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 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 See the end for copying conditions.
5 Please send Guile bug reports to bug-guile@gnu.org.
8 (During the 1.9 series, we will keep an incremental NEWS for the latest
9 prerelease, and a full NEWS corresponding to 1.8 -> 2.0.)
11 Changes in 1.9.3 (since the 1.9.2 prerelease):
13 ** Removed deprecated uniform array procedures: scm_make_uve,
14 scm_array_prototype, scm_list_to_uniform_array,
15 scm_dimensions_to_uniform_array, scm_make_ra, scm_shap2ra, scm_cvref,
16 scm_ra_set_contp, scm_aind, scm_raprin1
18 These functions have been deprecated since early 2005.
20 ** scm_array_p has one argument, not two
22 Use of the second argument produced a deprecation warning, so it is
23 unlikely that any code out there actually used this functionality.
25 ** Removed deprecated uniform array procedures:
26 dimensions->uniform-array, list->uniform-array, array-prototype
28 Instead, use make-typed-array, list->typed-array, or array-type,
31 ** And of course, the usual collection of bugfixes
33 Interested users should see the ChangeLog for more information.
36 Changes in 1.9.x (since the 1.8.x series):
38 * New modules (see the manual for details)
40 ** `(srfi srfi-18)', more sophisticated multithreading support
41 ** `(ice-9 i18n)', internationalization support
42 ** `(rnrs bytevector)', the R6RS bytevector API
43 ** `(rnrs io ports)', a subset of the R6RS I/O port API
44 ** `(system xref)', a cross-referencing facility (FIXME undocumented)
46 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
48 ** Guile now can compile Scheme to bytecode for a custom virtual machine.
50 Compiled code loads much faster than Scheme source code, and runs around
51 3 or 4 times as fast, generating much less garbage in the process.
53 ** The stack limit is now initialized from the environment.
55 If getrlimit(2) is available and a stack limit is set, Guile will set
56 its stack limit to 80% of the rlimit. Otherwise the limit is 160000
57 words, a four-fold increase from the earlier default limit.
59 ** New environment variables: GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH,
60 GUILE_SYSTEM_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH
62 GUILE_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH is for compiled files what GUILE_LOAD_PATH is
63 for source files. It is a different path, however, because compiled
64 files are architecture-specific. GUILE_SYSTEM_LOAD_COMPILED_PATH is like
67 ** New read-eval-print loop (REPL) implementation
69 Running Guile with no arguments drops the user into the new REPL. While
70 it is self-documenting to an extent, the new REPL has not yet been
71 documented in the manual. This will be fixed before 2.0.
73 ** New `guile-tools' commands: `compile', `disassemble'
75 Pass the `--help' command-line option to these commands for more
78 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
80 ** Procedure removed: `the-environment'
82 This procedure was part of the interpreter's execution model, and does
83 not apply to the compiler.
85 ** Files loaded with `primitive-load-path' will now be compiled
88 If a compiled .go file corresponding to a .scm file is not found or is
89 not fresh, the .scm file will be compiled on the fly, and the resulting
90 .go file stored away. An advisory note will be printed on the console.
92 Note that this mechanism depends on preservation of the .scm and .go
93 modification times; if the .scm or .go files are moved after
94 installation, care should be taken to preserve their original
97 Autocompiled files will be stored in the $XDG_CACHE_HOME/guile/ccache
98 directory, where $XDG_CACHE_HOME defaults to ~/.cache. This directory
99 will be created if needed.
101 To inhibit autocompilation, set the GUILE_AUTO_COMPILE environment
102 variable to 0, or pass --no-autocompile on the Guile command line.
104 Note that there is currently a bug here: automatic compilation will
105 sometimes be attempted when it shouldn't.
107 For example, the old (lang elisp) modules are meant to be interpreted,
108 not compiled. This bug will be fixed before 2.0. FIXME 2.0: Should say
109 something here about module-transformer called for compile.
111 ** New POSIX procedures: `getrlimit' and `setrlimit'
113 Note however that the interface of these functions is likely to change
114 in the next prerelease.
116 ** New procedure in `(oops goops)': `method-formals'
118 ** BUG: (procedure-property func 'arity) does not work on compiled
121 This will be fixed one way or another before 2.0.
123 ** New procedures in (ice-9 session): `add-value-help-handler!',
124 `remove-value-help-handler!', `add-name-help-handler!'
125 `remove-name-help-handler!', `procedure-arguments',
127 The value and name help handlers provide some minimal extensibility to
128 the help interface. Guile-lib's `(texinfo reflection)' uses them, for
129 example, to make stexinfo help documentation available. See those
130 procedures' docstrings for more information.
132 `procedure-arguments' describes the arguments that a procedure can take,
133 combining arity and formals. For example:
135 (procedure-arguments resolve-interface)
136 => ((required . (name)) (rest . args))
138 Additionally, `module-commentary' is now publically exported from
141 ** Deprecated: `procedure->memoizing-macro', `procedure->syntax'
143 These procedures will not work with syncase expansion, and indeed are
144 not used in the normal course of Guile. They are still used by the old
145 Emacs Lisp support, however.
147 ** New language: ECMAScript
149 Guile now ships with one other high-level language supported,
150 ECMAScript. The goal is to support all of version 3.1 of the standard,
151 but not all of the libraries are there yet. This support is not yet
152 documented; ask on the mailing list if you are interested.
154 ** New language: Brainfuck
156 Brainfuck is a toy language that closely models Turing machines. Guile's
157 brainfuck compiler is meant to be an example of implementing other
158 languages. See the manual for details, or
159 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck for more information about the
160 Brainfuck language itself.
162 ** Defmacros may now have docstrings.
164 Indeed, any macro may have a docstring. `object-documentation' from
165 `(ice-9 documentation)' may be used to retrieve the docstring, once you
166 have a macro value -- but see the above note about first-class macros.
167 Docstrings are associated with the syntax transformer procedures.
169 ** The psyntax expander now knows how to interpret the @ and @@ special
172 ** The psyntax expander is now hygienic with respect to modules.
174 Free variables in a macro are scoped in the module that the macro was
175 defined in, not in the module the macro is used in. For example, code
178 (define-module (foo) #:export (bar))
179 (define (helper x) ...)
181 (syntax-rules () ((_ x) (helper x))))
183 (define-module (baz) #:use-module (foo))
186 It used to be you had to export `helper' from `(foo)' as well.
187 Thankfully, this has been fixed.
189 ** New function, `procedure-module'
191 While useful on its own, `procedure-module' is used by psyntax on syntax
192 transformers to determine the module in which to scope introduced
195 ** `eval-case' has been deprecated, and replaced by `eval-when'.
197 The semantics of `eval-when' are easier to understand. It is still
198 missing documentation, however.
200 ** Guile is now more strict about prohibiting definitions in expression
203 Although previous versions of Guile accepted it, the following
204 expression is not valid, in R5RS or R6RS:
206 (if test (define foo 'bar) (define foo 'baz))
208 In this specific case, it would be better to do:
210 (define foo (if test 'bar 'baz))
212 It is certainly possible to circumvent this resriction with e.g.
213 `(module-define! (current-module) 'foo 'baz)'. We would appreciate
214 feedback about this change (a consequence of using psyntax as the
215 default expander), and may choose to revisit this situation before 2.0
216 in response to user feedback.
218 ** Defmacros must now produce valid Scheme expressions.
220 It used to be that defmacros could unquote in Scheme values, as a way of
221 supporting partial evaluation, and avoiding some hygiene issues. For
224 (define (helper x) ...)
225 (define-macro (foo bar)
228 Assuming this macro is in the `(baz)' module, the direct translation of
231 (define (helper x) ...)
232 (define-macro (foo bar)
233 `((@@ (baz) helper) ,bar))
235 Of course, one could just use a hygienic macro instead:
239 ((_ bar) (helper bar))))
241 ** Guile's psyntax now supports docstrings and internal definitions.
243 The following Scheme is not strictly legal:
250 However its intent is fairly clear. Guile interprets "bar" to be the
251 docstring of `foo', and the definition of `baz' is still in definition
254 ** Macros need to be defined before their first use.
256 It used to be that with lazy memoization, this might work:
260 (define-macro (ref x) x)
263 But now, the body of `foo' is interpreted to mean a call to the toplevel
264 `ref' function, instead of a macro expansion. The solution is to define
265 macros before code that uses them.
267 ** Functions needed by macros at expand-time need to be present at
270 For example, this code will work at the REPL:
272 (define (double-helper x) (* x x))
273 (define-macro (double-literal x) (double-helper x))
274 (double-literal 2) => 4
276 But it will not work when a file is compiled, because the definition of
277 `double-helper' is not present at expand-time. The solution is to wrap
278 the definition of `double-helper' in `eval-when':
280 (eval-when (load compile eval)
281 (define (double-helper x) (* x x)))
282 (define-macro (double-literal x) (double-helper x))
283 (double-literal 2) => 4
285 See the (currently missing) documentation for eval-when for more
288 ** New variable, %pre-modules-transformer
290 Need to document this one some more.
292 ** Temporarily removed functions: `macroexpand', `macroexpand-1'
294 `macroexpand' will be added back before 2.0. It is unclear how to
295 implement `macroexpand-1' with syntax-case, though PLT Scheme does prove
298 ** New reader macros: #' #` #, #,@
300 These macros translate, respectively, to `syntax', `quasisyntax',
301 `unsyntax', and `unsyntax-splicing'. See the R6RS for more information.
302 These reader macros may be overridden by `read-hash-extend'.
304 ** Incompatible change to #'
306 Guile did have a #' hash-extension, by default, which just returned the
307 subsequent datum: #'foo => foo. In the unlikely event that anyone
308 actually used this, this behavior may be reinstated via the
309 `read-hash-extend' mechanism.
311 ** Scheme expresssions may be commented out with #;
313 #; comments out an entire expression. See SRFI-62 or the R6RS for more
316 ** `make-stack' with a tail-called procedural narrowing argument no longer
317 works (with compiled procedures)
319 It used to be the case that a captured stack could be narrowed to select
320 calls only up to or from a certain procedure, even if that procedure
321 already tail-called another procedure. This was because the debug
322 information from the original procedure was kept on the stack.
324 Now with the new compiler, the stack only contains active frames from
325 the current continuation. A narrow to a procedure that is not in the
326 stack will result in an empty stack. To fix this, narrow to a procedure
327 that is active in the current continuation, or narrow to a specific
328 number of stack frames.
330 ** backtraces through compiled procedures only show procedures that are
331 active in the current continuation
333 Similarly to the previous issue, backtraces in compiled code may be
334 different from backtraces in interpreted code. There are no semantic
335 differences, however. Please mail bug-guile@gnu.org if you see any
336 deficiencies with Guile's backtraces.
338 ** syntax-rules and syntax-case macros now propagate source information
339 through to the expanded code
341 This should result in better backtraces.
343 ** The currying behavior of `define' has been removed.
345 Before, `(define ((f a) b) (* a b))' would translate to
347 (define f (lambda (a) (lambda (b) (* a b))))
349 Now a syntax error is signaled, as this syntax is not supported by
350 default. If there is sufficient demand, this syntax can be supported
353 ** All modules have names now
355 Before, you could have anonymous modules: modules without names. Now,
356 because of hygiene and macros, all modules have names. If a module was
357 created without a name, the first time `module-name' is called on it, a
358 fresh name will be lazily generated for it.
360 ** Many syntax errors have different texts now
362 Syntax errors still throw to the `syntax-error' key, but the arguments
363 are often different now. Perhaps in the future, Guile will switch to
364 using standard SRFI-35 conditions.
366 ** Returning multiple values to compiled code will silently truncate the
367 values to the expected number
369 For example, the interpreter would raise an error evaluating the form,
370 `(+ (values 1 2) (values 3 4))', because it would see the operands as
371 being two compound "values" objects, to which `+' does not apply.
373 The compiler, on the other hand, receives multiple values on the stack,
374 not as a compound object. Given that it must check the number of values
375 anyway, if too many values are provided for a continuation, it chooses
376 to truncate those values, effectively evaluating `(+ 1 3)' instead.
378 The idea is that the semantics that the compiler implements is more
379 intuitive, and the use of the interpreter will fade out with time.
380 This behavior is allowed both by the R5RS and the R6RS.
382 ** Multiple values in compiled code are not represented by compound
385 This change may manifest itself in the following situation:
387 (let ((val (foo))) (do-something) val)
389 In the interpreter, if `foo' returns multiple values, multiple values
390 are produced from the `let' expression. In the compiler, those values
391 are truncated to the first value, and that first value is returned. In
392 the compiler, if `foo' returns no values, an error will be raised, while
393 the interpreter would proceed.
395 Both of these behaviors are allowed by R5RS and R6RS. The compiler's
396 behavior is more correct, however. If you wish to preserve a potentially
397 multiply-valued return, you will need to set up a multiple-value
398 continuation, using `call-with-values'.
400 ** Defmacros are now implemented in terms of syntax-case.
402 The practical ramification of this is that the `defmacro?' predicate has
403 been removed, along with `defmacro-transformer', `macro-table',
404 `xformer-table', `assert-defmacro?!', `set-defmacro-transformer!' and
405 `defmacro:transformer'. This is because defmacros are simply macros. If
406 any of these procedures provided useful facilities to you, we encourage
407 you to contact the Guile developers.
409 ** psyntax is now the default expander
411 Scheme code is now expanded by default by the psyntax hygienic macro
412 expander. Expansion is performed completely before compilation or
415 Notably, syntax errors will be signalled before interpretation begins.
416 In the past, many syntax errors were only detected at runtime if the
417 code in question was memoized.
419 As part of its expansion, psyntax renames all lexically-bound
420 identifiers. Original identifier names are preserved and given to the
421 compiler, but the interpreter will see the renamed variables, e.g.,
422 `x432' instead of `x'.
424 Note that the psyntax that Guile uses is a fork, as Guile already had
425 modules before incompatible modules were added to psyntax -- about 10
426 years ago! Thus there are surely a number of bugs that have been fixed
427 in psyntax since then. If you find one, please notify bug-guile@gnu.org.
429 ** syntax-rules and syntax-case are available by default.
431 There is no longer any need to import the `(ice-9 syncase)' module
432 (which is now deprecated). The expander may be invoked directly via
433 `sc-expand', though it is normally searched for via the current module
436 Also, the helper routines for syntax-case are available in the default
437 environment as well: `syntax->datum', `datum->syntax',
438 `bound-identifier=?', `free-identifier=?', `generate-temporaries',
439 `identifier?', and `syntax-violation'. See the R6RS for documentation.
441 ** Lexical bindings introduced by hygienic macros may not be referenced
442 by nonhygienic macros.
444 If a lexical binding is introduced by a hygienic macro, it may not be
445 referenced by a nonhygienic macro. For example, this works:
448 (define-macro (bind-x val body)
449 `(let ((x ,val)) ,body))
450 (define-macro (ref x)
457 (define-syntax bind-x
459 ((_ val body) (let ((x val)) body))))
460 (define-macro (ref x)
464 It is not normal to run into this situation with existing code. However,
465 as code is ported over from defmacros to syntax-case, it is possible to
466 run into situations like this. In the future, Guile will probably port
467 its `while' macro to syntax-case, which makes this issue one to know
470 ** Macros may no longer be referenced as first-class values.
472 In the past, you could evaluate e.g. `if', and get its macro value. Now,
473 expanding this form raises a syntax error.
475 Macros still /exist/ as first-class values, but they must be
476 /referenced/ via the module system, e.g. `(module-ref (current-module)
479 This decision may be revisited before the 2.0 release. Feedback welcome
480 to guile-devel@gnu.org (subscription required) or bug-guile@gnu.org (no
481 subscription required).
483 ** Unicode characters
485 Unicode characters may be entered in octal format via e.g. `#\454', or
486 created via (integer->char 300). A hex external representation will
487 probably be introduced at some point.
491 Internally, strings are now represented either in the `latin-1'
492 encoding, one byte per character, or in UTF-32, with four bytes per
493 character. Strings manage their own allocation, switching if needed.
495 Currently no locale conversion is performed. Extended characters may be
496 written in a string using the hexadecimal escapes `\xXX', `\uXXXX', or
497 `\UXXXXXX', for 8-bit, 16-bit, or 24-bit codepoints, respectively.
499 ** Global variables `scm_charnames' and `scm_charnums' are removed
501 These variables contained the names of control characters and were
502 used when writing characters. While these were global, they were
503 never intended to be public API. They have been replaced with private
506 ** EBCDIC support is removed
508 There was an EBCDIC compile flag that altered some of the character
509 processing. It appeared that full EBCDIC support was never completed
510 and was unmaintained.
512 ** New macro type: syncase-macro
514 XXX Need to decide whether to document this for 2.0, probably should:
515 make-syncase-macro, make-extended-syncase-macro, macro-type,
516 syncase-macro-type, syncase-macro-binding
518 ** A new `memoize-symbol' evaluator trap has been added.
520 This trap can be used for efficiently implementing a Scheme code
523 ** Duplicate bindings among used modules are resolved lazily.
525 This slightly improves program startup times.
527 ** New thread cancellation and thread cleanup API
529 See `cancel-thread', `set-thread-cleanup!', and `thread-cleanup'.
531 ** Fix bad interaction between `false-if-exception' and stack-call.
533 Exceptions thrown by `false-if-exception' were erronously causing the
534 stack to be saved, causing later errors to show the incorrectly-saved
535 backtrace. This has been fixed.
537 ** New global variables: %load-compiled-path, %load-compiled-extensions
539 These are analogous to %load-path and %load-extensions.
541 ** New procedure, `make-promise'
543 `(make-promise (lambda () foo))' is equivalent to `(delay foo)'.
545 ** `defined?' may accept a module as its second argument
547 Previously it only accepted internal structures from the evaluator.
549 ** New entry into %guile-build-info: `ccachedir'
551 ** Fix bug in `module-bound?'.
553 `module-bound?' was returning true if a module did have a local
554 variable, but one that was unbound, but another imported module bound
555 the variable. This was an error, and was fixed.
557 ** `(ice-9 syncase)' has been deprecated.
559 As syntax-case is available by default, importing `(ice-9 syncase)' has
560 no effect, and will trigger a deprecation warning.
562 ** Removed deprecated uniform array procedures:
563 dimensions->uniform-array, list->uniform-array, array-prototype
565 Instead, use make-typed-array, list->typed-array, or array-type,
568 * Changes to the C interface
570 ** The GH interface (deprecated in version 1.6, 2001) was removed.
572 ** Internal `scm_i_' functions now have "hidden" linkage with GCC/ELF
574 This makes these internal functions technically not callable from
577 ** Functions for handling `scm_option' now no longer require an argument
578 indicating length of the `scm_t_option' array.
580 ** scm_primitive_load_path has additional argument, exception_on_error
582 ** New C function: scm_module_public_interface
584 This procedure corresponds to Scheme's `module-public-interface'.
586 ** `scm_stat' has an additional argument, `exception_on_error'
587 ** `scm_primitive_load_path' has an additional argument `exception_on_not_found'
589 ** `scm_set_port_seek' and `scm_set_port_truncate' use the `scm_t_off' type
591 Previously they would use the `off_t' type, which is fragile since its
592 definition depends on the application's value for `_FILE_OFFSET_BITS'.
594 ** The `long_long' C type, deprecated in 1.8, has been removed
596 ** Removed deprecated uniform array procedures: scm_make_uve,
597 scm_array_prototype, scm_list_to_uniform_array,
598 scm_dimensions_to_uniform_array, scm_make_ra, scm_shap2ra, scm_cvref,
599 scm_ra_set_contp, scm_aind, scm_raprin1
601 These functions have been deprecated since early 2005.
603 ** scm_array_p has one argument, not two
605 Use of the second argument produced a deprecation warning, so it is
606 unlikely that any code out there actually used this functionality.
608 * Changes to the distribution
610 ** Guile's license is now LGPLv3+
612 In other words the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 3 or
613 later (at the discretion of each person that chooses to redistribute
616 ** `guile-config' will be deprecated in favor of `pkg-config'
618 `guile-config' has been rewritten to get its information from
619 `pkg-config', so this should be a transparent change. Note however that
620 guile.m4 has yet to be modified to call pkg-config instead of
623 ** Guile now provides `guile-2.0.pc' instead of `guile-1.8.pc'
625 Programs that use `pkg-config' to find Guile or one of its Autoconf
626 macros should now require `guile-2.0' instead of `guile-1.8'.
628 ** New installation directory: $(pkglibdir)/1.9/ccache
630 If $(libdir) is /usr/lib, for example, Guile will install its .go files
631 to /usr/lib/guile/1.9/ccache. These files are architecture-specific.
633 ** New dependency: GNU libunistring.
635 See http://www.gnu.org/software/libunistring/, for more information. Our
636 unicode support uses routines from libunistring.
640 Changes in 1.8.8 (since 1.8.7)
644 ** Fix possible buffer overruns when parsing numbers
645 ** Avoid clash with system setjmp/longjmp on IA64
648 Changes in 1.8.7 (since 1.8.6)
650 * New modules (see the manual for details)
652 ** `(srfi srfi-98)', an interface to access environment variables
656 ** Fix compilation with `--disable-deprecated'
657 ** Fix %fast-slot-ref/set!, to avoid possible segmentation fault
658 ** Fix MinGW build problem caused by HAVE_STRUCT_TIMESPEC confusion
659 ** Fix build problem when scm_t_timespec is different from struct timespec
660 ** Fix build when compiled with -Wundef -Werror
661 ** More build fixes for `alphaev56-dec-osf5.1b' (Tru64)
662 ** Build fixes for `powerpc-ibm-aix5.3.0.0' (AIX 5.3)
663 ** With GCC, always compile with `-mieee' on `alpha*' and `sh*'
664 ** Better diagnose broken `(strftime "%z" ...)' in `time.test' (bug #24130)
665 ** Fix parsing of SRFI-88/postfix keywords longer than 128 characters
666 ** Fix reading of complex numbers where both parts are inexact decimals
668 ** Allow @ macro to work with (ice-9 syncase)
670 Previously, use of the @ macro in a module whose code is being
671 transformed by (ice-9 syncase) would cause an "Invalid syntax" error.
672 Now it works as you would expect (giving the value of the specified
675 ** Have `scm_take_locale_symbol ()' return an interned symbol (bug #25865)
678 Changes in 1.8.6 (since 1.8.5)
680 * New features (see the manual for details)
682 ** New convenience function `scm_c_symbol_length ()'
684 ** Single stepping through code from Emacs
686 When you use GDS to evaluate Scheme code from Emacs, you can now use
687 `C-u' to indicate that you want to single step through that code. See
688 `Evaluating Scheme Code' in the manual for more details.
690 ** New "guile(1)" man page!
692 * Changes to the distribution
694 ** Automake's `AM_MAINTAINER_MODE' is no longer used
696 Thus, the `--enable-maintainer-mode' configure option is no longer
697 available: Guile is now always configured in "maintainer mode".
699 ** `ChangeLog' files are no longer updated
701 Instead, changes are detailed in the version control system's logs. See
702 the top-level `ChangeLog' files for details.
707 ** `symbol->string' now returns a read-only string, as per R5RS
708 ** Fix incorrect handling of the FLAGS argument of `fold-matches'
709 ** `guile-config link' now prints `-L$libdir' before `-lguile'
710 ** Fix memory corruption involving GOOPS' `class-redefinition'
711 ** Fix possible deadlock in `mutex-lock'
712 ** Fix build issue on Tru64 and ia64-hp-hpux11.23 (`SCM_UNPACK' macro)
713 ** Fix build issue on mips, mipsel, powerpc and ia64 (stack direction)
714 ** Fix build issue on hppa2.0w-hp-hpux11.11 (`dirent64' and `readdir64_r')
715 ** Fix build issue on i386-unknown-freebsd7.0 ("break strict-aliasing rules")
716 ** Fix misleading output from `(help rationalize)'
717 ** Fix build failure on Debian hppa architecture (bad stack growth detection)
718 ** Fix `gcd' when called with a single, negative argument.
719 ** Fix `Stack overflow' errors seen when building on some platforms
720 ** Fix bug when `scm_with_guile ()' was called several times from the
722 ** The handler of SRFI-34 `with-exception-handler' is now invoked in the
723 dynamic environment of the call to `raise'
724 ** Fix potential deadlock in `make-struct'
725 ** Fix compilation problem with libltdl from Libtool 2.2.x
726 ** Fix sloppy bound checking in `string-{ref,set!}' with the empty string
729 Changes in 1.8.5 (since 1.8.4)
731 * Infrastructure changes
733 ** Guile repository switched from CVS to Git
735 The new repository can be accessed using
736 "git-clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/guile.git", or can be browsed on-line at
737 http://git.sv.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=guile.git . See `README' for details.
739 ** Add support for `pkg-config'
741 See "Autoconf Support" in the manual for details.
743 * New modules (see the manual for details)
747 * New features (see the manual for details)
749 ** New `postfix' read option, for SRFI-88 keyword syntax
750 ** Some I/O primitives have been inlined, which improves I/O performance
751 ** New object-based traps infrastructure
753 This is a GOOPS-based infrastructure that builds on Guile's low-level
754 evaluator trap calls and facilitates the development of debugging
755 features like single-stepping, breakpoints, tracing and profiling.
756 See the `Traps' node of the manual for details.
758 ** New support for working on Guile code from within Emacs
760 Guile now incorporates the `GDS' library (previously distributed
761 separately) for working on Guile code from within Emacs. See the
762 `Using Guile In Emacs' node of the manual for details.
766 ** `scm_add_slot ()' no longer segfaults (fixes bug #22369)
767 ** Fixed `(ice-9 match)' for patterns like `((_ ...) ...)'
769 Previously, expressions like `(match '((foo) (bar)) (((_ ...) ...) #t))'
770 would trigger an unbound variable error for `match:andmap'.
772 ** `(oop goops describe)' now properly provides the `describe' feature
773 ** Fixed `args-fold' from `(srfi srfi-37)'
775 Previously, parsing short option names of argument-less options would
776 lead to a stack overflow.
778 ** `(srfi srfi-35)' is now visible through `cond-expand'
779 ** Fixed type-checking for the second argument of `eval'
780 ** Fixed type-checking for SRFI-1 `partition'
781 ** Fixed `struct-ref' and `struct-set!' on "light structs"
782 ** Honor struct field access rights in GOOPS
783 ** Changed the storage strategy of source properties, which fixes a deadlock
784 ** Allow compilation of Guile-using programs in C99 mode with GCC 4.3 and later
785 ** Fixed build issue for GNU/Linux on IA64
786 ** Fixed build issues on NetBSD 1.6
787 ** Fixed build issue on Solaris 2.10 x86_64
788 ** Fixed build issue with DEC/Compaq/HP's compiler
789 ** Fixed `scm_from_complex_double' build issue on FreeBSD
790 ** Fixed `alloca' build issue on FreeBSD 6
791 ** Removed use of non-portable makefile constructs
792 ** Fixed shadowing of libc's <random.h> on Tru64, which broke compilation
793 ** Make sure all tests honor `$TMPDIR'
796 Changes in 1.8.4 (since 1.8.3)
800 ** CR (ASCII 0x0d) is (again) recognized as a token delimiter by the reader
801 ** Fixed a segmentation fault which occurred when displaying the
802 backtrace of a stack with a promise object (made by `delay') in it.
803 ** Make `accept' leave guile mode while blocking
804 ** `scm_c_read ()' and `scm_c_write ()' now type-check their port argument
805 ** Fixed a build problem on AIX (use of func_data identifier)
806 ** Fixed a segmentation fault which occurred when hashx-ref or hashx-set! was
807 called with an associator proc that returns neither a pair nor #f.
808 ** Secondary threads now always return a valid module for (current-module).
809 ** Avoid MacOS build problems caused by incorrect combination of "64"
810 system and library calls.
811 ** `guile-snarf' now honors `$TMPDIR'
812 ** `guile-config compile' now reports CPPFLAGS used at compile-time
813 ** Fixed build with Sun Studio (Solaris 9)
814 ** Fixed wrong-type-arg errors when creating zero length SRFI-4
815 uniform vectors on AIX.
816 ** Fixed a deadlock that occurs upon GC with multiple threads.
817 ** Fixed compile problem with GCC on Solaris and AIX (use of _Complex_I)
818 ** Fixed autotool-derived build problems on AIX 6.1.
819 ** Fixed NetBSD/alpha support
820 ** Fixed MacOS build problem caused by use of rl_get_keymap(_name)
822 * New modules (see the manual for details)
826 * Documentation fixes and improvements
828 ** Removed premature breakpoint documentation
830 The features described are not available in the series of 1.8.x
831 releases, so the documentation was misleading and has been removed.
833 ** More about Guile's default *random-state* variable
835 ** GOOPS: more about how to use `next-method'
837 * Changes to the distribution
839 ** Corrected a few files that referred incorrectly to the old GPL + special exception licence
841 In fact Guile since 1.8.0 has been licensed with the GNU Lesser
842 General Public License, and the few incorrect files have now been
843 fixed to agree with the rest of the Guile distribution.
845 ** Removed unnecessary extra copies of COPYING*
847 The distribution now contains a single COPYING.LESSER at its top level.
850 Changes in 1.8.3 (since 1.8.2)
852 * New modules (see the manual for details)
859 ** The `(ice-9 slib)' module now works as expected
860 ** Expressions like "(set! 'x #t)" no longer yield a crash
861 ** Warnings about duplicate bindings now go to stderr
862 ** A memory leak in `make-socket-address' was fixed
863 ** Alignment issues (e.g., on SPARC) in network routines were fixed
864 ** A threading issue that showed up at least on NetBSD was fixed
865 ** Build problems on Solaris and IRIX fixed
867 * Implementation improvements
869 ** The reader is now faster, which reduces startup time
870 ** Procedures returned by `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' are faster
873 Changes in 1.8.2 (since 1.8.1):
875 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
877 ** set-program-arguments
880 * Incompatible changes
882 ** The body of a top-level `define' no longer sees the binding being created
884 In a top-level `define', the binding being created is no longer visible
885 from the `define' body. This breaks code like
886 "(define foo (begin (set! foo 1) (+ foo 1)))", where `foo' is now
887 unbound in the body. However, such code was not R5RS-compliant anyway,
892 ** Fractions were not `equal?' if stored in unreduced form.
893 (A subtle problem, since printing a value reduced it, making it work.)
894 ** srfi-60 `copy-bit' failed on 64-bit systems
895 ** "guile --use-srfi" option at the REPL can replace core functions
896 (Programs run with that option were ok, but in the interactive REPL
897 the core bindings got priority, preventing SRFI replacements or
899 ** `regexp-exec' doesn't abort() on #\nul in the input or bad flags arg
900 ** `kill' on mingw throws an error for a PID other than oneself
901 ** Procedure names are attached to procedure-with-setters
902 ** Array read syntax works with negative lower bound
903 ** `array-in-bounds?' fix if an array has different lower bounds on each index
904 ** `*' returns exact 0 for "(* inexact 0)"
905 This follows what it always did for "(* 0 inexact)".
906 ** SRFI-19: Value returned by `(current-time time-process)' was incorrect
907 ** SRFI-19: `date->julian-day' did not account for timezone offset
908 ** `ttyname' no longer crashes when passed a non-tty argument
909 ** `inet-ntop' no longer crashes on SPARC when passed an `AF_INET' address
910 ** Small memory leaks have been fixed in `make-fluid' and `add-history'
911 ** GOOPS: Fixed a bug in `method-more-specific?'
912 ** Build problems on Solaris fixed
913 ** Build problems on HP-UX IA64 fixed
914 ** Build problems on MinGW fixed
917 Changes in 1.8.1 (since 1.8.0):
919 * LFS functions are now used to access 64-bit files on 32-bit systems.
921 * New procedures (see the manual for details)
923 ** primitive-_exit - [Scheme] the-root-module
924 ** scm_primitive__exit - [C]
925 ** make-completion-function - [Scheme] (ice-9 readline)
926 ** scm_c_locale_stringn_to_number - [C]
927 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse [C]
928 ** scm_srfi1_append_reverse_x [C]
936 ** Build problems have been fixed on MacOS, SunOS, and QNX.
938 ** `strftime' fix sign of %z timezone offset.
940 ** A one-dimensional array can now be 'equal?' to a vector.
942 ** Structures, records, and SRFI-9 records can now be compared with `equal?'.
944 ** SRFI-14 standard char sets are recomputed upon a successful `setlocale'.
946 ** `record-accessor' and `record-modifier' now have strict type checks.
948 Record accessor and modifier procedures now throw an error if the
949 record type of the record they're given is not the type expected.
950 (Previously accessors returned #f and modifiers silently did nothing).
952 ** It is now OK to use both autoload and use-modules on a given module.
954 ** `apply' checks the number of arguments more carefully on "0 or 1" funcs.
956 Previously there was no checking on primatives like make-vector that
957 accept "one or two" arguments. Now there is.
959 ** The srfi-1 assoc function now calls its equality predicate properly.
961 Previously srfi-1 assoc would call the equality predicate with the key
962 last. According to the SRFI, the key should be first.
964 ** A bug in n-par-for-each and n-for-each-par-map has been fixed.
966 ** The array-set! procedure no longer segfaults when given a bit vector.
968 ** Bugs in make-shared-array have been fixed.
970 ** string<? and friends now follow char<? etc order on 8-bit chars.
972 ** The format procedure now handles inf and nan values for ~f correctly.
974 ** exact->inexact should no longer overflow when given certain large fractions.
976 ** srfi-9 accessor and modifier procedures now have strict record type checks.
978 This matches the srfi-9 specification.
980 ** (ice-9 ftw) procedures won't ignore different files with same inode number.
982 Previously the (ice-9 ftw) procedures would ignore any file that had
983 the same inode number as a file they had already seen, even if that
984 file was on a different device.
987 Changes in 1.8.0 (changes since the 1.6.x series):
989 * Changes to the distribution
991 ** Guile is now licensed with the GNU Lesser General Public License.
993 ** The manual is now licensed with the GNU Free Documentation License.
995 ** Guile now requires GNU MP (http://swox.com/gmp).
997 Guile now uses the GNU MP library for arbitrary precision arithmetic.
999 ** Guile now has separate private and public configuration headers.
1001 That is, things like HAVE_STRING_H no longer leak from Guile's
1004 ** Guile now provides and uses an "effective" version number.
1006 Guile now provides scm_effective_version and effective-version
1007 functions which return the "effective" version number. This is just
1008 the normal full version string without the final micro-version number,
1009 so the current effective-version is "1.8". The effective version
1010 should remain unchanged during a stable series, and should be used for
1011 items like the versioned share directory name
1012 i.e. /usr/share/guile/1.8.
1014 Providing an unchanging version number during a stable release for
1015 things like the versioned share directory can be particularly
1016 important for Guile "add-on" packages, since it provides a directory
1017 that they can install to that won't be changed out from under them
1018 with each micro release during a stable series.
1020 ** Thread implementation has changed.
1022 When you configure "--with-threads=null", you will get the usual
1023 threading API (call-with-new-thread, make-mutex, etc), but you can't
1024 actually create new threads. Also, "--with-threads=no" is now
1025 equivalent to "--with-threads=null". This means that the thread API
1026 is always present, although you might not be able to create new
1029 When you configure "--with-threads=pthreads" or "--with-threads=yes",
1030 you will get threads that are implemented with the portable POSIX
1031 threads. These threads can run concurrently (unlike the previous
1032 "coop" thread implementation), but need to cooperate for things like
1035 The default is "pthreads", unless your platform doesn't have pthreads,
1036 in which case "null" threads are used.
1038 See the manual for details, nodes "Initialization", "Multi-Threading",
1039 "Blocking", and others.
1041 ** There is the new notion of 'discouraged' features.
1043 This is a milder form of deprecation.
1045 Things that are discouraged should not be used in new code, but it is
1046 OK to leave them in old code for now. When a discouraged feature is
1047 used, no warning message is printed like there is for 'deprecated'
1048 features. Also, things that are merely discouraged are nevertheless
1049 implemented efficiently, while deprecated features can be very slow.
1051 You can omit discouraged features from libguile by configuring it with
1052 the '--disable-discouraged' option.
1054 ** Deprecation warnings can be controlled at run-time.
1056 (debug-enable 'warn-deprecated) switches them on and (debug-disable
1057 'warn-deprecated) switches them off.
1059 ** Support for SRFI 61, extended cond syntax for multiple values has
1062 This SRFI is always available.
1064 ** Support for require-extension, SRFI-55, has been added.
1066 The SRFI-55 special form `require-extension' has been added. It is
1067 available at startup, and provides a portable way to load Scheme
1068 extensions. SRFI-55 only requires support for one type of extension,
1069 "srfi"; so a set of SRFIs may be loaded via (require-extension (srfi 1
1072 ** New module (srfi srfi-26) provides support for `cut' and `cute'.
1074 The (srfi srfi-26) module is an implementation of SRFI-26 which
1075 provides the `cut' and `cute' syntax. These may be used to specialize
1076 parameters without currying.
1078 ** New module (srfi srfi-31)
1080 This is an implementation of SRFI-31 which provides a special form
1081 `rec' for recursive evaluation.
1083 ** The modules (srfi srfi-13), (srfi srfi-14) and (srfi srfi-4) have
1084 been merged with the core, making their functionality always
1087 The modules are still available, tho, and you could use them together
1088 with a renaming import, for example.
1090 ** Guile no longer includes its own version of libltdl.
1092 The official version is good enough now.
1094 ** The --enable-htmldoc option has been removed from 'configure'.
1096 Support for translating the documentation into HTML is now always
1097 provided. Use 'make html'.
1099 ** New module (ice-9 serialize):
1101 (serialize FORM1 ...) and (parallelize FORM1 ...) are useful when you
1102 don't trust the thread safety of most of your program, but where you
1103 have some section(s) of code which you consider can run in parallel to
1104 other sections. See ice-9/serialize.scm for more information.
1106 ** The configure option '--disable-arrays' has been removed.
1108 Support for arrays and uniform numeric arrays is now always included
1111 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
1113 ** New command line option `-L'.
1115 This option adds a directory to the front of the load path.
1117 ** New command line option `--no-debug'.
1119 Specifying `--no-debug' on the command line will keep the debugging
1120 evaluator turned off, even for interactive sessions.
1122 ** User-init file ~/.guile is now loaded with the debugging evaluator.
1124 Previously, the normal evaluator would have been used. Using the
1125 debugging evaluator gives better error messages.
1127 ** The '-e' option now 'read's its argument.
1129 This is to allow the new '(@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)' construct to
1130 be used with '-e'. For example, you can now write a script like
1133 exec guile -e '(@ (demo) main)' -s "$0" "$@"
1136 (define-module (demo)
1140 (format #t "Demo: ~a~%" args))
1143 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
1145 ** Guardians have changed back to their original semantics
1147 Guardians now behave like described in the paper by Dybvig et al. In
1148 particular, they no longer make guarantees about the order in which
1149 they return objects, and they can no longer be greedy.
1151 They no longer drop cyclic data structures.
1153 The C function scm_make_guardian has been changed incompatibly and no
1154 longer takes the 'greedy_p' argument.
1156 ** New function hashx-remove!
1158 This function completes the set of 'hashx' functions.
1160 ** The concept of dynamic roots has been factored into continuation
1161 barriers and dynamic states.
1163 Each thread has a current dynamic state that carries the values of the
1164 fluids. You can create and copy dynamic states and use them as the
1165 second argument for 'eval'. See "Fluids and Dynamic States" in the
1168 To restrict the influence that captured continuations can have on the
1169 control flow, you can errect continuation barriers. See "Continuation
1170 Barriers" in the manual.
1172 The function call-with-dynamic-root now essentially temporarily
1173 installs a new dynamic state and errects a continuation barrier.
1175 ** The default load path no longer includes "." at the end.
1177 Automatically loading modules from the current directory should not
1178 happen by default. If you want to allow it in a more controlled
1179 manner, set the environment variable GUILE_LOAD_PATH or the Scheme
1180 variable %load-path.
1182 ** The uniform vector and array support has been overhauled.
1184 It now complies with SRFI-4 and the weird prototype based uniform
1185 array creation has been deprecated. See the manual for more details.
1187 Some non-compatible changes have been made:
1188 - characters can no longer be stored into byte arrays.
1189 - strings and bit vectors are no longer considered to be uniform numeric
1191 - array-rank throws an error for non-arrays instead of returning zero.
1192 - array-ref does no longer accept non-arrays when no indices are given.
1194 There is the new notion of 'generalized vectors' and corresponding
1195 procedures like 'generalized-vector-ref'. Generalized vectors include
1196 strings, bitvectors, ordinary vectors, and uniform numeric vectors.
1198 Arrays use generalized vectors as their storage, so that you still
1199 have arrays of characters, bits, etc. However, uniform-array-read!
1200 and uniform-array-write can no longer read/write strings and
1203 ** There is now support for copy-on-write substrings, mutation-sharing
1204 substrings and read-only strings.
1206 Three new procedures are related to this: substring/shared,
1207 substring/copy, and substring/read-only. See the manual for more
1210 ** Backtraces will now highlight the value that caused the error.
1212 By default, these values are enclosed in "{...}", such as in this
1221 <unnamed port>:1:1: In procedure car in expression (car (quote a)):
1222 <unnamed port>:1:1: Wrong type (expecting pair): a
1223 ABORT: (wrong-type-arg)
1225 The prefix and suffix used for highlighting can be set via the two new
1226 printer options 'highlight-prefix' and 'highlight-suffix'. For
1227 example, putting this into ~/.guile will output the bad value in bold
1228 on an ANSI terminal:
1230 (print-set! highlight-prefix "\x1b[1m")
1231 (print-set! highlight-suffix "\x1b[22m")
1234 ** 'gettext' support for internationalization has been added.
1236 See the manual for details.
1238 ** New syntax '@' and '@@':
1240 You can now directly refer to variables exported from a module by
1243 (@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME)
1245 For example (@ (ice-9 pretty-print) pretty-print) will directly access
1246 the pretty-print variable exported from the (ice-9 pretty-print)
1247 module. You don't need to 'use' that module first. You can also use
1248 '@' as a target of 'set!', as in (set! (@ mod var) val).
1250 The related syntax (@@ MODULE-NAME VARIABLE-NAME) works just like '@',
1251 but it can also access variables that have not been exported. It is
1252 intended only for kluges and temporary fixes and for debugging, not
1255 ** Keyword syntax has been made more disciplined.
1257 Previously, the name of a keyword was read as a 'token' but printed as
1258 a symbol. Now, it is read as a general Scheme datum which must be a
1269 ERROR: In expression (a b c):
1273 ERROR: Unbound variable: foo
1278 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): 12
1282 ERROR: Wrong type (expecting symbol): (a b c)
1286 ** The printing of symbols that might look like keywords can be
1289 The new printer option 'quote-keywordish-symbols' controls how symbols
1290 are printed that have a colon as their first or last character. The
1291 default now is to only quote a symbol with #{...}# when the read
1292 option 'keywords' is not '#f'. Thus:
1294 guile> (define foo (string->symbol ":foo"))
1295 guile> (read-set! keywords #f)
1298 guile> (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
1301 guile> (print-set! quote-keywordish-symbols #f)
1305 ** 'while' now provides 'break' and 'continue'
1307 break and continue were previously bound in a while loop, but not
1308 documented, and continue didn't quite work properly. The undocumented
1309 parameter to break which gave a return value for the while has been
1312 ** 'call-with-current-continuation' is now also available under the name
1315 ** The module system now checks for duplicate bindings.
1317 The module system now can check for name conflicts among imported
1320 The behavior can be controlled by specifying one or more 'duplicates'
1321 handlers. For example, to make Guile return an error for every name
1324 (define-module (foo)
1329 The new default behavior of the module system when a name collision
1330 has been detected is to
1332 1. Give priority to bindings marked as a replacement.
1333 2. Issue a warning (different warning if overriding core binding).
1334 3. Give priority to the last encountered binding (this corresponds to
1337 If you want the old behavior back without replacements or warnings you
1340 (default-duplicate-binding-handler 'last)
1342 to your .guile init file.
1344 ** New define-module option: :replace
1346 :replace works as :export, but, in addition, marks the binding as a
1349 A typical example is `format' in (ice-9 format) which is a replacement
1350 for the core binding `format'.
1352 ** Adding prefixes to imported bindings in the module system
1354 There is now a new :use-module option :prefix. It can be used to add
1355 a prefix to all imported bindings.
1357 (define-module (foo)
1358 :use-module ((bar) :prefix bar:))
1360 will import all bindings exported from bar, but rename them by adding
1363 ** Conflicting generic functions can be automatically merged.
1365 When two imported bindings conflict and they are both generic
1366 functions, the two functions can now be merged automatically. This is
1367 activated with the 'duplicates' handler 'merge-generics'.
1369 ** New function: effective-version
1371 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
1372 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
1373 to the distribution" above.
1375 ** New threading functions: parallel, letpar, par-map, and friends
1377 These are convenient ways to run calculations in parallel in new
1378 threads. See "Parallel forms" in the manual for details.
1380 ** New function 'try-mutex'.
1382 This function will attempt to lock a mutex but will return immediately
1383 instead of blocking and indicate failure.
1385 ** Waiting on a condition variable can have a timeout.
1387 The function 'wait-condition-variable' now takes a third, optional
1388 argument that specifies the point in time where the waiting should be
1391 ** New function 'broadcast-condition-variable'.
1393 ** New functions 'all-threads' and 'current-thread'.
1395 ** Signals and system asyncs work better with threads.
1397 The function 'sigaction' now takes a fourth, optional, argument that
1398 specifies the thread that the handler should run in. When the
1399 argument is omitted, the handler will run in the thread that called
1402 Likewise, 'system-async-mark' takes a second, optional, argument that
1403 specifies the thread that the async should run in. When it is
1404 omitted, the async will run in the thread that called
1405 'system-async-mark'.
1407 C code can use the new functions scm_sigaction_for_thread and
1408 scm_system_async_mark_for_thread to pass the new thread argument.
1410 When a thread blocks on a mutex, a condition variable or is waiting
1411 for IO to be possible, it will still execute system asyncs. This can
1412 be used to interrupt such a thread by making it execute a 'throw', for
1415 ** The function 'system-async' is deprecated.
1417 You can now pass any zero-argument procedure to 'system-async-mark'.
1418 The function 'system-async' will just return its argument unchanged
1421 ** New functions 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' and
1422 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
1424 The expression (call-with-blocked-asyncs PROC) will call PROC and will
1425 block execution of system asyncs for the current thread by one level
1426 while PROC runs. Likewise, call-with-unblocked-asyncs will call a
1427 procedure and will unblock the execution of system asyncs by one
1428 level for the current thread.
1430 Only system asyncs are affected by these functions.
1432 ** The functions 'mask-signals' and 'unmask-signals' are deprecated.
1434 Use 'call-with-blocked-asyncs' or 'call-with-unblocked-asyncs'
1435 instead. Those functions are easier to use correctly and can be
1438 ** New function 'unsetenv'.
1440 ** New macro 'define-syntax-public'.
1442 It works like 'define-syntax' and also exports the defined macro (but
1445 ** There is support for Infinity and NaNs.
1447 Following PLT Scheme, Guile can now work with infinite numbers, and
1450 There is new syntax for numbers: "+inf.0" (infinity), "-inf.0"
1451 (negative infinity), "+nan.0" (not-a-number), and "-nan.0" (same as
1452 "+nan.0"). These numbers are inexact and have no exact counterpart.
1454 Dividing by an inexact zero returns +inf.0 or -inf.0, depending on the
1455 sign of the dividend. The infinities are integers, and they answer #t
1456 for both 'even?' and 'odd?'. The +nan.0 value is not an integer and is
1457 not '=' to itself, but '+nan.0' is 'eqv?' to itself.
1468 ERROR: Numerical overflow
1470 Two new predicates 'inf?' and 'nan?' can be used to test for the
1473 ** Inexact zero can have a sign.
1475 Guile can now distinguish between plus and minus inexact zero, if your
1476 platform supports this, too. The two zeros are equal according to
1477 '=', but not according to 'eqv?'. For example
1488 ** Guile now has exact rationals.
1490 Guile can now represent fractions such as 1/3 exactly. Computing with
1491 them is also done exactly, of course:
1496 ** 'floor', 'ceiling', 'round' and 'truncate' now return exact numbers
1497 for exact arguments.
1499 For example: (floor 2) now returns an exact 2 where in the past it
1500 returned an inexact 2.0. Likewise, (floor 5/4) returns an exact 1.
1502 ** inexact->exact no longer returns only integers.
1504 Without exact rationals, the closest exact number was always an
1505 integer, but now inexact->exact returns the fraction that is exactly
1506 equal to a floating point number. For example:
1508 (inexact->exact 1.234)
1509 => 694680242521899/562949953421312
1511 When you want the old behavior, use 'round' explicitly:
1513 (inexact->exact (round 1.234))
1516 ** New function 'rationalize'.
1518 This function finds a simple fraction that is close to a given real
1519 number. For example (and compare with inexact->exact above):
1521 (rationalize (inexact->exact 1.234) 1/2000)
1524 Note that, as required by R5RS, rationalize returns only then an exact
1525 result when both its arguments are exact.
1527 ** 'odd?' and 'even?' work also for inexact integers.
1529 Previously, (odd? 1.0) would signal an error since only exact integers
1530 were recognized as integers. Now (odd? 1.0) returns #t, (odd? 2.0)
1531 returns #f and (odd? 1.5) signals an error.
1533 ** Guile now has uninterned symbols.
1535 The new function 'make-symbol' will return an uninterned symbol. This
1536 is a symbol that is unique and is guaranteed to remain unique.
1537 However, uninterned symbols can not yet be read back in.
1539 Use the new function 'symbol-interned?' to check whether a symbol is
1542 ** pretty-print has more options.
1544 The function pretty-print from the (ice-9 pretty-print) module can now
1545 also be invoked with keyword arguments that control things like
1546 maximum output width. See the manual for details.
1548 ** Variables have no longer a special behavior for `equal?'.
1550 Previously, comparing two variables with `equal?' would recursivly
1551 compare their values. This is no longer done. Variables are now only
1552 `equal?' if they are `eq?'.
1554 ** `(begin)' is now valid.
1556 You can now use an empty `begin' form. It will yield #<unspecified>
1557 when evaluated and simply be ignored in a definition context.
1559 ** Deprecated: procedure->macro
1561 Change your code to use 'define-macro' or r5rs macros. Also, be aware
1562 that macro expansion will not be done during evaluation, but prior to
1565 ** Soft ports now allow a `char-ready?' procedure
1567 The vector argument to `make-soft-port' can now have a length of
1568 either 5 or 6. (Previously the length had to be 5.) The optional 6th
1569 element is interpreted as an `input-waiting' thunk -- i.e. a thunk
1570 that returns the number of characters that can be read immediately
1571 without the soft port blocking.
1573 ** Deprecated: undefine
1575 There is no replacement for undefine.
1577 ** The functions make-keyword-from-dash-symbol and keyword-dash-symbol
1578 have been discouraged.
1580 They are relics from a time where a keyword like #:foo was used
1581 directly as a Tcl option "-foo" and thus keywords were internally
1582 stored as a symbol with a starting dash. We now store a symbol
1585 Use symbol->keyword and keyword->symbol instead.
1587 ** The `cheap' debug option is now obsolete
1589 Evaluator trap calls are now unconditionally "cheap" - in other words,
1590 they pass a debug object to the trap handler rather than a full
1591 continuation. The trap handler code can capture a full continuation
1592 by using `call-with-current-continuation' in the usual way, if it so
1595 The `cheap' option is retained for now so as not to break existing
1596 code which gets or sets it, but setting it now has no effect. It will
1597 be removed in the next major Guile release.
1599 ** Evaluator trap calls now support `tweaking'
1601 `Tweaking' means that the trap handler code can modify the Scheme
1602 expression that is about to be evaluated (in the case of an
1603 enter-frame trap) or the value that is being returned (in the case of
1604 an exit-frame trap). The trap handler code indicates that it wants to
1605 do this by returning a pair whose car is the symbol 'instead and whose
1606 cdr is the modified expression or return value.
1608 * Changes to the C interface
1610 ** The functions scm_hash_fn_remove_x and scm_hashx_remove_x no longer
1611 take a 'delete' function argument.
1613 This argument makes no sense since the delete function is used to
1614 remove a pair from an alist, and this must not be configurable.
1616 This is an incompatible change.
1618 ** The GH interface is now subject to the deprecation mechanism
1620 The GH interface has been deprecated for quite some time but now it is
1621 actually removed from Guile when it is configured with
1622 --disable-deprecated.
1624 See the manual "Transitioning away from GH" for more information.
1626 ** A new family of functions for converting between C values and
1627 Scheme values has been added.
1629 These functions follow a common naming scheme and are designed to be
1630 easier to use, thread-safe and more future-proof than the older
1633 - int scm_is_* (...)
1635 These are predicates that return a C boolean: 1 or 0. Instead of
1636 SCM_NFALSEP, you can now use scm_is_true, for example.
1638 - <type> scm_to_<type> (SCM val, ...)
1640 These are functions that convert a Scheme value into an appropriate
1641 C value. For example, you can use scm_to_int to safely convert from
1644 - SCM scm_from_<type> (<type> val, ...)
1646 These functions convert from a C type to a SCM value; for example,
1647 scm_from_int for ints.
1649 There is a huge number of these functions, for numbers, strings,
1650 symbols, vectors, etc. They are documented in the reference manual in
1651 the API section together with the types that they apply to.
1653 ** New functions for dealing with complex numbers in C have been added.
1655 The new functions are scm_c_make_rectangular, scm_c_make_polar,
1656 scm_c_real_part, scm_c_imag_part, scm_c_magnitude and scm_c_angle.
1657 They work like scm_make_rectangular etc but take or return doubles
1660 ** The function scm_make_complex has been discouraged.
1662 Use scm_c_make_rectangular instead.
1664 ** The INUM macros have been deprecated.
1666 A lot of code uses these macros to do general integer conversions,
1667 although the macros only work correctly with fixnums. Use the
1668 following alternatives.
1670 SCM_INUMP -> scm_is_integer or similar
1671 SCM_NINUMP -> !scm_is_integer or similar
1672 SCM_MAKINUM -> scm_from_int or similar
1673 SCM_INUM -> scm_to_int or similar
1675 SCM_VALIDATE_INUM_* -> Do not use these; scm_to_int, etc. will
1676 do the validating for you.
1678 ** The scm_num2<type> and scm_<type>2num functions and scm_make_real
1679 have been discouraged.
1681 Use the newer scm_to_<type> and scm_from_<type> functions instead for
1682 new code. The functions have been discouraged since they don't fit
1685 ** The 'boolean' macros SCM_FALSEP etc have been discouraged.
1687 They have strange names, especially SCM_NFALSEP, and SCM_BOOLP
1688 evaluates its argument twice. Use scm_is_true, etc. instead for new
1691 ** The macro SCM_EQ_P has been discouraged.
1693 Use scm_is_eq for new code, which fits better into the naming
1696 ** The macros SCM_CONSP, SCM_NCONSP, SCM_NULLP, and SCM_NNULLP have
1699 Use the function scm_is_pair or scm_is_null instead.
1701 ** The functions scm_round and scm_truncate have been deprecated and
1702 are now available as scm_c_round and scm_c_truncate, respectively.
1704 These functions occupy the names that scm_round_number and
1705 scm_truncate_number should have.
1707 ** The functions scm_c_string2str, scm_c_substring2str, and
1708 scm_c_symbol2str have been deprecated.
1710 Use scm_to_locale_stringbuf or similar instead, maybe together with
1713 ** New functions scm_c_make_string, scm_c_string_length,
1714 scm_c_string_ref, scm_c_string_set_x, scm_c_substring,
1715 scm_c_substring_shared, scm_c_substring_copy.
1717 These are like scm_make_string, scm_length, etc. but are slightly
1718 easier to use from C.
1720 ** The macros SCM_STRINGP, SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_STRING_LENGTH,
1721 SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, and SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH have been deprecated.
1723 They export too many assumptions about the implementation of strings
1724 and symbols that are no longer true in the presence of
1725 mutation-sharing substrings and when Guile switches to some form of
1728 When working with strings, it is often best to use the normal string
1729 functions provided by Guile, such as scm_c_string_ref,
1730 scm_c_string_set_x, scm_string_append, etc. Be sure to look in the
1731 manual since many more such functions are now provided than
1734 When you want to convert a SCM string to a C string, use the
1735 scm_to_locale_string function or similar instead. For symbols, use
1736 scm_symbol_to_string and then work with that string. Because of the
1737 new string representation, scm_symbol_to_string does not need to copy
1738 and is thus quite efficient.
1740 ** Some string, symbol and keyword functions have been discouraged.
1742 They don't fit into the uniform naming scheme and are not explicit
1743 about the character encoding.
1745 Replace according to the following table:
1747 scm_allocate_string -> scm_c_make_string
1748 scm_take_str -> scm_take_locale_stringn
1749 scm_take0str -> scm_take_locale_string
1750 scm_mem2string -> scm_from_locale_stringn
1751 scm_str2string -> scm_from_locale_string
1752 scm_makfrom0str -> scm_from_locale_string
1753 scm_mem2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symboln
1754 scm_mem2uninterned_symbol -> scm_from_locale_stringn + scm_make_symbol
1755 scm_str2symbol -> scm_from_locale_symbol
1757 SCM_SYMBOL_HASH -> scm_hashq
1758 SCM_SYMBOL_INTERNED_P -> scm_symbol_interned_p
1760 scm_c_make_keyword -> scm_from_locale_keyword
1762 ** The functions scm_keyword_to_symbol and sym_symbol_to_keyword are
1763 now also available to C code.
1765 ** SCM_KEYWORDP and SCM_KEYWORDSYM have been deprecated.
1767 Use scm_is_keyword and scm_keyword_to_symbol instead, but note that
1768 the latter returns the true name of the keyword, not the 'dash name',
1769 as SCM_KEYWORDSYM used to do.
1771 ** A new way to access arrays in a thread-safe and efficient way has
1774 See the manual, node "Accessing Arrays From C".
1776 ** The old uniform vector and bitvector implementations have been
1777 unceremoniously removed.
1779 This implementation exposed the details of the tagging system of
1780 Guile. Use the new C API explained in the manual in node "Uniform
1781 Numeric Vectors" and "Bit Vectors", respectively.
1783 The following macros are gone: SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE,
1784 SCM_UVECTOR_MAXLENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_UVECTOR_TAG,
1785 SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVECTOR_P, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE,
1786 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
1787 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_MAKE_BITVECTOR_TAG,
1788 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_BITVEC_REF, SCM_BITVEC_SET,
1791 ** The macros dealing with vectors have been deprecated.
1793 Use the new functions scm_is_vector, scm_vector_elements,
1794 scm_vector_writable_elements, etc, or scm_is_simple_vector,
1795 SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_REF, SCM_SIMPLE_VECTOR_SET, etc instead. See the
1796 manual for more details.
1798 Deprecated are SCM_VECTORP, SCM_VELTS, SCM_VECTOR_MAX_LENGTH,
1799 SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_REF, SCM_VECTOR_SET, SCM_WRITABLE_VELTS.
1801 The following macros have been removed: SCM_VECTOR_BASE,
1802 SCM_SET_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_MAKE_VECTOR_TAG, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH,
1803 SCM_VELTS_AS_STACKITEMS, SCM_SETVELTS, SCM_GC_WRITABLE_VELTS.
1805 ** Some C functions and macros related to arrays have been deprecated.
1807 Migrate according to the following table:
1809 scm_make_uve -> scm_make_typed_array, scm_make_u8vector etc.
1810 scm_make_ra -> scm_make_array
1811 scm_shap2ra -> scm_make_array
1812 scm_cvref -> scm_c_generalized_vector_ref
1813 scm_ra_set_contp -> do not use
1814 scm_aind -> scm_array_handle_pos
1815 scm_raprin1 -> scm_display or scm_write
1817 SCM_ARRAYP -> scm_is_array
1818 SCM_ARRAY_NDIM -> scm_c_array_rank
1819 SCM_ARRAY_DIMS -> scm_array_handle_dims
1820 SCM_ARRAY_CONTP -> do not use
1821 SCM_ARRAY_MEM -> do not use
1822 SCM_ARRAY_V -> scm_array_handle_elements or similar
1823 SCM_ARRAY_BASE -> do not use
1825 ** SCM_CELL_WORD_LOC has been deprecated.
1827 Use the new macro SCM_CELL_OBJECT_LOC instead, which returns a pointer
1828 to a SCM, as opposed to a pointer to a scm_t_bits.
1830 This was done to allow the correct use of pointers into the Scheme
1831 heap. Previously, the heap words were of type scm_t_bits and local
1832 variables and function arguments were of type SCM, making it
1833 non-standards-conformant to have a pointer that can point to both.
1835 ** New macros SCM_SMOB_DATA_2, SCM_SMOB_DATA_3, etc.
1837 These macros should be used instead of SCM_CELL_WORD_2/3 to access the
1838 second and third words of double smobs. Likewise for
1839 SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_2 and SCM_SET_SMOB_DATA_3.
1841 Also, there is SCM_SMOB_FLAGS and SCM_SET_SMOB_FLAGS that should be
1842 used to get and set the 16 exra bits in the zeroth word of a smob.
1844 And finally, there is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT and SCM_SMOB_SET_OBJECT for
1845 accesing the first immediate word of a smob as a SCM value, and there
1846 is SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_LOC for getting a pointer to the first immediate
1847 smob word. Like wise for SCM_SMOB_OBJECT_2, etc.
1849 ** New way to deal with non-local exits and re-entries.
1851 There is a new set of functions that essentially do what
1852 scm_internal_dynamic_wind does, but in a way that is more convenient
1853 for C code in some situations. Here is a quick example of how to
1854 prevent a potential memory leak:
1861 scm_dynwind_begin (0);
1863 mem = scm_malloc (100);
1864 scm_dynwind_unwind_handler (free, mem, SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY);
1866 /* MEM would leak if BAR throws an error.
1867 SCM_DYNWIND_UNWIND_HANDLER frees it nevertheless.
1874 /* Because of SCM_F_WIND_EXPLICITLY, MEM will be freed by
1875 SCM_DYNWIND_END as well.
1879 For full documentation, see the node "Dynamic Wind" in the manual.
1881 ** New function scm_dynwind_free
1883 This function calls 'free' on a given pointer when a dynwind context
1884 is left. Thus the call to scm_dynwind_unwind_handler above could be
1885 replaced with simply scm_dynwind_free (mem).
1887 ** New functions scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
1888 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs
1890 Like scm_call_with_blocked_asyncs etc. but for C functions.
1892 ** New functions scm_dynwind_block_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs
1894 In addition to scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs you can now also use
1895 scm_dynwind_block_asyncs in a 'dynwind context' (see above). Likewise for
1896 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs and scm_dynwind_unblock_asyncs.
1898 ** The macros SCM_DEFER_INTS, SCM_ALLOW_INTS, SCM_REDEFER_INTS,
1899 SCM_REALLOW_INTS have been deprecated.
1901 They do no longer fulfill their original role of blocking signal
1902 delivery. Depending on what you want to achieve, replace a pair of
1903 SCM_DEFER_INTS and SCM_ALLOW_INTS with a dynwind context that locks a
1904 mutex, blocks asyncs, or both. See node "Critical Sections" in the
1907 ** The value 'scm_mask_ints' is no longer writable.
1909 Previously, you could set scm_mask_ints directly. This is no longer
1910 possible. Use scm_c_call_with_blocked_asyncs and
1911 scm_c_call_with_unblocked_asyncs instead.
1913 ** New way to temporarily set the current input, output or error ports
1915 C code can now use scm_dynwind_current_<foo>_port in a 'dynwind
1916 context' (see above). <foo> is one of "input", "output" or "error".
1918 ** New way to temporarily set fluids
1920 C code can now use scm_dynwind_fluid in a 'dynwind context' (see
1921 above) to temporarily set the value of a fluid.
1923 ** New types scm_t_intmax and scm_t_uintmax.
1925 On platforms that have them, these types are identical to intmax_t and
1926 uintmax_t, respectively. On other platforms, they are identical to
1927 the largest integer types that Guile knows about.
1929 ** The functions scm_unmemocopy and scm_unmemoize have been removed.
1931 You should not have used them.
1933 ** Many public #defines with generic names have been made private.
1935 #defines with generic names like HAVE_FOO or SIZEOF_FOO have been made
1936 private or renamed with a more suitable public name.
1938 ** The macro SCM_TYP16S has been deprecated.
1940 This macro is not intended for public use.
1942 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_INEXACTP has been deprecated.
1944 Use scm_is_true (scm_inexact_p (...)) instead.
1946 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_REALP has been deprecated.
1948 Use scm_is_real instead.
1950 ** The macro SCM_SLOPPY_COMPLEXP has been deprecated.
1952 Use scm_is_complex instead.
1954 ** Some preprocessor defines have been deprecated.
1956 These defines indicated whether a certain feature was present in Guile
1957 or not. Going forward, assume that the features are always present.
1959 The macros are: USE_THREADS, GUILE_ISELECT, READER_EXTENSIONS,
1960 DEBUG_EXTENSIONS, DYNAMIC_LINKING.
1962 The following macros have been removed completely: MEMOIZE_LOCALS,
1963 SCM_RECKLESS, SCM_CAUTIOUS.
1965 ** The preprocessor define STACK_DIRECTION has been deprecated.
1967 There should be no need to know about the stack direction for ordinary
1970 ** New function: scm_effective_version
1972 Returns the "effective" version number. This is just the normal full
1973 version string without the final micro-version number. See "Changes
1974 to the distribution" above.
1976 ** The function scm_call_with_new_thread has a new prototype.
1978 Instead of taking a list with the thunk and handler, these two
1979 arguments are now passed directly:
1981 SCM scm_call_with_new_thread (SCM thunk, SCM handler);
1983 This is an incompatible change.
1985 ** New snarfer macro SCM_DEFINE_PUBLIC.
1987 This is like SCM_DEFINE, but also calls scm_c_export for the defined
1988 function in the init section.
1990 ** The snarfer macro SCM_SNARF_INIT is now officially supported.
1992 ** Garbage collector rewrite.
1994 The garbage collector is cleaned up a lot, and now uses lazy
1995 sweeping. This is reflected in the output of (gc-stats); since cells
1996 are being freed when they are allocated, the cells-allocated field
1997 stays roughly constant.
1999 For malloc related triggers, the behavior is changed. It uses the same
2000 heuristic as the cell-triggered collections. It may be tuned with the
2001 environment variables GUILE_MIN_YIELD_MALLOC. This is the percentage
2002 for minimum yield of malloc related triggers. The default is 40.
2003 GUILE_INIT_MALLOC_LIMIT sets the initial trigger for doing a GC. The
2006 Debugging operations for the freelist have been deprecated, along with
2007 the C variables that control garbage collection. The environment
2008 variables GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE, GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2,
2009 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1, and GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2 should be used.
2011 For understanding the memory usage of a GUILE program, the routine
2012 gc-live-object-stats returns an alist containing the number of live
2013 objects for every type.
2016 ** The function scm_definedp has been renamed to scm_defined_p
2018 The name scm_definedp is deprecated.
2020 ** The struct scm_cell type has been renamed to scm_t_cell
2022 This is in accordance to Guile's naming scheme for types. Note that
2023 the name scm_cell is now used for a function that allocates and
2024 initializes a new cell (see below).
2026 ** New functions for memory management
2028 A new set of functions for memory management has been added since the
2029 old way (scm_must_malloc, scm_must_free, etc) was error prone and
2030 indeed, Guile itself contained some long standing bugs that could
2031 cause aborts in long running programs.
2033 The new functions are more symmetrical and do not need cooperation
2034 from smob free routines, among other improvements.
2036 The new functions are scm_malloc, scm_realloc, scm_calloc, scm_strdup,
2037 scm_strndup, scm_gc_malloc, scm_gc_calloc, scm_gc_realloc,
2038 scm_gc_free, scm_gc_register_collectable_memory, and
2039 scm_gc_unregister_collectable_memory. Refer to the manual for more
2040 details and for upgrading instructions.
2042 The old functions for memory management have been deprecated. They
2043 are: scm_must_malloc, scm_must_realloc, scm_must_free,
2044 scm_must_strdup, scm_must_strndup, scm_done_malloc, scm_done_free.
2046 ** Declarations of exported features are marked with SCM_API.
2048 Every declaration of a feature that belongs to the exported Guile API
2049 has been marked by adding the macro "SCM_API" to the start of the
2050 declaration. This macro can expand into different things, the most
2051 common of which is just "extern" for Unix platforms. On Win32, it can
2052 be used to control which symbols are exported from a DLL.
2054 If you `#define SCM_IMPORT' before including <libguile.h>, SCM_API
2055 will expand into "__declspec (dllimport) extern", which is needed for
2056 linking to the Guile DLL in Windows.
2058 There are also SCM_RL_IMPORT, SCM_SRFI1314_IMPORT, and
2059 SCM_SRFI4_IMPORT, for the corresponding libraries.
2061 ** SCM_NEWCELL and SCM_NEWCELL2 have been deprecated.
2063 Use the new functions scm_cell and scm_double_cell instead. The old
2064 macros had problems because with them allocation and initialization
2065 was separated and the GC could sometimes observe half initialized
2066 cells. Only careful coding by the user of SCM_NEWCELL and
2067 SCM_NEWCELL2 could make this safe and efficient.
2069 ** CHECK_ENTRY, CHECK_APPLY and CHECK_EXIT have been deprecated.
2071 Use the variables scm_check_entry_p, scm_check_apply_p and scm_check_exit_p
2074 ** SRCBRKP has been deprecated.
2076 Use scm_c_source_property_breakpoint_p instead.
2078 ** Deprecated: scm_makmacro
2080 Change your code to use either scm_makmmacro or to define macros in
2081 Scheme, using 'define-macro'.
2083 ** New function scm_c_port_for_each.
2085 This function is like scm_port_for_each but takes a pointer to a C
2086 function as the callback instead of a SCM value.
2088 ** The names scm_internal_select, scm_thread_sleep, and
2089 scm_thread_usleep have been discouraged.
2091 Use scm_std_select, scm_std_sleep, scm_std_usleep instead.
2093 ** The GC can no longer be blocked.
2095 The global flags scm_gc_heap_lock and scm_block_gc have been removed.
2096 The GC can now run (partially) concurrently with other code and thus
2097 blocking it is not well defined.
2099 ** Many definitions have been removed that were previously deprecated.
2101 scm_lisp_nil, scm_lisp_t, s_nil_ify, scm_m_nil_ify, s_t_ify,
2102 scm_m_t_ify, s_0_cond, scm_m_0_cond, s_0_ify, scm_m_0_ify, s_1_ify,
2103 scm_m_1_ify, scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2,
2104 scm_tc16_allocated, SCM_SET_SYMBOL_HASH, SCM_IM_NIL_IFY, SCM_IM_T_IFY,
2105 SCM_IM_0_COND, SCM_IM_0_IFY, SCM_IM_1_IFY, SCM_GC_SET_ALLOCATED,
2106 scm_debug_newcell, scm_debug_newcell2, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL, SCM_INT_SIGNAL,
2107 SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL, SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL,
2108 SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD, SCM_ORD_SIG,
2109 SCM_NUM_SIGS, scm_top_level_lookup_closure_var,
2110 *top-level-lookup-closure*, scm_system_transformer, scm_eval_3,
2111 scm_eval2, root_module_lookup_closure, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
2112 SCM_RWSTRINGP, scm_read_only_string_p, scm_make_shared_substring,
2113 scm_tc7_substring, sym_huh, SCM_VARVCELL, SCM_UDVARIABLEP,
2114 SCM_DEFVARIABLEP, scm_mkbig, scm_big2inum, scm_adjbig, scm_normbig,
2115 scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl, SCM_FIXNUM_BIT,
2116 SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_SLOPPY_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET,
2117 SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_ROLENGTH,
2118 SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
2119 scm_sym2vcell, scm_intern, scm_intern0, scm_sysintern, scm_sysintern0,
2120 scm_sysintern0_no_module_lookup, scm_init_symbols_deprecated,
2121 scm_vector_set_length_x, scm_contregs, scm_debug_info,
2122 scm_debug_frame, SCM_DSIDEVAL, SCM_CONST_LONG, SCM_VCELL,
2123 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL, SCM_VCELL_INIT, SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL_INIT,
2124 SCM_HUGE_LENGTH, SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING,
2125 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY, SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY,
2126 SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, DIGITS, scm_small_istr2int, scm_istr2int,
2127 scm_istr2flo, scm_istring2number, scm_istr2int, scm_istr2flo,
2128 scm_istring2number, scm_vtable_index_vcell, scm_si_vcell, SCM_ECONSP,
2129 SCM_NECONSP, SCM_GLOC_VAR, SCM_GLOC_VAL, SCM_GLOC_SET_VAL,
2130 SCM_GLOC_VAL_LOC, scm_make_gloc, scm_gloc_p, scm_tc16_variable,
2131 SCM_CHARS, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH.
2133 * Changes to bundled modules
2137 Using the (ice-9 debug) module no longer automatically switches Guile
2138 to use the debugging evaluator. If you want to switch to the
2139 debugging evaluator (which is needed for backtrace information if you
2140 hit an error), please add an explicit "(debug-enable 'debug)" to your
2141 code just after the code to use (ice-9 debug).
2144 Changes since Guile 1.4:
2146 * Changes to the distribution
2148 ** A top-level TODO file is included.
2150 ** Guile now uses a versioning scheme similar to that of the Linux kernel.
2152 Guile now always uses three numbers to represent the version,
2153 i.e. "1.6.5". The first number, 1, is the major version number, the
2154 second number, 6, is the minor version number, and the third number,
2155 5, is the micro version number. Changes in major version number
2156 indicate major changes in Guile.
2158 Minor version numbers that are even denote stable releases, and odd
2159 minor version numbers denote development versions (which may be
2160 unstable). The micro version number indicates a minor sub-revision of
2161 a given MAJOR.MINOR release.
2163 In keeping with the new scheme, (minor-version) and scm_minor_version
2164 no longer return everything but the major version number. They now
2165 just return the minor version number. Two new functions
2166 (micro-version) and scm_micro_version have been added to report the
2167 micro version number.
2169 In addition, ./GUILE-VERSION now defines GUILE_MICRO_VERSION.
2171 ** New preprocessor definitions are available for checking versions.
2173 version.h now #defines SCM_MAJOR_VERSION, SCM_MINOR_VERSION, and
2174 SCM_MICRO_VERSION to the appropriate integer values.
2176 ** Guile now actively warns about deprecated features.
2178 The new configure option `--enable-deprecated=LEVEL' and the
2179 environment variable GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATED control this mechanism.
2180 See INSTALL and README for more information.
2182 ** Guile is much more likely to work on 64-bit architectures.
2184 Guile now compiles and passes "make check" with only two UNRESOLVED GC
2185 cases on Alpha and ia64 based machines now. Thanks to John Goerzen
2186 for the use of a test machine, and thanks to Stefan Jahn for ia64
2189 ** New functions: setitimer and getitimer.
2191 These implement a fairly direct interface to the libc functions of the
2194 ** The #. reader extension is now disabled by default.
2196 For safety reasons, #. evaluation is disabled by default. To
2197 re-enable it, set the fluid read-eval? to #t. For example:
2199 (fluid-set! read-eval? #t)
2201 but make sure you realize the potential security risks involved. With
2202 read-eval? enabled, reading a data file from an untrusted source can
2205 ** New SRFI modules have been added:
2207 SRFI-0 `cond-expand' is now supported in Guile, without requiring
2210 (srfi srfi-1) is a library containing many useful pair- and list-processing
2213 (srfi srfi-2) exports and-let*.
2215 (srfi srfi-4) implements homogeneous numeric vector datatypes.
2217 (srfi srfi-6) is a dummy module for now, since guile already provides
2218 all of the srfi-6 procedures by default: open-input-string,
2219 open-output-string, get-output-string.
2221 (srfi srfi-8) exports receive.
2223 (srfi srfi-9) exports define-record-type.
2225 (srfi srfi-10) exports define-reader-ctor and implements the reader
2228 (srfi srfi-11) exports let-values and let*-values.
2230 (srfi srfi-13) implements the SRFI String Library.
2232 (srfi srfi-14) implements the SRFI Character-Set Library.
2234 (srfi srfi-17) implements setter and getter-with-setter and redefines
2235 some accessor procedures as procedures with getters. (such as car,
2236 cdr, vector-ref etc.)
2238 (srfi srfi-19) implements the SRFI Time/Date Library.
2240 ** New scripts / "executable modules"
2242 Subdirectory "scripts" contains Scheme modules that are packaged to
2243 also be executable as scripts. At this time, these scripts are available:
2252 See README there for more info.
2254 These scripts can be invoked from the shell with the new program
2255 "guile-tools", which keeps track of installation directory for you.
2258 $ guile-tools display-commentary srfi/*.scm
2260 guile-tools is copied to the standard $bindir on "make install".
2262 ** New module (ice-9 stack-catch):
2264 stack-catch is like catch, but saves the current state of the stack in
2265 the fluid the-last-stack. This fluid can be useful when using the
2266 debugger and when re-throwing an error.
2268 ** The module (ice-9 and-let*) has been renamed to (ice-9 and-let-star)
2270 This has been done to prevent problems on lesser operating systems
2271 that can't tolerate `*'s in file names. The exported macro continues
2272 to be named `and-let*', of course.
2274 On systems that support it, there is also a compatibility module named
2275 (ice-9 and-let*). It will go away in the next release.
2277 ** New modules (oop goops) etc.:
2280 (oop goops describe)
2282 (oop goops active-slot)
2283 (oop goops composite-slot)
2285 The Guile Object Oriented Programming System (GOOPS) has been
2286 integrated into Guile. For further information, consult the GOOPS
2287 manual and tutorial in the `doc' directory.
2289 ** New module (ice-9 rdelim).
2291 This exports the following procedures which were previously defined
2292 in the default environment:
2294 read-line read-line! read-delimited read-delimited! %read-delimited!
2295 %read-line write-line
2297 For backwards compatibility the definitions are still imported into the
2298 default environment in this version of Guile. However you should add:
2300 (use-modules (ice-9 rdelim))
2302 to any program which uses the definitions, since this may change in
2305 Alternatively, if guile-scsh is installed, the (scsh rdelim) module
2306 can be used for similar functionality.
2308 ** New module (ice-9 rw)
2310 This is a subset of the (scsh rw) module from guile-scsh. Currently
2311 it defines two procedures:
2313 *** New function: read-string!/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
2315 Read characters from a port or file descriptor into a string STR.
2316 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
2317 fport. This procedure is scsh-compatible and can efficiently read
2320 *** New function: write-string/partial str [port_or_fdes [start [end]]]
2322 Write characters from a string STR to a port or file descriptor.
2323 A port must have an underlying file descriptor -- a so-called
2324 fport. This procedure is mostly compatible and can efficiently
2325 write large strings.
2327 ** New module (ice-9 match)
2329 This module includes Andrew K. Wright's pattern matcher. See
2330 ice-9/match.scm for brief description or
2332 http://www.star-lab.com/wright/code.html
2334 for complete documentation.
2336 ** New module (ice-9 buffered-input)
2338 This module provides procedures to construct an input port from an
2339 underlying source of input that reads and returns its input in chunks.
2340 The underlying input source is a Scheme procedure, specified by the
2341 caller, which the port invokes whenever it needs more input.
2343 This is useful when building an input port whose back end is Readline
2344 or a UI element such as the GtkEntry widget.
2348 The reference and tutorial documentation that was previously
2349 distributed separately, as `guile-doc', is now included in the core
2350 Guile distribution. The documentation consists of the following
2353 - The Guile Tutorial (guile-tut.texi) contains a tutorial introduction
2356 - The Guile Reference Manual (guile.texi) contains (or is intended to
2357 contain) reference documentation on all aspects of Guile.
2359 - The GOOPS Manual (goops.texi) contains both tutorial-style and
2360 reference documentation for using GOOPS, Guile's Object Oriented
2363 - The Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
2366 See the README file in the `doc' directory for more details.
2368 ** There are a couple of examples in the examples/ directory now.
2370 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
2372 ** New command line option `--use-srfi'
2374 Using this option, SRFI modules can be loaded on startup and be
2375 available right from the beginning. This makes programming portable
2376 Scheme programs easier.
2378 The option `--use-srfi' expects a comma-separated list of numbers,
2379 each representing a SRFI number to be loaded into the interpreter
2380 before starting evaluating a script file or the REPL. Additionally,
2381 the feature identifier for the loaded SRFIs is recognized by
2382 `cond-expand' when using this option.
2385 $ guile --use-srfi=8,13
2386 guile> (receive (x z) (values 1 2) (+ 1 2))
2388 guile> (string-pad "bla" 20)
2391 ** Guile now always starts up in the `(guile-user)' module.
2393 Previously, scripts executed via the `-s' option would run in the
2394 `(guile)' module and the repl would run in the `(guile-user)' module.
2395 Now every user action takes place in the `(guile-user)' module by
2398 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
2400 ** Character classifiers work for non-ASCII characters.
2402 The predicates `char-alphabetic?', `char-numeric?',
2403 `char-whitespace?', `char-lower?', `char-upper?' and `char-is-both?'
2404 no longer check whether their arguments are ASCII characters.
2405 Previously, a character would only be considered alphabetic when it
2406 was also ASCII, for example.
2408 ** Previously deprecated Scheme functions have been removed:
2410 tag - no replacement.
2411 fseek - replaced by seek.
2412 list* - replaced by cons*.
2414 ** It's now possible to create modules with controlled environments
2418 (use-modules (ice-9 safe))
2419 (define m (make-safe-module))
2420 ;;; m will now be a module containing only a safe subset of R5RS
2421 (eval '(+ 1 2) m) --> 3
2422 (eval 'load m) --> ERROR: Unbound variable: load
2424 ** Evaluation of "()", the empty list, is now an error.
2426 Previously, the expression "()" evaluated to the empty list. This has
2427 been changed to signal a "missing expression" error. The correct way
2428 to write the empty list as a literal constant is to use quote: "'()".
2430 ** New concept of `Guile Extensions'.
2432 A Guile Extension is just a ordinary shared library that can be linked
2433 at run-time. We found it advantageous to give this simple concept a
2434 dedicated name to distinguish the issues related to shared libraries
2435 from the issues related to the module system.
2437 *** New function: load-extension
2439 Executing (load-extension lib init) is mostly equivalent to
2441 (dynamic-call init (dynamic-link lib))
2443 except when scm_register_extension has been called previously.
2444 Whenever appropriate, you should use `load-extension' instead of
2445 dynamic-link and dynamic-call.
2447 *** New C function: scm_c_register_extension
2449 This function registers a initialization function for use by
2450 `load-extension'. Use it when you don't want specific extensions to
2451 be loaded as shared libraries (for example on platforms that don't
2452 support dynamic linking).
2454 ** Auto-loading of compiled-code modules is deprecated.
2456 Guile used to be able to automatically find and link a shared
2457 library to satisfy requests for a module. For example, the module
2458 `(foo bar)' could be implemented by placing a shared library named
2459 "foo/libbar.so" (or with a different extension) in a directory on the
2462 This has been found to be too tricky, and is no longer supported. The
2463 shared libraries are now called "extensions". You should now write a
2464 small Scheme file that calls `load-extension' to load the shared
2465 library and initialize it explicitly.
2467 The shared libraries themselves should be installed in the usual
2468 places for shared libraries, with names like "libguile-foo-bar".
2470 For example, place this into a file "foo/bar.scm"
2472 (define-module (foo bar))
2474 (load-extension "libguile-foo-bar" "foobar_init")
2476 ** Backward incompatible change: eval EXP ENVIRONMENT-SPECIFIER
2478 `eval' is now R5RS, that is it takes two arguments.
2479 The second argument is an environment specifier, i.e. either
2481 (scheme-report-environment 5)
2482 (null-environment 5)
2483 (interaction-environment)
2489 ** The module system has been made more disciplined.
2491 The function `eval' will save and restore the current module around
2492 the evaluation of the specified expression. While this expression is
2493 evaluated, `(current-module)' will now return the right module, which
2494 is the module specified as the second argument to `eval'.
2496 A consequence of this change is that `eval' is not particularly
2497 useful when you want allow the evaluated code to change what module is
2498 designated as the current module and have this change persist from one
2499 call to `eval' to the next. The read-eval-print-loop is an example
2500 where `eval' is now inadequate. To compensate, there is a new
2501 function `primitive-eval' that does not take a module specifier and
2502 that does not save/restore the current module. You should use this
2503 function together with `set-current-module', `current-module', etc
2504 when you want to have more control over the state that is carried from
2505 one eval to the next.
2507 Additionally, it has been made sure that forms that are evaluated at
2508 the top level are always evaluated with respect to the current module.
2509 Previously, subforms of top-level forms such as `begin', `case',
2510 etc. did not respect changes to the current module although these
2511 subforms are at the top-level as well.
2513 To prevent strange behavior, the forms `define-module',
2514 `use-modules', `use-syntax', and `export' have been restricted to only
2515 work on the top level. The forms `define-public' and
2516 `defmacro-public' only export the new binding on the top level. They
2517 behave just like `define' and `defmacro', respectively, when they are
2518 used in a lexical environment.
2520 Also, `export' will no longer silently re-export bindings imported
2521 from a used module. It will emit a `deprecation' warning and will
2522 cease to perform any re-export in the next version. If you actually
2523 want to re-export bindings, use the new `re-export' in place of
2524 `export'. The new `re-export' will not make copies of variables when
2525 rexporting them, as `export' did wrongly.
2527 ** Module system now allows selection and renaming of imported bindings
2529 Previously, when using `use-modules' or the `#:use-module' clause in
2530 the `define-module' form, all the bindings (association of symbols to
2531 values) for imported modules were added to the "current module" on an
2532 as-is basis. This has been changed to allow finer control through two
2533 new facilities: selection and renaming.
2535 You can now select which of the imported module's bindings are to be
2536 visible in the current module by using the `:select' clause. This
2537 clause also can be used to rename individual bindings. For example:
2539 ;; import all bindings no questions asked
2540 (use-modules (ice-9 common-list))
2542 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them;
2543 ;; the current module sees: every some zonk-y zonk-n
2544 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
2546 (remove-if . zonk-y)
2547 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))))
2549 You can also programmatically rename all selected bindings using the
2550 `:renamer' clause, which specifies a proc that takes a symbol and
2551 returns another symbol. Because it is common practice to use a prefix,
2552 we now provide the convenience procedure `symbol-prefix-proc'. For
2555 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
2556 ;; and all four w/ prefix "CL:";
2557 ;; the current module sees: CL:every CL:some CL:zonk-y CL:zonk-n
2558 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
2560 (remove-if . zonk-y)
2561 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
2562 :renamer (symbol-prefix-proc 'CL:)))
2564 ;; import four bindings, renaming two of them specifically,
2565 ;; and all four by upcasing.
2566 ;; the current module sees: EVERY SOME ZONK-Y ZONK-N
2567 (define (upcase-symbol sym)
2568 (string->symbol (string-upcase (symbol->string sym))))
2570 (use-modules ((ice-9 common-list)
2572 (remove-if . zonk-y)
2573 (remove-if-not . zonk-n))
2574 :renamer upcase-symbol))
2576 Note that programmatic renaming is done *after* individual renaming.
2577 Also, the above examples show `use-modules', but the same facilities are
2578 available for the `#:use-module' clause of `define-module'.
2580 See manual for more info.
2582 ** The semantics of guardians have changed.
2584 The changes are for the most part compatible. An important criterion
2585 was to keep the typical usage of guardians as simple as before, but to
2586 make the semantics safer and (as a result) more useful.
2588 *** All objects returned from guardians are now properly alive.
2590 It is now guaranteed that any object referenced by an object returned
2591 from a guardian is alive. It's now impossible for a guardian to
2592 return a "contained" object before its "containing" object.
2594 One incompatible (but probably not very important) change resulting
2595 from this is that it is no longer possible to guard objects that
2596 indirectly reference themselves (i.e. are parts of cycles). If you do
2597 so accidentally, you'll get a warning.
2599 *** There are now two types of guardians: greedy and sharing.
2601 If you call (make-guardian #t) or just (make-guardian), you'll get a
2602 greedy guardian, and for (make-guardian #f) a sharing guardian.
2604 Greedy guardians are the default because they are more "defensive".
2605 You can only greedily guard an object once. If you guard an object
2606 more than once, once in a greedy guardian and the rest of times in
2607 sharing guardians, then it is guaranteed that the object won't be
2608 returned from sharing guardians as long as it is greedily guarded
2611 Guardians returned by calls to `make-guardian' can now take one more
2612 optional parameter, which says whether to throw an error in case an
2613 attempt is made to greedily guard an object that is already greedily
2614 guarded. The default is true, i.e. throw an error. If the parameter
2615 is false, the guardian invocation returns #t if guarding was
2616 successful and #f if it wasn't.
2618 Also, since greedy guarding is, in effect, a side-effecting operation
2619 on objects, a new function is introduced: `destroy-guardian!'.
2620 Invoking this function on a guardian renders it unoperative and, if
2621 the guardian is greedy, clears the "greedily guarded" property of the
2622 objects that were guarded by it, thus undoing the side effect.
2624 Note that all this hair is hardly very important, since guardian
2625 objects are usually permanent.
2627 ** Continuations created by call-with-current-continuation now accept
2628 any number of arguments, as required by R5RS.
2630 ** New function `issue-deprecation-warning'
2632 This function is used to display the deprecation messages that are
2633 controlled by GUILE_WARN_DEPRECATION as explained in the README.
2636 (issue-deprecation-warning "`id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.")
2640 ;; `id' is deprecated. Use `identity' instead.
2645 ** New syntax `begin-deprecated'
2647 When deprecated features are included (as determined by the configure
2648 option --enable-deprecated), `begin-deprecated' is identical to
2649 `begin'. When deprecated features are excluded, it always evaluates
2650 to `#f', ignoring the body forms.
2652 ** New function `make-object-property'
2654 This function returns a new `procedure with setter' P that can be used
2655 to attach a property to objects. When calling P as
2659 where `obj' is any kind of object, it attaches `val' to `obj' in such
2660 a way that it can be retrieved by calling P as
2664 This function will replace procedure properties, symbol properties and
2665 source properties eventually.
2667 ** Module (ice-9 optargs) now uses keywords instead of `#&'.
2669 Instead of #&optional, #&key, etc you should now use #:optional,
2670 #:key, etc. Since #:optional is a keyword, you can write it as just
2671 :optional when (read-set! keywords 'prefix) is active.
2673 The old reader syntax `#&' is still supported, but deprecated. It
2674 will be removed in the next release.
2676 ** New define-module option: pure
2678 Tells the module system not to include any bindings from the root
2683 (define-module (totally-empty-module)
2686 ** New define-module option: export NAME1 ...
2688 Export names NAME1 ...
2690 This option is required if you want to be able to export bindings from
2691 a module which doesn't import one of `define-public' or `export'.
2695 (define-module (foo)
2697 :use-module (ice-9 r5rs)
2700 ;;; Note that we're pure R5RS below this point!
2705 ** New function: object->string OBJ
2707 Return a Scheme string obtained by printing a given object.
2709 ** New function: port? X
2711 Returns a boolean indicating whether X is a port. Equivalent to
2712 `(or (input-port? X) (output-port? X))'.
2714 ** New function: file-port?
2716 Determines whether a given object is a port that is related to a file.
2718 ** New function: port-for-each proc
2720 Apply PROC to each port in the Guile port table in turn. The return
2721 value is unspecified. More specifically, PROC is applied exactly once
2722 to every port that exists in the system at the time PORT-FOR-EACH is
2723 invoked. Changes to the port table while PORT-FOR-EACH is running
2724 have no effect as far as PORT-FOR-EACH is concerned.
2726 ** New function: dup2 oldfd newfd
2728 A simple wrapper for the `dup2' system call. Copies the file
2729 descriptor OLDFD to descriptor number NEWFD, replacing the
2730 previous meaning of NEWFD. Both OLDFD and NEWFD must be integers.
2731 Unlike for dup->fdes or primitive-move->fdes, no attempt is made
2732 to move away ports which are using NEWFD. The return value is
2735 ** New function: close-fdes fd
2737 A simple wrapper for the `close' system call. Close file
2738 descriptor FD, which must be an integer. Unlike close (*note
2739 close: Ports and File Descriptors.), the file descriptor will be
2740 closed even if a port is using it. The return value is
2743 ** New function: crypt password salt
2745 Encrypts `password' using the standard unix password encryption
2748 ** New function: chroot path
2750 Change the root directory of the running process to `path'.
2752 ** New functions: getlogin, cuserid
2754 Return the login name or the user name of the current effective user
2757 ** New functions: getpriority which who, setpriority which who prio
2759 Get or set the priority of the running process.
2761 ** New function: getpass prompt
2763 Read a password from the terminal, first displaying `prompt' and
2766 ** New function: flock file operation
2768 Set/remove an advisory shared or exclusive lock on `file'.
2770 ** New functions: sethostname name, gethostname
2772 Set or get the hostname of the machine the current process is running
2775 ** New function: mkstemp! tmpl
2777 mkstemp creates a new unique file in the file system and returns a
2778 new buffered port open for reading and writing to the file. TMPL
2779 is a string specifying where the file should be created: it must
2780 end with `XXXXXX' and will be changed in place to return the name
2781 of the temporary file.
2783 ** New function: open-input-string string
2785 Return an input string port which delivers the characters from
2786 `string'. This procedure, together with `open-output-string' and
2787 `get-output-string' implements SRFI-6.
2789 ** New function: open-output-string
2791 Return an output string port which collects all data written to it.
2792 The data can then be retrieved by `get-output-string'.
2794 ** New function: get-output-string
2796 Return the contents of an output string port.
2798 ** New function: identity
2800 Return the argument.
2802 ** socket, connect, accept etc., now have support for IPv6. IPv6 addresses
2803 are represented in Scheme as integers with normal host byte ordering.
2805 ** New function: inet-pton family address
2807 Convert a printable string network address into an integer. Note that
2808 unlike the C version of this function, the result is an integer with
2809 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
2812 (inet-pton AF_INET "127.0.0.1") => 2130706433
2813 (inet-pton AF_INET6 "::1") => 1
2815 ** New function: inet-ntop family address
2817 Convert an integer network address into a printable string. Note that
2818 unlike the C version of this function, the input is an integer with
2819 normal host byte ordering. FAMILY can be `AF_INET' or `AF_INET6'.
2822 (inet-ntop AF_INET 2130706433) => "127.0.0.1"
2823 (inet-ntop AF_INET6 (- (expt 2 128) 1)) =>
2824 ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
2828 Use `identity' instead.
2834 ** Deprecated: return-it
2838 ** Deprecated: string-character-length
2840 Use `string-length' instead.
2842 ** Deprecated: flags
2844 Use `logior' instead.
2846 ** Deprecated: close-all-ports-except.
2848 This was intended for closing ports in a child process after a fork,
2849 but it has the undesirable side effect of flushing buffers.
2850 port-for-each is more flexible.
2852 ** The (ice-9 popen) module now attempts to set up file descriptors in
2853 the child process from the current Scheme ports, instead of using the
2854 current values of file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 in the parent process.
2856 ** Removed function: builtin-weak-bindings
2858 There is no such concept as a weak binding any more.
2860 ** Removed constants: bignum-radix, scm-line-incrementors
2862 ** define-method: New syntax mandatory.
2864 The new method syntax is now mandatory:
2866 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ...) BODY ...)
2867 (define-method (NAME ARG-SPEC ... . REST-ARG) BODY ...)
2869 ARG-SPEC ::= ARG-NAME | (ARG-NAME TYPE)
2870 REST-ARG ::= ARG-NAME
2872 If you have old code using the old syntax, import
2873 (oop goops old-define-method) before (oop goops) as in:
2875 (use-modules (oop goops old-define-method) (oop goops))
2877 ** Deprecated function: builtin-variable
2878 Removed function: builtin-bindings
2880 There is no longer a distinction between builtin or other variables.
2881 Use module system operations for all variables.
2883 ** Lazy-catch handlers are no longer allowed to return.
2885 That is, a call to `throw', `error', etc is now guaranteed to not
2888 ** Bugfixes for (ice-9 getopt-long)
2890 This module is now tested using test-suite/tests/getopt-long.test.
2891 The following bugs have been fixed:
2893 *** Parsing for options that are specified to have `optional' args now checks
2894 if the next element is an option instead of unconditionally taking it as the
2897 *** An error is now thrown for `--opt=val' when the option description
2898 does not specify `(value #t)' or `(value optional)'. This condition used to
2899 be accepted w/o error, contrary to the documentation.
2901 *** The error message for unrecognized options is now more informative.
2902 It used to be "not a record", an artifact of the implementation.
2904 *** The error message for `--opt' terminating the arg list (no value), when
2905 `(value #t)' is specified, is now more informative. It used to be "not enough
2908 *** "Clumped" single-char args now preserve trailing string, use it as arg.
2909 The expansion used to be like so:
2911 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "--xyz")
2913 Note that the "5d" is dropped. Now it is like so:
2915 ("-abc5d" "--xyz") => ("-a" "-b" "-c" "5d" "--xyz")
2917 This enables single-char options to have adjoining arguments as long as their
2918 constituent characters are not potential single-char options.
2920 ** (ice-9 session) procedure `arity' now works with (ice-9 optargs) `lambda*'
2922 The `lambda*' and derivative forms in (ice-9 optargs) now set a procedure
2923 property `arglist', which can be retrieved by `arity'. The result is that
2924 `arity' can give more detailed information than before:
2928 guile> (use-modules (ice-9 optargs))
2929 guile> (define* (foo #:optional a b c) a)
2931 0 or more arguments in `lambda*:G0'.
2936 3 optional arguments: `a', `b' and `c'.
2937 guile> (define* (bar a b #:key c d #:allow-other-keys) a)
2939 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 2 keyword arguments: `c'
2940 and `d', other keywords allowed.
2941 guile> (define* (baz a b #:optional c #:rest r) a)
2943 2 required arguments: `a' and `b', 1 optional argument: `c',
2946 * Changes to the C interface
2948 ** Types have been renamed from scm_*_t to scm_t_*.
2950 This has been done for POSIX sake. It reserves identifiers ending
2951 with "_t". What a concept.
2953 The old names are still available with status `deprecated'.
2955 ** scm_t_bits (former scm_bits_t) is now a unsigned type.
2957 ** Deprecated features have been removed.
2961 SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP SCM_ICHRP, SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR
2962 SCM_SETJMPBUF SCM_NSTRINGP SCM_NRWSTRINGP SCM_NVECTORP SCM_DOUBLE_CELLP
2964 *** C Functions removed
2966 scm_sysmissing scm_tag scm_tc16_flo scm_tc_flo
2967 scm_fseek - replaced by scm_seek.
2968 gc-thunk - replaced by after-gc-hook.
2969 gh_int2scmb - replaced by gh_bool2scm.
2970 scm_tc_dblr - replaced by scm_tc16_real.
2971 scm_tc_dblc - replaced by scm_tc16_complex.
2972 scm_list_star - replaced by scm_cons_star.
2974 ** Deprecated: scm_makfromstr
2976 Use scm_mem2string instead.
2978 ** Deprecated: scm_make_shared_substring
2980 Explicit shared substrings will disappear from Guile.
2982 Instead, "normal" strings will be implemented using sharing
2983 internally, combined with a copy-on-write strategy.
2985 ** Deprecated: scm_read_only_string_p
2987 The concept of read-only strings will disappear in next release of
2990 ** Deprecated: scm_sloppy_memq, scm_sloppy_memv, scm_sloppy_member
2992 Instead, use scm_c_memq or scm_memq, scm_memv, scm_member.
2994 ** New functions: scm_call_0, scm_call_1, scm_call_2, scm_call_3
2996 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments. See "Fly
2997 Evaluation" in the manual.
2999 ** New functions: scm_apply_0, scm_apply_1, scm_apply_2, scm_apply_3
3001 Call a procedure with the indicated number of arguments and a list of
3002 further arguments. See "Fly Evaluation" in the manual.
3004 ** New functions: scm_list_1, scm_list_2, scm_list_3, scm_list_4, scm_list_5
3006 Create a list of the given number of elements. See "List
3007 Constructors" in the manual.
3009 ** Renamed function: scm_listify has been replaced by scm_list_n.
3011 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_LIST0, SCM_LIST1, SCM_LIST2, SCM_LIST3, SCM_LIST4,
3012 SCM_LIST5, SCM_LIST6, SCM_LIST7, SCM_LIST8, SCM_LIST9.
3014 Use functions scm_list_N instead.
3016 ** New function: scm_c_read (SCM port, void *buffer, scm_sizet size)
3018 Used by an application to read arbitrary number of bytes from a port.
3019 Same semantics as libc read, except that scm_c_read only returns less
3020 than SIZE bytes if at end-of-file.
3022 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
3024 ** New function: scm_c_write (SCM port, const void *ptr, scm_sizet size)
3026 Used by an application to write arbitrary number of bytes to an SCM
3027 port. Similar semantics as libc write. However, unlike libc
3028 write, scm_c_write writes the requested number of bytes and has no
3031 Warning: Doesn't update port line and column counts!
3033 ** New function: scm_init_guile ()
3035 In contrast to scm_boot_guile, scm_init_guile will return normally
3036 after initializing Guile. It is not available on all systems, tho.
3038 ** New functions: scm_str2symbol, scm_mem2symbol
3040 The function scm_str2symbol takes a const char* pointing to a zero-terminated
3041 field of characters and creates a scheme symbol object from that C string.
3042 The function scm_mem2symbol takes a const char* and a number of characters and
3043 creates a symbol from the characters in that memory area.
3045 ** New functions: scm_primitive_make_property
3046 scm_primitive_property_ref
3047 scm_primitive_property_set_x
3048 scm_primitive_property_del_x
3050 These functions implement a new way to deal with object properties.
3051 See libguile/properties.c for their documentation.
3053 ** New function: scm_done_free (long size)
3055 This function is the inverse of scm_done_malloc. Use it to report the
3056 amount of smob memory you free. The previous method, which involved
3057 calling scm_done_malloc with negative argument, was somewhat
3058 unintuitive (and is still available, of course).
3060 ** New function: scm_c_memq (SCM obj, SCM list)
3062 This function provides a fast C level alternative for scm_memq for the case
3063 that the list parameter is known to be a proper list. The function is a
3064 replacement for scm_sloppy_memq, but is stricter in its requirements on its
3065 list input parameter, since for anything else but a proper list the function's
3066 behaviour is undefined - it may even crash or loop endlessly. Further, for
3067 the case that the object is not found in the list, scm_c_memq returns #f which
3068 is similar to scm_memq, but different from scm_sloppy_memq's behaviour.
3070 ** New functions: scm_remember_upto_here_1, scm_remember_upto_here_2,
3071 scm_remember_upto_here
3073 These functions replace the function scm_remember.
3075 ** Deprecated function: scm_remember
3077 Use one of the new functions scm_remember_upto_here_1,
3078 scm_remember_upto_here_2 or scm_remember_upto_here instead.
3080 ** New function: scm_allocate_string
3082 This function replaces the function scm_makstr.
3084 ** Deprecated function: scm_makstr
3086 Use the new function scm_allocate_string instead.
3088 ** New global variable scm_gc_running_p introduced.
3090 Use this variable to find out if garbage collection is being executed. Up to
3091 now applications have used scm_gc_heap_lock to test if garbage collection was
3092 running, which also works because of the fact that up to know only the garbage
3093 collector has set this variable. But, this is an implementation detail that
3094 may change. Further, scm_gc_heap_lock is not set throughout gc, thus the use
3095 of this variable is (and has been) not fully safe anyway.
3097 ** New macros: SCM_BITVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_MAX_LENGTH
3099 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
3101 ** New macros: SCM_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_CCLO_LENGTH, SCM_STACK_LENGTH,
3102 SCM_STRING_LENGTH, SCM_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
3103 SCM_BITVECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_VECTOR_LENGTH.
3105 Use these instead of SCM_LENGTH.
3107 ** New macros: SCM_SET_CONTINUATION_LENGTH, SCM_SET_STRING_LENGTH,
3108 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_LENGTH, SCM_SET_VECTOR_LENGTH, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_LENGTH,
3109 SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_LENGTH
3111 Use these instead of SCM_SETLENGTH
3113 ** New macros: SCM_STRING_CHARS, SCM_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_CCLO_BASE,
3114 SCM_VECTOR_BASE, SCM_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_BITVECTOR_BASE, SCM_COMPLEX_MEM,
3117 Use these instead of SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS, SCM_ROCHARS, SCM_ROUCHARS or
3120 ** New macros: SCM_SET_BIGNUM_BASE, SCM_SET_STRING_CHARS,
3121 SCM_SET_SYMBOL_CHARS, SCM_SET_UVECTOR_BASE, SCM_SET_BITVECTOR_BASE,
3124 Use these instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
3126 ** New macro: SCM_BITVECTOR_P
3128 ** New macro: SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X
3130 Use instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
3132 ** New macros: SCM_DIR_OPEN_P, SCM_DIR_FLAG_OPEN
3134 For directory objects, use these instead of SCM_OPDIRP and SCM_OPN.
3136 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_OUTOFRANGE, SCM_NALLOC, SCM_HUP_SIGNAL,
3137 SCM_INT_SIGNAL, SCM_FPE_SIGNAL, SCM_BUS_SIGNAL, SCM_SEGV_SIGNAL,
3138 SCM_ALRM_SIGNAL, SCM_GC_SIGNAL, SCM_TICK_SIGNAL, SCM_SIG_ORD,
3139 SCM_ORD_SIG, SCM_NUM_SIGS, SCM_SYMBOL_SLOTS, SCM_SLOTS, SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP,
3140 SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR, SCM_FREEP, SCM_NFREEP, SCM_CHARS, SCM_UCHARS,
3141 SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING, SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING_COPY,
3142 SCM_VALIDATE_NULLORROSTRING_COPY, SCM_ROLENGTH, SCM_LENGTH, SCM_HUGE_LENGTH,
3143 SCM_SUBSTRP, SCM_SUBSTR_STR, SCM_SUBSTR_OFFSET, SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR,
3144 SCM_ROSTRINGP, SCM_RWSTRINGP, SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING, SCM_ROCHARS,
3145 SCM_ROUCHARS, SCM_SETLENGTH, SCM_SETCHARS, SCM_LENGTH_MAX, SCM_GC8MARKP,
3146 SCM_SETGC8MARK, SCM_CLRGC8MARK, SCM_GCTYP16, SCM_GCCDR, SCM_SUBR_DOC,
3147 SCM_OPDIRP, SCM_VALIDATE_OPDIR, SCM_WTA, RETURN_SCM_WTA, SCM_CONST_LONG,
3148 SCM_WNA, SCM_FUNC_NAME, SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_COPY,
3149 SCM_VALIDATE_NUMBER_DEF_COPY, SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP, SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP,
3150 SCM_SETAND_CDR, SCM_SETOR_CDR, SCM_SETAND_CAR, SCM_SETOR_CAR
3152 Use SCM_ASSERT_RANGE or SCM_VALIDATE_XXX_RANGE instead of SCM_OUTOFRANGE.
3153 Use scm_memory_error instead of SCM_NALLOC.
3154 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_STRINGP.
3155 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_STRINGORSUBSTR.
3156 Use SCM_FREE_CELL_P instead of SCM_FREEP/SCM_NFREEP
3157 Use a type specific accessor macro instead of SCM_CHARS/SCM_UCHARS.
3158 Use a type specific accessor instead of SCM(_|_RO|_HUGE_)LENGTH.
3159 Use SCM_VALIDATE_(SYMBOL|STRING) instead of SCM_VALIDATE_ROSTRING.
3160 Use SCM_STRING_COERCE_0TERMINATION_X instead of SCM_COERCE_SUBSTR.
3161 Use SCM_STRINGP or SCM_SYMBOLP instead of SCM_ROSTRINGP.
3162 Use SCM_STRINGP instead of SCM_RWSTRINGP.
3163 Use SCM_VALIDATE_STRING instead of SCM_VALIDATE_RWSTRING.
3164 Use SCM_STRING_CHARS instead of SCM_ROCHARS.
3165 Use SCM_STRING_UCHARS instead of SCM_ROUCHARS.
3166 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETLENGTH.
3167 Use a type specific setter macro instead of SCM_SETCHARS.
3168 Use a type specific length macro instead of SCM_LENGTH_MAX.
3169 Use SCM_GCMARKP instead of SCM_GC8MARKP.
3170 Use SCM_SETGCMARK instead of SCM_SETGC8MARK.
3171 Use SCM_CLRGCMARK instead of SCM_CLRGC8MARK.
3172 Use SCM_TYP16 instead of SCM_GCTYP16.
3173 Use SCM_CDR instead of SCM_GCCDR.
3174 Use SCM_DIR_OPEN_P instead of SCM_OPDIRP.
3175 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of SCM_WTA.
3176 Use SCM_MISC_ERROR or SCM_WRONG_TYPE_ARG instead of RETURN_SCM_WTA.
3177 Use SCM_VCELL_INIT instead of SCM_CONST_LONG.
3178 Use SCM_WRONG_NUM_ARGS instead of SCM_WNA.
3179 Use SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_CONSP.
3180 Use !SCM_CONSP instead of SCM_SLOPPY_NCONSP.
3182 ** Removed function: scm_struct_init
3184 ** Removed variable: scm_symhash_dim
3186 ** Renamed function: scm_make_cont has been replaced by
3187 scm_make_continuation, which has a different interface.
3189 ** Deprecated function: scm_call_catching_errors
3191 Use scm_catch or scm_lazy_catch from throw.[ch] instead.
3193 ** Deprecated function: scm_strhash
3195 Use scm_string_hash instead.
3197 ** Deprecated function: scm_vector_set_length_x
3199 Instead, create a fresh vector of the desired size and copy the contents.
3201 ** scm_gensym has changed prototype
3203 scm_gensym now only takes one argument.
3205 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc7_ssymbol, scm_tc7_msymbol, scm_tcs_symbols,
3208 There is now only a single symbol type scm_tc7_symbol.
3209 The tag scm_tc7_lvector was not used anyway.
3211 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe, scm_set_smob_mfpe.
3213 Use scm_make_smob_type and scm_set_smob_XXX instead.
3215 ** New function scm_set_smob_apply.
3217 This can be used to set an apply function to a smob type.
3219 ** Deprecated function: scm_strprint_obj
3221 Use scm_object_to_string instead.
3223 ** Deprecated function: scm_wta
3225 Use scm_wrong_type_arg, or another appropriate error signalling function
3228 ** Explicit support for obarrays has been deprecated.
3230 Use `scm_str2symbol' and the generic hashtable functions instead.
3232 ** The concept of `vcells' has been deprecated.
3234 The data type `variable' is now used exclusively. `Vcells' have been
3235 a low-level concept so you are likely not affected by this change.
3237 *** Deprecated functions: scm_sym2vcell, scm_sysintern,
3238 scm_sysintern0, scm_symbol_value0, scm_intern, scm_intern0.
3240 Use scm_c_define or scm_c_lookup instead, as appropriate.
3242 *** New functions: scm_c_module_lookup, scm_c_lookup,
3243 scm_c_module_define, scm_c_define, scm_module_lookup, scm_lookup,
3244 scm_module_define, scm_define.
3246 These functions work with variables instead of with vcells.
3248 ** New functions for creating and defining `subr's and `gsubr's.
3250 The new functions more clearly distinguish between creating a subr (or
3251 gsubr) object and adding it to the current module.
3253 These new functions are available: scm_c_make_subr, scm_c_define_subr,
3254 scm_c_make_subr_with_generic, scm_c_define_subr_with_generic,
3255 scm_c_make_gsubr, scm_c_define_gsubr, scm_c_make_gsubr_with_generic,
3256 scm_c_define_gsubr_with_generic.
3258 ** Deprecated functions: scm_make_subr, scm_make_subr_opt,
3259 scm_make_subr_with_generic, scm_make_gsubr,
3260 scm_make_gsubr_with_generic.
3262 Use the new ones from above instead.
3264 ** C interface to the module system has changed.
3266 While we suggest that you avoid as many explicit module system
3267 operations from C as possible for the time being, the C interface has
3268 been made more similar to the high-level Scheme module system.
3270 *** New functions: scm_c_define_module, scm_c_use_module,
3271 scm_c_export, scm_c_resolve_module.
3273 They mostly work like their Scheme namesakes. scm_c_define_module
3274 takes a function that is called a context where the new module is
3277 *** Deprecated functions: scm_the_root_module, scm_make_module,
3278 scm_ensure_user_module, scm_load_scheme_module.
3280 Use the new functions instead.
3282 ** Renamed function: scm_internal_with_fluids becomes
3285 scm_internal_with_fluids is available as a deprecated function.
3287 ** New function: scm_c_with_fluid.
3289 Just like scm_c_with_fluids, but takes one fluid and one value instead
3292 ** Deprecated typedefs: long_long, ulong_long.
3294 They are of questionable utility and they pollute the global
3297 ** Deprecated typedef: scm_sizet
3299 It is of questionable utility now that Guile requires ANSI C, and is
3302 ** Deprecated typedefs: scm_port_rw_active, scm_port,
3303 scm_ptob_descriptor, scm_debug_info, scm_debug_frame, scm_fport,
3304 scm_option, scm_rstate, scm_rng, scm_array, scm_array_dim.
3306 Made more compliant with the naming policy by adding a _t at the end.
3308 ** Deprecated functions: scm_mkbig, scm_big2num, scm_adjbig,
3309 scm_normbig, scm_copybig, scm_2ulong2big, scm_dbl2big, scm_big2dbl
3311 With the exception of the mysterious scm_2ulong2big, they are still
3312 available under new names (scm_i_mkbig etc). These functions are not
3313 intended to be used in user code. You should avoid dealing with
3314 bignums directly, and should deal with numbers in general (which can
3317 ** Change in behavior: scm_num2long, scm_num2ulong
3319 The scm_num2[u]long functions don't any longer accept an inexact
3320 argument. This change in behavior is motivated by concordance with
3321 R5RS: It is more common that a primitive doesn't want to accept an
3322 inexact for an exact.
3324 ** New functions: scm_short2num, scm_ushort2num, scm_int2num,
3325 scm_uint2num, scm_size2num, scm_ptrdiff2num, scm_num2short,
3326 scm_num2ushort, scm_num2int, scm_num2uint, scm_num2ptrdiff,
3329 These are conversion functions between the various ANSI C integral
3330 types and Scheme numbers. NOTE: The scm_num2xxx functions don't
3331 accept an inexact argument.
3333 ** New functions: scm_float2num, scm_double2num,
3334 scm_num2float, scm_num2double.
3336 These are conversion functions between the two ANSI C float types and
3339 ** New number validation macros:
3340 SCM_NUM2{SIZE,PTRDIFF,SHORT,USHORT,INT,UINT}[_DEF]
3344 ** New functions: scm_gc_protect_object, scm_gc_unprotect_object
3346 These are just nicer-named old scm_protect_object and
3347 scm_unprotect_object.
3349 ** Deprecated functions: scm_protect_object, scm_unprotect_object
3351 ** New functions: scm_gc_[un]register_root, scm_gc_[un]register_roots
3353 These functions can be used to register pointers to locations that
3356 ** Deprecated function: scm_create_hook.
3358 Its sins are: misleading name, non-modularity and lack of general
3362 Changes since Guile 1.3.4:
3364 * Changes to the distribution
3366 ** Trees from nightly snapshots and CVS now require you to run autogen.sh.
3368 We've changed the way we handle generated files in the Guile source
3369 repository. As a result, the procedure for building trees obtained
3370 from the nightly FTP snapshots or via CVS has changed:
3371 - You must have appropriate versions of autoconf, automake, and
3372 libtool installed on your system. See README for info on how to
3373 obtain these programs.
3374 - Before configuring the tree, you must first run the script
3375 `autogen.sh' at the top of the source tree.
3377 The Guile repository used to contain not only source files, written by
3378 humans, but also some generated files, like configure scripts and
3379 Makefile.in files. Even though the contents of these files could be
3380 derived mechanically from other files present, we thought it would
3381 make the tree easier to build if we checked them into CVS.
3383 However, this approach means that minor differences between
3384 developer's installed tools and habits affected the whole team.
3385 So we have removed the generated files from the repository, and
3386 added the autogen.sh script, which will reconstruct them
3390 ** configure now has experimental options to remove support for certain
3393 --disable-arrays omit array and uniform array support
3394 --disable-posix omit posix interfaces
3395 --disable-networking omit networking interfaces
3396 --disable-regex omit regular expression interfaces
3398 These are likely to become separate modules some day.
3400 ** New configure option --enable-debug-freelist
3402 This enables a debugging version of SCM_NEWCELL(), and also registers
3403 an extra primitive, the setter `gc-set-debug-check-freelist!'.
3405 Configure with the --enable-debug-freelist option to enable
3406 the gc-set-debug-check-freelist! primitive, and then use:
3408 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #t) # turn on checking of the freelist
3409 (gc-set-debug-check-freelist! #f) # turn off checking
3411 Checking of the freelist forces a traversal of the freelist and
3412 a garbage collection before each allocation of a cell. This can
3413 slow down the interpreter dramatically, so the setter should be used to
3414 turn on this extra processing only when necessary.
3416 ** New configure option --enable-debug-malloc
3418 Include code for debugging of calls to scm_must_malloc/realloc/free.
3422 1. objects freed by scm_must_free has been mallocated by scm_must_malloc
3423 2. objects reallocated by scm_must_realloc has been allocated by
3425 3. reallocated objects are reallocated with the same what string
3427 But, most importantly, it records the number of allocated objects of
3428 each kind. This is useful when searching for memory leaks.
3430 A Guile compiled with this option provides the primitive
3431 `malloc-stats' which returns an alist with pairs of kind and the
3432 number of objects of that kind.
3434 ** All includes are now referenced relative to the root directory
3436 Since some users have had problems with mixups between Guile and
3437 system headers, we have decided to always refer to Guile headers via
3438 their parent directories. This essentially creates a "private name
3439 space" for Guile headers. This means that the compiler only is given
3440 -I options for the root build and root source directory.
3442 ** Header files kw.h and genio.h have been removed.
3444 ** The module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) has been removed.
3446 ** New module (ice-9 documentation)
3448 Implements the interface to documentation strings associated with
3451 ** New module (ice-9 time)
3453 Provides a macro `time', which displays execution time of a given form.
3455 ** New module (ice-9 history)
3457 Loading this module enables value history in the repl.
3459 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
3461 ** New command line option --debug
3463 Start Guile with debugging evaluator and backtraces enabled.
3465 This is useful when debugging your .guile init file or scripts.
3467 ** New help facility
3469 Usage: (help NAME) gives documentation about objects named NAME (a symbol)
3470 (help REGEXP) ditto for objects with names matching REGEXP (a string)
3471 (help 'NAME) gives documentation for NAME, even if it is not an object
3472 (help ,EXPR) gives documentation for object returned by EXPR
3473 (help (my module)) gives module commentary for `(my module)'
3474 (help) gives this text
3476 `help' searches among bindings exported from loaded modules, while
3477 `apropos' searches among bindings visible from the "current" module.
3479 Examples: (help help)
3481 (help "output-string")
3483 ** `help' and `apropos' now prints full module names
3485 ** Dynamic linking now uses libltdl from the libtool package.
3487 The old system dependent code for doing dynamic linking has been
3488 replaced with calls to the libltdl functions which do all the hairy
3491 The major improvement is that you can now directly pass libtool
3492 library names like "libfoo.la" to `dynamic-link' and `dynamic-link'
3493 will be able to do the best shared library job you can get, via
3496 The way dynamic libraries are found has changed and is not really
3497 portable across platforms, probably. It is therefore recommended to
3498 use absolute filenames when possible.
3500 If you pass a filename without an extension to `dynamic-link', it will
3501 try a few appropriate ones. Thus, the most platform ignorant way is
3502 to specify a name like "libfoo", without any directories and
3505 ** Guile COOP threads are now compatible with LinuxThreads
3507 Previously, COOP threading wasn't possible in applications linked with
3508 Linux POSIX threads due to their use of the stack pointer to find the
3509 thread context. This has now been fixed with a workaround which uses
3510 the pthreads to allocate the stack.
3512 ** New primitives: `pkgdata-dir', `site-dir', `library-dir'
3514 ** Positions of erring expression in scripts
3516 With version 1.3.4, the location of the erring expression in Guile
3517 scipts is no longer automatically reported. (This should have been
3518 documented before the 1.3.4 release.)
3520 You can get this information by enabling recording of positions of
3521 source expressions and running the debugging evaluator. Put this at
3522 the top of your script (or in your "site" file):
3524 (read-enable 'positions)
3525 (debug-enable 'debug)
3527 ** Backtraces in scripts
3529 It is now possible to get backtraces in scripts.
3533 (debug-enable 'debug 'backtrace)
3535 at the top of the script.
3537 (The first options enables the debugging evaluator.
3538 The second enables backtraces.)
3540 ** Part of module system symbol lookup now implemented in C
3542 The eval closure of most modules is now implemented in C. Since this
3543 was one of the bottlenecks for loading speed, Guile now loads code
3544 substantially faster than before.
3546 ** Attempting to get the value of an unbound variable now produces
3547 an exception with a key of 'unbound-variable instead of 'misc-error.
3549 ** The initial default output port is now unbuffered if it's using a
3550 tty device. Previously in this situation it was line-buffered.
3552 ** New hook: after-gc-hook
3554 after-gc-hook takes over the role of gc-thunk. This hook is run at
3555 the first SCM_TICK after a GC. (Thus, the code is run at the same
3556 point during evaluation as signal handlers.)
3558 Note that this hook should be used only for diagnostic and debugging
3559 purposes. It is not certain that it will continue to be well-defined
3560 when this hook is run in the future.
3562 C programmers: Note the new C level hooks scm_before_gc_c_hook,
3563 scm_before_sweep_c_hook, scm_after_gc_c_hook.
3565 ** Improvements to garbage collector
3567 Guile 1.4 has a new policy for triggering heap allocation and
3568 determining the sizes of heap segments. It fixes a number of problems
3571 1. The new policy can handle two separate pools of cells
3572 (2-word/4-word) better. (The old policy would run wild, allocating
3573 more and more memory for certain programs.)
3575 2. The old code would sometimes allocate far too much heap so that the
3576 Guile process became gigantic. The new code avoids this.
3578 3. The old code would sometimes allocate too little so that few cells
3579 were freed at GC so that, in turn, too much time was spent in GC.
3581 4. The old code would often trigger heap allocation several times in a
3582 row. (The new scheme predicts how large the segments needs to be
3583 in order not to need further allocation.)
3585 All in all, the new GC policy will make larger applications more
3588 The new GC scheme also is prepared for POSIX threading. Threads can
3589 allocate private pools of cells ("clusters") with just a single
3590 function call. Allocation of single cells from such a cluster can
3591 then proceed without any need of inter-thread synchronization.
3593 ** New environment variables controlling GC parameters
3595 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE Maximal segment size
3598 Allocation of 2-word cell heaps:
3600 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_1 Size of initial heap segment in bytes
3603 GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1 Minimum number of freed cells at each
3604 GC in percent of total heap size
3607 Allocation of 4-word cell heaps
3608 (used for real numbers and misc other objects):
3610 GUILE_INIT_SEGMENT_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2
3612 (See entry "Way for application to customize GC parameters" under
3613 section "Changes to the scm_ interface" below.)
3615 ** Guile now implements reals using 4-word cells
3617 This speeds up computation with reals. (They were earlier allocated
3618 with `malloc'.) There is still some room for optimizations, however.
3620 ** Some further steps toward POSIX thread support have been taken
3622 *** Guile's critical sections (SCM_DEFER/ALLOW_INTS)
3623 don't have much effect any longer, and many of them will be removed in
3627 are only handled at the top of the evaluator loop, immediately after
3628 I/O, and in scm_equalp.
3630 *** The GC can allocate thread private pools of pairs.
3632 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
3634 ** close-input-port and close-output-port are now R5RS
3636 These procedures have been turned into primitives and have R5RS behaviour.
3638 ** New procedure: simple-format PORT MESSAGE ARG1 ...
3640 (ice-9 boot) makes `format' an alias for `simple-format' until possibly
3641 extended by the more sophisticated version in (ice-9 format)
3643 (simple-format port message . args)
3644 Write MESSAGE to DESTINATION, defaulting to `current-output-port'.
3645 MESSAGE can contain ~A (was %s) and ~S (was %S) escapes. When printed,
3646 the escapes are replaced with corresponding members of ARGS:
3647 ~A formats using `display' and ~S formats using `write'.
3648 If DESTINATION is #t, then use the `current-output-port',
3649 if DESTINATION is #f, then return a string containing the formatted text.
3650 Does not add a trailing newline."
3652 ** string-ref: the second argument is no longer optional.
3654 ** string, list->string: no longer accept strings in their arguments,
3655 only characters, for compatibility with R5RS.
3657 ** New procedure: port-closed? PORT
3658 Returns #t if PORT is closed or #f if it is open.
3660 ** Deprecated: list*
3662 The list* functionality is now provided by cons* (SRFI-1 compliant)
3664 ** New procedure: cons* ARG1 ARG2 ... ARGn
3666 Like `list', but the last arg provides the tail of the constructed list,
3667 returning (cons ARG1 (cons ARG2 (cons ... ARGn))).
3669 Requires at least one argument. If given one argument, that argument
3670 is returned as result.
3672 This function is called `list*' in some other Schemes and in Common LISP.
3674 ** Removed deprecated: serial-map, serial-array-copy!, serial-array-map!
3676 ** New procedure: object-documentation OBJECT
3678 Returns the documentation string associated with OBJECT. The
3679 procedure uses a caching mechanism so that subsequent lookups are
3682 Exported by (ice-9 documentation).
3684 ** module-name now returns full names of modules
3686 Previously, only the last part of the name was returned (`session' for
3687 `(ice-9 session)'). Ex: `(ice-9 session)'.
3689 * Changes to the gh_ interface
3691 ** Deprecated: gh_int2scmb
3693 Use gh_bool2scm instead.
3695 * Changes to the scm_ interface
3697 ** Guile primitives now carry docstrings!
3699 Thanks to Greg Badros!
3701 ** Guile primitives are defined in a new way: SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
3703 Now Guile primitives are defined using the SCM_DEFINE/SCM_DEFINE1/SCM_PROC
3704 macros and must contain a docstring that is extracted into foo.doc using a new
3705 guile-doc-snarf script (that uses guile-doc-snarf.awk).
3707 However, a major overhaul of these macros is scheduled for the next release of
3710 ** Guile primitives use a new technique for validation of arguments
3712 SCM_VALIDATE_* macros are defined to ease the redundancy and improve
3713 the readability of argument checking.
3715 ** All (nearly?) K&R prototypes for functions replaced with ANSI C equivalents.
3717 ** New macros: SCM_PACK, SCM_UNPACK
3719 Compose/decompose an SCM value.
3721 The SCM type is now treated as an abstract data type and may be defined as a
3722 long, a void* or as a struct, depending on the architecture and compile time
3723 options. This makes it easier to find several types of bugs, for example when
3724 SCM values are treated as integers without conversion. Values of the SCM type
3725 should be treated as "atomic" values. These macros are used when
3726 composing/decomposing an SCM value, either because you want to access
3727 individual bits, or because you want to treat it as an integer value.
3729 E.g., in order to set bit 7 in an SCM value x, use the expression
3731 SCM_PACK (SCM_UNPACK (x) | 0x80)
3733 ** The name property of hooks is deprecated.
3734 Thus, the use of SCM_HOOK_NAME and scm_make_hook_with_name is deprecated.
3736 You can emulate this feature by using object properties.
3738 ** Deprecated macros: SCM_INPORTP, SCM_OUTPORTP, SCM_CRDY, SCM_ICHRP,
3739 SCM_ICHR, SCM_MAKICHR, SCM_SETJMPBUF, SCM_NSTRINGP, SCM_NRWSTRINGP,
3742 These macros will be removed in a future release of Guile.
3744 ** The following types, functions and macros from numbers.h are deprecated:
3745 scm_dblproc, SCM_UNEGFIXABLE, SCM_FLOBUFLEN, SCM_INEXP, SCM_CPLXP, SCM_REAL,
3746 SCM_IMAG, SCM_REALPART, scm_makdbl, SCM_SINGP, SCM_NUM2DBL, SCM_NO_BIGDIG
3748 ** Port internals: the rw_random variable in the scm_port structure
3749 must be set to non-zero in any random access port. In recent Guile
3750 releases it was only set for bidirectional random-access ports.
3752 ** Port internals: the seek ptob procedure is now responsible for
3753 resetting the buffers if required. The change was made so that in the
3754 special case of reading the current position (i.e., seek p 0 SEEK_CUR)
3755 the fport and strport ptobs can avoid resetting the buffers,
3756 in particular to avoid discarding unread chars. An existing port
3757 type can be fixed by adding something like the following to the
3758 beginning of the ptob seek procedure:
3760 if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_READ)
3761 scm_end_input (object);
3762 else if (pt->rw_active == SCM_PORT_WRITE)
3763 ptob->flush (object);
3765 although to actually avoid resetting the buffers and discard unread
3766 chars requires further hacking that depends on the characteristics
3769 ** Deprecated functions: scm_fseek, scm_tag
3771 These functions are no longer used and will be removed in a future version.
3773 ** The scm_sysmissing procedure is no longer used in libguile.
3774 Unless it turns out to be unexpectedly useful to somebody, it will be
3775 removed in a future version.
3777 ** The format of error message strings has changed
3779 The two C procedures: scm_display_error and scm_error, as well as the
3780 primitive `scm-error', now use scm_simple_format to do their work.
3781 This means that the message strings of all code must be updated to use
3782 ~A where %s was used before, and ~S where %S was used before.
3784 During the period when there still are a lot of old Guiles out there,
3785 you might want to support both old and new versions of Guile.
3787 There are basically two methods to achieve this. Both methods use
3790 AC_CHECK_FUNCS(scm_simple_format)
3792 in your configure.in.
3794 Method 1: Use the string concatenation features of ANSI C's
3799 #ifdef HAVE_SCM_SIMPLE_FORMAT
3805 Then represent each of your error messages using a preprocessor macro:
3807 #define E_SPIDER_ERROR "There's a spider in your " ## FMT_S ## "!!!"
3811 (define fmt-s (if (defined? 'simple-format) "~S" "%S"))
3812 (define make-message string-append)
3814 (define e-spider-error (make-message "There's a spider in your " fmt-s "!!!"))
3816 Method 2: Use the oldfmt function found in doc/oldfmt.c.
3820 scm_misc_error ("picnic", scm_c_oldfmt0 ("There's a spider in your ~S!!!"),
3825 (scm-error 'misc-error "picnic" (oldfmt "There's a spider in your ~S!!!")
3829 ** Deprecated: coop_mutex_init, coop_condition_variable_init
3831 Don't use the functions coop_mutex_init and
3832 coop_condition_variable_init. They will change.
3834 Use scm_mutex_init and scm_cond_init instead.
3836 ** New function: int scm_cond_timedwait (scm_cond_t *COND, scm_mutex_t *MUTEX, const struct timespec *ABSTIME)
3837 `scm_cond_timedwait' atomically unlocks MUTEX and waits on
3838 COND, as `scm_cond_wait' does, but it also bounds the duration
3839 of the wait. If COND has not been signaled before time ABSTIME,
3840 the mutex MUTEX is re-acquired and `scm_cond_timedwait'
3841 returns the error code `ETIMEDOUT'.
3843 The ABSTIME parameter specifies an absolute time, with the same
3844 origin as `time' and `gettimeofday': an ABSTIME of 0 corresponds
3845 to 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970.
3847 ** New function: scm_cond_broadcast (scm_cond_t *COND)
3848 `scm_cond_broadcast' restarts all the threads that are waiting
3849 on the condition variable COND. Nothing happens if no threads are
3852 ** New function: scm_key_create (scm_key_t *KEY, void (*destr_function) (void *))
3853 `scm_key_create' allocates a new TSD key. The key is stored in
3854 the location pointed to by KEY. There is no limit on the number
3855 of keys allocated at a given time. The value initially associated
3856 with the returned key is `NULL' in all currently executing threads.
3858 The DESTR_FUNCTION argument, if not `NULL', specifies a destructor
3859 function associated with the key. When a thread terminates,
3860 DESTR_FUNCTION is called on the value associated with the key in
3861 that thread. The DESTR_FUNCTION is not called if a key is deleted
3862 with `scm_key_delete' or a value is changed with
3863 `scm_setspecific'. The order in which destructor functions are
3864 called at thread termination time is unspecified.
3866 Destructors are not yet implemented.
3868 ** New function: scm_setspecific (scm_key_t KEY, const void *POINTER)
3869 `scm_setspecific' changes the value associated with KEY in the
3870 calling thread, storing the given POINTER instead.
3872 ** New function: scm_getspecific (scm_key_t KEY)
3873 `scm_getspecific' returns the value currently associated with
3874 KEY in the calling thread.
3876 ** New function: scm_key_delete (scm_key_t KEY)
3877 `scm_key_delete' deallocates a TSD key. It does not check
3878 whether non-`NULL' values are associated with that key in the
3879 currently executing threads, nor call the destructor function
3880 associated with the key.
3882 ** New function: scm_c_hook_init (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *HOOK_DATA, scm_c_hook_type_t TYPE)
3884 Initialize a C level hook HOOK with associated HOOK_DATA and type
3885 TYPE. (See scm_c_hook_run ().)
3887 ** New function: scm_c_hook_add (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA, int APPENDP)
3889 Add hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA to HOOK. If APPENDP
3890 is true, add it last, otherwise first. The same FUNC can be added
3891 multiple times if FUNC_DATA differ and vice versa.
3893 ** New function: scm_c_hook_remove (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, scm_c_hook_function_t FUNC, void *FUNC_DATA)
3895 Remove hook function FUNC with associated FUNC_DATA from HOOK. A
3896 function is only removed if both FUNC and FUNC_DATA matches.
3898 ** New function: void *scm_c_hook_run (scm_c_hook_t *HOOK, void *DATA)
3900 Run hook HOOK passing DATA to the hook functions.
3902 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_NORMAL, all hook functions are run. The value
3903 returned is undefined.
3905 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_OR, hook functions are run until a function
3906 returns a non-NULL value. This value is returned as the result of
3907 scm_c_hook_run. If all functions return NULL, NULL is returned.
3909 If TYPE is SCM_C_HOOK_AND, hook functions are run until a function
3910 returns a NULL value, and NULL is returned. If all functions returns
3911 a non-NULL value, the last value is returned.
3913 ** New C level GC hooks
3915 Five new C level hooks has been added to the garbage collector.
3917 scm_before_gc_c_hook
3920 are run before locking and after unlocking the heap. The system is
3921 thus in a mode where evaluation can take place. (Except that
3922 scm_before_gc_c_hook must not allocate new cells.)
3924 scm_before_mark_c_hook
3925 scm_before_sweep_c_hook
3926 scm_after_sweep_c_hook
3928 are run when the heap is locked. These are intended for extension of
3929 the GC in a modular fashion. Examples are the weaks and guardians
3932 ** Way for application to customize GC parameters
3934 The application can set up other default values for the GC heap
3935 allocation parameters
3937 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_1, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_1,
3938 GUILE_INIT_HEAP_SIZE_2, GUILE_MIN_YIELD_2,
3939 GUILE_MAX_SEGMENT_SIZE,
3943 scm_default_init_heap_size_1, scm_default_min_yield_1,
3944 scm_default_init_heap_size_2, scm_default_min_yield_2,
3945 scm_default_max_segment_size
3947 respectively before callong scm_boot_guile.
3949 (See entry "New environment variables ..." in section
3950 "Changes to the stand-alone interpreter" above.)
3952 ** scm_protect_object/scm_unprotect_object now nest
3954 This means that you can call scm_protect_object multiple times on an
3955 object and count on the object being protected until
3956 scm_unprotect_object has been call the same number of times.
3958 The functions also have better time complexity.
3960 Still, it is usually possible to structure the application in a way
3961 that you don't need to use these functions. For example, if you use a
3962 protected standard Guile list to keep track of live objects rather
3963 than some custom data type, objects will die a natural death when they
3964 are no longer needed.
3966 ** Deprecated type tags: scm_tc16_flo, scm_tc_flo, scm_tc_dblr, scm_tc_dblc
3968 Guile does not provide the float representation for inexact real numbers any
3969 more. Now, only doubles are used to represent inexact real numbers. Further,
3970 the tag names scm_tc_dblr and scm_tc_dblc have been changed to scm_tc16_real
3971 and scm_tc16_complex, respectively.
3973 ** Removed deprecated type scm_smobfuns
3975 ** Removed deprecated function scm_newsmob
3977 ** Warning: scm_make_smob_type_mfpe might become deprecated in a future release
3979 There is an ongoing discussion among the developers whether to
3980 deprecate `scm_make_smob_type_mfpe' or not. Please use the current
3981 standard interface (scm_make_smob_type, scm_set_smob_XXX) in new code
3982 until this issue has been settled.
3984 ** Removed deprecated type tag scm_tc16_kw
3986 ** Added type tag scm_tc16_keyword
3988 (This was introduced already in release 1.3.4 but was not documented
3991 ** gdb_print now prints "*** Guile not initialized ***" until Guile initialized
3993 * Changes to system call interfaces:
3995 ** The "select" procedure now tests port buffers for the ability to
3996 provide input or accept output. Previously only the underlying file
3997 descriptors were checked.
3999 ** New variable PIPE_BUF: the maximum number of bytes that can be
4000 atomically written to a pipe.
4002 ** If a facility is not available on the system when Guile is
4003 compiled, the corresponding primitive procedure will not be defined.
4004 Previously it would have been defined but would throw a system-error
4005 exception if called. Exception handlers which catch this case may
4006 need minor modification: an error will be thrown with key
4007 'unbound-variable instead of 'system-error. Alternatively it's
4008 now possible to use `defined?' to check whether the facility is
4011 ** Procedures which depend on the timezone should now give the correct
4012 result on systems which cache the TZ environment variable, even if TZ
4013 is changed without calling tzset.
4015 * Changes to the networking interfaces:
4017 ** New functions: htons, ntohs, htonl, ntohl: for converting short and
4018 long integers between network and host format. For now, it's not
4019 particularly convenient to do this kind of thing, but consider:
4021 (define write-network-long
4022 (lambda (value port)
4023 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
4024 (uniform-vector-set! v 0 (htonl value))
4025 (uniform-vector-write v port))))
4027 (define read-network-long
4029 (let ((v (make-uniform-vector 1 1 0)))
4030 (uniform-vector-read! v port)
4031 (ntohl (uniform-vector-ref v 0)))))
4033 ** If inet-aton fails, it now throws an error with key 'misc-error
4034 instead of 'system-error, since errno is not relevant.
4036 ** Certain gethostbyname/gethostbyaddr failures now throw errors with
4037 specific keys instead of 'system-error. The latter is inappropriate
4038 since errno will not have been set. The keys are:
4039 'host-not-found, 'try-again, 'no-recovery and 'no-data.
4041 ** sethostent, setnetent, setprotoent, setservent: now take an
4042 optional argument STAYOPEN, which specifies whether the database
4043 remains open after a database entry is accessed randomly (e.g., using
4044 gethostbyname for the hosts database.) The default is #f. Previously
4048 Changes since Guile 1.3.2:
4050 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
4054 An initial version of the Guile debugger written by Chris Hanson has
4055 been added. The debugger is still under development but is included
4056 in the distribution anyway since it is already quite useful.
4062 after an error to enter the debugger. Type `help' inside the debugger
4063 for a description of available commands.
4065 If you prefer to have stack frames numbered and printed in
4066 anti-chronological order and prefer up in the stack to be down on the
4067 screen as is the case in gdb, you can put
4069 (debug-enable 'backwards)
4071 in your .guile startup file. (However, this means that Guile can't
4072 use indentation to indicate stack level.)
4074 The debugger is autoloaded into Guile at the first use.
4076 ** Further enhancements to backtraces
4078 There is a new debug option `width' which controls the maximum width
4079 on the screen of printed stack frames. Fancy printing parameters
4080 ("level" and "length" as in Common LISP) are adaptively adjusted for
4081 each stack frame to give maximum information while still fitting
4082 within the bounds. If the stack frame can't be made to fit by
4083 adjusting parameters, it is simply cut off at the end. This is marked
4086 ** Some modules are now only loaded when the repl is started
4088 The modules (ice-9 debug), (ice-9 session), (ice-9 threads) and (ice-9
4089 regex) are now loaded into (guile-user) only if the repl has been
4090 started. The effect is that the startup time for scripts has been
4091 reduced to 30% of what it was previously.
4093 Correctly written scripts load the modules they require at the top of
4094 the file and should not be affected by this change.
4096 ** Hooks are now represented as smobs
4098 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
4100 ** Readline support has changed again.
4102 The old (readline-activator) module is gone. Use (ice-9 readline)
4103 instead, which now contains all readline functionality. So the code
4104 to activate readline is now
4106 (use-modules (ice-9 readline))
4109 This should work at any time, including from the guile prompt.
4111 To avoid confusion about the terms of Guile's license, please only
4112 enable readline for your personal use; please don't make it the
4113 default for others. Here is why we make this rather odd-sounding
4116 Guile is normally licensed under a weakened form of the GNU General
4117 Public License, which allows you to link code with Guile without
4118 placing that code under the GPL. This exception is important to some
4121 However, since readline is distributed under the GNU General Public
4122 License, when you link Guile with readline, either statically or
4123 dynamically, you effectively change Guile's license to the strict GPL.
4124 Whenever you link any strictly GPL'd code into Guile, uses of Guile
4125 which are normally permitted become forbidden. This is a rather
4126 non-obvious consequence of the licensing terms.
4128 So, to make sure things remain clear, please let people choose for
4129 themselves whether to link GPL'd libraries like readline with Guile.
4131 ** regexp-substitute/global has changed slightly, but incompatibly.
4133 If you include a function in the item list, the string of the match
4134 object it receives is the same string passed to
4135 regexp-substitute/global, not some suffix of that string.
4136 Correspondingly, the match's positions are relative to the entire
4137 string, not the suffix.
4139 If the regexp can match the empty string, the way matches are chosen
4140 from the string has changed. regexp-substitute/global recognizes the
4141 same set of matches that list-matches does; see below.
4143 ** New function: list-matches REGEXP STRING [FLAGS]
4145 Return a list of match objects, one for every non-overlapping, maximal
4146 match of REGEXP in STRING. The matches appear in left-to-right order.
4147 list-matches only reports matches of the empty string if there are no
4148 other matches which begin on, end at, or include the empty match's
4151 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
4153 ** New function: fold-matches REGEXP STRING INIT PROC [FLAGS]
4155 For each match of REGEXP in STRING, apply PROC to the match object,
4156 and the last value PROC returned, or INIT for the first call. Return
4157 the last value returned by PROC. We apply PROC to the matches as they
4158 appear from left to right.
4160 This function recognizes matches according to the same criteria as
4163 Thus, you could define list-matches like this:
4165 (define (list-matches regexp string . flags)
4166 (reverse! (apply fold-matches regexp string '() cons flags)))
4168 If present, FLAGS is passed as the FLAGS argument to regexp-exec.
4172 *** New function: hook? OBJ
4174 Return #t if OBJ is a hook, otherwise #f.
4176 *** New function: make-hook-with-name NAME [ARITY]
4178 Return a hook with name NAME and arity ARITY. The default value for
4179 ARITY is 0. The only effect of NAME is that it will appear when the
4180 hook object is printed to ease debugging.
4182 *** New function: hook-empty? HOOK
4184 Return #t if HOOK doesn't contain any procedures, otherwise #f.
4186 *** New function: hook->list HOOK
4188 Return a list of the procedures that are called when run-hook is
4191 ** `map' signals an error if its argument lists are not all the same length.
4193 This is the behavior required by R5RS, so this change is really a bug
4194 fix. But it seems to affect a lot of people's code, so we're
4195 mentioning it here anyway.
4197 ** Print-state handling has been made more transparent
4199 Under certain circumstances, ports are represented as a port with an
4200 associated print state. Earlier, this pair was represented as a pair
4201 (see "Some magic has been added to the printer" below). It is now
4202 indistinguishable (almost; see `get-print-state') from a port on the
4205 *** New function: port-with-print-state OUTPUT-PORT PRINT-STATE
4207 Return a new port with the associated print state PRINT-STATE.
4209 *** New function: get-print-state OUTPUT-PORT
4211 Return the print state associated with this port if it exists,
4212 otherwise return #f.
4214 *** New function: directory-stream? OBJECT
4216 Returns true iff OBJECT is a directory stream --- the sort of object
4217 returned by `opendir'.
4219 ** New function: using-readline?
4221 Return #t if readline is in use in the current repl.
4223 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
4225 Structs will be replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into Guile
4226 and use GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
4228 * Changes to the scm_ interface
4230 ** structs will be removed in 1.4
4232 The entire current struct interface (struct.c, struct.h) will be
4233 replaced in Guile 1.4. We will merge GOOPS into libguile and use
4234 GOOPS objects as the fundamental record type.
4236 ** The internal representation of subr's has changed
4238 Instead of giving a hint to the subr name, the CAR field of the subr
4239 now contains an index to a subr entry in scm_subr_table.
4241 *** New variable: scm_subr_table
4243 An array of subr entries. A subr entry contains the name, properties
4244 and documentation associated with the subr. The properties and
4245 documentation slots are not yet used.
4247 ** A new scheme for "forwarding" calls to a builtin to a generic function
4249 It is now possible to extend the functionality of some Guile
4250 primitives by letting them defer a call to a GOOPS generic function on
4251 argument mismatch. This means that there is no loss of efficiency in
4256 (use-modules (oop goops)) ; Must be GOOPS version 0.2.
4257 (define-method + ((x <string>) (y <string>))
4258 (string-append x y))
4260 + will still be as efficient as usual in numerical calculations, but
4261 can also be used for concatenating strings.
4263 Who will be the first one to extend Guile's numerical tower to
4264 rationals? :) [OK, there a few other things to fix before this can
4265 be made in a clean way.]
4267 *** New snarf macros for defining primitives: SCM_GPROC, SCM_GPROC1
4269 New macro: SCM_GPROC (CNAME, SNAME, REQ, OPT, VAR, CFUNC, GENERIC)
4271 New macro: SCM_GPROC1 (CNAME, SNAME, TYPE, CFUNC, GENERIC)
4273 These do the same job as SCM_PROC and SCM_PROC1, but they also define
4274 a variable GENERIC which can be used by the dispatch macros below.
4276 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
4278 *** New macros for forwarding control to a generic on arg type error
4280 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_1 (GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
4282 New macro: SCM_WTA_DISPATCH_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
4284 These correspond to the scm_wta function call, and have the same
4285 behaviour until the user has called the GOOPS primitive
4286 `enable-primitive-generic!'. After that, these macros will apply the
4287 generic function GENERIC to the argument(s) instead of calling
4290 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
4292 *** New macros for argument testing with generic dispatch
4294 New macro: SCM_GASSERT1 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, POS, SUBR)
4296 New macro: SCM_GASSERT2 (COND, GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, POS, SUBR)
4298 These correspond to the SCM_ASSERT macro, but will defer control to
4299 GENERIC on error after `enable-primitive-generic!' has been called.
4301 [This is experimental code which may change soon.]
4303 ** New function: SCM scm_eval_body (SCM body, SCM env)
4305 Evaluates the body of a special form.
4307 ** The internal representation of struct's has changed
4309 Previously, four slots were allocated for the procedure(s) of entities
4310 and operators. The motivation for this representation had to do with
4311 the structure of the evaluator, the wish to support tail-recursive
4312 generic functions, and efficiency. Since the generic function
4313 dispatch mechanism has changed, there is no longer a need for such an
4314 expensive representation, and the representation has been simplified.
4316 This should not make any difference for most users.
4318 ** GOOPS support has been cleaned up.
4320 Some code has been moved from eval.c to objects.c and code in both of
4321 these compilation units has been cleaned up and better structured.
4323 *** New functions for applying generic functions
4325 New function: SCM scm_apply_generic (GENERIC, ARGS)
4326 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_0 (GENERIC)
4327 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_1 (GENERIC, ARG1)
4328 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_2 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2)
4329 New function: SCM scm_call_generic_3 (GENERIC, ARG1, ARG2, ARG3)
4331 ** Deprecated function: scm_make_named_hook
4333 It is now replaced by:
4335 ** New function: SCM scm_create_hook (const char *name, int arity)
4337 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
4338 binds a variable named NAME to it.
4340 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
4342 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module.
4343 This might change when we get the new module system.
4345 [The behaviour is identical to scm_make_named_hook.]
4349 Changes since Guile 1.3:
4351 * Changes to mailing lists
4353 ** Some of the Guile mailing lists have moved to sourceware.cygnus.com.
4355 See the README file to find current addresses for all the Guile
4358 * Changes to the distribution
4360 ** Readline support is no longer included with Guile by default.
4362 Based on the different license terms of Guile and Readline, we
4363 concluded that Guile should not *by default* cause the linking of
4364 Readline into an application program. Readline support is now offered
4365 as a separate module, which is linked into an application only when
4366 you explicitly specify it.
4368 Although Guile is GNU software, its distribution terms add a special
4369 exception to the usual GNU General Public License (GPL). Guile's
4370 license includes a clause that allows you to link Guile with non-free
4371 programs. We add this exception so as not to put Guile at a
4372 disadvantage vis-a-vis other extensibility packages that support other
4375 In contrast, the GNU Readline library is distributed under the GNU
4376 General Public License pure and simple. This means that you may not
4377 link Readline, even dynamically, into an application unless it is
4378 distributed under a free software license that is compatible the GPL.
4380 Because of this difference in distribution terms, an application that
4381 can use Guile may not be able to use Readline. Now users will be
4382 explicitly offered two independent decisions about the use of these
4385 You can activate the readline support by issuing
4387 (use-modules (readline-activator))
4390 from your ".guile" file, for example.
4392 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
4394 ** All builtins now print as primitives.
4395 Previously builtin procedures not belonging to the fundamental subr
4396 types printed as #<compiled closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>.
4397 Now, they print as #<primitive-procedure NAME>.
4399 ** Backtraces slightly more intelligible.
4400 gsubr-apply and macro transformer application frames no longer appear
4403 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
4405 ** Guile now correctly handles internal defines by rewriting them into
4406 their equivalent letrec. Previously, internal defines would
4407 incrementally add to the innermost environment, without checking
4408 whether the restrictions specified in RnRS were met. This lead to the
4409 correct behaviour when these restriction actually were met, but didn't
4410 catch all illegal uses. Such an illegal use could lead to crashes of
4411 the Guile interpreter or or other unwanted results. An example of
4412 incorrect internal defines that made Guile behave erratically:
4424 The problem with this example is that the definition of `c' uses the
4425 value of `b' directly. This confuses the meoization machine of Guile
4426 so that the second call of `b' (this time in a larger environment that
4427 also contains bindings for `c' and `d') refers to the binding of `c'
4428 instead of `a'. You could also make Guile crash with a variation on
4433 (define (b flag) (if flag a 1))
4434 (define c (1+ (b flag)))
4442 From now on, Guile will issue an `Unbound variable: b' error message
4447 A hook contains a list of functions which should be called on
4448 particular occasions in an existing program. Hooks are used for
4451 A window manager might have a hook before-window-map-hook. The window
4452 manager uses the function run-hooks to call all functions stored in
4453 before-window-map-hook each time a window is mapped. The user can
4454 store functions in the hook using add-hook!.
4456 In Guile, hooks are first class objects.
4458 *** New function: make-hook [N_ARGS]
4460 Return a hook for hook functions which can take N_ARGS arguments.
4461 The default value for N_ARGS is 0.
4463 (See also scm_make_named_hook below.)
4465 *** New function: add-hook! HOOK PROC [APPEND_P]
4467 Put PROC at the beginning of the list of functions stored in HOOK.
4468 If APPEND_P is supplied, and non-false, put PROC at the end instead.
4470 PROC must be able to take the number of arguments specified when the
4473 If PROC already exists in HOOK, then remove it first.
4475 *** New function: remove-hook! HOOK PROC
4477 Remove PROC from the list of functions in HOOK.
4479 *** New function: reset-hook! HOOK
4481 Clear the list of hook functions stored in HOOK.
4483 *** New function: run-hook HOOK ARG1 ...
4485 Run all hook functions stored in HOOK with arguments ARG1 ... .
4486 The number of arguments supplied must correspond to the number given
4487 when the hook was created.
4489 ** The function `dynamic-link' now takes optional keyword arguments.
4490 The only keyword argument that is currently defined is `:global
4491 BOOL'. With it, you can control whether the shared library will be
4492 linked in global mode or not. In global mode, the symbols from the
4493 linked library can be used to resolve references from other
4494 dynamically linked libraries. In non-global mode, the linked
4495 library is essentially invisible and can only be accessed via
4496 `dynamic-func', etc. The default is now to link in global mode.
4497 Previously, the default has been non-global mode.
4499 The `#:global' keyword is only effective on platforms that support
4500 the dlopen family of functions.
4502 ** New function `provided?'
4504 - Function: provided? FEATURE
4505 Return true iff FEATURE is supported by this installation of
4506 Guile. FEATURE must be a symbol naming a feature; the global
4507 variable `*features*' is a list of available features.
4509 ** Changes to the module (ice-9 expect):
4511 *** The expect-strings macro now matches `$' in a regular expression
4512 only at a line-break or end-of-file by default. Previously it would
4513 match the end of the string accumulated so far. The old behaviour
4514 can be obtained by setting the variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
4517 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable `expect-strings-exec-flags'
4518 for the regexp-exec flags. If `regexp/noteol' is included, then `$'
4519 in a regular expression will still match before a line-break or
4520 end-of-file. The default is `regexp/noteol'.
4522 *** The expect-strings macro now uses a variable
4523 `expect-strings-compile-flags' for the flags to be supplied to
4524 `make-regexp'. The default is `regexp/newline', which was previously
4527 *** The expect macro now supplies two arguments to a match procedure:
4528 the current accumulated string and a flag to indicate whether
4529 end-of-file has been reached. Previously only the string was supplied.
4530 If end-of-file is reached, the match procedure will be called an
4531 additional time with the same accumulated string as the previous call
4532 but with the flag set.
4534 ** New module (ice-9 format), implementing the Common Lisp `format' function.
4536 This code, and the documentation for it that appears here, was
4537 borrowed from SLIB, with minor adaptations for Guile.
4539 - Function: format DESTINATION FORMAT-STRING . ARGUMENTS
4540 An almost complete implementation of Common LISP format description
4541 according to the CL reference book `Common LISP' from Guy L.
4542 Steele, Digital Press. Backward compatible to most of the
4543 available Scheme format implementations.
4545 Returns `#t', `#f' or a string; has side effect of printing
4546 according to FORMAT-STRING. If DESTINATION is `#t', the output is
4547 to the current output port and `#t' is returned. If DESTINATION
4548 is `#f', a formatted string is returned as the result of the call.
4549 NEW: If DESTINATION is a string, DESTINATION is regarded as the
4550 format string; FORMAT-STRING is then the first argument and the
4551 output is returned as a string. If DESTINATION is a number, the
4552 output is to the current error port if available by the
4553 implementation. Otherwise DESTINATION must be an output port and
4556 FORMAT-STRING must be a string. In case of a formatting error
4557 format returns `#f' and prints a message on the current output or
4558 error port. Characters are output as if the string were output by
4559 the `display' function with the exception of those prefixed by a
4560 tilde (~). For a detailed description of the FORMAT-STRING syntax
4561 please consult a Common LISP format reference manual. For a test
4562 suite to verify this format implementation load `formatst.scm'.
4563 Please send bug reports to `lutzeb@cs.tu-berlin.de'.
4565 Note: `format' is not reentrant, i.e. only one `format'-call may
4566 be executed at a time.
4569 *** Format Specification (Format version 3.0)
4571 Please consult a Common LISP format reference manual for a detailed
4572 description of the format string syntax. For a demonstration of the
4573 implemented directives see `formatst.scm'.
4575 This implementation supports directive parameters and modifiers (`:'
4576 and `@' characters). Multiple parameters must be separated by a comma
4577 (`,'). Parameters can be numerical parameters (positive or negative),
4578 character parameters (prefixed by a quote character (`''), variable
4579 parameters (`v'), number of rest arguments parameter (`#'), empty and
4580 default parameters. Directive characters are case independent. The
4581 general form of a directive is:
4583 DIRECTIVE ::= ~{DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER,}[:][@]DIRECTIVE-CHARACTER
4585 DIRECTIVE-PARAMETER ::= [ [-|+]{0-9}+ | 'CHARACTER | v | # ]
4587 *** Implemented CL Format Control Directives
4589 Documentation syntax: Uppercase characters represent the
4590 corresponding control directive characters. Lowercase characters
4591 represent control directive parameter descriptions.
4594 Any (print as `display' does).
4598 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARA'
4602 S-expression (print as `write' does).
4606 `~MINCOL,COLINC,MINPAD,PADCHARS'
4612 print number sign always.
4615 print comma separated.
4617 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARD'
4623 print number sign always.
4626 print comma separated.
4628 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARX'
4634 print number sign always.
4637 print comma separated.
4639 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARO'
4645 print number sign always.
4648 print comma separated.
4650 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARB'
4655 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHARR'
4659 print a number as a Roman numeral.
4662 print a number as an "old fashioned" Roman numeral.
4665 print a number as an ordinal English number.
4668 print a number as a cardinal English number.
4673 prints `y' and `ies'.
4676 as `~P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
4679 as `~@P but jumps 1 argument backward.'
4684 prints a character as the reader can understand it (i.e. `#\'
4688 prints a character as emacs does (eg. `^C' for ASCII 03).
4691 Fixed-format floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN).
4692 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHARF'
4694 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
4697 Exponential floating-point (prints a flonum like MMM.NNN`E'EE).
4698 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARE'
4700 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
4703 General floating-point (prints a flonum either fixed or
4705 `~WIDTH,DIGITS,EXPONENTDIGITS,SCALE,OVERFLOWCHAR,PADCHAR,EXPONENTCHARG'
4707 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
4710 Dollars floating-point (prints a flonum in fixed with signs
4712 `~DIGITS,SCALE,WIDTH,PADCHAR$'
4714 If the number is positive a plus sign is printed.
4717 A sign is always printed and appears before the padding.
4720 The sign appears before the padding.
4728 print newline if not at the beginning of the output line.
4730 prints `~&' and then N-1 newlines.
4735 print N page separators.
4745 newline is ignored, white space left.
4748 newline is left, white space ignored.
4753 relative tabulation.
4759 Indirection (expects indirect arguments as a list).
4761 extracts indirect arguments from format arguments.
4764 Case conversion (converts by `string-downcase').
4766 converts by `string-capitalize'.
4769 converts by `string-capitalize-first'.
4772 converts by `string-upcase'.
4775 Argument Jumping (jumps 1 argument forward).
4777 jumps N arguments forward.
4780 jumps 1 argument backward.
4783 jumps N arguments backward.
4786 jumps to the 0th argument.
4789 jumps to the Nth argument (beginning from 0)
4791 `~[STR0~;STR1~;...~;STRN~]'
4792 Conditional Expression (numerical clause conditional).
4794 take argument from N.
4797 true test conditional.
4800 if-else-then conditional.
4806 default clause follows.
4809 Iteration (args come from the next argument (a list)).
4811 at most N iterations.
4814 args from next arg (a list of lists).
4817 args from the rest of arguments.
4820 args from the rest args (lists).
4831 aborts if N <= M <= K
4833 *** Not Implemented CL Format Control Directives
4836 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
4839 print `#f' as an empty list (see below).
4845 (sorry I don't understand its semantics completely)
4847 *** Extended, Replaced and Additional Control Directives
4849 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHD'
4850 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHX'
4851 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHO'
4852 `~MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHB'
4853 `~N,MINCOL,PADCHAR,COMMACHAR,COMMAWIDTHR'
4854 COMMAWIDTH is the number of characters between two comma
4858 print a R4RS complex number as `~F~@Fi' with passed parameters for
4862 Pretty print formatting of an argument for scheme code lists.
4868 Flushes the output if format DESTINATION is a port.
4871 Print a `#\space' character
4873 print N `#\space' characters.
4876 Print a `#\tab' character
4878 print N `#\tab' characters.
4881 Takes N as an integer representation for a character. No arguments
4882 are consumed. N is converted to a character by `integer->char'. N
4883 must be a positive decimal number.
4886 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
4887 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
4888 be processed by `read'.
4891 Print out readproof. Prints out internal objects represented as
4892 `#<...>' as strings `"#<...>"' so that the format output can always
4893 be processed by `read'.
4896 Prints information and a copyright notice on the format
4899 prints format version.
4902 may also print number strings, i.e. passing a number as a string
4903 and format it accordingly.
4905 *** Configuration Variables
4907 The format module exports some configuration variables to suit the
4908 systems and users needs. There should be no modification necessary for
4909 the configuration that comes with Guile. Format detects automatically
4910 if the running scheme system implements floating point numbers and
4913 format:symbol-case-conv
4914 Symbols are converted by `symbol->string' so the case type of the
4915 printed symbols is implementation dependent.
4916 `format:symbol-case-conv' is a one arg closure which is either
4917 `#f' (no conversion), `string-upcase', `string-downcase' or
4918 `string-capitalize'. (default `#f')
4920 format:iobj-case-conv
4921 As FORMAT:SYMBOL-CASE-CONV but applies for the representation of
4922 implementation internal objects. (default `#f')
4925 The character prefixing the exponent value in `~E' printing.
4928 *** Compatibility With Other Format Implementations
4934 Downward compatible except for padding support and `~A', `~S',
4935 `~P', `~X' uppercase printing. SLIB format 1.4 uses C-style
4936 `printf' padding support which is completely replaced by the CL
4937 `format' padding style.
4940 Downward compatible except for `~', which is not documented
4941 (ignores all characters inside the format string up to a newline
4942 character). (7.1 implements `~a', `~s', ~NEWLINE, `~~', `~%',
4943 numerical and variable parameters and `:/@' modifiers in the CL
4947 Downward compatible except for `~A' and `~S' which print in
4948 uppercase. (Elk implements `~a', `~s', `~~', and `~%' (no
4949 directive parameters or modifiers)).
4952 Downward compatible except for an optional destination parameter:
4953 S2C accepts a format call without a destination which returns a
4954 formatted string. This is equivalent to a #f destination in S2C.
4955 (S2C implements `~a', `~s', `~c', `~%', and `~~' (no directive
4956 parameters or modifiers)).
4959 ** Changes to string-handling functions.
4961 These functions were added to support the (ice-9 format) module, above.
4963 *** New function: string-upcase STRING
4964 *** New function: string-downcase STRING
4966 These are non-destructive versions of the existing string-upcase! and
4967 string-downcase! functions.
4969 *** New function: string-capitalize! STRING
4970 *** New function: string-capitalize STRING
4972 These functions convert the first letter of each word in the string to
4975 (string-capitalize "howdy there")
4978 As with the other functions, string-capitalize! modifies the string in
4979 place, while string-capitalize returns a modified copy of its argument.
4981 *** New function: string-ci->symbol STRING
4983 Return a symbol whose name is STRING, but having the same case as if
4984 the symbol had be read by `read'.
4986 Guile can be configured to be sensitive or insensitive to case
4987 differences in Scheme identifiers. If Guile is case-insensitive, all
4988 symbols are converted to lower case on input. The `string-ci->symbol'
4989 function returns a symbol whose name in STRING, transformed as Guile
4990 would if STRING were input.
4992 *** New function: substring-move! STRING1 START END STRING2 START
4994 Copy the substring of STRING1 from START (inclusive) to END
4995 (exclusive) to STRING2 at START. STRING1 and STRING2 may be the same
4996 string, and the source and destination areas may overlap; in all
4997 cases, the function behaves as if all the characters were copied
5000 *** Extended functions: substring-move-left! substring-move-right!
5002 These functions now correctly copy arbitrarily overlapping substrings;
5003 they are both synonyms for substring-move!.
5006 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-long), with the function `getopt-long'.
5008 getopt-long is a function for parsing command-line arguments in a
5009 manner consistent with other GNU programs.
5011 (getopt-long ARGS GRAMMAR)
5012 Parse the arguments ARGS according to the argument list grammar GRAMMAR.
5014 ARGS should be a list of strings. Its first element should be the
5015 name of the program; subsequent elements should be the arguments
5016 that were passed to the program on the command line. The
5017 `program-arguments' procedure returns a list of this form.
5019 GRAMMAR is a list of the form:
5020 ((OPTION (PROPERTY VALUE) ...) ...)
5022 Each OPTION should be a symbol. `getopt-long' will accept a
5023 command-line option named `--OPTION'.
5024 Each option can have the following (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs:
5026 (single-char CHAR) --- Accept `-CHAR' as a single-character
5027 equivalent to `--OPTION'. This is how to specify traditional
5029 (required? BOOL) --- If BOOL is true, the option is required.
5030 getopt-long will raise an error if it is not found in ARGS.
5031 (value BOOL) --- If BOOL is #t, the option accepts a value; if
5032 it is #f, it does not; and if it is the symbol
5033 `optional', the option may appear in ARGS with or
5035 (predicate FUNC) --- If the option accepts a value (i.e. you
5036 specified `(value #t)' for this option), then getopt
5037 will apply FUNC to the value, and throw an exception
5038 if it returns #f. FUNC should be a procedure which
5039 accepts a string and returns a boolean value; you may
5040 need to use quasiquotes to get it into GRAMMAR.
5042 The (PROPERTY VALUE) pairs may occur in any order, but each
5043 property may occur only once. By default, options do not have
5044 single-character equivalents, are not required, and do not take
5047 In ARGS, single-character options may be combined, in the usual
5048 Unix fashion: ("-x" "-y") is equivalent to ("-xy"). If an option
5049 accepts values, then it must be the last option in the
5050 combination; the value is the next argument. So, for example, using
5051 the following grammar:
5052 ((apples (single-char #\a))
5053 (blimps (single-char #\b) (value #t))
5054 (catalexis (single-char #\c) (value #t)))
5055 the following argument lists would be acceptable:
5056 ("-a" "-b" "bang" "-c" "couth") ("bang" and "couth" are the values
5057 for "blimps" and "catalexis")
5058 ("-ab" "bang" "-c" "couth") (same)
5059 ("-ac" "couth" "-b" "bang") (same)
5060 ("-abc" "couth" "bang") (an error, since `-b' is not the
5061 last option in its combination)
5063 If an option's value is optional, then `getopt-long' decides
5064 whether it has a value by looking at what follows it in ARGS. If
5065 the next element is a string, and it does not appear to be an
5066 option itself, then that string is the option's value.
5068 The value of a long option can appear as the next element in ARGS,
5069 or it can follow the option name, separated by an `=' character.
5070 Thus, using the same grammar as above, the following argument lists
5072 ("--apples" "Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
5073 ("--apples=Braeburn" "--blimps" "Goodyear")
5074 ("--blimps" "Goodyear" "--apples=Braeburn")
5076 If the option "--" appears in ARGS, argument parsing stops there;
5077 subsequent arguments are returned as ordinary arguments, even if
5078 they resemble options. So, in the argument list:
5079 ("--apples" "Granny Smith" "--" "--blimp" "Goodyear")
5080 `getopt-long' will recognize the `apples' option as having the
5081 value "Granny Smith", but it will not recognize the `blimp'
5082 option; it will return the strings "--blimp" and "Goodyear" as
5083 ordinary argument strings.
5085 The `getopt-long' function returns the parsed argument list as an
5086 assocation list, mapping option names --- the symbols from GRAMMAR
5087 --- onto their values, or #t if the option does not accept a value.
5088 Unused options do not appear in the alist.
5090 All arguments that are not the value of any option are returned
5091 as a list, associated with the empty list.
5093 `getopt-long' throws an exception if:
5094 - it finds an unrecognized option in ARGS
5095 - a required option is omitted
5096 - an option that requires an argument doesn't get one
5097 - an option that doesn't accept an argument does get one (this can
5098 only happen using the long option `--opt=value' syntax)
5099 - an option predicate fails
5104 `((lockfile-dir (required? #t)
5107 (predicate ,file-is-directory?))
5108 (verbose (required? #f)
5111 (x-includes (single-char #\x))
5112 (rnet-server (single-char #\y)
5113 (predicate ,string?))))
5115 (getopt-long '("my-prog" "-vk" "/tmp" "foo1" "--x-includes=/usr/include"
5116 "--rnet-server=lamprod" "--" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
5118 => ((() "foo1" "-fred" "foo2" "foo3")
5119 (rnet-server . "lamprod")
5120 (x-includes . "/usr/include")
5121 (lockfile-dir . "/tmp")
5124 ** The (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style) module is obsolete; use (ice-9 getopt-long).
5126 It will be removed in a few releases.
5128 ** New syntax: lambda*
5129 ** New syntax: define*
5130 ** New syntax: define*-public
5131 ** New syntax: defmacro*
5132 ** New syntax: defmacro*-public
5133 Guile now supports optional arguments.
5135 `lambda*', `define*', `define*-public', `defmacro*' and
5136 `defmacro*-public' are identical to the non-* versions except that
5137 they use an extended type of parameter list that has the following BNF
5138 syntax (parentheses are literal, square brackets indicate grouping,
5139 and `*', `+' and `?' have the usual meaning):
5141 ext-param-list ::= ( [identifier]* [#&optional [ext-var-decl]+]?
5142 [#&key [ext-var-decl]+ [#&allow-other-keys]?]?
5143 [[#&rest identifier]|[. identifier]]? ) | [identifier]
5145 ext-var-decl ::= identifier | ( identifier expression )
5147 The semantics are best illustrated with the following documentation
5148 and examples for `lambda*':
5151 lambda extended for optional and keyword arguments
5153 lambda* creates a procedure that takes optional arguments. These
5154 are specified by putting them inside brackets at the end of the
5155 paramater list, but before any dotted rest argument. For example,
5156 (lambda* (a b #&optional c d . e) '())
5157 creates a procedure with fixed arguments a and b, optional arguments c
5158 and d, and rest argument e. If the optional arguments are omitted
5159 in a call, the variables for them are unbound in the procedure. This
5160 can be checked with the bound? macro.
5162 lambda* can also take keyword arguments. For example, a procedure
5164 (lambda* (#&key xyzzy larch) '())
5165 can be called with any of the argument lists (#:xyzzy 11)
5166 (#:larch 13) (#:larch 42 #:xyzzy 19) (). Whichever arguments
5167 are given as keywords are bound to values.
5169 Optional and keyword arguments can also be given default values
5170 which they take on when they are not present in a call, by giving a
5171 two-item list in place of an optional argument, for example in:
5172 (lambda* (foo #&optional (bar 42) #&key (baz 73)) (list foo bar baz))
5173 foo is a fixed argument, bar is an optional argument with default
5174 value 42, and baz is a keyword argument with default value 73.
5175 Default value expressions are not evaluated unless they are needed
5176 and until the procedure is called.
5178 lambda* now supports two more special parameter list keywords.
5180 lambda*-defined procedures now throw an error by default if a
5181 keyword other than one of those specified is found in the actual
5182 passed arguments. However, specifying #&allow-other-keys
5183 immediately after the kyword argument declarations restores the
5184 previous behavior of ignoring unknown keywords. lambda* also now
5185 guarantees that if the same keyword is passed more than once, the
5186 last one passed is the one that takes effect. For example,
5187 ((lambda* (#&key (heads 0) (tails 0)) (display (list heads tails)))
5188 #:heads 37 #:tails 42 #:heads 99)
5189 would result in (99 47) being displayed.
5191 #&rest is also now provided as a synonym for the dotted syntax rest
5192 argument. The argument lists (a . b) and (a #&rest b) are equivalent in
5193 all respects to lambda*. This is provided for more similarity to DSSSL,
5194 MIT-Scheme and Kawa among others, as well as for refugees from other
5197 Further documentation may be found in the optargs.scm file itself.
5199 The optional argument module also exports the macros `let-optional',
5200 `let-optional*', `let-keywords', `let-keywords*' and `bound?'. These
5201 are not documented here because they may be removed in the future, but
5202 full documentation is still available in optargs.scm.
5204 ** New syntax: and-let*
5205 Guile now supports the `and-let*' form, described in the draft SRFI-2.
5207 Syntax: (land* (<clause> ...) <body> ...)
5208 Each <clause> should have one of the following forms:
5209 (<variable> <expression>)
5212 Each <variable> or <bound-variable> should be an identifier. Each
5213 <expression> should be a valid expression. The <body> should be a
5214 possibly empty sequence of expressions, like the <body> of a
5217 Semantics: A LAND* expression is evaluated by evaluating the
5218 <expression> or <bound-variable> of each of the <clause>s from
5219 left to right. The value of the first <expression> or
5220 <bound-variable> that evaluates to a false value is returned; the
5221 remaining <expression>s and <bound-variable>s are not evaluated.
5222 The <body> forms are evaluated iff all the <expression>s and
5223 <bound-variable>s evaluate to true values.
5225 The <expression>s and the <body> are evaluated in an environment
5226 binding each <variable> of the preceding (<variable> <expression>)
5227 clauses to the value of the <expression>. Later bindings
5228 shadow earlier bindings.
5230 Guile's and-let* macro was contributed by Michael Livshin.
5232 ** New sorting functions
5234 *** New function: sorted? SEQUENCE LESS?
5235 Returns `#t' when the sequence argument is in non-decreasing order
5236 according to LESS? (that is, there is no adjacent pair `... x y
5237 ...' for which `(less? y x)').
5239 Returns `#f' when the sequence contains at least one out-of-order
5240 pair. It is an error if the sequence is neither a list nor a
5243 *** New function: merge LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
5244 LIST1 and LIST2 are sorted lists.
5245 Returns the sorted list of all elements in LIST1 and LIST2.
5247 Assume that the elements a and b1 in LIST1 and b2 in LIST2 are "equal"
5248 in the sense that (LESS? x y) --> #f for x, y in {a, b1, b2},
5249 and that a < b1 in LIST1. Then a < b1 < b2 in the result.
5250 (Here "<" should read "comes before".)
5252 *** New procedure: merge! LIST1 LIST2 LESS?
5253 Merges two lists, re-using the pairs of LIST1 and LIST2 to build
5254 the result. If the code is compiled, and LESS? constructs no new
5255 pairs, no pairs at all will be allocated. The first pair of the
5256 result will be either the first pair of LIST1 or the first pair of
5259 *** New function: sort SEQUENCE LESS?
5260 Accepts either a list or a vector, and returns a new sequence
5261 which is sorted. The new sequence is the same type as the input.
5262 Always `(sorted? (sort sequence less?) less?)'. The original
5263 sequence is not altered in any way. The new sequence shares its
5264 elements with the old one; no elements are copied.
5266 *** New procedure: sort! SEQUENCE LESS
5267 Returns its sorted result in the original boxes. No new storage is
5268 allocated at all. Proper usage: (set! slist (sort! slist <))
5270 *** New function: stable-sort SEQUENCE LESS?
5271 Similar to `sort' but stable. That is, if "equal" elements are
5272 ordered a < b in the original sequence, they will have the same order
5275 *** New function: stable-sort! SEQUENCE LESS?
5276 Similar to `sort!' but stable.
5277 Uses temporary storage when sorting vectors.
5279 *** New functions: sort-list, sort-list!
5280 Added for compatibility with scsh.
5282 ** New built-in random number support
5284 *** New function: random N [STATE]
5285 Accepts a positive integer or real N and returns a number of the
5286 same type between zero (inclusive) and N (exclusive). The values
5287 returned have a uniform distribution.
5289 The optional argument STATE must be of the type produced by
5290 `copy-random-state' or `seed->random-state'. It defaults to the value
5291 of the variable `*random-state*'. This object is used to maintain the
5292 state of the pseudo-random-number generator and is altered as a side
5293 effect of the `random' operation.
5295 *** New variable: *random-state*
5296 Holds a data structure that encodes the internal state of the
5297 random-number generator that `random' uses by default. The nature
5298 of this data structure is implementation-dependent. It may be
5299 printed out and successfully read back in, but may or may not
5300 function correctly as a random-number state object in another
5303 *** New function: copy-random-state [STATE]
5304 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
5305 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
5306 If argument STATE is given, a copy of it is returned. Otherwise a
5307 copy of `*random-state*' is returned.
5309 *** New function: seed->random-state SEED
5310 Returns a new object of type suitable for use as the value of the
5311 variable `*random-state*' and as a second argument to `random'.
5312 SEED is a string or a number. A new state is generated and
5313 initialized using SEED.
5315 *** New function: random:uniform [STATE]
5316 Returns an uniformly distributed inexact real random number in the
5317 range between 0 and 1.
5319 *** New procedure: random:solid-sphere! VECT [STATE]
5320 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose
5321 squares is less than 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in
5322 space of dimension N = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are
5323 uniformly distributed within the unit N-shere. The sum of the
5324 squares of the numbers is returned. VECT can be either a vector
5325 or a uniform vector of doubles.
5327 *** New procedure: random:hollow-sphere! VECT [STATE]
5328 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers the sum of whose squares
5329 is equal to 1.0. Thinking of VECT as coordinates in space of
5330 dimension n = `(vector-length VECT)', the coordinates are uniformly
5331 distributed over the surface of the unit n-shere. VECT can be either
5332 a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
5334 *** New function: random:normal [STATE]
5335 Returns an inexact real in a normal distribution with mean 0 and
5336 standard deviation 1. For a normal distribution with mean M and
5337 standard deviation D use `(+ M (* D (random:normal)))'.
5339 *** New procedure: random:normal-vector! VECT [STATE]
5340 Fills VECT with inexact real random numbers which are independent and
5341 standard normally distributed (i.e., with mean 0 and variance 1).
5342 VECT can be either a vector or a uniform vector of doubles.
5344 *** New function: random:exp STATE
5345 Returns an inexact real in an exponential distribution with mean 1.
5346 For an exponential distribution with mean U use (* U (random:exp)).
5348 ** The range of logand, logior, logxor, logtest, and logbit? have changed.
5350 These functions now operate on numbers in the range of a C unsigned
5353 These functions used to operate on numbers in the range of a C signed
5354 long; however, this seems inappropriate, because Guile integers don't
5357 ** New function: make-guardian
5358 This is an implementation of guardians as described in
5359 R. Kent Dybvig, Carl Bruggeman, and David Eby (1993) "Guardians in a
5360 Generation-Based Garbage Collector" ACM SIGPLAN Conference on
5361 Programming Language Design and Implementation, June 1993
5362 ftp://ftp.cs.indiana.edu/pub/scheme-repository/doc/pubs/guardians.ps.gz
5364 ** New functions: delq1!, delv1!, delete1!
5365 These procedures behave similar to delq! and friends but delete only
5366 one object if at all.
5368 ** New function: unread-string STRING PORT
5369 Unread STRING to PORT, that is, push it back onto the port so that
5370 next read operation will work on the pushed back characters.
5372 ** unread-char can now be called multiple times
5373 If unread-char is called multiple times, the unread characters will be
5374 read again in last-in first-out order.
5376 ** the procedures uniform-array-read! and uniform-array-write! now
5377 work on any kind of port, not just ports which are open on a file.
5379 ** Now 'l' in a port mode requests line buffering.
5381 ** The procedure truncate-file now works on string ports as well
5382 as file ports. If the size argument is omitted, the current
5383 file position is used.
5385 ** new procedure: seek PORT/FDES OFFSET WHENCE
5386 The arguments are the same as for the old fseek procedure, but it
5387 works on string ports as well as random-access file ports.
5389 ** the fseek procedure now works on string ports, since it has been
5390 redefined using seek.
5392 ** the setvbuf procedure now uses a default size if mode is _IOFBF and
5393 size is not supplied.
5395 ** the newline procedure no longer flushes the port if it's not
5396 line-buffered: previously it did if it was the current output port.
5398 ** open-pipe and close-pipe are no longer primitive procedures, but
5399 an emulation can be obtained using `(use-modules (ice-9 popen))'.
5401 ** the freopen procedure has been removed.
5403 ** new procedure: drain-input PORT
5404 Drains PORT's read buffers (including any pushed-back characters)
5405 and returns the contents as a single string.
5407 ** New function: map-in-order PROC LIST1 LIST2 ...
5408 Version of `map' which guarantees that the procedure is applied to the
5409 lists in serial order.
5411 ** Renamed `serial-array-copy!' and `serial-array-map!' to
5412 `array-copy-in-order!' and `array-map-in-order!'. The old names are
5413 now obsolete and will go away in release 1.5.
5415 ** New syntax: collect BODY1 ...
5416 Version of `begin' which returns a list of the results of the body
5417 forms instead of the result of the last body form. In contrast to
5418 `begin', `collect' allows an empty body.
5420 ** New functions: read-history FILENAME, write-history FILENAME
5421 Read/write command line history from/to file. Returns #t on success
5422 and #f if an error occured.
5424 ** `ls' and `lls' in module (ice-9 ls) now handle no arguments.
5426 These procedures return a list of definitions available in the specified
5427 argument, a relative module reference. In the case of no argument,
5428 `(current-module)' is now consulted for definitions to return, instead
5429 of simply returning #f, the former behavior.
5431 ** The #/ syntax for lists is no longer supported.
5433 Earlier versions of Scheme accepted this syntax, but printed a
5436 ** Guile no longer consults the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable.
5438 Instead, you should set GUILE_LOAD_PATH to tell Guile where to find
5441 * Changes to the gh_ interface
5445 Now takes a second argument which is the result array. If this
5446 pointer is NULL, a new array is malloced (the old behaviour).
5448 ** gh_chars2byvect, gh_shorts2svect, gh_floats2fvect, gh_scm2chars,
5449 gh_scm2shorts, gh_scm2longs, gh_scm2floats
5453 * Changes to the scm_ interface
5455 ** Function: scm_make_named_hook (char* name, int n_args)
5457 Creates a hook in the same way as make-hook above but also
5458 binds a variable named NAME to it.
5460 This is the typical way of creating a hook from C code.
5462 Currently, the variable is created in the "current" module. This
5463 might change when we get the new module system.
5465 ** The smob interface
5467 The interface for creating smobs has changed. For documentation, see
5468 data-rep.info (made from guile-core/doc/data-rep.texi).
5470 *** Deprecated function: SCM scm_newsmob (scm_smobfuns *)
5472 >>> This function will be removed in 1.3.4. <<<
5476 *** Function: SCM scm_make_smob_type (const char *name, scm_sizet size)
5477 This function adds a new smob type, named NAME, with instance size
5478 SIZE to the system. The return value is a tag that is used in
5479 creating instances of the type. If SIZE is 0, then no memory will
5480 be allocated when instances of the smob are created, and nothing
5481 will be freed by the default free function.
5483 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_mark (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
5484 This function sets the smob marking procedure for the smob type
5485 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
5486 `scm_make_smob_type'.
5488 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_free (long tc, SCM (*mark) (SCM))
5489 This function sets the smob freeing procedure for the smob type
5490 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
5491 `scm_make_smob_type'.
5493 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_print (tc, print)
5495 - Function: void scm_set_smob_print (long tc,
5496 scm_sizet (*print) (SCM,
5500 This function sets the smob printing procedure for the smob type
5501 specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
5502 `scm_make_smob_type'.
5504 *** Function: void scm_set_smob_equalp (long tc, SCM (*equalp) (SCM, SCM))
5505 This function sets the smob equality-testing predicate for the
5506 smob type specified by the tag TC. TC is the tag returned by
5507 `scm_make_smob_type'.
5509 *** Macro: void SCM_NEWSMOB (SCM var, long tc, void *data)
5510 Make VALUE contain a smob instance of the type with type code TC and
5511 smob data DATA. VALUE must be previously declared as C type `SCM'.
5513 *** Macro: fn_returns SCM_RETURN_NEWSMOB (long tc, void *data)
5514 This macro expands to a block of code that creates a smob instance
5515 of the type with type code TC and smob data DATA, and returns that
5516 `SCM' value. It should be the last piece of code in a block.
5518 ** The interfaces for using I/O ports and implementing port types
5519 (ptobs) have changed significantly. The new interface is based on
5520 shared access to buffers and a new set of ptob procedures.
5522 *** scm_newptob has been removed
5526 *** Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (type_name, fill_buffer, write_flush)
5528 - Function: SCM scm_make_port_type (char *type_name,
5529 int (*fill_buffer) (SCM port),
5530 void (*write_flush) (SCM port));
5532 Similarly to the new smob interface, there is a set of function
5533 setters by which the user can customize the behaviour of his port
5534 type. See ports.h (scm_set_port_XXX).
5536 ** scm_strport_to_string: New function: creates a new string from
5537 a string port's buffer.
5539 ** Plug in interface for random number generators
5540 The variable `scm_the_rng' in random.c contains a value and three
5541 function pointers which together define the current random number
5542 generator being used by the Scheme level interface and the random
5543 number library functions.
5545 The user is free to replace the default generator with the generator
5548 *** Variable: size_t scm_the_rng.rstate_size
5549 The size of the random state type used by the current RNG
5552 *** Function: unsigned long scm_the_rng.random_bits (scm_rstate *STATE)
5553 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
5555 *** Function: void scm_the_rng.init_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE, chars *S, int N)
5556 Seed random state STATE using string S of length N.
5558 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_the_rng.copy_rstate (scm_rstate *STATE)
5559 Given random state STATE, return a malloced copy.
5562 The default RNG is the MWC (Multiply With Carry) random number
5563 generator described by George Marsaglia at the Department of
5564 Statistics and Supercomputer Computations Research Institute, The
5565 Florida State University (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo).
5567 It uses 64 bits, has a period of 4578426017172946943 (4.6e18), and
5568 passes all tests in the DIEHARD test suite
5569 (http://stat.fsu.edu/~geo/diehard.html). The generation of 32 bits
5570 costs one multiply and one add on platforms which either supports long
5571 longs (gcc does this on most systems) or have 64 bit longs. The cost
5572 is four multiply on other systems but this can be optimized by writing
5573 scm_i_uniform32 in assembler.
5575 These functions are provided through the scm_the_rng interface for use
5576 by libguile and the application.
5578 *** Function: unsigned long scm_i_uniform32 (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
5579 Given the random STATE, return 32 random bits.
5580 Don't use this function directly. Instead go through the plugin
5581 interface (see "Plug in interface" above).
5583 *** Function: void scm_i_init_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE, char *SEED, int N)
5584 Initialize STATE using SEED of length N.
5586 *** Function: scm_i_rstate *scm_i_copy_rstate (scm_i_rstate *STATE)
5587 Return a malloc:ed copy of STATE. This function can easily be re-used
5588 in the interfaces to other RNGs.
5590 ** Random number library functions
5591 These functions use the current RNG through the scm_the_rng interface.
5592 It might be a good idea to use these functions from your C code so
5593 that only one random generator is used by all code in your program.
5595 The default random state is stored in:
5597 *** Variable: SCM scm_var_random_state
5598 Contains the vcell of the Scheme variable "*random-state*" which is
5599 used as default state by all random number functions in the Scheme
5604 double x = scm_c_uniform01 (SCM_RSTATE (SCM_CDR (scm_var_random_state)));
5606 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_default_rstate (void)
5607 This is a convenience function which returns the value of
5608 scm_var_random_state. An error message is generated if this value
5609 isn't a random state.
5611 *** Function: scm_rstate *scm_c_make_rstate (char *SEED, int LENGTH)
5612 Make a new random state from the string SEED of length LENGTH.
5614 It is generally not a good idea to use multiple random states in a
5615 program. While subsequent random numbers generated from one random
5616 state are guaranteed to be reasonably independent, there is no such
5617 guarantee for numbers generated from different random states.
5619 *** Macro: unsigned long scm_c_uniform32 (scm_rstate *STATE)
5620 Return 32 random bits.
5622 *** Function: double scm_c_uniform01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
5623 Return a sample from the uniform(0,1) distribution.
5625 *** Function: double scm_c_normal01 (scm_rstate *STATE)
5626 Return a sample from the normal(0,1) distribution.
5628 *** Function: double scm_c_exp1 (scm_rstate *STATE)
5629 Return a sample from the exp(1) distribution.
5631 *** Function: unsigned long scm_c_random (scm_rstate *STATE, unsigned long M)
5632 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
5634 *** Function: SCM scm_c_random_bignum (scm_rstate *STATE, SCM M)
5635 Return a sample from the discrete uniform(0,M) distribution.
5636 M must be a bignum object. The returned value may be an INUM.
5640 Changes in Guile 1.3 (released Monday, October 19, 1998):
5642 * Changes to the distribution
5644 ** We renamed the SCHEME_LOAD_PATH environment variable to GUILE_LOAD_PATH.
5645 To avoid conflicts, programs should name environment variables after
5646 themselves, except when there's a common practice establishing some
5649 For now, Guile supports both GUILE_LOAD_PATH and SCHEME_LOAD_PATH,
5650 giving the former precedence, and printing a warning message if the
5651 latter is set. Guile 1.4 will not recognize SCHEME_LOAD_PATH at all.
5653 ** The header files related to multi-byte characters have been removed.
5654 They were: libguile/extchrs.h and libguile/mbstrings.h. Any C code
5655 which referred to these explicitly will probably need to be rewritten,
5656 since the support for the variant string types has been removed; see
5659 ** The header files append.h and sequences.h have been removed. These
5660 files implemented non-R4RS operations which would encourage
5661 non-portable programming style and less easy-to-read code.
5663 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
5665 ** New procedures have been added to implement a "batch mode":
5667 *** Function: batch-mode?
5669 Returns a boolean indicating whether the interpreter is in batch
5672 *** Function: set-batch-mode?! ARG
5674 If ARG is true, switches the interpreter to batch mode. The `#f'
5675 case has not been implemented.
5677 ** Guile now provides full command-line editing, when run interactively.
5678 To use this feature, you must have the readline library installed.
5679 The Guile build process will notice it, and automatically include
5682 The readline library is available via anonymous FTP from any GNU
5683 mirror site; the canonical location is "ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu".
5685 ** the-last-stack is now a fluid.
5687 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
5689 ** You can now use the `guile-config' utility to build programs that use Guile.
5691 Guile now includes a command-line utility called `guile-config', which
5692 can provide information about how to compile and link programs that
5695 *** `guile-config compile' prints any C compiler flags needed to use Guile.
5696 You should include this command's output on the command line you use
5697 to compile C or C++ code that #includes the Guile header files. It's
5698 usually just a `-I' flag to help the compiler find the Guile headers.
5701 *** `guile-config link' prints any linker flags necessary to link with Guile.
5703 This command writes to its standard output a list of flags which you
5704 must pass to the linker to link your code against the Guile library.
5705 The flags include '-lguile' itself, any other libraries the Guile
5706 library depends upon, and any `-L' flags needed to help the linker
5707 find those libraries.
5709 For example, here is a Makefile rule that builds a program named 'foo'
5710 from the object files ${FOO_OBJECTS}, and links them against Guile:
5713 ${CC} ${CFLAGS} ${FOO_OBJECTS} `guile-config link` -o foo
5715 Previous Guile releases recommended that you use autoconf to detect
5716 which of a predefined set of libraries were present on your system.
5717 It is more robust to use `guile-config', since it records exactly which
5718 libraries the installed Guile library requires.
5720 This was originally called `build-guile', but was renamed to
5721 `guile-config' before Guile 1.3 was released, to be consistent with
5722 the analogous script for the GTK+ GUI toolkit, which is called
5726 ** Use the GUILE_FLAGS macro in your configure.in file to find Guile.
5728 If you are using the GNU autoconf package to configure your program,
5729 you can use the GUILE_FLAGS autoconf macro to call `guile-config'
5730 (described above) and gather the necessary values for use in your
5733 The GUILE_FLAGS macro expands to configure script code which runs the
5734 `guile-config' script, to find out where Guile's header files and
5735 libraries are installed. It sets two variables, marked for
5736 substitution, as by AC_SUBST.
5738 GUILE_CFLAGS --- flags to pass to a C or C++ compiler to build
5739 code that uses Guile header files. This is almost always just a
5742 GUILE_LDFLAGS --- flags to pass to the linker to link a
5743 program against Guile. This includes `-lguile' for the Guile
5744 library itself, any libraries that Guile itself requires (like
5745 -lqthreads), and so on. It may also include a -L flag to tell the
5746 compiler where to find the libraries.
5748 GUILE_FLAGS is defined in the file guile.m4, in the top-level
5749 directory of the Guile distribution. You can copy it into your
5750 package's aclocal.m4 file, and then use it in your configure.in file.
5752 If you are using the `aclocal' program, distributed with GNU automake,
5753 to maintain your aclocal.m4 file, the Guile installation process
5754 installs guile.m4 where aclocal will find it. All you need to do is
5755 use GUILE_FLAGS in your configure.in file, and then run `aclocal';
5756 this will copy the definition of GUILE_FLAGS into your aclocal.m4
5760 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
5762 ** Multi-byte strings have been removed, as have multi-byte and wide
5763 ports. We felt that these were the wrong approach to
5764 internationalization support.
5766 ** New function: readline [PROMPT]
5767 Read a line from the terminal, and allow the user to edit it,
5768 prompting with PROMPT. READLINE provides a large set of Emacs-like
5769 editing commands, lets the user recall previously typed lines, and
5770 works on almost every kind of terminal, including dumb terminals.
5772 READLINE assumes that the cursor is at the beginning of the line when
5773 it is invoked. Thus, you can't print a prompt yourself, and then call
5774 READLINE; you need to package up your prompt as a string, pass it to
5775 the function, and let READLINE print the prompt itself. This is
5776 because READLINE needs to know the prompt's screen width.
5778 For Guile to provide this function, you must have the readline
5779 library, version 2.1 or later, installed on your system. Readline is
5780 available via anonymous FTP from prep.ai.mit.edu in pub/gnu, or from
5781 any GNU mirror site.
5783 See also ADD-HISTORY function.
5785 ** New function: add-history STRING
5786 Add STRING as the most recent line in the history used by the READLINE
5787 command. READLINE does not add lines to the history itself; you must
5788 call ADD-HISTORY to make previous input available to the user.
5790 ** The behavior of the read-line function has changed.
5792 This function now uses standard C library functions to read the line,
5793 for speed. This means that it doesn not respect the value of
5794 scm-line-incrementors; it assumes that lines are delimited with
5797 (Note that this is read-line, the function that reads a line of text
5798 from a port, not readline, the function that reads a line from a
5799 terminal, providing full editing capabilities.)
5801 ** New module (ice-9 getopt-gnu-style): Parse command-line arguments.
5803 This module provides some simple argument parsing. It exports one
5806 Function: getopt-gnu-style ARG-LS
5807 Parse a list of program arguments into an alist of option
5810 Each item in the list of program arguments is examined to see if
5811 it meets the syntax of a GNU long-named option. An argument like
5812 `--MUMBLE' produces an element of the form (MUMBLE . #t) in the
5813 returned alist, where MUMBLE is a keyword object with the same
5814 name as the argument. An argument like `--MUMBLE=FROB' produces
5815 an element of the form (MUMBLE . FROB), where FROB is a string.
5817 As a special case, the returned alist also contains a pair whose
5818 car is the symbol `rest'. The cdr of this pair is a list
5819 containing all the items in the argument list that are not options
5820 of the form mentioned above.
5822 The argument `--' is treated specially: all items in the argument
5823 list appearing after such an argument are not examined, and are
5824 returned in the special `rest' list.
5826 This function does not parse normal single-character switches.
5827 You will need to parse them out of the `rest' list yourself.
5829 ** The read syntax for byte vectors and short vectors has changed.
5831 Instead of #bytes(...), write #y(...).
5833 Instead of #short(...), write #h(...).
5835 This may seem nutty, but, like the other uniform vectors, byte vectors
5836 and short vectors want to have the same print and read syntax (and,
5837 more basic, want to have read syntax!). Changing the read syntax to
5838 use multiple characters after the hash sign breaks with the
5839 conventions used in R5RS and the conventions used for the other
5840 uniform vectors. It also introduces complexity in the current reader,
5841 both on the C and Scheme levels. (The Right solution is probably to
5842 change the syntax and prototypes for uniform vectors entirely.)
5845 ** The new module (ice-9 session) provides useful interactive functions.
5847 *** New procedure: (apropos REGEXP OPTION ...)
5849 Display a list of top-level variables whose names match REGEXP, and
5850 the modules they are imported from. Each OPTION should be one of the
5853 value --- Show the value of each matching variable.
5854 shadow --- Show bindings shadowed by subsequently imported modules.
5855 full --- Same as both `shadow' and `value'.
5859 guile> (apropos "trace" 'full)
5860 debug: trace #<procedure trace args>
5861 debug: untrace #<procedure untrace args>
5862 the-scm-module: display-backtrace #<compiled-closure #<primitive-procedure gsubr-apply>>
5863 the-scm-module: before-backtrace-hook ()
5864 the-scm-module: backtrace #<primitive-procedure backtrace>
5865 the-scm-module: after-backtrace-hook ()
5866 the-scm-module: has-shown-backtrace-hint? #f
5869 ** There are new functions and syntax for working with macros.
5871 Guile implements macros as a special object type. Any variable whose
5872 top-level binding is a macro object acts as a macro. The macro object
5873 specifies how the expression should be transformed before evaluation.
5875 *** Macro objects now print in a reasonable way, resembling procedures.
5877 *** New function: (macro? OBJ)
5878 True iff OBJ is a macro object.
5880 *** New function: (primitive-macro? OBJ)
5881 Like (macro? OBJ), but true only if OBJ is one of the Guile primitive
5882 macro transformers, implemented in eval.c rather than Scheme code.
5884 Why do we have this function?
5885 - For symmetry with procedure? and primitive-procedure?,
5886 - to allow custom print procedures to tell whether a macro is
5887 primitive, and display it differently, and
5888 - to allow compilers and user-written evaluators to distinguish
5889 builtin special forms from user-defined ones, which could be
5892 *** New function: (macro-type OBJ)
5893 Return a value indicating what kind of macro OBJ is. Possible return
5896 The symbol `syntax' --- a macro created by procedure->syntax.
5897 The symbol `macro' --- a macro created by procedure->macro.
5898 The symbol `macro!' --- a macro created by procedure->memoizing-macro.
5899 The boolean #f --- if OBJ is not a macro object.
5901 *** New function: (macro-name MACRO)
5902 Return the name of the macro object MACRO's procedure, as returned by
5905 *** New function: (macro-transformer MACRO)
5906 Return the transformer procedure for MACRO.
5908 *** New syntax: (use-syntax MODULE ... TRANSFORMER)
5910 Specify a new macro expander to use in the current module. Each
5911 MODULE is a module name, with the same meaning as in the `use-modules'
5912 form; each named module's exported bindings are added to the current
5913 top-level environment. TRANSFORMER is an expression evaluated in the
5914 resulting environment which must yield a procedure to use as the
5915 module's eval transformer: every expression evaluated in this module
5916 is passed to this function, and the result passed to the Guile
5919 *** macro-eval! is removed. Use local-eval instead.
5921 ** Some magic has been added to the printer to better handle user
5922 written printing routines (like record printers, closure printers).
5924 The problem is that these user written routines must have access to
5925 the current `print-state' to be able to handle fancy things like
5926 detection of circular references. These print-states have to be
5927 passed to the builtin printing routines (display, write, etc) to
5928 properly continue the print chain.
5930 We didn't want to change all existing print code so that it
5931 explicitly passes thru a print state in addition to a port. Instead,
5932 we extented the possible values that the builtin printing routines
5933 accept as a `port'. In addition to a normal port, they now also take
5934 a pair of a normal port and a print-state. Printing will go to the
5935 port and the print-state will be used to control the detection of
5936 circular references, etc. If the builtin function does not care for a
5937 print-state, it is simply ignored.
5939 User written callbacks are now called with such a pair as their
5940 `port', but because every function now accepts this pair as a PORT
5941 argument, you don't have to worry about that. In fact, it is probably
5942 safest to not check for these pairs.
5944 However, it is sometimes necessary to continue a print chain on a
5945 different port, for example to get a intermediate string
5946 representation of the printed value, mangle that string somehow, and
5947 then to finally print the mangled string. Use the new function
5949 inherit-print-state OLD-PORT NEW-PORT
5951 for this. It constructs a new `port' that prints to NEW-PORT but
5952 inherits the print-state of OLD-PORT.
5954 ** struct-vtable-offset renamed to vtable-offset-user
5956 ** New constants: vtable-index-layout, vtable-index-vtable, vtable-index-printer
5958 ** There is now a third optional argument to make-vtable-vtable
5959 (and fourth to make-struct) when constructing new types (vtables).
5960 This argument initializes field vtable-index-printer of the vtable.
5962 ** The detection of circular references has been extended to structs.
5963 That is, a structure that -- in the process of being printed -- prints
5964 itself does not lead to infinite recursion.
5966 ** There is now some basic support for fluids. Please read
5967 "libguile/fluid.h" to find out more. It is accessible from Scheme with
5968 the following functions and macros:
5970 Function: make-fluid
5972 Create a new fluid object. Fluids are not special variables or
5973 some other extension to the semantics of Scheme, but rather
5974 ordinary Scheme objects. You can store them into variables (that
5975 are still lexically scoped, of course) or into any other place you
5976 like. Every fluid has a initial value of `#f'.
5978 Function: fluid? OBJ
5980 Test whether OBJ is a fluid.
5982 Function: fluid-ref FLUID
5983 Function: fluid-set! FLUID VAL
5985 Access/modify the fluid FLUID. Modifications are only visible
5986 within the current dynamic root (that includes threads).
5988 Function: with-fluids* FLUIDS VALUES THUNK
5990 FLUIDS is a list of fluids and VALUES a corresponding list of
5991 values for these fluids. Before THUNK gets called the values are
5992 installed in the fluids and the old values of the fluids are
5993 saved in the VALUES list. When the flow of control leaves THUNK
5994 or reenters it, the values get swapped again. You might think of
5995 this as a `safe-fluid-excursion'. Note that the VALUES list is
5996 modified by `with-fluids*'.
5998 Macro: with-fluids ((FLUID VALUE) ...) FORM ...
6000 The same as `with-fluids*' but with a different syntax. It looks
6001 just like `let', but both FLUID and VALUE are evaluated. Remember,
6002 fluids are not special variables but ordinary objects. FLUID
6003 should evaluate to a fluid.
6005 ** Changes to system call interfaces:
6007 *** close-port, close-input-port and close-output-port now return a
6008 boolean instead of an `unspecified' object. #t means that the port
6009 was successfully closed, while #f means it was already closed. It is
6010 also now possible for these procedures to raise an exception if an
6011 error occurs (some errors from write can be delayed until close.)
6013 *** the first argument to chmod, fcntl, ftell and fseek can now be a
6016 *** the third argument to fcntl is now optional.
6018 *** the first argument to chown can now be a file descriptor or a port.
6020 *** the argument to stat can now be a port.
6022 *** The following new procedures have been added (most use scsh
6025 *** procedure: close PORT/FD
6026 Similar to close-port (*note close-port: Closing Ports.), but also
6027 works on file descriptors. A side effect of closing a file
6028 descriptor is that any ports using that file descriptor are moved
6029 to a different file descriptor and have their revealed counts set
6032 *** procedure: port->fdes PORT
6033 Returns the integer file descriptor underlying PORT. As a side
6034 effect the revealed count of PORT is incremented.
6036 *** procedure: fdes->ports FDES
6037 Returns a list of existing ports which have FDES as an underlying
6038 file descriptor, without changing their revealed counts.
6040 *** procedure: fdes->inport FDES
6041 Returns an existing input port which has FDES as its underlying
6042 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
6043 Otherwise, returns a new input port with a revealed count of 1.
6045 *** procedure: fdes->outport FDES
6046 Returns an existing output port which has FDES as its underlying
6047 file descriptor, if one exists, and increments its revealed count.
6048 Otherwise, returns a new output port with a revealed count of 1.
6050 The next group of procedures perform a `dup2' system call, if NEWFD
6051 (an integer) is supplied, otherwise a `dup'. The file descriptor to be
6052 duplicated can be supplied as an integer or contained in a port. The
6053 type of value returned varies depending on which procedure is used.
6055 All procedures also have the side effect when performing `dup2' that
6056 any ports using NEWFD are moved to a different file descriptor and have
6057 their revealed counts set to zero.
6059 *** procedure: dup->fdes PORT/FD [NEWFD]
6060 Returns an integer file descriptor.
6062 *** procedure: dup->inport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
6063 Returns a new input port using the new file descriptor.
6065 *** procedure: dup->outport PORT/FD [NEWFD]
6066 Returns a new output port using the new file descriptor.
6068 *** procedure: dup PORT/FD [NEWFD]
6069 Returns a new port if PORT/FD is a port, with the same mode as the
6070 supplied port, otherwise returns an integer file descriptor.
6072 *** procedure: dup->port PORT/FD MODE [NEWFD]
6073 Returns a new port using the new file descriptor. MODE supplies a
6074 mode string for the port (*note open-file: File Ports.).
6076 *** procedure: setenv NAME VALUE
6077 Modifies the environment of the current process, which is also the
6078 default environment inherited by child processes.
6080 If VALUE is `#f', then NAME is removed from the environment.
6081 Otherwise, the string NAME=VALUE is added to the environment,
6082 replacing any existing string with name matching NAME.
6084 The return value is unspecified.
6086 *** procedure: truncate-file OBJ SIZE
6087 Truncates the file referred to by OBJ to at most SIZE bytes. OBJ
6088 can be a string containing a file name or an integer file
6089 descriptor or port open for output on the file. The underlying
6090 system calls are `truncate' and `ftruncate'.
6092 The return value is unspecified.
6094 *** procedure: setvbuf PORT MODE [SIZE]
6095 Set the buffering mode for PORT. MODE can be:
6103 block buffered, using a newly allocated buffer of SIZE bytes.
6104 However if SIZE is zero or unspecified, the port will be made
6107 This procedure should not be used after I/O has been performed with
6110 Ports are usually block buffered by default, with a default buffer
6111 size. Procedures e.g., *Note open-file: File Ports, which accept a
6112 mode string allow `0' to be added to request an unbuffered port.
6114 *** procedure: fsync PORT/FD
6115 Copies any unwritten data for the specified output file descriptor
6116 to disk. If PORT/FD is a port, its buffer is flushed before the
6117 underlying file descriptor is fsync'd. The return value is
6120 *** procedure: open-fdes PATH FLAGS [MODES]
6121 Similar to `open' but returns a file descriptor instead of a port.
6123 *** procedure: execle PATH ENV [ARG] ...
6124 Similar to `execl', but the environment of the new process is
6125 specified by ENV, which must be a list of strings as returned by
6126 the `environ' procedure.
6128 This procedure is currently implemented using the `execve' system
6129 call, but we call it `execle' because of its Scheme calling
6132 *** procedure: strerror ERRNO
6133 Returns the Unix error message corresponding to ERRNO, an integer.
6135 *** procedure: primitive-exit [STATUS]
6136 Terminate the current process without unwinding the Scheme stack.
6137 This is would typically be useful after a fork. The exit status
6138 is STATUS if supplied, otherwise zero.
6140 *** procedure: times
6141 Returns an object with information about real and processor time.
6142 The following procedures accept such an object as an argument and
6143 return a selected component:
6146 The current real time, expressed as time units relative to an
6150 The CPU time units used by the calling process.
6153 The CPU time units used by the system on behalf of the
6157 The CPU time units used by terminated child processes of the
6158 calling process, whose status has been collected (e.g., using
6162 Similarly, the CPU times units used by the system on behalf of
6163 terminated child processes.
6165 ** Removed: list-length
6166 ** Removed: list-append, list-append!
6167 ** Removed: list-reverse, list-reverse!
6169 ** array-map renamed to array-map!
6171 ** serial-array-map renamed to serial-array-map!
6173 ** catch doesn't take #f as first argument any longer
6175 Previously, it was possible to pass #f instead of a key to `catch'.
6176 That would cause `catch' to pass a jump buffer object to the procedure
6177 passed as second argument. The procedure could then use this jump
6178 buffer objekt as an argument to throw.
6180 This mechanism has been removed since its utility doesn't motivate the
6181 extra complexity it introduces.
6183 ** The `#/' notation for lists now provokes a warning message from Guile.
6184 This syntax will be removed from Guile in the near future.
6186 To disable the warning message, set the GUILE_HUSH environment
6187 variable to any non-empty value.
6189 ** The newline character now prints as `#\newline', following the
6190 normal Scheme notation, not `#\nl'.
6192 * Changes to the gh_ interface
6194 ** The gh_enter function now takes care of loading the Guile startup files.
6195 gh_enter works by calling scm_boot_guile; see the remarks below.
6197 ** Function: void gh_write (SCM x)
6199 Write the printed representation of the scheme object x to the current
6200 output port. Corresponds to the scheme level `write'.
6202 ** gh_list_length renamed to gh_length.
6204 ** vector handling routines
6206 Several major changes. In particular, gh_vector() now resembles
6207 (vector ...) (with a caveat -- see manual), and gh_make_vector() now
6208 exists and behaves like (make-vector ...). gh_vset() and gh_vref()
6209 have been renamed gh_vector_set_x() and gh_vector_ref(). Some missing
6210 vector-related gh_ functions have been implemented.
6212 ** pair and list routines
6214 Implemented several of the R4RS pair and list functions that were
6217 ** gh_scm2doubles, gh_doubles2scm, gh_doubles2dvect
6219 New function. Converts double arrays back and forth between Scheme
6222 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6224 ** The function scm_boot_guile now takes care of loading the startup files.
6226 Guile's primary initialization function, scm_boot_guile, now takes
6227 care of loading `boot-9.scm', in the `ice-9' module, to initialize
6228 Guile, define the module system, and put together some standard
6229 bindings. It also loads `init.scm', which is intended to hold
6230 site-specific initialization code.
6232 Since Guile cannot operate properly until boot-9.scm is loaded, there
6233 is no reason to separate loading boot-9.scm from Guile's other
6234 initialization processes.
6236 This job used to be done by scm_compile_shell_switches, which didn't
6237 make much sense; in particular, it meant that people using Guile for
6238 non-shell-like applications had to jump through hoops to get Guile
6239 initialized properly.
6241 ** The function scm_compile_shell_switches no longer loads the startup files.
6242 Now, Guile always loads the startup files, whenever it is initialized;
6243 see the notes above for scm_boot_guile and scm_load_startup_files.
6245 ** Function: scm_load_startup_files
6246 This new function takes care of loading Guile's initialization file
6247 (`boot-9.scm'), and the site initialization file, `init.scm'. Since
6248 this is always called by the Guile initialization process, it's
6249 probably not too useful to call this yourself, but it's there anyway.
6251 ** The semantics of smob marking have changed slightly.
6253 The smob marking function (the `mark' member of the scm_smobfuns
6254 structure) is no longer responsible for setting the mark bit on the
6255 smob. The generic smob handling code in the garbage collector will
6256 set this bit. The mark function need only ensure that any other
6257 objects the smob refers to get marked.
6259 Note that this change means that the smob's GC8MARK bit is typically
6260 already set upon entry to the mark function. Thus, marking functions
6261 which look like this:
6264 if (SCM_GC8MARKP (ptr))
6266 SCM_SETGC8MARK (ptr);
6267 ... mark objects to which the smob refers ...
6270 are now incorrect, since they will return early, and fail to mark any
6271 other objects the smob refers to. Some code in the Guile library used
6274 ** The semantics of the I/O port functions in scm_ptobfuns have changed.
6276 If you have implemented your own I/O port type, by writing the
6277 functions required by the scm_ptobfuns and then calling scm_newptob,
6278 you will need to change your functions slightly.
6280 The functions in a scm_ptobfuns structure now expect the port itself
6281 as their argument; they used to expect the `stream' member of the
6282 port's scm_port_table structure. This allows functions in an
6283 scm_ptobfuns structure to easily access the port's cell (and any flags
6284 it its CAR), and the port's scm_port_table structure.
6286 Guile now passes the I/O port itself as the `port' argument in the
6287 following scm_ptobfuns functions:
6289 int (*free) (SCM port);
6290 int (*fputc) (int, SCM port);
6291 int (*fputs) (char *, SCM port);
6292 scm_sizet (*fwrite) SCM_P ((char *ptr,
6296 int (*fflush) (SCM port);
6297 int (*fgetc) (SCM port);
6298 int (*fclose) (SCM port);
6300 The interfaces to the `mark', `print', `equalp', and `fgets' methods
6303 If you have existing code which defines its own port types, it is easy
6304 to convert your code to the new interface; simply apply SCM_STREAM to
6305 the port argument to yield the value you code used to expect.
6307 Note that since both the port and the stream have the same type in the
6308 C code --- they are both SCM values --- the C compiler will not remind
6309 you if you forget to update your scm_ptobfuns functions.
6312 ** Function: int scm_internal_select (int fds,
6316 struct timeval *timeout);
6318 This is a replacement for the `select' function provided by the OS.
6319 It enables I/O blocking and sleeping to happen for one cooperative
6320 thread without blocking other threads. It also avoids busy-loops in
6321 these situations. It is intended that all I/O blocking and sleeping
6322 will finally go through this function. Currently, this function is
6323 only available on systems providing `gettimeofday' and `select'.
6325 ** Function: SCM scm_internal_stack_catch (SCM tag,
6326 scm_catch_body_t body,
6328 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
6331 A new sibling to the other two C level `catch' functions
6332 scm_internal_catch and scm_internal_lazy_catch. Use it if you want
6333 the stack to be saved automatically into the variable `the-last-stack'
6334 (scm_the_last_stack_var) on error. This is necessary if you want to
6335 use advanced error reporting, such as calling scm_display_error and
6336 scm_display_backtrace. (They both take a stack object as argument.)
6338 ** Function: SCM scm_spawn_thread (scm_catch_body_t body,
6340 scm_catch_handler_t handler,
6343 Spawns a new thread. It does a job similar to
6344 scm_call_with_new_thread but takes arguments more suitable when
6345 spawning threads from application C code.
6347 ** The hook scm_error_callback has been removed. It was originally
6348 intended as a way for the user to install his own error handler. But
6349 that method works badly since it intervenes between throw and catch,
6350 thereby changing the semantics of expressions like (catch #t ...).
6351 The correct way to do it is to use one of the C level catch functions
6352 in throw.c: scm_internal_catch/lazy_catch/stack_catch.
6354 ** Removed functions:
6356 scm_obj_length, scm_list_length, scm_list_append, scm_list_append_x,
6357 scm_list_reverse, scm_list_reverse_x
6359 ** New macros: SCM_LISTn where n is one of the integers 0-9.
6361 These can be used for pretty list creation from C. The idea is taken
6362 from Erick Gallesio's STk.
6364 ** scm_array_map renamed to scm_array_map_x
6366 ** mbstrings are now removed
6368 This means that the type codes scm_tc7_mb_string and
6369 scm_tc7_mb_substring has been removed.
6371 ** scm_gen_putc, scm_gen_puts, scm_gen_write, and scm_gen_getc have changed.
6373 Since we no longer support multi-byte strings, these I/O functions
6374 have been simplified, and renamed. Here are their old names, and
6375 their new names and arguments:
6377 scm_gen_putc -> void scm_putc (int c, SCM port);
6378 scm_gen_puts -> void scm_puts (char *s, SCM port);
6379 scm_gen_write -> void scm_lfwrite (char *ptr, scm_sizet size, SCM port);
6380 scm_gen_getc -> void scm_getc (SCM port);
6383 ** The macros SCM_TYP7D and SCM_TYP7SD has been removed.
6385 ** The macro SCM_TYP7S has taken the role of the old SCM_TYP7D
6387 SCM_TYP7S now masks away the bit which distinguishes substrings from
6390 ** scm_catch_body_t: Backward incompatible change!
6392 Body functions to scm_internal_catch and friends do not any longer
6393 take a second argument. This is because it is no longer possible to
6394 pass a #f arg to catch.
6396 ** Calls to scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect now nest properly.
6398 The function scm_protect_object protects its argument from being freed
6399 by the garbage collector. scm_unprotect_object removes that
6402 These functions now nest properly. That is, for every object O, there
6403 is a counter which scm_protect_object(O) increments and
6404 scm_unprotect_object(O) decrements, if the counter is greater than
6405 zero. Every object's counter is zero when it is first created. If an
6406 object's counter is greater than zero, the garbage collector will not
6407 reclaim its storage.
6409 This allows you to use scm_protect_object in your code without
6410 worrying that some other function you call will call
6411 scm_unprotect_object, and allow it to be freed. Assuming that the
6412 functions you call are well-behaved, and unprotect only those objects
6413 they protect, you can follow the same rule and have confidence that
6414 objects will be freed only at appropriate times.
6417 Changes in Guile 1.2 (released Tuesday, June 24 1997):
6419 * Changes to the distribution
6421 ** Nightly snapshots are now available from ftp.red-bean.com.
6422 The old server, ftp.cyclic.com, has been relinquished to its rightful
6425 Nightly snapshots of the Guile development sources are now available via
6426 anonymous FTP from ftp.red-bean.com, as /pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz.
6428 Via the web, that's: ftp://ftp.red-bean.com/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
6429 For getit, that's: ftp.red-bean.com:/pub/guile/guile-snap.tar.gz
6431 ** To run Guile without installing it, the procedure has changed a bit.
6433 If you used a separate build directory to compile Guile, you'll need
6434 to include the build directory in SCHEME_LOAD_PATH, as well as the
6435 source directory. See the `INSTALL' file for examples.
6437 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
6439 ** The standard Guile load path for Scheme code now includes
6440 $(datadir)/guile (usually /usr/local/share/guile). This means that
6441 you can install your own Scheme files there, and Guile will find them.
6442 (Previous versions of Guile only checked a directory whose name
6443 contained the Guile version number, so you had to re-install or move
6444 your Scheme sources each time you installed a fresh version of Guile.)
6446 The load path also includes $(datadir)/guile/site; we recommend
6447 putting individual Scheme files there. If you want to install a
6448 package with multiple source files, create a directory for them under
6451 ** Guile 1.2 will now use the Rx regular expression library, if it is
6452 installed on your system. When you are linking libguile into your own
6453 programs, this means you will have to link against -lguile, -lqt (if
6454 you configured Guile with thread support), and -lrx.
6456 If you are using autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your
6457 application, the following lines should suffice to add the appropriate
6458 libraries to your link command:
6460 ### Find Rx, quickthreads and libguile.
6461 AC_CHECK_LIB(rx, main)
6462 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
6463 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
6465 The Guile 1.2 distribution does not contain sources for the Rx
6466 library, as Guile 1.0 did. If you want to use Rx, you'll need to
6467 retrieve it from a GNU FTP site and install it separately.
6469 * Changes to Scheme functions and syntax
6471 ** The dynamic linking features of Guile are now enabled by default.
6472 You can disable them by giving the `--disable-dynamic-linking' option
6475 (dynamic-link FILENAME)
6477 Find the object file denoted by FILENAME (a string) and link it
6478 into the running Guile application. When everything works out,
6479 return a Scheme object suitable for representing the linked object
6480 file. Otherwise an error is thrown. How object files are
6481 searched is system dependent.
6483 (dynamic-object? VAL)
6485 Determine whether VAL represents a dynamically linked object file.
6487 (dynamic-unlink DYNOBJ)
6489 Unlink the indicated object file from the application. DYNOBJ
6490 should be one of the values returned by `dynamic-link'.
6492 (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
6494 Search the C function indicated by FUNCTION (a string or symbol)
6495 in DYNOBJ and return some Scheme object that can later be used
6496 with `dynamic-call' to actually call this function. Right now,
6497 these Scheme objects are formed by casting the address of the
6498 function to `long' and converting this number to its Scheme
6501 (dynamic-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ)
6503 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ. The
6504 function is passed no arguments and its return value is ignored.
6505 When FUNCTION is something returned by `dynamic-func', call that
6506 function and ignore DYNOBJ. When FUNCTION is a string (or symbol,
6507 etc.), look it up in DYNOBJ; this is equivalent to
6509 (dynamic-call (dynamic-func FUNCTION DYNOBJ) #f)
6511 Interrupts are deferred while the C function is executing (with
6512 SCM_DEFER_INTS/SCM_ALLOW_INTS).
6514 (dynamic-args-call FUNCTION DYNOBJ ARGS)
6516 Call the C function indicated by FUNCTION and DYNOBJ, but pass it
6517 some arguments and return its return value. The C function is
6518 expected to take two arguments and return an `int', just like
6521 int c_func (int argc, char **argv);
6523 ARGS must be a list of strings and is converted into an array of
6524 `char *'. The array is passed in ARGV and its size in ARGC. The
6525 return value is converted to a Scheme number and returned from the
6526 call to `dynamic-args-call'.
6528 When dynamic linking is disabled or not supported on your system,
6529 the above functions throw errors, but they are still available.
6531 Here is a small example that works on GNU/Linux:
6533 (define libc-obj (dynamic-link "libc.so"))
6534 (dynamic-args-call 'rand libc-obj '())
6536 See the file `libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING' for additional comments.
6538 ** The #/ syntax for module names is depreciated, and will be removed
6539 in a future version of Guile. Instead of
6547 The latter syntax is more consistent with existing Lisp practice.
6549 ** Guile now does fancier printing of structures. Structures are the
6550 underlying implementation for records, which in turn are used to
6551 implement modules, so all of these object now print differently and in
6552 a more informative way.
6554 The Scheme printer will examine the builtin variable *struct-printer*
6555 whenever it needs to print a structure object. When this variable is
6556 not `#f' it is deemed to be a procedure and will be applied to the
6557 structure object and the output port. When *struct-printer* is `#f'
6558 or the procedure return `#f' the structure object will be printed in
6559 the boring #<struct 80458270> form.
6561 This hook is used by some routines in ice-9/boot-9.scm to implement
6562 type specific printing routines. Please read the comments there about
6565 One of the more specific uses of structs are records. The printing
6566 procedure that could be passed to MAKE-RECORD-TYPE is now actually
6567 called. It should behave like a *struct-printer* procedure (described
6570 ** Guile now supports a new R4RS-compliant syntax for keywords. A
6571 token of the form #:NAME, where NAME has the same syntax as a Scheme
6572 symbol, is the external representation of the keyword named NAME.
6573 Keyword objects print using this syntax as well, so values containing
6574 keyword objects can be read back into Guile. When used in an
6575 expression, keywords are self-quoting objects.
6577 Guile suports this read syntax, and uses this print syntax, regardless
6578 of the current setting of the `keyword' read option. The `keyword'
6579 read option only controls whether Guile recognizes the `:NAME' syntax,
6580 which is incompatible with R4RS. (R4RS says such token represent
6583 ** Guile has regular expression support again. Guile 1.0 included
6584 functions for matching regular expressions, based on the Rx library.
6585 In Guile 1.1, the Guile/Rx interface was removed to simplify the
6586 distribution, and thus Guile had no regular expression support. Guile
6587 1.2 again supports the most commonly used functions, and supports all
6588 of SCSH's regular expression functions.
6590 If your system does not include a POSIX regular expression library,
6591 and you have not linked Guile with a third-party regexp library such as
6592 Rx, these functions will not be available. You can tell whether your
6593 Guile installation includes regular expression support by checking
6594 whether the `*features*' list includes the `regex' symbol.
6596 *** regexp functions
6598 By default, Guile supports POSIX extended regular expressions. That
6599 means that the characters `(', `)', `+' and `?' are special, and must
6600 be escaped if you wish to match the literal characters.
6602 This regular expression interface was modeled after that implemented
6603 by SCSH, the Scheme Shell. It is intended to be upwardly compatible
6604 with SCSH regular expressions.
6606 **** Function: string-match PATTERN STR [START]
6607 Compile the string PATTERN into a regular expression and compare
6608 it with STR. The optional numeric argument START specifies the
6609 position of STR at which to begin matching.
6611 `string-match' returns a "match structure" which describes what,
6612 if anything, was matched by the regular expression. *Note Match
6613 Structures::. If STR does not match PATTERN at all,
6614 `string-match' returns `#f'.
6616 Each time `string-match' is called, it must compile its PATTERN
6617 argument into a regular expression structure. This operation is
6618 expensive, which makes `string-match' inefficient if the same regular
6619 expression is used several times (for example, in a loop). For better
6620 performance, you can compile a regular expression in advance and then
6621 match strings against the compiled regexp.
6623 **** Function: make-regexp STR [FLAGS]
6624 Compile the regular expression described by STR, and return the
6625 compiled regexp structure. If STR does not describe a legal
6626 regular expression, `make-regexp' throws a
6627 `regular-expression-syntax' error.
6629 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
6631 **** Constant: regexp/extended
6632 Use POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax when interpreting
6633 STR. If not set, POSIX Basic Regular Expression syntax is used.
6634 If the FLAGS argument is omitted, we assume regexp/extended.
6636 **** Constant: regexp/icase
6637 Do not differentiate case. Subsequent searches using the
6638 returned regular expression will be case insensitive.
6640 **** Constant: regexp/newline
6641 Match-any-character operators don't match a newline.
6643 A non-matching list ([^...]) not containing a newline matches a
6646 Match-beginning-of-line operator (^) matches the empty string
6647 immediately after a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
6648 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/notbol.
6650 Match-end-of-line operator ($) matches the empty string
6651 immediately before a newline, regardless of whether the FLAGS
6652 passed to regexp-exec contain regexp/noteol.
6654 **** Function: regexp-exec REGEXP STR [START [FLAGS]]
6655 Match the compiled regular expression REGEXP against `str'. If
6656 the optional integer START argument is provided, begin matching
6657 from that position in the string. Return a match structure
6658 describing the results of the match, or `#f' if no match could be
6661 FLAGS may be the bitwise-or of one or more of the following:
6663 **** Constant: regexp/notbol
6664 The match-beginning-of-line operator always fails to match (but
6665 see the compilation flag regexp/newline above) This flag may be
6666 used when different portions of a string are passed to
6667 regexp-exec and the beginning of the string should not be
6668 interpreted as the beginning of the line.
6670 **** Constant: regexp/noteol
6671 The match-end-of-line operator always fails to match (but see the
6672 compilation flag regexp/newline above)
6674 **** Function: regexp? OBJ
6675 Return `#t' if OBJ is a compiled regular expression, or `#f'
6678 Regular expressions are commonly used to find patterns in one string
6679 and replace them with the contents of another string.
6681 **** Function: regexp-substitute PORT MATCH [ITEM...]
6682 Write to the output port PORT selected contents of the match
6683 structure MATCH. Each ITEM specifies what should be written, and
6684 may be one of the following arguments:
6686 * A string. String arguments are written out verbatim.
6688 * An integer. The submatch with that number is written.
6690 * The symbol `pre'. The portion of the matched string preceding
6691 the regexp match is written.
6693 * The symbol `post'. The portion of the matched string
6694 following the regexp match is written.
6696 PORT may be `#f', in which case nothing is written; instead,
6697 `regexp-substitute' constructs a string from the specified ITEMs
6700 **** Function: regexp-substitute/global PORT REGEXP TARGET [ITEM...]
6701 Similar to `regexp-substitute', but can be used to perform global
6702 substitutions on STR. Instead of taking a match structure as an
6703 argument, `regexp-substitute/global' takes two string arguments: a
6704 REGEXP string describing a regular expression, and a TARGET string
6705 which should be matched against this regular expression.
6707 Each ITEM behaves as in REGEXP-SUBSTITUTE, with the following
6710 * A function may be supplied. When this function is called, it
6711 will be passed one argument: a match structure for a given
6712 regular expression match. It should return a string to be
6713 written out to PORT.
6715 * The `post' symbol causes `regexp-substitute/global' to recurse
6716 on the unmatched portion of STR. This *must* be supplied in
6717 order to perform global search-and-replace on STR; if it is
6718 not present among the ITEMs, then `regexp-substitute/global'
6719 will return after processing a single match.
6721 *** Match Structures
6723 A "match structure" is the object returned by `string-match' and
6724 `regexp-exec'. It describes which portion of a string, if any, matched
6725 the given regular expression. Match structures include: a reference to
6726 the string that was checked for matches; the starting and ending
6727 positions of the regexp match; and, if the regexp included any
6728 parenthesized subexpressions, the starting and ending positions of each
6731 In each of the regexp match functions described below, the `match'
6732 argument must be a match structure returned by a previous call to
6733 `string-match' or `regexp-exec'. Most of these functions return some
6734 information about the original target string that was matched against a
6735 regular expression; we will call that string TARGET for easy reference.
6737 **** Function: regexp-match? OBJ
6738 Return `#t' if OBJ is a match structure returned by a previous
6739 call to `regexp-exec', or `#f' otherwise.
6741 **** Function: match:substring MATCH [N]
6742 Return the portion of TARGET matched by subexpression number N.
6743 Submatch 0 (the default) represents the entire regexp match. If
6744 the regular expression as a whole matched, but the subexpression
6745 number N did not match, return `#f'.
6747 **** Function: match:start MATCH [N]
6748 Return the starting position of submatch number N.
6750 **** Function: match:end MATCH [N]
6751 Return the ending position of submatch number N.
6753 **** Function: match:prefix MATCH
6754 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET preceding the regexp match.
6756 **** Function: match:suffix MATCH
6757 Return the unmatched portion of TARGET following the regexp match.
6759 **** Function: match:count MATCH
6760 Return the number of parenthesized subexpressions from MATCH.
6761 Note that the entire regular expression match itself counts as a
6762 subexpression, and failed submatches are included in the count.
6764 **** Function: match:string MATCH
6765 Return the original TARGET string.
6767 *** Backslash Escapes
6769 Sometimes you will want a regexp to match characters like `*' or `$'
6770 exactly. For example, to check whether a particular string represents
6771 a menu entry from an Info node, it would be useful to match it against
6772 a regexp like `^* [^:]*::'. However, this won't work; because the
6773 asterisk is a metacharacter, it won't match the `*' at the beginning of
6774 the string. In this case, we want to make the first asterisk un-magic.
6776 You can do this by preceding the metacharacter with a backslash
6777 character `\'. (This is also called "quoting" the metacharacter, and
6778 is known as a "backslash escape".) When Guile sees a backslash in a
6779 regular expression, it considers the following glyph to be an ordinary
6780 character, no matter what special meaning it would ordinarily have.
6781 Therefore, we can make the above example work by changing the regexp to
6782 `^\* [^:]*::'. The `\*' sequence tells the regular expression engine
6783 to match only a single asterisk in the target string.
6785 Since the backslash is itself a metacharacter, you may force a
6786 regexp to match a backslash in the target string by preceding the
6787 backslash with itself. For example, to find variable references in a
6788 TeX program, you might want to find occurrences of the string `\let\'
6789 followed by any number of alphabetic characters. The regular expression
6790 `\\let\\[A-Za-z]*' would do this: the double backslashes in the regexp
6791 each match a single backslash in the target string.
6793 **** Function: regexp-quote STR
6794 Quote each special character found in STR with a backslash, and
6795 return the resulting string.
6797 *Very important:* Using backslash escapes in Guile source code (as
6798 in Emacs Lisp or C) can be tricky, because the backslash character has
6799 special meaning for the Guile reader. For example, if Guile encounters
6800 the character sequence `\n' in the middle of a string while processing
6801 Scheme code, it replaces those characters with a newline character.
6802 Similarly, the character sequence `\t' is replaced by a horizontal tab.
6803 Several of these "escape sequences" are processed by the Guile reader
6804 before your code is executed. Unrecognized escape sequences are
6805 ignored: if the characters `\*' appear in a string, they will be
6806 translated to the single character `*'.
6808 This translation is obviously undesirable for regular expressions,
6809 since we want to be able to include backslashes in a string in order to
6810 escape regexp metacharacters. Therefore, to make sure that a backslash
6811 is preserved in a string in your Guile program, you must use *two*
6812 consecutive backslashes:
6814 (define Info-menu-entry-pattern (make-regexp "^\\* [^:]*"))
6816 The string in this example is preprocessed by the Guile reader before
6817 any code is executed. The resulting argument to `make-regexp' is the
6818 string `^\* [^:]*', which is what we really want.
6820 This also means that in order to write a regular expression that
6821 matches a single backslash character, the regular expression string in
6822 the source code must include *four* backslashes. Each consecutive pair
6823 of backslashes gets translated by the Guile reader to a single
6824 backslash, and the resulting double-backslash is interpreted by the
6825 regexp engine as matching a single backslash character. Hence:
6827 (define tex-variable-pattern (make-regexp "\\\\let\\\\=[A-Za-z]*"))
6829 The reason for the unwieldiness of this syntax is historical. Both
6830 regular expression pattern matchers and Unix string processing systems
6831 have traditionally used backslashes with the special meanings described
6832 above. The POSIX regular expression specification and ANSI C standard
6833 both require these semantics. Attempting to abandon either convention
6834 would cause other kinds of compatibility problems, possibly more severe
6835 ones. Therefore, without extending the Scheme reader to support
6836 strings with different quoting conventions (an ungainly and confusing
6837 extension when implemented in other languages), we must adhere to this
6838 cumbersome escape syntax.
6840 * Changes to the gh_ interface
6842 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6844 * Changes to system call interfaces:
6846 ** The value returned by `raise' is now unspecified. It throws an exception
6849 *** A new procedure `sigaction' can be used to install signal handlers
6851 (sigaction signum [action] [flags])
6853 signum is the signal number, which can be specified using the value
6856 If action is omitted, sigaction returns a pair: the CAR is the current
6857 signal hander, which will be either an integer with the value SIG_DFL
6858 (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or the Scheme procedure which
6859 handles the signal, or #f if a non-Scheme procedure handles the
6860 signal. The CDR contains the current sigaction flags for the handler.
6862 If action is provided, it is installed as the new handler for signum.
6863 action can be a Scheme procedure taking one argument, or the value of
6864 SIG_DFL (default action) or SIG_IGN (ignore), or #f to restore
6865 whatever signal handler was installed before sigaction was first used.
6866 Flags can optionally be specified for the new handler (SA_RESTART is
6867 always used if the system provides it, so need not be specified.) The
6868 return value is a pair with information about the old handler as
6871 This interface does not provide access to the "signal blocking"
6872 facility. Maybe this is not needed, since the thread support may
6873 provide solutions to the problem of consistent access to data
6876 *** A new procedure `flush-all-ports' is equivalent to running
6877 `force-output' on every port open for output.
6879 ** Guile now provides information on how it was built, via the new
6880 global variable, %guile-build-info. This variable records the values
6881 of the standard GNU makefile directory variables as an assocation
6882 list, mapping variable names (symbols) onto directory paths (strings).
6883 For example, to find out where the Guile link libraries were
6884 installed, you can say:
6886 guile -c "(display (assq-ref %guile-build-info 'libdir)) (newline)"
6889 * Changes to the scm_ interface
6891 ** The new function scm_handle_by_message_noexit is just like the
6892 existing scm_handle_by_message function, except that it doesn't call
6893 exit to terminate the process. Instead, it prints a message and just
6894 returns #f. This might be a more appropriate catch-all handler for
6895 new dynamic roots and threads.
6898 Changes in Guile 1.1 (released Friday, May 16 1997):
6900 * Changes to the distribution.
6902 The Guile 1.0 distribution has been split up into several smaller
6904 guile-core --- the Guile interpreter itself.
6905 guile-tcltk --- the interface between the Guile interpreter and
6906 Tcl/Tk; Tcl is an interpreter for a stringy language, and Tk
6907 is a toolkit for building graphical user interfaces.
6908 guile-rgx-ctax --- the interface between Guile and the Rx regular
6909 expression matcher, and the translator for the Ctax
6910 programming language. These are packaged together because the
6911 Ctax translator uses Rx to parse Ctax source code.
6913 This NEWS file describes the changes made to guile-core since the 1.0
6916 We no longer distribute the documentation, since it was either out of
6917 date, or incomplete. As soon as we have current documentation, we
6922 * Changes to the stand-alone interpreter
6924 ** guile now accepts command-line arguments compatible with SCSH, Olin
6925 Shivers' Scheme Shell.
6927 In general, arguments are evaluated from left to right, but there are
6928 exceptions. The following switches stop argument processing, and
6929 stash all remaining command-line arguments as the value returned by
6930 the (command-line) function.
6931 -s SCRIPT load Scheme source code from FILE, and exit
6932 -c EXPR evalute Scheme expression EXPR, and exit
6933 -- stop scanning arguments; run interactively
6935 The switches below are processed as they are encountered.
6936 -l FILE load Scheme source code from FILE
6937 -e FUNCTION after reading script, apply FUNCTION to
6938 command line arguments
6939 -ds do -s script at this point
6940 --emacs enable Emacs protocol (experimental)
6941 -h, --help display this help and exit
6942 -v, --version display version information and exit
6943 \ read arguments from following script lines
6945 So, for example, here is a Guile script named `ekko' (thanks, Olin)
6946 which re-implements the traditional "echo" command:
6948 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
6951 (map (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
6955 (main (command-line))
6957 Suppose we invoke this script as follows:
6959 ekko a speckled gecko
6961 Through the magic of Unix script processing (triggered by the `#!'
6962 token at the top of the file), /usr/local/bin/guile receives the
6963 following list of command-line arguments:
6965 ("-s" "./ekko" "a" "speckled" "gecko")
6967 Unix inserts the name of the script after the argument specified on
6968 the first line of the file (in this case, "-s"), and then follows that
6969 with the arguments given to the script. Guile loads the script, which
6970 defines the `main' function, and then applies it to the list of
6971 remaining command-line arguments, ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
6973 In Unix, the first line of a script file must take the following form:
6975 #!INTERPRETER ARGUMENT
6977 where INTERPRETER is the absolute filename of the interpreter
6978 executable, and ARGUMENT is a single command-line argument to pass to
6981 You may only pass one argument to the interpreter, and its length is
6982 limited. These restrictions can be annoying to work around, so Guile
6983 provides a general mechanism (borrowed from, and compatible with,
6984 SCSH) for circumventing them.
6986 If the ARGUMENT in a Guile script is a single backslash character,
6987 `\', Guile will open the script file, parse arguments from its second
6988 and subsequent lines, and replace the `\' with them. So, for example,
6989 here is another implementation of the `ekko' script:
6991 #!/usr/local/bin/guile \
6995 (for-each (lambda (arg) (display arg) (display " "))
6999 If the user invokes this script as follows:
7001 ekko a speckled gecko
7003 Unix expands this into
7005 /usr/local/bin/guile \ ekko a speckled gecko
7007 When Guile sees the `\' argument, it replaces it with the arguments
7008 read from the second line of the script, producing:
7010 /usr/local/bin/guile -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
7012 This tells Guile to load the `ekko' script, and apply the function
7013 `main' to the argument list ("a" "speckled" "gecko").
7015 Here is how Guile parses the command-line arguments:
7016 - Each space character terminates an argument. This means that two
7017 spaces in a row introduce an empty-string argument.
7018 - The tab character is not permitted (unless you quote it with the
7019 backslash character, as described below), to avoid confusion.
7020 - The newline character terminates the sequence of arguments, and will
7021 also terminate a final non-empty argument. (However, a newline
7022 following a space will not introduce a final empty-string argument;
7023 it only terminates the argument list.)
7024 - The backslash character is the escape character. It escapes
7025 backslash, space, tab, and newline. The ANSI C escape sequences
7026 like \n and \t are also supported. These produce argument
7027 constituents; the two-character combination \n doesn't act like a
7028 terminating newline. The escape sequence \NNN for exactly three
7029 octal digits reads as the character whose ASCII code is NNN. As
7030 above, characters produced this way are argument constituents.
7031 Backslash followed by other characters is not allowed.
7033 * Changes to the procedure for linking libguile with your programs
7035 ** Guile now builds and installs a shared guile library, if your
7036 system support shared libraries. (It still builds a static library on
7037 all systems.) Guile automatically detects whether your system
7038 supports shared libraries. To prevent Guile from buildisg shared
7039 libraries, pass the `--disable-shared' flag to the configure script.
7041 Guile takes longer to compile when it builds shared libraries, because
7042 it must compile every file twice --- once to produce position-
7043 independent object code, and once to produce normal object code.
7045 ** The libthreads library has been merged into libguile.
7047 To link a program against Guile, you now need only link against
7048 -lguile and -lqt; -lthreads is no longer needed. If you are using
7049 autoconf to generate configuration scripts for your application, the
7050 following lines should suffice to add the appropriate libraries to
7053 ### Find quickthreads and libguile.
7054 AC_CHECK_LIB(qt, main)
7055 AC_CHECK_LIB(guile, scm_shell)
7057 * Changes to Scheme functions
7059 ** Guile Scheme's special syntax for keyword objects is now optional,
7060 and disabled by default.
7062 The syntax variation from R4RS made it difficult to port some
7063 interesting packages to Guile. The routines which accepted keyword
7064 arguments (mostly in the module system) have been modified to also
7065 accept symbols whose names begin with `:'.
7067 To change the keyword syntax, you must first import the (ice-9 debug)
7069 (use-modules (ice-9 debug))
7071 Then you can enable the keyword syntax as follows:
7072 (read-set! keywords 'prefix)
7074 To disable keyword syntax, do this:
7075 (read-set! keywords #f)
7077 ** Many more primitive functions accept shared substrings as
7078 arguments. In the past, these functions required normal, mutable
7079 strings as arguments, although they never made use of this
7082 ** The uniform array functions now operate on byte vectors. These
7083 functions are `array-fill!', `serial-array-copy!', `array-copy!',
7084 `serial-array-map', `array-map', `array-for-each', and
7087 ** The new functions `trace' and `untrace' implement simple debugging
7088 support for Scheme functions.
7090 The `trace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
7091 and tells the Guile interpreter to display each procedure's name and
7092 arguments each time the procedure is invoked. When invoked with no
7093 arguments, `trace' returns the list of procedures currently being
7096 The `untrace' function accepts any number of procedures as arguments,
7097 and tells the Guile interpreter not to trace them any more. When
7098 invoked with no arguments, `untrace' untraces all curretly traced
7101 The tracing in Guile has an advantage over most other systems: we
7102 don't create new procedure objects, but mark the procedure objects
7103 themselves. This means that anonymous and internal procedures can be
7106 ** The function `assert-repl-prompt' has been renamed to
7107 `set-repl-prompt!'. It takes one argument, PROMPT.
7108 - If PROMPT is #f, the Guile read-eval-print loop will not prompt.
7109 - If PROMPT is a string, we use it as a prompt.
7110 - If PROMPT is a procedure accepting no arguments, we call it, and
7111 display the result as a prompt.
7112 - Otherwise, we display "> ".
7114 ** The new function `eval-string' reads Scheme expressions from a
7115 string and evaluates them, returning the value of the last expression
7116 in the string. If the string contains no expressions, it returns an
7119 ** The new function `thunk?' returns true iff its argument is a
7120 procedure of zero arguments.
7122 ** `defined?' is now a builtin function, instead of syntax. This
7123 means that its argument should be quoted. It returns #t iff its
7124 argument is bound in the current module.
7126 ** The new syntax `use-modules' allows you to add new modules to your
7127 environment without re-typing a complete `define-module' form. It
7128 accepts any number of module names as arguments, and imports their
7129 public bindings into the current module.
7131 ** The new function (module-defined? NAME MODULE) returns true iff
7132 NAME, a symbol, is defined in MODULE, a module object.
7134 ** The new function `builtin-bindings' creates and returns a hash
7135 table containing copies of all the root module's bindings.
7137 ** The new function `builtin-weak-bindings' does the same as
7138 `builtin-bindings', but creates a doubly-weak hash table.
7140 ** The `equal?' function now considers variable objects to be
7141 equivalent if they have the same name and the same value.
7143 ** The new function `command-line' returns the command-line arguments
7144 given to Guile, as a list of strings.
7146 When using guile as a script interpreter, `command-line' returns the
7147 script's arguments; those processed by the interpreter (like `-s' or
7148 `-c') are omitted. (In other words, you get the normal, expected
7149 behavior.) Any application that uses scm_shell to process its
7150 command-line arguments gets this behavior as well.
7152 ** The new function `load-user-init' looks for a file called `.guile'
7153 in the user's home directory, and loads it if it exists. This is
7154 mostly for use by the code generated by scm_compile_shell_switches,
7155 but we thought it might also be useful in other circumstances.
7157 ** The new function `log10' returns the base-10 logarithm of its
7160 ** Changes to I/O functions
7162 *** The functions `read', `primitive-load', `read-and-eval!', and
7163 `primitive-load-path' no longer take optional arguments controlling
7164 case insensitivity and a `#' parser.
7166 Case sensitivity is now controlled by a read option called
7167 `case-insensitive'. The user can add new `#' syntaxes with the
7168 `read-hash-extend' function (see below).
7170 *** The new function `read-hash-extend' allows the user to change the
7171 syntax of Guile Scheme in a somewhat controlled way.
7173 (read-hash-extend CHAR PROC)
7174 When parsing S-expressions, if we read a `#' character followed by
7175 the character CHAR, use PROC to parse an object from the stream.
7176 If PROC is #f, remove any parsing procedure registered for CHAR.
7178 The reader applies PROC to two arguments: CHAR and an input port.
7180 *** The new functions read-delimited and read-delimited! provide a
7181 general mechanism for doing delimited input on streams.
7183 (read-delimited DELIMS [PORT HANDLE-DELIM])
7184 Read until we encounter one of the characters in DELIMS (a string),
7185 or end-of-file. PORT is the input port to read from; it defaults to
7186 the current input port. The HANDLE-DELIM parameter determines how
7187 the terminating character is handled; it should be one of the
7190 'trim omit delimiter from result
7191 'peek leave delimiter character in input stream
7192 'concat append delimiter character to returned value
7193 'split return a pair: (RESULT . TERMINATOR)
7195 HANDLE-DELIM defaults to 'peek.
7197 (read-delimited! DELIMS BUF [PORT HANDLE-DELIM START END])
7198 A side-effecting variant of `read-delimited'.
7200 The data is written into the string BUF at the indices in the
7201 half-open interval [START, END); the default interval is the whole
7202 string: START = 0 and END = (string-length BUF). The values of
7203 START and END must specify a well-defined interval in BUF, i.e.
7204 0 <= START <= END <= (string-length BUF).
7206 It returns NBYTES, the number of bytes read. If the buffer filled
7207 up without a delimiter character being found, it returns #f. If the
7208 port is at EOF when the read starts, it returns the EOF object.
7210 If an integer is returned (i.e., the read is successfully terminated
7211 by reading a delimiter character), then the HANDLE-DELIM parameter
7212 determines how to handle the terminating character. It is described
7213 above, and defaults to 'peek.
7215 (The descriptions of these functions were borrowed from the SCSH
7216 manual, by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
7218 *** The `%read-delimited!' function is the primitive used to implement
7219 `read-delimited' and `read-delimited!'.
7221 (%read-delimited! DELIMS BUF GOBBLE? [PORT START END])
7223 This returns a pair of values: (TERMINATOR . NUM-READ).
7224 - TERMINATOR describes why the read was terminated. If it is a
7225 character or the eof object, then that is the value that terminated
7226 the read. If it is #f, the function filled the buffer without finding
7227 a delimiting character.
7228 - NUM-READ is the number of characters read into BUF.
7230 If the read is successfully terminated by reading a delimiter
7231 character, then the gobble? parameter determines what to do with the
7232 terminating character. If true, the character is removed from the
7233 input stream; if false, the character is left in the input stream
7234 where a subsequent read operation will retrieve it. In either case,
7235 the character is also the first value returned by the procedure call.
7237 (The descriptions of this function was borrowed from the SCSH manual,
7238 by Olin Shivers and Brian Carlstrom.)
7240 *** The `read-line' and `read-line!' functions have changed; they now
7241 trim the terminator by default; previously they appended it to the
7242 returned string. For the old behavior, use (read-line PORT 'concat).
7244 *** The functions `uniform-array-read!' and `uniform-array-write!' now
7245 take new optional START and END arguments, specifying the region of
7246 the array to read and write.
7248 *** The `ungetc-char-ready?' function has been removed. We feel it's
7249 inappropriate for an interface to expose implementation details this
7252 ** Changes to the Unix library and system call interface
7254 *** The new fcntl function provides access to the Unix `fcntl' system
7257 (fcntl PORT COMMAND VALUE)
7258 Apply COMMAND to PORT's file descriptor, with VALUE as an argument.
7259 Values for COMMAND are:
7261 F_DUPFD duplicate a file descriptor
7262 F_GETFD read the descriptor's close-on-exec flag
7263 F_SETFD set the descriptor's close-on-exec flag to VALUE
7264 F_GETFL read the descriptor's flags, as set on open
7265 F_SETFL set the descriptor's flags, as set on open to VALUE
7266 F_GETOWN return the process ID of a socket's owner, for SIGIO
7267 F_SETOWN set the process that owns a socket to VALUE, for SIGIO
7268 FD_CLOEXEC not sure what this is
7270 For details, see the documentation for the fcntl system call.
7272 *** The arguments to `select' have changed, for compatibility with
7273 SCSH. The TIMEOUT parameter may now be non-integral, yielding the
7274 expected behavior. The MILLISECONDS parameter has been changed to
7275 MICROSECONDS, to more closely resemble the underlying system call.
7276 The RVEC, WVEC, and EVEC arguments can now be vectors; the type of the
7277 corresponding return set will be the same.
7279 *** The arguments to the `mknod' system call have changed. They are
7282 (mknod PATH TYPE PERMS DEV)
7283 Create a new file (`node') in the file system. PATH is the name of
7284 the file to create. TYPE is the kind of file to create; it should
7285 be 'fifo, 'block-special, or 'char-special. PERMS specifies the
7286 permission bits to give the newly created file. If TYPE is
7287 'block-special or 'char-special, DEV specifies which device the
7288 special file refers to; its interpretation depends on the kind of
7289 special file being created.
7291 *** The `fork' function has been renamed to `primitive-fork', to avoid
7292 clashing with various SCSH forks.
7294 *** The `recv' and `recvfrom' functions have been renamed to `recv!'
7295 and `recvfrom!'. They no longer accept a size for a second argument;
7296 you must pass a string to hold the received value. They no longer
7297 return the buffer. Instead, `recv' returns the length of the message
7298 received, and `recvfrom' returns a pair containing the packet's length
7299 and originating address.
7301 *** The file descriptor datatype has been removed, as have the
7302 `read-fd', `write-fd', `close', `lseek', and `dup' functions.
7303 We plan to replace these functions with a SCSH-compatible interface.
7305 *** The `create' function has been removed; it's just a special case
7308 *** There are new functions to break down process termination status
7309 values. In the descriptions below, STATUS is a value returned by
7312 (status:exit-val STATUS)
7313 If the child process exited normally, this function returns the exit
7314 code for the child process (i.e., the value passed to exit, or
7315 returned from main). If the child process did not exit normally,
7316 this function returns #f.
7318 (status:stop-sig STATUS)
7319 If the child process was suspended by a signal, this function
7320 returns the signal that suspended the child. Otherwise, it returns
7323 (status:term-sig STATUS)
7324 If the child process terminated abnormally, this function returns
7325 the signal that terminated the child. Otherwise, this function
7328 POSIX promises that exactly one of these functions will return true on
7329 a valid STATUS value.
7331 These functions are compatible with SCSH.
7333 *** There are new accessors and setters for the broken-out time vectors
7334 returned by `localtime', `gmtime', and that ilk. They are:
7336 Component Accessor Setter
7337 ========================= ============ ============
7338 seconds tm:sec set-tm:sec
7339 minutes tm:min set-tm:min
7340 hours tm:hour set-tm:hour
7341 day of the month tm:mday set-tm:mday
7342 month tm:mon set-tm:mon
7343 year tm:year set-tm:year
7344 day of the week tm:wday set-tm:wday
7345 day in the year tm:yday set-tm:yday
7346 daylight saving time tm:isdst set-tm:isdst
7347 GMT offset, seconds tm:gmtoff set-tm:gmtoff
7348 name of time zone tm:zone set-tm:zone
7350 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `uname',
7351 describing the host system:
7354 ============================================== ================
7355 name of the operating system implementation utsname:sysname
7356 network name of this machine utsname:nodename
7357 release level of the operating system utsname:release
7358 version level of the operating system utsname:version
7359 machine hardware platform utsname:machine
7361 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getpw',
7362 `getpwnam', `getpwuid', and `getpwent', describing entries from the
7363 system's user database:
7366 ====================== =================
7367 user name passwd:name
7368 user password passwd:passwd
7371 real name passwd:gecos
7372 home directory passwd:dir
7373 shell program passwd:shell
7375 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getgr',
7376 `getgrnam', `getgrgid', and `getgrent', describing entries from the
7377 system's group database:
7380 ======================= ============
7381 group name group:name
7382 group password group:passwd
7384 group members group:mem
7386 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `gethost',
7387 `gethostbyaddr', `gethostbyname', and `gethostent', describing
7391 ========================= ===============
7392 official name of host hostent:name
7393 alias list hostent:aliases
7394 host address type hostent:addrtype
7395 length of address hostent:length
7396 list of addresses hostent:addr-list
7398 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getnet',
7399 `getnetbyaddr', `getnetbyname', and `getnetent', describing internet
7403 ========================= ===============
7404 official name of net netent:name
7405 alias list netent:aliases
7406 net number type netent:addrtype
7407 net number netent:net
7409 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getproto',
7410 `getprotobyname', `getprotobynumber', and `getprotoent', describing
7414 ========================= ===============
7415 official protocol name protoent:name
7416 alias list protoent:aliases
7417 protocol number protoent:proto
7419 *** There are new accessors for the vectors returned by `getserv',
7420 `getservbyname', `getservbyport', and `getservent', describing
7424 ========================= ===============
7425 official service name servent:name
7426 alias list servent:aliases
7427 port number servent:port
7428 protocol to use servent:proto
7430 *** There are new accessors for the sockaddr structures returned by
7431 `accept', `getsockname', `getpeername', `recvfrom!':
7434 ======================================== ===============
7435 address format (`family') sockaddr:fam
7436 path, for file domain addresses sockaddr:path
7437 address, for internet domain addresses sockaddr:addr
7438 TCP or UDP port, for internet sockaddr:port
7440 *** The `getpwent', `getgrent', `gethostent', `getnetent',
7441 `getprotoent', and `getservent' functions now return #f at the end of
7442 the user database. (They used to throw an exception.)
7444 Note that calling MUMBLEent function is equivalent to calling the
7445 corresponding MUMBLE function with no arguments.
7447 *** The `setpwent', `setgrent', `sethostent', `setnetent',
7448 `setprotoent', and `setservent' routines now take no arguments.
7450 *** The `gethost', `getproto', `getnet', and `getserv' functions now
7451 provide more useful information when they throw an exception.
7453 *** The `lnaof' function has been renamed to `inet-lnaof'.
7455 *** Guile now claims to have the `current-time' feature.
7457 *** The `mktime' function now takes an optional second argument ZONE,
7458 giving the time zone to use for the conversion. ZONE should be a
7459 string, in the same format as expected for the "TZ" environment variable.
7461 *** The `strptime' function now returns a pair (TIME . COUNT), where
7462 TIME is the parsed time as a vector, and COUNT is the number of
7463 characters from the string left unparsed. This function used to
7464 return the remaining characters as a string.
7466 *** The `gettimeofday' function has replaced the old `time+ticks' function.
7467 The return value is now (SECONDS . MICROSECONDS); the fractional
7468 component is no longer expressed in "ticks".
7470 *** The `ticks/sec' constant has been removed, in light of the above change.
7472 * Changes to the gh_ interface
7474 ** gh_eval_str() now returns an SCM object which is the result of the
7477 ** gh_scm2str() now copies the Scheme data to a caller-provided C
7480 ** gh_scm2newstr() now makes a C array, copies the Scheme data to it,
7481 and returns the array
7483 ** gh_scm2str0() is gone: there is no need to distinguish
7484 null-terminated from non-null-terminated, since gh_scm2newstr() allows
7485 the user to interpret the data both ways.
7487 * Changes to the scm_ interface
7489 ** The new function scm_symbol_value0 provides an easy way to get a
7490 symbol's value from C code:
7492 SCM scm_symbol_value0 (char *NAME)
7493 Return the value of the symbol named by the null-terminated string
7494 NAME in the current module. If the symbol named NAME is unbound in
7495 the current module, return SCM_UNDEFINED.
7497 ** The new function scm_sysintern0 creates new top-level variables,
7498 without assigning them a value.
7500 SCM scm_sysintern0 (char *NAME)
7501 Create a new Scheme top-level variable named NAME. NAME is a
7502 null-terminated string. Return the variable's value cell.
7504 ** The function scm_internal_catch is the guts of catch. It handles
7505 all the mechanics of setting up a catch target, invoking the catch
7506 body, and perhaps invoking the handler if the body does a throw.
7508 The function is designed to be usable from C code, but is general
7509 enough to implement all the semantics Guile Scheme expects from throw.
7511 TAG is the catch tag. Typically, this is a symbol, but this function
7512 doesn't actually care about that.
7514 BODY is a pointer to a C function which runs the body of the catch;
7515 this is the code you can throw from. We call it like this:
7516 BODY (BODY_DATA, JMPBUF)
7518 BODY_DATA is just the BODY_DATA argument we received; we pass it
7519 through to BODY as its first argument. The caller can make
7520 BODY_DATA point to anything useful that BODY might need.
7521 JMPBUF is the Scheme jmpbuf object corresponding to this catch,
7522 which we have just created and initialized.
7524 HANDLER is a pointer to a C function to deal with a throw to TAG,
7525 should one occur. We call it like this:
7526 HANDLER (HANDLER_DATA, THROWN_TAG, THROW_ARGS)
7528 HANDLER_DATA is the HANDLER_DATA argument we recevied; it's the
7529 same idea as BODY_DATA above.
7530 THROWN_TAG is the tag that the user threw to; usually this is
7531 TAG, but it could be something else if TAG was #t (i.e., a
7532 catch-all), or the user threw to a jmpbuf.
7533 THROW_ARGS is the list of arguments the user passed to the THROW
7536 BODY_DATA is just a pointer we pass through to BODY. HANDLER_DATA
7537 is just a pointer we pass through to HANDLER. We don't actually
7538 use either of those pointers otherwise ourselves. The idea is
7539 that, if our caller wants to communicate something to BODY or
7540 HANDLER, it can pass a pointer to it as MUMBLE_DATA, which BODY and
7541 HANDLER can then use. Think of it as a way to make BODY and
7542 HANDLER closures, not just functions; MUMBLE_DATA points to the
7545 Of course, it's up to the caller to make sure that any data a
7546 MUMBLE_DATA needs is protected from GC. A common way to do this is
7547 to make MUMBLE_DATA a pointer to data stored in an automatic
7548 structure variable; since the collector must scan the stack for
7549 references anyway, this assures that any references in MUMBLE_DATA
7552 ** The new function scm_internal_lazy_catch is exactly like
7553 scm_internal_catch, except:
7555 - It does not unwind the stack (this is the major difference).
7556 - If handler returns, its value is returned from the throw.
7557 - BODY always receives #f as its JMPBUF argument (since there's no
7558 jmpbuf associated with a lazy catch, because we don't unwind the
7561 ** scm_body_thunk is a new body function you can pass to
7562 scm_internal_catch if you want the body to be like Scheme's `catch'
7563 --- a thunk, or a function of one argument if the tag is #f.
7565 BODY_DATA is a pointer to a scm_body_thunk_data structure, which
7566 contains the Scheme procedure to invoke as the body, and the tag
7567 we're catching. If the tag is #f, then we pass JMPBUF (created by
7568 scm_internal_catch) to the body procedure; otherwise, the body gets
7571 ** scm_handle_by_proc is a new handler function you can pass to
7572 scm_internal_catch if you want the handler to act like Scheme's catch
7573 --- call a procedure with the tag and the throw arguments.
7575 If the user does a throw to this catch, this function runs a handler
7576 procedure written in Scheme. HANDLER_DATA is a pointer to an SCM
7577 variable holding the Scheme procedure object to invoke. It ought to
7578 be a pointer to an automatic variable (i.e., one living on the stack),
7579 or the procedure object should be otherwise protected from GC.
7581 ** scm_handle_by_message is a new handler function to use with
7582 `scm_internal_catch' if you want Guile to print a message and die.
7583 It's useful for dealing with throws to uncaught keys at the top level.
7585 HANDLER_DATA, if non-zero, is assumed to be a char * pointing to a
7586 message header to print; if zero, we use "guile" instead. That
7587 text is followed by a colon, then the message described by ARGS.
7589 ** The return type of scm_boot_guile is now void; the function does
7590 not return a value, and indeed, never returns at all.
7592 ** The new function scm_shell makes it easy for user applications to
7593 process command-line arguments in a way that is compatible with the
7594 stand-alone guile interpreter (which is in turn compatible with SCSH,
7597 To use the scm_shell function, first initialize any guile modules
7598 linked into your application, and then call scm_shell with the values
7599 of ARGC and ARGV your `main' function received. scm_shell will add
7600 any SCSH-style meta-arguments from the top of the script file to the
7601 argument vector, and then process the command-line arguments. This
7602 generally means loading a script file or starting up an interactive
7603 command interpreter. For details, see "Changes to the stand-alone
7606 ** The new functions scm_get_meta_args and scm_count_argv help you
7607 implement the SCSH-style meta-argument, `\'.
7609 char **scm_get_meta_args (int ARGC, char **ARGV)
7610 If the second element of ARGV is a string consisting of a single
7611 backslash character (i.e. "\\" in Scheme notation), open the file
7612 named by the following argument, parse arguments from it, and return
7613 the spliced command line. The returned array is terminated by a
7616 For details of argument parsing, see above, under "guile now accepts
7617 command-line arguments compatible with SCSH..."
7619 int scm_count_argv (char **ARGV)
7620 Count the arguments in ARGV, assuming it is terminated by a null
7623 For an example of how these functions might be used, see the source
7624 code for the function scm_shell in libguile/script.c.
7626 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
7629 ** The new function scm_compile_shell_switches turns an array of
7630 command-line arguments into Scheme code to carry out the actions they
7631 describe. Given ARGC and ARGV, it returns a Scheme expression to
7632 evaluate, and calls scm_set_program_arguments to make any remaining
7633 command-line arguments available to the Scheme code. For example,
7634 given the following arguments:
7636 -e main -s ekko a speckled gecko
7638 scm_set_program_arguments will return the following expression:
7640 (begin (load "ekko") (main (command-line)) (quit))
7642 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
7645 ** The function scm_shell_usage prints a usage message appropriate for
7646 an interpreter that uses scm_compile_shell_switches to handle its
7647 command-line arguments.
7649 void scm_shell_usage (int FATAL, char *MESSAGE)
7650 Print a usage message to the standard error output. If MESSAGE is
7651 non-zero, write it before the usage message, followed by a newline.
7652 If FATAL is non-zero, exit the process, using FATAL as the
7653 termination status. (If you want to be compatible with Guile,
7654 always use 1 as the exit status when terminating due to command-line
7657 You will usually want to use scm_shell instead of calling this
7660 ** scm_eval_0str now returns SCM_UNSPECIFIED if the string contains no
7661 expressions. It used to return SCM_EOL. Earth-shattering.
7663 ** The macros for declaring scheme objects in C code have been
7664 rearranged slightly. They are now:
7666 SCM_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
7667 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
7668 point to the Scheme symbol whose name is SCHEME_NAME. C_NAME should
7669 be a C identifier, and SCHEME_NAME should be a C string.
7671 SCM_GLOBAL_SYMBOL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
7672 Just like SCM_SYMBOL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
7674 SCM_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
7675 Create a global variable at the Scheme level named SCHEME_NAME.
7676 Declare a static SCM variable named C_NAME, and initialize it to
7677 point to the Scheme variable's value cell.
7679 SCM_GLOBAL_VCELL (C_NAME, SCHEME_NAME)
7680 Just like SCM_VCELL, but make C_NAME globally visible.
7682 The `guile-snarf' script writes initialization code for these macros
7683 to its standard output, given C source code as input.
7685 The SCM_GLOBAL macro is gone.
7687 ** The scm_read_line and scm_read_line_x functions have been replaced
7688 by Scheme code based on the %read-delimited! procedure (known to C
7689 code as scm_read_delimited_x). See its description above for more
7692 ** The function scm_sys_open has been renamed to scm_open. It now
7693 returns a port instead of an FD object.
7695 * The dynamic linking support has changed. For more information, see
7696 libguile/DYNAMIC-LINKING.
7701 User-visible changes from Thursday, September 5, 1996 until Guile 1.0
7704 * Changes to the 'guile' program:
7706 ** Guile now loads some new files when it starts up. Guile first
7707 searches the load path for init.scm, and loads it if found. Then, if
7708 Guile is not being used to execute a script, and the user's home
7709 directory contains a file named `.guile', Guile loads that.
7711 ** You can now use Guile as a shell script interpreter.
7713 To paraphrase the SCSH manual:
7715 When Unix tries to execute an executable file whose first two
7716 characters are the `#!', it treats the file not as machine code to
7717 be directly executed by the native processor, but as source code
7718 to be executed by some interpreter. The interpreter to use is
7719 specified immediately after the #! sequence on the first line of
7720 the source file. The kernel reads in the name of the interpreter,
7721 and executes that instead. It passes the interpreter the source
7722 filename as its first argument, with the original arguments
7723 following. Consult the Unix man page for the `exec' system call
7724 for more information.
7726 Now you can use Guile as an interpreter, using a mechanism which is a
7727 compatible subset of that provided by SCSH.
7729 Guile now recognizes a '-s' command line switch, whose argument is the
7730 name of a file of Scheme code to load. It also treats the two
7731 characters `#!' as the start of a comment, terminated by `!#'. Thus,
7732 to make a file of Scheme code directly executable by Unix, insert the
7733 following two lines at the top of the file:
7735 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
7738 Guile treats the argument of the `-s' command-line switch as the name
7739 of a file of Scheme code to load, and treats the sequence `#!' as the
7740 start of a block comment, terminated by `!#'.
7742 For example, here's a version of 'echo' written in Scheme:
7744 #!/usr/local/bin/guile -s
7746 (let loop ((args (cdr (program-arguments))))
7749 (display (car args))
7750 (if (pair? (cdr args))
7752 (loop (cdr args)))))
7755 Why does `#!' start a block comment terminated by `!#', instead of the
7756 end of the line? That is the notation SCSH uses, and although we
7757 don't yet support the other SCSH features that motivate that choice,
7758 we would like to be backward-compatible with any existing Guile
7759 scripts once we do. Furthermore, if the path to Guile on your system
7760 is too long for your kernel, you can start the script with this
7764 exec /really/long/path/to/guile -s "$0" ${1+"$@"}
7767 Note that some very old Unix systems don't support the `#!' syntax.
7770 ** You can now run Guile without installing it.
7772 Previous versions of the interactive Guile interpreter (`guile')
7773 couldn't start up unless Guile's Scheme library had been installed;
7774 they used the value of the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH'
7775 later on in the startup process, but not to find the startup code
7776 itself. Now Guile uses `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' in all searches for Scheme
7779 To run Guile without installing it, build it in the normal way, and
7780 then set the environment variable `SCHEME_LOAD_PATH' to a
7781 colon-separated list of directories, including the top-level directory
7782 of the Guile sources. For example, if you unpacked Guile so that the
7783 full filename of this NEWS file is /home/jimb/guile-1.0b3/NEWS, then
7786 export SCHEME_LOAD_PATH=/home/jimb/my-scheme:/home/jimb/guile-1.0b3
7789 ** Guile's read-eval-print loop no longer prints #<unspecified>
7790 results. If the user wants to see this, she can evaluate the
7791 expression (assert-repl-print-unspecified #t), perhaps in her startup
7794 ** Guile no longer shows backtraces by default when an error occurs;
7795 however, it does display a message saying how to get one, and how to
7796 request that they be displayed by default. After an error, evaluate
7798 to see a backtrace, and
7799 (debug-enable 'backtrace)
7800 to see them by default.
7804 * Changes to Guile Scheme:
7806 ** Guile now distinguishes between #f and the empty list.
7808 This is for compatibility with the IEEE standard, the (possibly)
7809 upcoming Revised^5 Report on Scheme, and many extant Scheme
7812 Guile used to have #f and '() denote the same object, to make Scheme's
7813 type system more compatible with Emacs Lisp's. However, the change
7814 caused too much trouble for Scheme programmers, and we found another
7815 way to reconcile Emacs Lisp with Scheme that didn't require this.
7818 ** Guile's delq, delv, delete functions, and their destructive
7819 counterparts, delq!, delv!, and delete!, now remove all matching
7820 elements from the list, not just the first. This matches the behavior
7821 of the corresponding Emacs Lisp functions, and (I believe) the Maclisp
7822 functions which inspired them.
7824 I recognize that this change may break code in subtle ways, but it
7825 seems best to make the change before the FSF's first Guile release,
7829 ** The compiled-library-path function has been deleted from libguile.
7831 ** The facilities for loading Scheme source files have changed.
7833 *** The variable %load-path now tells Guile which directories to search
7834 for Scheme code. Its value is a list of strings, each of which names
7837 *** The variable %load-extensions now tells Guile which extensions to
7838 try appending to a filename when searching the load path. Its value
7839 is a list of strings. Its default value is ("" ".scm").
7841 *** (%search-load-path FILENAME) searches the directories listed in the
7842 value of the %load-path variable for a Scheme file named FILENAME,
7843 with all the extensions listed in %load-extensions. If it finds a
7844 match, then it returns its full filename. If FILENAME is absolute, it
7845 returns it unchanged. Otherwise, it returns #f.
7847 %search-load-path will not return matches that refer to directories.
7849 *** (primitive-load FILENAME :optional CASE-INSENSITIVE-P SHARP)
7850 uses %seach-load-path to find a file named FILENAME, and loads it if
7851 it finds it. If it can't read FILENAME for any reason, it throws an
7854 The arguments CASE-INSENSITIVE-P and SHARP are interpreted as by the
7857 *** load uses the same searching semantics as primitive-load.
7859 *** The functions %try-load, try-load-with-path, %load, load-with-path,
7860 basic-try-load-with-path, basic-load-with-path, try-load-module-with-
7861 path, and load-module-with-path have been deleted. The functions
7862 above should serve their purposes.
7864 *** If the value of the variable %load-hook is a procedure,
7865 `primitive-load' applies its value to the name of the file being
7866 loaded (without the load path directory name prepended). If its value
7867 is #f, it is ignored. Otherwise, an error occurs.
7869 This is mostly useful for printing load notification messages.
7872 ** The function `eval!' is no longer accessible from the scheme level.
7873 We can't allow operations which introduce glocs into the scheme level,
7874 because Guile's type system can't handle these as data. Use `eval' or
7875 `read-and-eval!' (see below) as replacement.
7877 ** The new function read-and-eval! reads an expression from PORT,
7878 evaluates it, and returns the result. This is more efficient than
7879 simply calling `read' and `eval', since it is not necessary to make a
7880 copy of the expression for the evaluator to munge.
7882 Its optional arguments CASE_INSENSITIVE_P and SHARP are interpreted as
7883 for the `read' function.
7886 ** The function `int?' has been removed; its definition was identical
7887 to that of `integer?'.
7889 ** The functions `<?', `<?', `<=?', `=?', `>?', and `>=?'. Code should
7890 use the R4RS names for these functions.
7892 ** The function object-properties no longer returns the hash handle;
7893 it simply returns the object's property list.
7895 ** Many functions have been changed to throw errors, instead of
7896 returning #f on failure. The point of providing exception handling in
7897 the language is to simplify the logic of user code, but this is less
7898 useful if Guile's primitives don't throw exceptions.
7900 ** The function `fileno' has been renamed from `%fileno'.
7902 ** The function primitive-mode->fdes returns #t or #f now, not 1 or 0.
7905 * Changes to Guile's C interface:
7907 ** The library's initialization procedure has been simplified.
7908 scm_boot_guile now has the prototype:
7910 void scm_boot_guile (int ARGC,
7912 void (*main_func) (),
7915 scm_boot_guile calls MAIN_FUNC, passing it CLOSURE, ARGC, and ARGV.
7916 MAIN_FUNC should do all the work of the program (initializing other
7917 packages, reading user input, etc.) before returning. When MAIN_FUNC
7918 returns, call exit (0); this function never returns. If you want some
7919 other exit value, MAIN_FUNC may call exit itself.
7921 scm_boot_guile arranges for program-arguments to return the strings
7922 given by ARGC and ARGV. If MAIN_FUNC modifies ARGC/ARGV, should call
7923 scm_set_program_arguments with the final list, so Scheme code will
7924 know which arguments have been processed.
7926 scm_boot_guile establishes a catch-all catch handler which prints an
7927 error message and exits the process. This means that Guile exits in a
7928 coherent way when system errors occur and the user isn't prepared to
7929 handle it. If the user doesn't like this behavior, they can establish
7930 their own universal catcher in MAIN_FUNC to shadow this one.
7932 Why must the caller do all the real work from MAIN_FUNC? The garbage
7933 collector assumes that all local variables of type SCM will be above
7934 scm_boot_guile's stack frame on the stack. If you try to manipulate
7935 SCM values after this function returns, it's the luck of the draw
7936 whether the GC will be able to find the objects you allocate. So,
7937 scm_boot_guile function exits, rather than returning, to discourage
7938 people from making that mistake.
7940 The IN, OUT, and ERR arguments were removed; there are other
7941 convenient ways to override these when desired.
7943 The RESULT argument was deleted; this function should never return.
7945 The BOOT_CMD argument was deleted; the MAIN_FUNC argument is more
7949 ** Guile's header files should no longer conflict with your system's
7952 In order to compile code which #included <libguile.h>, previous
7953 versions of Guile required you to add a directory containing all the
7954 Guile header files to your #include path. This was a problem, since
7955 Guile's header files have names which conflict with many systems'
7958 Now only <libguile.h> need appear in your #include path; you must
7959 refer to all Guile's other header files as <libguile/mumble.h>.
7960 Guile's installation procedure puts libguile.h in $(includedir), and
7961 the rest in $(includedir)/libguile.
7964 ** Two new C functions, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object,
7965 have been added to the Guile library.
7967 scm_protect_object (OBJ) protects OBJ from the garbage collector.
7968 OBJ will not be freed, even if all other references are dropped,
7969 until someone does scm_unprotect_object (OBJ). Both functions
7972 Note that calls to scm_protect_object do not nest. You can call
7973 scm_protect_object any number of times on a given object, and the
7974 next call to scm_unprotect_object will unprotect it completely.
7976 Basically, scm_protect_object and scm_unprotect_object just
7977 maintain a list of references to things. Since the GC knows about
7978 this list, all objects it mentions stay alive. scm_protect_object
7979 adds its argument to the list; scm_unprotect_object remove its
7980 argument from the list.
7983 ** scm_eval_0str now returns the value of the last expression
7986 ** The new function scm_read_0str reads an s-expression from a
7987 null-terminated string, and returns it.
7989 ** The new function `scm_stdio_to_port' converts a STDIO file pointer
7990 to a Scheme port object.
7992 ** The new function `scm_set_program_arguments' allows C code to set
7993 the value returned by the Scheme `program-arguments' function.
7998 * Guile no longer includes sophisticated Tcl/Tk support.
8000 The old Tcl/Tk support was unsatisfying to us, because it required the
8001 user to link against the Tcl library, as well as Tk and Guile. The
8002 interface was also un-lispy, in that it preserved Tcl/Tk's practice of
8003 referring to widgets by names, rather than exporting widgets to Scheme
8004 code as a special datatype.
8006 In the Usenix Tk Developer's Workshop held in July 1996, the Tcl/Tk
8007 maintainers described some very interesting changes in progress to the
8008 Tcl/Tk internals, which would facilitate clean interfaces between lone
8009 Tk and other interpreters --- even for garbage-collected languages
8010 like Scheme. They expected the new Tk to be publicly available in the
8013 Since it seems that Guile might soon have a new, cleaner interface to
8014 lone Tk, and that the old Guile/Tk glue code would probably need to be
8015 completely rewritten, we (Jim Blandy and Richard Stallman) have
8016 decided not to support the old code. We'll spend the time instead on
8017 a good interface to the newer Tk, as soon as it is available.
8019 Until then, gtcltk-lib provides trivial, low-maintenance functionality.
8022 Copyright information:
8024 Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
8026 Permission is granted to anyone to make or distribute verbatim copies
8027 of this document as received, in any medium, provided that the
8028 copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved,
8029 thus giving the recipient permission to redistribute in turn.
8031 Permission is granted to distribute modified versions
8032 of this document, or of portions of it,
8033 under the above conditions, provided also that they
8034 carry prominent notices stating who last changed them.
8039 paragraph-separate: "[
\f]*$"