototypes for uniform vectors entirely.)
7087 ** The new module (ice-9 session) provides useful interactive functions.
7089 *** New procedure: (apropos REGEXP OPTION ...)
7091 Display a list of top-level variables whose names match REGEXP, and
7092 the modules they are imported from. Each OPTION should be one of the
7095 value --- Show the value of each matching variable.
7096 shadow --- Show bindings shadowed by subsequently imported modules.
7097 full --- Same as both `shadow' and `value'.
7101 guile> (apropos "trace" 'full)
7102 debug: trace #<procedure trace args>
7103 debug: untrace #<procedure untrace args>
7104 the-scm-module: display-backtrace #<compiled-closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>
7105 the-scm-module: before-backtrace-hook ()
7106 the-scm-module: backtrace #<primitive-procedure backtrace>
7107 the-scm-module: after-backtrace-hook ()
7108 the-scm-module: has-shown-backtrace-hint? #f
7111 ** There are new functions and syntax for working with macros.
7113 Guile implements macros as a special object type. Any variable whose
7114 top-level binding is a macro object acts as a macro. The macro object
7115 specifies how the expression should be transformed before evaluation.
7117 *** Macro objects now print in a reasonable way, resembling procedures.
7119 *** New function: (macro? OBJ)
7120 True iff OBJ is a macro object.
7122 *** New function: (primitive-macro? OBJ)
7123 Like (macro? OBJ), but true only if OBJ is one of the Guile primitive
7124 macro transformers, implemented in eval.c rather than Scheme code.
7126 Why do we have this function?
7127 - For symmetry with procedure? and primitive-procedure?,
7128 - to allow custom print procedures to tell whether a macro is
7129 primitive, and display it differently, and
7130 - to allow compilers and user-written evaluators to distinguish
7131 builtin special forms from user-defined ones, which could be
7134 *** New function: (macro-type OBJ)
7135 Return a value indicating what kind of macro OBJ is. Possible return
7138 The symbol `syntax' --- a macro created by procedure->syntax.
7139 The symbol `macro' --- a macro created by procedure->macro.
7140 The symbol `macro!' --- a macro created by procedure->memoizing-macro.
7141 The boolean #f --- if OBJ is not a macro object.
7143 *** New function: (macro-name MACRO)
7144 Return the name of the macro object MACRO's procedure, as returned by
7147 *** New function: (macro-transformer MACRO)
7148 Return the transformer procedure for MACRO.
7150 *** New syntax: (use-syntax MODULE ... TRANSFORMER)
7152 Specify a new macro expander to use in the current module. Each
7153 MODULE is a module name, with the same meaning as in the `use-modules'
7154 form; each named module's exported bindings are added to the current
7155 top-level environment. TRANSFORMER is an expression evaluated in the
7156 resulting environment which must yield a procedure to use as the
7157 module's eval transformer: every expression evaluated in this module
7158 is passed to this function, and the result passed to the Guile
7161 *** macro-eval! is removed. Use local-eval instead.
7163 ** Some magic has been added to the printer to better handle user
7164 written printing routines (like record printers, closure printers).
7166 The problem is that these user written routines must have access to
7167 the current `print-state' to be able to handle fancy things like
7168 detection of circular references. These print-states have to be
7169 passed to the builtin printing routines (display, write, etc) to
7170 properly continue the print chain.
7172 We didn't want to change all existing print code so that it
7173 explicitly passes thru a print state in addition to a port. Instead,
7174 we extented the possible values that the builtin printing routines
7175 accept as a `port'. In addition to a normal port, they now also take
7176 a pair of a normal port and a print-state. Printing will go to the
7177 port and the print-state will be used to control the detection of
7178 circular references, etc. If the builtin function does not care for a
7179 print-state, it is simply ignored.
7181 User written callbacks are now called with such a pair as their
7182 `port', but because every function now accepts this pair as a PORT
7183 argument, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, it is probably
7184 safest to not check for these pairs.
7186 However, it is sometimes necessary to continue a print chain on a
7187 different port, for example to get a intermediate string
7188 representation of the printed value, mangle that string somehow, and
7189 then to finally print the mangled string. Use the new function
7191 inherit-print-state OLD-PORT NEW-PORT
7193 for this. It constructs a new `port' that prints to NEW-PORT but
7194 inherits the print-state of OLD-PORT.
7196 ** struct-vtable-offset renamed to vtable-offset-user
7198 ** New constants: vtable-index-layout, vtable-index-vtable, vtable-index-printer
7200 ** There is now a third optional argument to make-vtable-vtable
7201 (and fourth to make-struct) when constructing new types (vtables).
7202 This argument initializes field vtable-index-printer of the vtable.
7204 ** The detection of circular references has been extended to structs.
7205 That is, a structure that -- in the process of being printed -- prints
7206 itself does not lead to infinite recursion.
7208 ** There is now some basic support for fluids. Please read
7209 "libguile/fluid.h" to find out more. It is accessible from Scheme with
7210 the following functions and macros:
7212 Function: make-fluid
7214 Create a new fluid object. Fluids are not special variables or
7215 some other extension to the semantics of Scheme, but rather
7216 ordinary Scheme objects. You can store them into variables (that
7217 are still lexically scoped, of course) or into any other place you
7218 like. Every fluid has a initial value of `#f'.
7220 Function: fluid? OBJ
7222 Test whether OBJ is a fluid.
7224 Function: fluid-ref FLUID
7225 Function: fluid-set! FLUID VAL
7227 Access/modify the fluid FLUID. Modifications are only visible
7228 within the current dynamic root (that includes threads).
7230 Function: with-fluids* FLUIDS VALUES THUNK
7232 FLUIDS is a list of fluids and VALUES a corresponding list of
7233 values for these fluids. Before THUNK gets called the values are
7234 installed in the fluids and the old values of the fluids are
7235 saved in the VALUES list. When the flow of control leaves THUNK
7236 or reenters it, the values get swapped again. You might think of
7237 this as a `safe-fluid-excursion'. Note that the VALUES list is
7238 modified by `with-fluids*'.
7240 Macro: with-fluids ((FLUID VALUE) ...) FORM ...
7242 The same as `with-fluids*' but with a different syntax. It looks
7243 just like `let', but both FLUID and VALUE are evaluated. Remember,
7244 fluids are not special variables but ordinary objects. FLUID
7245 should evaluate to a fluid.
7247 ** Changes to system call interfaces:
7249 *** close-port, close-input-port and close-output-port now return a
7250 boolean instead of an `unspecified' object. #t means that the port
7251 was successfully closed, while #f means it was already closed. It is
7252 also now possible for these procedures to raise an exception if an
7253 error occurs (some errors from write can be delayed until close.)
7255 *** the first argument to chmod, fcntl, ftell and fseek can now be a
7258 *** the third argument to fcntl is now optional.
7260 *** the first argument to chown can now be a file descriptor or a port.
7262 *** the argument to stat can now be a port.
7264 *** The following new procedures have been added (most use scsh
7267 *** procedure: close PORT/FD
7268 Similar to close-port (*note close-port: Closing Ports.), but also
7269 works on file descriptors. A side effect of closing a file
7270 descriptor is that any ports using that file descriptor are moved
7271 to a different file descriptor and have their revealed counts set
7274 *** procedure: port->fdes PORT
7275 Returns the integer file descriptor underlying PORT. As a side
7276 effect the revealed count of PORT is incremented.
7278 *** procedure: fdes->ports FDES
7279 Returns a list of existing ports which have FDES as an underlying
7280 file descriptor, without changing their revealed counts.
7282 *** procedure: fdes->inport FDES
7283 Returns an existing input port which has FDES as its underlying
7284 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
7285 Otherwise, returns a new input port with a revealed count of 1.
7287 *** procedure: fdes->outport FDES
7288 Returns an existing output port which has FDES as its underlying
7289 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
7290 Otherwise, returns a new output port with a revealed count of 1.
7292 The next group of procedures perform a `dup2' system call, if NEWFD
7293 (an integer) is supplied, otherwise a `dup'. The file descriptor to be
7294 duplicated can be supplied as an integer or contained in a port. The
7295 type of value returned varies depending on which procedure is used.
7297 All procedures also have the side effect when performing `dup2' that
7298 any ports using NEWFD are moved to a different file descriptor and have
7299 their revealed counts set to zero.
7301 *** procedure: dup->fdes PORT/FD [NEWFD]
7302 Returns an integer file descriptor.
7304 *** procedure: dup->inport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
7305 Returns a new input port using the new file descriptor.
7307 *** procedure: dup->outport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
7308 Returns a new output port using the new file descriptor.
7310 *** procedure: dup PORT/FD [NEWFD]
7311 Returns a new port if PORT/FD is a port, with the same mode as the
7312 supplied port, otherwise returns an integer file descriptor.
7314 *** procedure: dup->port PORT/FD MODE [NEWFD]
7315 Returns a new port using the new file descriptor. MODE supplies a
7316 mode string for the port (*note open-file: File Ports.).
7318 *** procedure: setenv NAME VALUE
7319 Modifies the environment of the current process, which is also the
7320 default environment inherited by child processes.
7322 If VALUE is `#f', then NAME is removed from the environment.
7323 Otherwise, the string NAME=VALUE is added to the environment,
7324 replacing any existing string with name matching NAME.
7326 The return value is unspecified.
7328 *** procedure: truncate-file OBJ SIZE
7329 Truncates the file referred to by OBJ to at most SIZE bytes. OBJ
7330 can be a string containing a file name or an integer file
7331 descriptor or port open for output on the file. The underlying
7332 system calls are `truncate' and `ftruncate'.
7334 The return value is unspecified.
7336 *** procedure: setvbuf PORT MODE [SIZE]
7337 Set the buffering mode for PORT. MODE can be:
7345 block buffered, using a newly allocated buffer of SIZE bytes.
7346 However if SIZE is zero or unspecified, the port will be made
7349 This procedure should not be used after I/O has been performed with
7352 Ports are usually block buffered by default, with a default buffer
7353 size. Procedures e.g., *Note open-file: File Ports, which accept a
7354 mode string allow `0' to be added to request an unbuffered port.
7356 *** procedure: fsync PORT/FD
7357 Copies any unwritten data for the specified output file descriptor
7358 to disk. If PORT/FD is a port, its buffer is flushed before the
7359 underlying file descriptor is fsync'd. The return value is
7362 *** procedure: open-fdes PATH FLAGS [MODES]
7363 Similar to `open' but returns a file descriptor instead of a port.
7365 *** procedure: execle PATH ENV [ARG] ...
7366 Similar to `execl', but the environment of the new process is
7367 specified by ENV, which must be a list of strings as returned by
7368 the `environ' procedure.
7370 This procedure is currently implemented using the `execve' system
7371 call, but we call it `execle' because of its Scheme calling
7374 *** procedure: strerror ERRNO
7375 Returns the Unix error message corresponding to ERRNO, an integer.
7377 *** procedure: primitive-exit [STATUS]
7378 Terminate the current process without unwinding the Scheme stack.
7379 This is would typically be useful after a fork. The exit status
7380 is STATUS if supplied, otherwise zero.
7382 *** procedure: times
7383 Returns an object with information about real and processor time.
7384 The following procedures accept such an object as an argument and
7385 return a selected component:
7388 The current real time, expressed as time units relative to an
7392 The CPU time units used by the calling process.
7395 The CPU time units used by the system on behalf of the
7399 The CPU time units used by terminated child processes of the
7400 calling process, whose status has been collected (e.g., using
7404 Similarly, the CPU times units used by the system on behalf of
7405 terminated child processes.
7407 ** Removed: list-length
7408 ** Removed: list-append, list-append!
7409 ** Removed: list-reverse, list-reverse!
7411 ** array-map renamed to array-map!
7413 ** serial-array-map renamed to serial-array-map!
7415 ** catch doesn't take #f as first argument any longer
7417 Previously, it was possible to pass #f instead of a key to `catch'.
7418 That would cause `catch' to pass a jump buffer object to the procedure
7419 passed as second argument. The procedure could then use this jump
7420 buffer objekt as an argument to throw.
7422 This mechanism has been removed since its utility doesn't motivate the
7423 extra complexity it introduces.
7425 ** The `#/' notation for lists now provokes a warning message from Guile.
7426 This syntax will be removed from Guile in the near future.
7428 To disable the warning message, set the GUILE_HUSH environment
7429 variable to any non-empty value.
7431 ** The newline character now prints as `#\newline', following the
7432 normal Scheme notation, not `#\nl'.
7434 * Changes to the gh_ interface
7436 ** The gh_enter function now takes care of loading the Guile startup files.
7437 gh_enter works by calling scm_boot_guile; see the remarks below.
7439 ** Function: void gh_write (SCM x)
7441 Write the printed representation of the scheme object x to the current
7442 output port. Corresponds to the scheme level `write'.
7444 ** gh_list_length renamed to gh_length.
7446 ** vector handling routines
7448 Several major changes. In particular, gh_vector() now resembles
7449 (vector ...) (with a caveat -- see manual), and gh_make_vector() now
7450 exists and behaves like (make-vector ...). gh_vset() and gh_vref()
7451 have been renamed gh_vector_set_x() and gh_vector_ref(). Some missing
7452 vector-related gh_ functions have been implemented.
7454 ** pair and list routines
7456 Implemented several of the R4RS pair and list functions that were
7459 ** gh_scm2doubles, gh_doubles2scm, gh_doubles2dvect
7461 New function. Converts double arrays back and forth between Scheme
7464 * Changes to the scm_ interface
7466 ** The function scm_boot_guile now takes care of loading the startup files.
7468 Guile's primary initialization function, scm_boot_guile, now takes
7469 care of loading `boot-9.scm', in the `ice-9' module, to initialize
7470 Guile, define the module system, and put together some standard
7471 bindings. It also loads `init.scm', which is intended to hold
7472 site-specific initialization code.
7474 Since Guile cannot operate properly until boot-9.scm is loaded, there
7475 is no reason to separate loading boot-9.scm from Guile's other
7476 initialization processes.
7478 This job used to be done by scm_compile_shell_switches, which didn't
7479 make much sense; in particular, it meant that people using Guile for
7480 non-shell-like applications had to jump through hoops to get Guile
7481 initialized properly.
7483 ** The function scm_compile_shell_switches no longer loads the startup files.
7484 Now, Guile always loads the startup files, whenever it is initialized;
7485 see the notes above for scm_boot_guile and scm_load_startup_files.
7487 ** Function: scm_load_startup_files
7488 This new function takes care of loading Guile's initialization file
7489 (`boot-9.scm'), and the site initialization file, `init.scm'. Since
7490 this is always called by the Guile initialization process, it's
7491 probably not too useful to call this yourself, but it's there anyway.
7493 ** The semantics of smob marking have changed slightly.
7495 The smob marking function (the `mark' member of the scm_smobfuns
7496 structure) is no longer responsible for setting the mark bit on the
7497 smob. The generic smob handling code in the garbage collector will
7498 set this bit. The mark function need only ensure that any other
7499 objects the smob refers to get marked.
7501 Note that this change means that the smob's GC8MARK bit is typically
7502 already set upon entry to the mark function. Thus, marking functions
7503 which look like this:
7506 if (SCM_GC8MARKP (ptr))
7508 SCM_SETGC8MARK (ptr);
7509 ... mark objects to which the smob refers ...
7512 are now incorrect, since they will return early, and fail to mark any
7513 other objects the smob refers to. Some code in the Guile library used
7516 ** The semantics of the I/O port functions in scm_ptobfuns have changed.
7518 If you have implemented your own I/O port type, by writing the
7519 functions required by the scm_ptobfuns and then calling scm_newptob,
7520 you will need to change your functions slightly.
7522 The functions in a scm_ptobfuns structure now expect the port itself
7523 as their argument; they used to expect the `stream' member of the
7524 port's scm_port_table structure. This allows functions in an
7525 scm_ptobfuns structure to easily access the port's cell (and any flags
7526 it its CAR), and the port's scm_port_table structure.
7528 Guile now passes the I/O port itself as the `port' argument in the
7529 following scm_ptobfuns functions:
7531 int (*free) (SCM port);
7532 int (*fputc) (int, SCM port);
7533 int (*fputs) (char *, SCM port);
7534 scm_sizet (*fwrite) SCM_P ((char *ptr,
7538 int (*fflush) (SCM port);
7539 int (*fgetc) (SCM port);
7540 int (*fclose) (SCM port);
7542 The interfaces to the `mark', `print', `equalp', and `fgets' methods
7545 If you have existing code which defines its own port types, it is easy
7546 to convert your code to the new interface; simply apply SCM_STREAM to
7547 the port argument to yield the value you code used to expect.
7549 Note that since both the port and the stream have the same type in the
7550 C code --- they are both SCM values --- the C compiler will not remind
7551 you if you forget to update your scm_ptobfuns functions.
7554 ** Function: int scm_internal_select (int fds,
7558 struct timeval *timeout);
7560 This is a replacement for the `select' function provided by the OS.
7561 It enables I/O blocking and sleeping to happen for one cooperative
7562 thread without blocking other threads. It also avoids busy-loops in
7563 these situations. It is intended that all I/O blocking and sleeping
7564 will finally go through this function. Currently, this function is
7565 only available on systems providing `gettimeofday' and `select'.
7567 ** Function: SCM scm_internal_stack_catch (SCM tag,
7568 scm_catch_body_t body,
7570 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
7573 A new sibling to the other two C level `catch' functions
7574 scm_internal_catch and scm_internal_lazy_catch. Use it if you want
7575 the stack to be saved automatically into the variable `the-last-stack'
7576 (scm_the_last_stack_var) on error. This is necessary if you want to
7577 use advanced error reporting, such as calling scm_display_error and
7578 scm_display_backtrace. (They both take a stack object as argument.)
7580 ** Function: SCM scm_spawn_thread (scm_catch_body_t body,
7582 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
7585 Spawns a new thread. It does a job similar to
7586 scm_call_with_new_thread but takes arguments more suitable when
7587 spawning threads from application C code.
7589 ** The hook scm_error_callback has been removed. It was originally
7590 intended as a way for the user to install his own error handler. But
7591 that method works badly since it intervenes between throw and catch,
7592 thereby changing the semantics of expressions like (catch #t ...).
7593 The correct way to do it is to use one of the C level catch functions
7594 in throw.c: scm_internal_catch/lazy_catch/stack_catch.
7596 ** Removed functions:
7598 scm_obj_length, scm_list_length, scm_list_append, scm_list_append_x,
7599 scm_list_reverse, scm_list_reverse_x
7601 ** New macros: SCM_LISTn where n is one of the integers 0-9.
7603 These can be used for pretty list creation from C. The idea is taken
7604 from Erick Gallesio's STk.
7606 ** scm_array_map renamed to scm_array_map_x
7608 ** mbstrings are now removed
7610 This means that the type codes scm_tc7_mb_string and
7611 scm_tc7_mb_substring has been removed.
7613 ** scm_gen_putc, scm_gen_puts, scm_gen_write, and scm_gen_getc have changed.
7615 Since we no longer support multi-byte strings, these I/O functions
7616 have been simplified, and renamed. Here are their old names, and
7617 their new names and arguments:
7619 scm_gen_putc -> void scm_putc (int c, SCM port);
7620 scm_gen_puts -> void scm_puts (char *s, SCM port);
7621 scm_gen_write -> void scm_lfwrite (char *ptr, scm_sizet size, SCM port);
7622 scm_gen_getc -> void scm_getc (SCM port);
7625 ** The macros SCM_TYP7D and SCM_TYP7SD has been removed.
7627 ** The macro SCM_TYP7S has taken the role of the old SCM_TYP7D
7629 SCM_TYP7S now masks away the bit which distinguishes substrings from
7632 ** scm_catch_body_t: Backward incompatible change!
7634 Body functions to scm_internal_catch and friends do not any longer
7635 take a second argument. This is because it is no longer possible to
7636 pass a #f arg to catch.
7638 ** Calls to scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect now nest properly.
7640 The function scm_protect_object protects its argument from being freed
7641 by the garbage collector. scm_unprotect_object removes that
7644 These functions now nest properly. That is, for every object O, there
7645 is a counter which scm_protect_object(O) increments and
7646 scm_unprotect_object(O) decrements, if the counter is greater than
7647 zero. Every object's counter is zero when it is first created. If an
7648 object's counter is greater than zero, the garbage collector will not
7649 reclaim its storage.
7651 This allows you to use scm_protect_object in your code without
7652 worrying that some other function you call will call
7653 scm_unprotect_object, and allow it to be freed. Assuming that the
7654 functions you call are well-behaved, and unprotect only those objects
7655 they protect, you can follow the same rule and have confidence that
7656 objects will be freed only at appropriate times.
7659 Changes in Guile 1.2 (released Tuesday, June 24 1997):
7661 * Changes to the distribution
7663 ** Nightly snapshots are now available from ftp.red-bean.com.
7664 The old server, ftp.cyclic.com, has been relinquished to its rightful
7667 Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are now available via
7668 anonymous FTP from ftp.red-bean.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.
7670 Via the web, that's: ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
7671 For getit, that's: ftp.red-bean.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
7673 ** To run Guile without installing it, the procedure has changed a bit.
7675 If you used a separate build directory to compile Guile, you'll need
7676 to include the build directory in SCHEME_LOAD_PATH, as well as the
7677 source directory. See the `INSTALL' file for examples.
7679 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
7681 ** The standard Guile load path for Scheme code now includes
7682 $(datadir)/guile (usually /usr/local/share/guile). This means that
7683 you can install your own Scheme files there, and Guile will find them.
7684 (Previous versions of Guile only checked a directory whose name
7685 contained the Guile version number, so you had to re-install or move
7686 your Scheme sources each time you installed a fresh version of Guile.)
7688 The load path also includes $(datadir)/guile/site; we recommend
7689 putting individual Scheme files there. If you want to install a
7690 package with multiple source files, create a directory for them under
7693 ** Guile 1.2 will now use the Rx regular expression library, if it is
7694 installed on your system. When you are linking libguile into your own
7695 programs, this means you will have to link against -lguile, -lqt (if
7696 you configured Guile with thread support), and -lrx.
7698 If you are using autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your
7699 application, the following lines should suffice to add the appropriate
7700 libraries to your link command:
7702 ### Find Rx, quickthreads and libguile.
7703 AC_CHECK_LIB(rx, main)
7704 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
7705 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
7707 The Guile 1.2 distribution does not contain sources for the Rx
7708 library, as Guile 1.0 did. If you want to use Rx, you'll need to
7709 retrieve it from a GNU FTP site and install it separately.
7711 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
7713 ** The dynamic linking features of Guile are now enabled by default.
7714 You can disable them by giving the `--disable-dynamic-linking' option
7717 (dynamic-link FILENAME)
7719 Find the object file denoted by FILENAME (a string) and link it
7720 into the running Guile application. When everything works out,
7721 return a Scheme object suitable for representing the linked object
7722 file. Otherwise an error is thrown. How object files are
7723 searched is system dependent.
7725 (dynamic-object? VAL)
7727 Determine whether VAL represents a dynamically linked object file.
7729 (dynamic-unlink DYNOBJ)
7731 Unlink the indicated object file from the application. DYNOBJ
7732 should be one of the values returned by `dynamic-link'.
7734 (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
7736 Search the C function indicated by FUNCTION (a string or symbol)
7737 in DYNOBJ and return some Scheme object that can later be used
7738 with `dynamic-call' to actually call this function. Right now,
7739 these Scheme objects are formed by casting the address of the
7740 function to `long' and converting this number to its Scheme
7743 (dynamic-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
7745 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ. The
7746 function is passed no arguments and its return value is ignored.
7747 When FUNCTION is something returned by `dynamic-func', call that
7748 function and ignore DYNOBJ. When FUNCTION is a string (or symbol,
7749 etc.), look it up in DYNOBJ; this is equivalent to
7751 (dynamic-call (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ) #f)
7753 Interrupts are deferred while the C function is executing (with
7754 SCM_DEFER_INTS/SCM_ALLOW_INTS).
7756 (dynamic-args-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ ARGS)
7758 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ, but pass it
7759 some arguments and return its return value. The C function is
7760 expected to take two arguments and return an `int', just like
7763 int c_func (int argc, char **argv);
7765 ARGS must be a list of strings and is converted into an array of
7766 `char *'. The array is passed in ARGV and its size in ARGC. The
7767 return value is converted to a Scheme number and returned from the
7768 call to `dynamic-args-call'.
7770 When dynamic linking is disabled or not supported on your system,
7771 the above functions throw errors, but they are still available.
7773 Here is a small example that works on GNU/Linux:
7775 (define libc-obj (dynamic-link "libc.so"))
7776 (dynamic-args-call 'rand libc-obj '())
7778 See the file `libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING' for additional comments.
7780 ** The #/ syntax for module names is depreciated, and will be removed
7781 in a future version of Guile. Instead of
7789 The latter syntax is more consistent with existing Lisp practice.
7791 ** Guile now does fancier printing of structures. Structures are the
7792 underlying implementation for records, which in turn are used to
7793 implement modules, so all of these object now print differently and in
7794 a more informative way.
7796 The Scheme printer will examine the builtin variable *struct-printer*
7797 whenever it needs to print a structure object. When this variable is
7798 not `#f' it is deemed to be a procedure and will be applied to the
7799 structure object and the output port. When *struct-printer* is `#f'
7800 or the procedure return `#f' the structure object will be printed in
7801 the boring #<struct 80458270> form.
7803 This hook is used by some routines in ice-9/boot-9.scm to implement
7804 type specific printing routines. Please read the comments there about
7807 One of the more specific uses of structs are records. The printing
7808 procedure that could be passed to MAKE-RECORD-TYPE is now actually
7809 called. It should behave like a *struct-printer* procedure (described
7812 ** Guile now supports a new R4RS-compliant syntax for keywords. A
7813 token of the form #:NAME, where NAME has the same syntax as a Scheme
7814 symbol, is the external representation of the keyword named NAME.
7815 Keyword objects print using this syntax as well, so values containing
7816 keyword objects can be read back into Guile. When used in an
7817 expression, keywords are self-quoting objects.
7819 Guile suports this read syntax, and uses this print syntax, regardless
7820 of the current setting of the `keyword' read option. The `keyword'
7821 read option only controls whether Guile recognizes the `:NAME' syntax,
7822 which is incompatible with R4RS. (R4RS says such token represent
7825 ** Guile has regular expression support again. Guile 1.0 included
7826 functions for matching regular expressions, based on the Rx library.
7827 In Guile 1.1, the Guile/Rx interface was removed to simplify the
7828 distribution, and thus Guile had no regular expression support. Guile
7829 1.2 again supports the most commonly used functions, and supports all
7830 of SCSH's regular expression functions.
7832 If your system does not include a POSIX regular expression library,
7833 and you have not linked Guile with a third-party regexp library such as
7834 Rx, these functions will not be available. You can tell whether your
7835 Guile installation includes regular expression support by checking
7836 whether the `*features*' list includes the `regex' symbol.
7838 *** regexp functions
7840 By default, Guile supports POSIX extended regular expressions. That
7841 means that the characters `(', `)', `+' and `?' are special, and must
7842 be escaped if you wish to match the literal characters.
7844 This regular expression interface was modeled after that implemented
7845 by SCSH, the Scheme Shell. It is intended to be upwardly compatible
7846 with SCSH regular expressions.
7848 **** Function: string-match PATTERN STR [START]
7849 Compile the string PATTERN into a regular expression and compare
7850 it with STR. The optional numeric argument START specifies the
7851 position of STR at which to begin matching.
7853 `string-match' returns a "match structure" which describes what,
7854 if anything, was matched by the regular expression. *Note Match
7855 Structures::. If STR does not match PATTERN at all,
7856 `string-match' returns `#f'.
7858 Each time `string-match' is called, it must compile its PATTERN
7859 argument into a regular expression structure. This operation is
7860 expensive, which makes `string-match' inefficient if the same regular
7861 expression is used several times (for example, in a loop). For better
7862 performance, you can compile a regular expression in advance and then
7863 match strings against the compiled regexp.
7865 **** Function: make-regexp STR [FLAGS]
7866 Compile the regular expression described by STR, and return the
7867 compiled regexp structure. If STR does not describe a legal
7868 regular expression, `make-regexp' throws a
7869 `regular-expression-syntax' error.
7871 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
7873 **** Constant: regexp/extended
7874 Use POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting
7875 STR. If not set, POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used.
7876 If the FLAGS argument is omitted, we assume regexp/extended.
7878 **** Constant: regexp/icase
7879 Do not differentiate case. Subsequent searches using the
7880 returned regular expression will be case insensitive.
7882 **** Constant: regexp/newline
7883 Match-any-character operators don't match a newline.
7885 A non-matching list ([^...]) not containing a newline matches a
7888 Match-beginning-of-line operator (^) matches the empty string
7889 immediately after a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
7890 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/notbol.
7892 Match-end-of-line operator ($) matches the empty string
7893 immediately before a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
7894 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/noteol.
7896 **** Function: regexp-exec REGEXP STR [START [FLAGS]]
7897 Match the compiled regular expression REGEXP against `str'. If
7898 the optional integer START argument is provided, begin matching
7899 from that position in the string. Return a match structure
7900 describing the results of the match, or `#f' if no match could be
7903 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
7905 **** Constant: regexp/notbol
7906 The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but
7907 see the compilation flag regexp/newline above) This flag may be
7908 used when different portions of a string are passed to
7909 regexp-exec and the beginning of the string should not be
7910 interpreted as the beginning of the line.
7912 **** Constant: regexp/noteol
7913 The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the
7914 compilation flag regexp/newline above)
7916 **** Function: regexp? OBJ
7917 Return `#t' if OBJ is a compiled regular expression, or `#f'
7920 Regular expressions are commonly used to find patterns in one string
7921 and replace them with the contents of another string.
7923 **** Function: regexp-substitute PORT MATCH [ITEM...]
7924 Write to the output port PORT selected contents of the match
7925 structure MATCH. Each ITEM specifies what should be written, and
7926 may be one of the following arguments:
7928 * A string. String arguments are written out verbatim.
7930 * An integer. The submatch with that number is written.
7932 * The symbol `pre'. The portion of the matched string preceding
7933 the regexp match is written.
7935 * The symbol `post'. The portion of the matched string
7936 following the regexp match is written.
7938 PORT may be `#f', in which case nothing is written; instead,
7939 `regexp-substitute' constructs a string from the specified ITEMs
7942 **** Function: regexp-substitute/global PORT REGEXP TARGET [ITEM...]
7943 Similar to `regexp-substitute', but can be used to perform global
7944 substitutions on STR. Instead of taking a match structure as an
7945 argument, `regexp-substitute/global' takes two string arguments: a
7946 REGEXP string describing a regular expression, and a TARGET string
7947 which should be matched against this regular expression.
7949 Each ITEM behaves as in REGEXP-SUBSTITUTE, with the following
7952 * A function may be supplied. When this function is called, it
7953 will be passed one argument: a match structure for a given
7954 regular expression match. It should return a string to be
7955 written out to PORT.
7957 * The `post' symbol causes `regexp-substitute/global' to recurse
7958 on the unmatched portion of STR. This *must* be supplied in
7959 order to perform global search-and-replace on STR; if it is
7960 not present among the ITEMs, then `regexp-substitute/global'
7961 will return after processing a single match.
7963 *** Match Structures
7965 A "match structure" is the object returned by `string-match' and
7966 `regexp-exec'. It describes which portion of a string, if any, matched
7967 the given regular expression. Match structures include: a reference to
7968 the string that was checked for matches; the starting and ending
7969 positions of the regexp match; and, if the regexp included any
7970 parenthesized subexpressions, the starting and ending positions of each
7973 In each of the regexp match functions described below, the `match'
7974 argument must be a match structure returned by a previous call to
7975 `string-match' or `regexp-exec'. Most of these functions return some
7976 information about the original target string that was matched against a
7977 regular expression; we will call that string TARGET for easy reference.
7979 **** Function: regexp-match? OBJ
7980 Return `#t' if OBJ is a match structure returned by a previous
7981 call to `regexp-exec', or `#f' otherwise.
7983 **** Function: match:substring MATCH [N]
7984 Return the portion of TARGET matched by subexpression number N.
7985 Submatch 0 (the default) represents the entire regexp match. If
7986 the regular expression as a whole matched, but the subexpression
7987 number N did not match, return `#f'.
7989 **** Function: match:start MATCH [N]
7990 Return the starting position of submatch number N.
7992 **** Function: match:end MATCH [N]
7993 Return the ending position of submatch number N.
7995 **** Function: match:prefix MATCH
7996 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET preceding the regexp match.
7998 **** Function: match:suffix MATCH
7999 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET following the regexp match.
8001 **** Function: match:count MATCH
8002 Return the number of parenthesized subexpressions from MATCH.
8003 Note that the entire regular expression match itself counts as a
8004 subexpression, and failed submatches are included in the count.
8006 **** Function: match:string MATCH
8007 Return the original TARGET string.
8009 *** Backslash Escapes
8011 Sometimes you will want a regexp to match characters like `*' or `$'
8012 exactly. For example, to check whether a particular string represents
8013 a menu entry from an Info node, it would be useful to match it against
8014 a regexp like `^* [^:]*::'. However, this won't work; because the
8015 asterisk is a metacharacter, it won't match the `*' at the beginning of
8016 the string. In this case, we want to make the first asterisk un-magic.
8018 You can do this by preceding the metacharacter with a backslash
8019 character `\'. (This is also called "quoting" the metacharacter, and
8020 is known as a "backslash escape".) When Guile sees a backslash in a
8021 regular expression, it considers the following glyph to be an ordinary
8022 character, no matter what special meaning it would ordinarily have.
8023 Therefore, we can make the above example work by changing the regexp to
8024 `^\* [^:]*::'. The `\*' sequence tells the regular expression engine
8025 to match only a single asterisk in the target string.
8027 Since the backslash is itself a metacharacter, you may force a
8028 regexp to match a backslash in the target string by preceding the
8029 backslash with itself. For example, to find variable references in a
8030 TeX program, you might want to find occurrences of the string `\let\'
8031 followed by any number of alphabetic characters. The regular expression
8032 `\\let\\[A-Za-z]*' would do this: the double backslashes in the regexp
8033 each match a single backslash in the target string.
8035 **** Function: regexp-quote STR
8036 Quote each special character found in STR with a backslash, and
8037 return the resulting string.
8039 *Very important:* Using backslash escapes in Guile source code (as
8040 in Emacs Lisp or C) can be tricky, because the backslash character has
8041 special meaning for the Guile reader. For example, if Guile encounters
8042 the character sequence `\n' in the middle of a string while processing
8043 Scheme code, it replaces those characters with a newline character.
8044 Similarly, the character sequence `\t' is replaced by a horizontal tab.
8045 Several of these "escape sequences" are processed by the Guile reader
8046 before your code is executed. Unrecognized escape sequences are
8047 ignored: if the characters `\*' appear in a string, they will be
8048 translated to the single character `*'.
8050 This translation is obviously undesirable for regular expressions,
8051 since we want to be able to include backslashes in a string in order to
8052 escape regexp metacharacters. Therefore, to make sure that a backslash
8053 is preserved in a string in your Guile program, you must use *two*
8054 consecutive backslashes:
8056 (define Info-menu-entry-pattern (make-regexp "^\\* [^:]*"))
8058 The string in this example is preprocessed by the Guile reader before
8059 any code is executed. The resulting argument to `make-regexp' is the
8060 string `^\* [^:]*', which is what we really want.
8062 This also means that in order to write a regular expression that
8063 matches a single backslash character, the regular expression string in
8064 the source code must include *four* backslashes. Each consecutive pair
8065 of backslashes gets translated by the Guile reader to a single
8066 backslash, and the resulting double-backslash is interpreted by the
8067 regexp engine as matching a single backslash character. Hence:
8069 (define tex-variable-pattern (make-regexp "\\\\let\\\\=[A-Za-z]*"))
8071 The reason for the unwieldiness of this syntax is historical. Both
8072 regular expression pattern matchers and Unix string processing systems
8073 have traditionally used backslashes with the special meanings described
8074 above. The POSIX regular expression specification and ANSI C standard
8075 both require these semantics. Attempting to abandon either convention
8076 would cause other kinds of compatibility problems, possibly more severe
8077 ones. Therefore, without extending the Scheme reader to support
8078 strings with different quoting conventions (an ungainly and confusing
8079 extension when implemented in other languages), we must adhere to this
8080 cumbersome escape syntax.
8082 * Changes to the gh_ interface
8084 * Changes to the scm_ interface
8086 * Changes to system call interfaces:
8088 ** The value returned by `raise' is now unspecified. It throws an exception
8091 *** A new procedure `sigaction' can be used to install signal handlers
8093 (sigaction signum [action] [flags])
8095 signum is the signal number, which can be specified using the value
8098 If action is omitted, sigaction returns a pair: the CAR is the current
8099 signal hander, which will be either an integer with the value SIG_DFL
8100 (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or the Scheme procedure which
8101 handles the signal, or #f if a non-Scheme procedure handles the
8102 signal. The CDR contains the current sigaction flags for the handler.
8104 If action is provided, it is installed as the new handler for signum.
8105 action can be a Scheme procedure taking one argument, or the value of
8106 SIG_DFL (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or #f to restore
8107 whatever signal handler was installed before sigaction was first used.
8108 Flags can optionally be specified for the new handler (SA_RESTART is
8109 always used if the system provides it, so need not be specified.) The
8110 return value is a pair with information about the old handler as
8113 This interface does not provide access to the "signal blocking"
8114 facility. Maybe this is not needed, since the thread support may
8115 provide solutions to the problem of consistent access to data
8118 *** A new procedure `flush-all-ports' is equivalent to running
8119 `force-output' on every port open for output.
8121 ** Guile now provides information on how it was built, via the new
8122 global variable, %guile-build-info. This variable records the values
8123 of the standard GNU makefile directory variables as an assocation
8124 list, mapping variable names (symbols) onto directory paths (strings).
8125 For example, to find out where the Guile link libraries were
8126 installed, you can say:
8128 guile -c "(display (assq-ref %guile-build-info 'libdir)) (newline)"
8131 * Changes to the scm_ interface
8133 ** The new function scm_handle_by_message_noexit is just like the
8134 existing scm_handle_by_message function, except that it doesn't call
8135 exit to terminate the process. Instead, it prints a message and just
8136 returns #f. This might be a more appropriate catch-all handler for
8137 new dynamic roots and threads.
8140 Changes in Guile 1.1 (released Friday, May 16 1997):
8142 * Changes to the distribution.
8144 The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
8146 guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
8147 guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
8148 Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
8149 is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
8150 guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
8151 expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
8152 programming language. These are packaged together because the
8153 Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
8155 This NEWS file describes the changes made to guile-core since the 1.0
8158 We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
8159 date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
8164 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
8166 ** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
8167 Shivers' Scheme Shell.
8169 In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
8170 exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
8171 stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
8172 the (command-line) function.
8173 -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
8174 -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
8175 -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
8177 The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
8178 -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
8179 -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
8180 command line arguments
8181 -ds do -s script at this point
8182 --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
8183 -h, --help display this help and exit
8184 -v, --version display version information and exit
8185 \ read arguments from following script lines
8187 So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
8188 which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
8190 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
8193 (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
8197 (main (command-line))
8199 Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
8201 ekko a speckled gecko
8203 Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
8204 token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
8205 following list of command-line arguments:
8207 ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
8209 Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
8210 the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
8211 with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
8212 defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
8213 remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
8215 In Unix, the first line of a script file must take the following form:
8217 #!INTERPRETER ARGUMENT
8219 where INTERPRETER is the absolute filename of the interpreter
8220 executable, and ARGUMENT is a single command-line argument to pass to
8223 You may only pass one argument to the interpreter, and its length is
8224 limited. These restrictions can be annoying to work around, so Guile
8225 provides a general mechanism (borrowed from, and compatible with,
8226 SCSH) for circumventing them.
8228 If the ARGUMENT in a Guile script is a single backslash character,
8229 `\', Guile will open the script file, parse arguments from its second
8230 and subsequent lines, and replace the `\' with them. So, for example,
8231 here is another implementation of the `ekko' script:
8233 #!/usr/local/bin/guile \
8237 (for-each (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
8241 If the user invokes this script as follows:
8243 ekko a speckled gecko
8245 Unix expands this into
8247 /usr/local/bin/guile \ ekko a speckled gecko
8249 When Guile sees the `\' argument, it replaces it with the arguments
8250 read from the second line of the script, producing:
8252 /usr/local/bin/guile -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
8254 This tells Guile to load the `ekko' script, and apply the function
8255 `main' to the argument list ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
8257 Here is how Guile parses the command-line arguments:
8258 - Each space character terminates an argument. This means that two
8259 spaces in a row introduce an empty-string argument.
8260 - The tab character is not permitted (unless you quote it with the
8261 backslash character, as described below), to avoid confusion.
8262 - The newline character terminates the sequence of arguments, and will
8263 also terminate a final non-empty argument. (However, a newline
8264 following a space will not introduce a final empty-string argument;
8265 it only terminates the argument list.)
8266 - The backslash character is the escape character. It escapes
8267 backslash, space, tab, and newline. The ANSI C escape sequences
8268 like \n and \t are also supported. These produce argument
8269 constituents; the two-character combination \n doesn't act like a
8270 terminating newline. The escape sequence \NNN for exactly three
8271 octal digits reads as the character whose ASCII code is NNN. As
8272 above, characters produced this way are argument constituents.
8273 Backslash followed by other characters is not allowed.
8275 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
8277 ** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
8278 system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
8279 all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
8280 supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
8281 libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
8283 Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
8284 it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
8285 independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
8287 ** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
8289 To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
8290 -lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
8291 autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
8292 following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
8295 ### Find quickthreads and libguile.
8296 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
8297 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
8299 * Changes to Scheme functions
8301 ** Guile Scheme's special syntax for keyword objects is now optional,
8302 and disabled by default.
8304 The syntax variation from R4RS made it difficult to port some
8305 interesting packages to Guile. The routines which accepted keyword
8306 arguments (mostly in the module system) have been modified to also
8307 accept symbols whose names begin with `:'.
8309 To change the keyword syntax, you must first import the (ice-9 debug)
8311 (use-modules (ice-9 debug))
8313 Then you can enable the keyword syntax as follows:
8314 (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
8316 To disable keyword syntax, do this:
8317 (read-set! keywords #f)
8319 ** Many more primitive functions accept shared substrings as
8320 arguments. In the past, these functions required normal, mutable
8321 strings as arguments, although they never made use of this
8324 ** The uniform array functions now operate on byte vectors. These
8325 functions are `array-fill!', `serial-array-copy!', `array-copy!',
8326 `serial-array-map', `array-map', `array-for-each', and
8329 ** The new functions `trace' and `untrace' implement simple debugging
8330 support for Scheme functions.
8332 The `trace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
8333 and tells the Guile interpreter to display each procedure's name and
8334 arguments each time the procedure is invoked. When invoked with no
8335 arguments, `trace' returns the list of procedures currently being
8338 The `untrace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
8339 and tells the Guile interpreter not to trace them any more. When
8340 invoked with no arguments, `untrace' untraces all curretly traced
8343 The tracing in Guile has an advantage over most other systems: we
8344 don't create new procedure objects, but mark the procedure objects
8345 themselves. This means that anonymous and internal procedures can be
8348 ** The function `assert-repl-prompt' has been renamed to
8349 `set-repl-prompt!'. It takes one argument, PROMPT.
8350 - If PROMPT is #f, the Guile read-eval-print loop will not prompt.
8351 - If PROMPT is a string, we use it as a prompt.
8352 - If PROMPT is a procedure accepting no arguments, we call it, and
8353 display the result as a prompt.
8354 - Otherwise, we display "> ".
8356 ** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
8357 string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
8358 in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
8361 ** The new function `thunk?' returns true iff its argument is a
8362 procedure of zero arguments.
8364 ** `defined?' is now a builtin function, instead of syntax. This
8365 means that its argument should be quoted. It returns #t iff its
8366 argument is bound in the current module.
8368 ** The new syntax `use-modules' allows you to add new modules to your
8369 environment without re-typing a complete `define-module' form. It
8370 accepts any number of module names as arguments, and imports their
8371 public bindings into the current module.
8373 ** The new function (module-defined? NAME MODULE) returns true iff
8374 NAME, a symbol, is defined in MODULE, a module object.
8376 ** The new function `builtin-bindings' creates and returns a hash
8377 table containing copies of all the root module's bindings.
8379 ** The new function `builtin-weak-bindings' does the same as
8380 `builtin-bindings', but creates a doubly-weak hash table.
8382 ** The `equal?' function now considers variable objects to be
8383 equivalent if they have the same name and the same value.
8385 ** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
8386 given to Guile, as a list of strings.
8388 When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
8389 script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
8390 `-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
8391 behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
8392 command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
8394 ** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
8395 in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
8396 mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
8397 but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
8399 ** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
8402 ** Changes to I/O functions
8404 *** The functions `read', `primitive-load', `read-and-eval!', and
8405 `primitive-load-path' no longer take optional arguments controlling
8406 case insensitivity and a `#' parser.
8408 Case sensitivity is now controlled by a read option called
8409 `case-insensitive'. The user can add new `#' syntaxes with the
8410 `read-hash-extend' function (see below).
8412 *** The new function `read-hash-extend' allows the user to change the
8413 syntax of Guile Scheme in a somewhat controlled way.
8415 (read-hash-extend CHAR PROC)
8416 When parsing S-expressions, if we read a `#' character followed by
8417 the character CHAR, use PROC to parse an object from the stream.
8418 If PROC is #f, remove any parsing procedure registered for CHAR.
8420 The reader applies PROC to two arguments: CHAR and an input port.
8422 *** The new functions read-delimited and read-delimited! provide a
8423 general mechanism for doing delimited input on streams.
8425 (read-delimited DELIMS [PORT HANDLE-DELIM])
8426 Read until we encounter one of the characters in DELIMS (a string),
8427 or end-of-file. PORT is the input port to read from; it defaults to
8428 the current input port. The HANDLE-DELIM parameter determines how
8429 the terminating character is handled; it should be one of the
8432 'trim omit delimiter from result
8433 'peek leave delimiter character in input stream
8434 'concat append delimiter character to returned value
8435 'split return a pair: (RESULT . TERMINATOR)
8437 HANDLE-DELIM defaults to 'peek.
8439 (read-delimited! DELIMS BUF [PORT HANDLE-DELIM START END])
8440 A side-effecting variant of `read-delimited'.
8442 The data is written into the string BUF at the indices in the
8443 half-open interval [START, END); the default interval is the whole
8444 string: START = 0 and END = (string-length BUF). The values of
8445 START and END must specify a well-defined interval in BUF, i.e.
8446 0 <= START <= END <= (string-length BUF).
8448 It returns NBYTES, the number of bytes read. If the buffer filled
8449 up without a delimiter character being found, it returns #f. If the
8450 port is at EOF when the read starts, it returns the EOF object.
8452 If an integer is returned (i.e., the read is successfully terminated
8453 by reading a delimiter character), then the HANDLE-DELIM parameter
8454 determines how to handle the terminating character. It is described
8455 above, and defaults to 'peek.
8457 (The descriptions of these functions were borrowed from the SCSH
8458 manual, by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
8460 *** The `%read-delimited!' function is the primitive used to implement
8461 `read-delimited' and `read-delimited!'.
8463 (%read-delimited! DELIMS BUF GOBBLE? [PORT START END])
8465 This returns a pair of values: (TERMINATOR . NUM-READ).
8466 - TERMINATOR describes why the read was terminated. If it is a
8467 character or the eof object, then that is the value that terminated
8468 the read. If it is #f, the function filled the buffer without finding
8469 a delimiting character.
8470 - NUM-READ is the number of characters read into BUF.
8472 If the read is successfully terminated by reading a delimiter
8473 character, then the gobble? parameter determines what to do with the
8474 terminating character. If true, the character is removed from the
8475 input stream; if false, the character is left in the input stream
8476 where a subsequent read operation will retrieve it. In either case,
8477 the character is also the first value returned by the procedure call.
8479 (The descriptions of this function was borrowed from the SCSH manual,
8480 by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
8482 *** The `read-line' and `read-line!' functions have changed; they now
8483 trim the terminator by default; previously they appended it to the
8484 returned string. For the old behavior, use (read-line PORT 'concat).
8486 *** The functions `uniform-array-read!' and `uniform-array-write!' now
8487 take new optional START and END arguments, specifying the region of
8488 the array to read and write.
8490 *** The `ungetc-char-ready?' function has been removed. We feel it's
8491 inappropriate for an interface to expose implementation details this
8494 ** Changes to the Unix library and system call interface
8496 *** The new fcntl function provides access to the Unix `fcntl' system
8499 (fcntl PORT COMMAND VALUE)
8500 Apply COMMAND to PORT's file descriptor, with VALUE as an argument.
8501 Values for COMMAND are:
8503 F_DUPFD duplicate a file descriptor
8504 F_GETFD read the descriptor's close-on-exec flag
8505 F_SETFD set the descriptor's close-on-exec flag to VALUE
8506 F_GETFL read the descriptor's flags, as set on open
8507 F_SETFL set the descriptor's flags, as set on open to VALUE
8508 F_GETOWN return the process ID of a socket's owner, for SIGIO
8509 F_SETOWN set the process that owns a socket to VALUE, for SIGIO
8510 FD_CLOEXEC not sure what this is
8512 For details, see the documentation for the fcntl system call.
8514 *** The arguments to `select' have changed, for compatibility with
8515 SCSH. The TIMEOUT parameter may now be non-integral, yielding the
8516 expected behavior. The MILLISECONDS parameter has been changed to
8517 MICROSECONDS, to more closely resemble the underlying system call.
8518 The RVEC, WVEC, and EVEC arguments can now be vectors; the type of the
8519 corresponding return set will be the same.
8521 *** The arguments to the `mknod' system call have changed. They are
8524 (mknod PATH TYPE PERMS DEV)
8525 Create a new file (`node') in the file system. PATH is the name of
8526 the file to create. TYPE is the kind of file to create; it should
8527 be 'fifo, 'block-special, or 'char-special. PERMS specifies the
8528 permission bits to give the newly created file. If TYPE is
8529 'block-special or 'char-special, DEV specifies which device the
8530 special file refers to; its interpretation depends on the kind of
8531 special file being created.
8533 *** The `fork' function has been renamed to `primitive-fork', to avoid
8534 clashing with various SCSH forks.
8536 *** The `recv' and `recvfrom' functions have been renamed to `recv!'
8537 and `recvfrom!'. They no longer accept a size for a second argument;
8538 you must pass a string to hold the received value. They no longer
8539 return the buffer. Instead, `recv' returns the length of the message
8540 received, and `recvfrom' returns a pair containing the packet's length
8541 and originating address.
8543 *** The file descriptor datatype has been removed, as have the
8544 `read-fd', `write-fd', `close', `lseek', and `dup' functions.
8545 We plan to replace these functions with a SCSH-compatible interface.
8547 *** The `create' function has been removed; it's just a special case
8550 *** There are new functions to break down process termination status
8551 values. In the descriptions below, STATUS is a value returned by
8554 (status:exit-val STATUS)
8555 If the child process exited normally, this function returns the exit
8556 code for the child process (i.e., the value passed to exit, or
8557 returned from main). If the child process did not exit normally,
8558 this function returns #f.
8560 (status:stop-sig STATUS)
8561 If the child process was suspended by a signal, this function
8562 returns the signal that suspended the child. Otherwise, it returns
8565 (status:term-sig STATUS)
8566 If the child process terminated abnormally, this function returns
8567 the signal that terminated the child. Otherwise, this function
8570 POSIX promises that exactly one of these functions will return true on
8571 a valid STATUS value.
8573 These functions are compatible with SCSH.
8575 *** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
8576 returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
8578 Component Accessor Setter
8579 ========================= ============ ============
8580 seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
8581 minutes tm:min set-tm:min
8582 hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
8583 day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
8584 month tm:mon set-tm:mon
8585 year tm:year set-tm:year
8586 day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
8587 day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
8588 daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
8589 GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
8590 name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
8592 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname',
8593 describing the host system:
8596 ============================================== ================
8597 name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
8598 network name of this machine utsname:nodename
8599 release level of the operating system utsname:release
8600 version level of the operating system utsname:version
8601 machine hardware platform utsname:machine
8603 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getpw',
8604 `getpwnam', `getpwuid', and `getpwent', describing entries from the
8605 system's user database:
8608 ====================== =================
8609 user name passwd:name
8610 user password passwd:passwd
8613 real name passwd:gecos
8614 home directory passwd:dir
8615 shell program passwd:shell
8617 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getgr',
8618 `getgrnam', `getgrgid', and `getgrent', describing entries from the
8619 system's group database:
8622 ======================= ============
8623 group name group:name
8624 group password group:passwd
8626 group members group:mem
8628 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `gethost',
8629 `gethostbyaddr', `gethostbyname', and `gethostent', describing
8633 ========================= ===============
8634 official name of host hostent:name
8635 alias list hostent:aliases
8636 host address type hostent:addrtype
8637 length of address hostent:length
8638 list of addresses hostent:addr-list
8640 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getnet',
8641 `getnetbyaddr', `getnetbyname', and `getnetent', describing internet
8645 ========================= ===============
8646 official name of net netent:name
8647 alias list netent:aliases
8648 net number type netent:addrtype
8649 net number netent:net
8651 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getproto',
8652 `getprotobyname', `getprotobynumber', and `getprotoent', describing
8656 ========================= ===============
8657 official protocol name protoent:name
8658 alias list protoent:aliases
8659 protocol number protoent:proto
8661 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getserv',
8662 `getservbyname', `getservbyport', and `getservent', describing
8666 ========================= ===============
8667 official service name servent:name
8668 alias list servent:aliases
8669 port number servent:port
8670 protocol to use servent:proto
8672 *** There are new accessors for the sockaddr structures returned by
8673 `accept', `getsockname', `getpeername', `recvfrom!':
8676 ======================================== ===============
8677 address format (`family') sockaddr:fam
8678 path, for file domain addresses sockaddr:path
8679 address, for internet domain addresses sockaddr:addr
8680 TCP or UDP port, for internet sockaddr:port
8682 *** The `getpwent', `getgrent', `gethostent', `getnetent',
8683 `getprotoent', and `getservent' functions now return #f at the end of
8684 the user database. (They used to throw an exception.)
8686 Note that calling MUMBLEent function is equivalent to calling the
8687 corresponding MUMBLE function with no arguments.
8689 *** The `setpwent', `setgrent', `sethostent', `setnetent',
8690 `setprotoent', and `setservent' routines now take no arguments.
8692 *** The `gethost', `getproto', `getnet', and `getserv' functions now
8693 provide more useful information when they throw an exception.
8695 *** The `lnaof' function has been renamed to `inet-lnaof'.
8697 *** Guile now claims to have the `current-time' feature.
8699 *** The `mktime' function now takes an optional second argument ZONE,
8700 giving the time zone to use for the conversion. ZONE should be a
8701 string, in the same format as expected for the "TZ" environment variable.
8703 *** The `strptime' function now returns a pair (TIME . COUNT), where
8704 TIME is the parsed time as a vector, and COUNT is the number of
8705 characters from the string left unparsed. This function used to
8706 return the remaining characters as a string.
8708 *** The `gettimeofday' function has replaced the old `time+ticks' function.
8709 The return value is now (SECONDS . MICROSECONDS); the fractional
8710 component is no longer expressed in "ticks".
8712 *** The `ticks/sec' constant has been removed, in light of the above change.
8714 * Changes to the gh_ interface
8716 ** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
8719 ** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
8722 ** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
8723 and returns the array
8725 ** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
8726 null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
8727 the user to interpret the data both ways.
8729 * Changes to the scm_ interface
8731 ** The new function scm_symbol_value0 provides an easy way to get a
8732 symbol's value from C code:
8734 SCM scm_symbol_value0 (char *NAME)
8735 Return the value of the symbol named by the null-terminated string
8736 NAME in the current module. If the symbol named NAME is unbound in
8737 the current module, return SCM_UNDEFINED.
8739 ** The new function scm_sysintern0 creates new top-level variables,
8740 without assigning them a value.
8742 SCM scm_sysintern0 (char *NAME)
8743 Create a new Scheme top-level variable named NAME. NAME is a
8744 null-terminated string. Return the variable's value cell.
8746 ** The function scm_internal_catch is the guts of catch. It handles
8747 all the mechanics of setting up a catch target, invoking the catch
8748 body, and perhaps invoking the handler if the body does a throw.
8750 The function is designed to be usable from C code, but is general
8751 enough to implement all the semantics Guile Scheme expects from throw.
8753 TAG is the catch tag. Typically, this is a symbol, but this function
8754 doesn't actually care about that.
8756 BODY is a pointer to a C function which runs the body of the catch;
8757 this is the code you can throw from. We call it like this:
8758 BODY (BODY_DATA, JMPBUF)
8760 BODY_DATA is just the BODY_DATA argument we received; we pass it
8761 through to BODY as its first argument. The caller can make
8762 BODY_DATA point to anything useful that BODY might need.
8763 JMPBUF is the Scheme jmpbuf object corresponding to this catch,
8764 which we have just created and initialized.
8766 HANDLER is a pointer to a C function to deal with a throw to TAG,
8767 should one occur. We call it like this:
8768 HANDLER (HANDLER_DATA, THROWN_TAG, THROW_ARGS)
8770 HANDLER_DATA is the HANDLER_DATA argument we recevied; it's the
8771 same idea as BODY_DATA above.
8772 THROWN_TAG is the tag that the user threw to; usually this is
8773 TAG, but it could be something else if TAG was #t (i.e., a
8774 catch-all), or the user threw to a jmpbuf.
8775 THROW_ARGS is the list of arguments the user passed to the THROW
8778 BODY_DATA is just a pointer we pass through to BODY. HANDLER_DATA
8779 is just a pointer we pass through to HANDLER. We don't actually
8780 use either of those pointers otherwise ourselves. The idea is
8781 that, if our caller wants to communicate something to BODY or
8782 HANDLER, it can pass a pointer to it as MUMBLE_DATA, which BODY and
8783 HANDLER can then use. Think of it as a way to make BODY and
8784 HANDLER closures, not just functions; MUMBLE_DATA points to the
8787 Of course, it's up to the caller to make sure that any data a
8788 MUMBLE_DATA needs is protected from GC. A common way to do this is
8789 to make MUMBLE_DATA a pointer to data stored in an automatic
8790 structure variable; since the collector must scan the stack for
8791 references anyway, this assures that any references in MUMBLE_DATA
8794 ** The new function scm_internal_lazy_catch is exactly like
8795 scm_internal_catch, except:
8797 - It does not unwind the stack (this is the major difference).
8798 - If handler returns, its value is returned from the throw.
8799 - BODY always receives #f as its JMPBUF argument (since there's no
8800 jmpbuf associated with a lazy catch, because we don't unwind the
8803 ** scm_body_thunk is a new body function you can pass to
8804 scm_internal_catch if you want the body to be like Scheme's `catch'
8805 --- a thunk, or a function of one argument if the tag is #f.
8807 BODY_DATA is a pointer to a scm_body_thunk_data structure, which
8808 contains the Scheme procedure to invoke as the body, and the tag
8809 we're catching. If the tag is #f, then we pass JMPBUF (created by
8810 scm_internal_catch) to the body procedure; otherwise, the body gets
8813 ** scm_handle_by_proc is a new handler function you can pass to
8814 scm_internal_catch if you want the handler to act like Scheme's catch
8815 --- call a procedure with the tag and the throw arguments.
8817 If the user does a throw to this catch, this function runs a handler
8818 procedure written in Scheme. HANDLER_DATA is a pointer to an SCM
8819 variable holding the Scheme procedure object to invoke. It ought to
8820 be a pointer to an automatic variable (i.e., one living on the stack),
8821 or the procedure object should be otherwise protected from GC.
8823 ** scm_handle_by_message is a new handler function to use with
8824 `scm_internal_catch' if you want Guile to print a message and die.
8825 It's useful for dealing with throws to uncaught keys at the top level.
8827 HANDLER_DATA, if non-zero, is assumed to be a char * pointing to a
8828 message header to print; if zero, we use "guile" instead. That
8829 text is followed by a colon, then the message described by ARGS.
8831 ** The return type of scm_boot_guile is now void; the function does
8832 not return a value, and indeed, never returns at all.
8834 ** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
8835 process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
8836 stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
8839 To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
8840 linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
8841 of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will add
8842 any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
8843 argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
8844 generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
8845 command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
8848 ** The new functions scm_get_meta_args and scm_count_argv help you
8849 implement the SCSH-style meta-argument, `\'.
8851 char **scm_get_meta_args (int ARGC, char **ARGV)
8852 If the second element of ARGV is a string consisting of a single
8853 backslash character (i.e. "\\" in Scheme notation), open the file
8854 named by the following argument, parse arguments from it, and return
8855 the spliced command line. The returned array is terminated by a
8858 For details of argument parsing, see above, under "guile now accepts
8859 command-line arguments compatible with SCSH..."
8861 int scm_count_argv (char **ARGV)
8862 Count the arguments in ARGV, assuming it is terminated by a null
8865 For an example of how these functions might be used, see the source
8866 code for the function scm_shell in libguile/script.c.
8868 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
8871 ** The new function scm_compile_shell_switches turns an array of
8872 command-line arguments into Scheme code to carry out the actions they
8873 describe. Given ARGC and ARGV, it returns a Scheme expression to
8874 evaluate, and calls scm_set_program_arguments to make any remaining
8875 command-line arguments available to the Scheme code. For example,
8876 given the following arguments:
8878 -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
8880 scm_set_program_arguments will return the following expression:
8882 (begin (load "ekko") (main (command-line)) (quit))
8884 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
8887 ** The function scm_shell_usage prints a usage message appropriate for
8888 an interpreter that uses scm_compile_shell_switches to handle its
8889 command-line arguments.
8891 void scm_shell_usage (int FATAL, char *MESSAGE)
8892 Print a usage message to the standard error output. If MESSAGE is
8893 non-zero, write it before the usage message, followed by a newline.
8894 If FATAL is non-zero, exit the process, using FATAL as the
8895 termination status. (If you want to be compatible with Guile,
8896 always use 1 as the exit status when terminating due to command-line
8899 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
8902 ** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
8903 expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL. Earth-shattering.
8905 ** The macros for declaring scheme objects in C code have been
8906 rearranged slightly. They are now:
8908 SCM_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
8909 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
8910 point to the Scheme symbol whose name is SCHEME_NAME. C_NAME should
8911 be a C identifier, and SCHEME_NAME should be a C string.
8913 SCM_GLOBAL_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
8914 Just like SCM_SYMBOL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
8916 SCM_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
8917 Create a global variable at the Scheme level named SCHEME_NAME.
8918 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
8919 point to the Scheme variable's value cell.
8921 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
8922 Just like SCM_VCELL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
8924 The `guile-snarf' script writes initialization code for these macros
8925 to its standard output, given C source code as input.
8927 The SCM_GLOBAL macro is gone.
8929 ** The scm_read_line and scm_read_line_x functions have been replaced
8930 by Scheme code based on the %read-delimited! procedure (known to C
8931 code as scm_read_delimited_x). See its description above for more
8934 ** The function scm_sys_open has been renamed to scm_open. It now
8935 returns a port instead of an FD object.
8937 * The dynamic linking support has changed. For more information, see
8938 libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING.
8943 User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
8946 * Changes to the 'guile' program:
8948 ** Guile now loads some new files when it starts up. Guile first
8949 searches the load path for init.scm, and loads it if found. Then, if
8950 Guile is not being used to execute a script, and the user's home
8951 directory contains a file named `.guile', Guile loads that.
8953 ** You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
8955 To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
8957 When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
8958 characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
8959 be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
8960 to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
8961 specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
8962 the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
8963 and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
8964 filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
8965 following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
8966 for more information.
8968 Now you can use Guile as an interpreter, using a mechanism which is a
8969 compatible subset of that provided by SCSH.
8971 Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
8972 name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
8973 characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
8974 to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
8975 following two lines at the top of the file:
8977 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
8980 Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
8981 of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
8982 start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
8984 For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
8986 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
8988 (let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
8991 (display (car args))
8992 (if (pair? (cdr args))
8994 (loop (cdr args)))))
8997 Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
8998 end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
8999 don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
9000 we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
9001 scripts once we do. Furthermore, if the path to Guile on your system
9002 is too long for your kernel, you can start the script with this
9006 exec /really/long/path/to/guile -s "$0" ${1+"$@"}
9009 Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
9012 ** You can now run Guile without installing it.
9014 Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
9015 couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
9016 they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
9017 later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
9018 itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
9021 To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
9022 then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
9023 colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
9024 of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
9025 full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
9028 export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
9031 ** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
9032 results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
9033 expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
9036 ** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
9037 however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
9038 request that they be displayed by default. After an error, evaluate
9040 to see a backtrace, and
9041 (debug-enable 'backtrace)
9042 to see them by default.
9046 * Changes to Guile Scheme:
9048 ** Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
9050 This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
9051 upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
9054 Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
9055 type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
9056 caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
9057 way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
9060 ** Guile's delq, delv, delete functions, and their destructive
9061 counterparts, delq!, delv!, and delete!, now remove all matching
9062 elements from the list, not just the first. This matches the behavior
9063 of the corresponding Emacs Lisp functions, and (I believe) the Maclisp
9064 functions which inspired them.
9066 I recognize that this change may break code in subtle ways, but it
9067 seems best to make the change before the FSF's first Guile release,
9071 ** The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
9073 ** The facilities for loading Scheme source files have changed.
9075 *** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
9076 for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
9079 *** The variable %load-extensions now tells Guile which extensions to
9080 try appending to a filename when searching the load path. Its value
9081 is a list of strings. Its default value is ("" ".scm").
9083 *** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
9084 value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME,
9085 with all the extensions listed in %load-extensions. If it finds a
9086 match, then it returns its full filename. If FILENAME is absolute, it
9087 returns it unchanged. Otherwise, it returns #f.
9089 %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to directories.
9091 *** (primitive-load FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
9092 uses %seach-load-path to find a file named FILENAME, and loads it if
9093 it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for any reason, it throws an
9096 The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
9099 *** load uses the same searching semantics as primitive-load.
9101 *** The functions %try-load, try-load-with-path, %load, load-with-path,
9102 basic-try-load-with-path, basic-load-with-path, try-load-module-with-
9103 path, and load-module-with-path have been deleted. The functions
9104 above should serve their purposes.
9106 *** If the value of the variable %load-hook is a procedure,
9107 `primitive-load' applies its value to the name of the file being
9108 loaded (without the load path directory name prepended). If its value
9109 is #f, it is ignored. Otherwise, an error occurs.
9111 This is mostly useful for printing load notification messages.
9114 ** The function `eval!' is no longer accessible from the scheme level.
9115 We can't allow operations which introduce glocs into the scheme level,
9116 because Guile's type system can't handle these as data. Use `eval' or
9117 `read-and-eval!' (see below) as replacement.
9119 ** The new function read-and-eval! reads an expression from PORT,
9120 evaluates it, and returns the result. This is more efficient than
9121 simply calling `read' and `eval', since it is not necessary to make a
9122 copy of the expression for the evaluator to munge.
9124 Its optional arguments CASE_INSENSITIVE_P and SHARP are interpreted as
9125 for the `read' function.
9128 ** The function `int?' has been removed; its definition was identical
9129 to that of `integer?'.
9131 ** The functions `<?', `<?', `<=?', `=?', `>?', and `>=?'. Code should
9132 use the R4RS names for these functions.
9134 ** The function object-properties no longer returns the hash handle;
9135 it simply returns the object's property list.
9137 ** Many functions have been changed to throw errors, instead of
9138 returning #f on failure. The point of providing exception handling in
9139 the language is to simplify the logic of user code, but this is less
9140 useful if Guile's primitives don't throw exceptions.
9142 ** The function `fileno' has been renamed from `%fileno'.
9144 ** The function primitive-mode->fdes returns #t or #f now, not 1 or 0.
9147 * Changes to Guile's C interface:
9149 ** The library's initialization procedure has been simplified.
9150 scm_boot_guile now has the prototype:
9152 void scm_boot_guile (int ARGC,
9154 void (*main_func) (),
9157 scm_boot_guile calls MAIN_FUNC, passing it CLOSURE, ARGC, and ARGV.
9158 MAIN_FUNC should do all the work of the program (initializing other
9159 packages, reading user input, etc.) before returning. When MAIN_FUNC
9160 returns, call exit (0); this function never returns. If you want some
9161 other exit value, MAIN_FUNC may call exit itself.
9163 scm_boot_guile arranges for program-arguments to return the strings
9164 given by ARGC and ARGV. If MAIN_FUNC modifies ARGC/ARGV, should call
9165 scm_set_program_arguments with the final list, so Scheme code will
9166 know which arguments have been processed.
9168 scm_boot_guile establishes a catch-all catch handler which prints an
9169 error message and exits the process. This means that Guile exits in a
9170 coherent way when system errors occur and the user isn't prepared to
9171 handle it. If the user doesn't like this behavior, they can establish
9172 their own universal catcher in MAIN_FUNC to shadow this one.
9174 Why must the caller do all the real work from MAIN_FUNC? The garbage
9175 collector assumes that all local variables of type SCM will be above
9176 scm_boot_guile's stack frame on the stack. If you try to manipulate
9177 SCM values after this function returns, it's the luck of the draw
9178 whether the GC will be able to find the objects you allocate. So,
9179 scm_boot_guile function exits, rather than returning, to discourage
9180 people from making that mistake.
9182 The IN, OUT, and ERR arguments were removed; there are other
9183 convenient ways to override these when desired.
9185 The RESULT argument was deleted; this function should never return.
9187 The BOOT_CMD argument was deleted; the MAIN_FUNC argument is more
9191 ** Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
9194 In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
9195 versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
9196 Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
9197 Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
9200 Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
9201 refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
9202 Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
9203 the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
9206 ** Two new C functions, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object,
9207 have been added to the Guile library.
9209 scm_protect_object (OBJ) protects OBJ from the garbage collector.
9210 OBJ will not be freed, even if all other references are dropped,
9211 until someone does scm_unprotect_object (OBJ). Both functions
9214 Note that calls to scm_protect_object do not nest. You can call
9215 scm_protect_object any number of times on a given object, and the
9216 next call to scm_unprotect_object will unprotect it completely.
9218 Basically, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object just
9219 maintain a list of references to things. Since the GC knows about
9220 this list, all objects it mentions stay alive. scm_protect_object
9221 adds its argument to the list; scm_unprotect_object remove its
9222 argument from the list.
9225 ** scm_eval_0str now returns the value of the last expression
9228 ** The new function scm_read_0str reads an s-expression from a
9229 null-terminated string, and returns it.
9231 ** The new function `scm_stdio_to_port' converts a STDIO file pointer
9232 to a Scheme port object.
9234 ** The new function `scm_set_program_arguments' allows C code to set
9235 the value returned by the Scheme `program-arguments' function.
9240 * Guile no longer includes sophisticated Tcl/Tk support.
9242 The old Tcl/Tk support was unsatisfying to us, because it required the
9243 user to link against the Tcl library, as well as Tk and Guile. The
9244 interface was also un-lispy, in that it preserved Tcl/Tk's practice of
9245 referring to widgets by names, rather than exporting widgets to Scheme
9246 code as a special datatype.
9248 In the Usenix Tk Developer's Workshop held in July 1996, the Tcl/Tk
9249 maintainers described some very interesting changes in progress to the
9250 Tcl/Tk internals, which would facilitate clean interfaces between lone
9251 Tk and other interpreters --- even for garbage-collected languages
9252 like Scheme. They expected the new Tk to be publicly available in the
9255 Since it seems that Guile might soon have a new, cleaner interface to
9256 lone Tk, and that the old Guile/Tk glue code would probably need to be
9257 completely rewritten, we (Jim Blandy and Richard Stallman) have
9258 decided not to support the old code. We'll spend the time instead on
9259 a good interface to the newer Tk, as soon as it is available.
9261 Until then, gtcltk-lib provides trivial, low-maintenance functionality.
9264 Copyright information:
9266 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
9268 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
9269 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
9270 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
9271 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
9273 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
9274 of this document, or of portions of it,
9275 under the above conditions, provided also that they
9276 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
9281 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"