;; Welcome to the GDS tutorial! ;; This tutorial teaches the use of GDS by leading you through a set ;; of examples where you actually use GDS, in Emacs, along the way. ;; To get maximum benefit, therefore, you should be reading this ;; tutorial in Emacs. ;; ** GDS setup ;; The first thing to do, if you haven't already, is to load the GDS ;; library into Emacs. The Emacs Lisp expression for this is: (require 'gds) ;; So, if you don't already have this in your .emacs, either add it ;; and then restart Emacs, or evaluate it just for this Emacs session ;; by moving the cursor to just after the closing parenthesis and ;; typing `C-x C-e'. ;; (Note that if you _have_ already loaded GDS, and you type `C-x C-e' ;; after this expression, you will see a *Guile Evaluation* window ;; telling you that the evaluation failed because `require' is ;; unbound. Don't worry; this is not a problem, and the rest of the ;; tutorial should still work just fine.) ;; ** Help ;; GDS makes it easy to access the Guile help system when working on a ;; Scheme program in Emacs. For example, suppose that you are writing ;; code that uses list-ref, and need to remind yourself about ;; list-ref's arguments ... (define (penultimate l) (list-ref ;; Just place the cursor on the word "list-ref" and type `C-h g RET'. ;; Try it now! ;; If GDS is working correctly, a window should have popped up above ;; or below showing the Guile help for list-ref. ;; You can also do an "apropos" search through Guile's help. If you ;; couldn't remember the name list-ref, for example, you could search ;; for anything matching "list" by typing `C-h C-g' and entering ;; "list" at the minibuffer prompt. Try doing this now: you should ;; see a longish list of Guile definitions whose names include "list". ;; As usual in Emacs, you can use `M-PageUp' and `M-PageDown' to ;; conveniently scroll the other window without having to select it. ;; The functions called by `C-h g' and `C-h C-g' are gds-help-symbol ;; and gds-apropos. They both look up the symbol or word at point by ;; default, but that default can be overidden by typing something else ;; at the minibuffer prompt. ;; ** Completion ;; As you are typing Scheme code, you can ask GDS to complete the ;; symbol before point for you, by typing `ESC TAB'. GDS selects ;; possible completions by matching the text so far against all ;; definitions in the Guile environment. (This may be contrasted with ;; the "dabbrev" completion performed by `M-/', which selects possible ;; completions from the contents of Emacs buffers. So, if you are ;; trying to complete "with-ou", to get "with-output-to-string", for ;; example, `ESC TAB' will always work, because with-output-to-string ;; is always defined in Guile's default environment, whereas `M-/' ;; will only work if one of Emacs's buffers happens to contain the ;; full name "with-output-to-string".) ;; To illustrate the idea, here are some partial names that you can ;; try completing. For each one, move the cursor to the end of the ;; line and type `ESC TAB' to try to complete it. list- with-ou with-output-to-s mkst ;; (If you are not familiar with any of the completed definitions, ;; feel free to use `C-h g' to find out about them!) ;; ** Evaluation ;; GDS provides several ways for you to evaluate Scheme code from ;; within Emacs. ;; Just like in Emacs Lisp, a single expression in a buffer can be ;; evaluated using `C-x C-e' or `C-M-x'. For `C-x C-e', the ;; expression is that which ends immediately before point (so that it ;; is useful for evaluating something just after you have typed it). ;; For `C-M-x', the expression is the "top level defun" around point; ;; this means the balanced chunk of code around point whose opening ;; parenthesis is in column 0. ;; Take this code fragment as an example: (let ((x 1) (y 2)) (let ((z (atan x y))) (display "Arctangent is: ") (display z) (newline) z)) ;; If you move the cursor to the end of the (display z) line and type ;; `C-x C-e', the code evaluated is just "(display z)", which normally ;; produces an error, because z is not defined in the usual Guile ;; environment. If, however, you type `C-M-x' with the cursor in the ;; same place, the code evaluated is the whole "(let ((x 1) (y 2)) ;; ...)" kaboodle, because that is the most recent expression before ;; point that starts in column 0. ;; Try these now. The Guile Evaluation window should pop up again, ;; and show you: ;; - the expression that was evaluated (probably abbreviated) ;; - the module that it was evaluated in ;; - anything that the code wrote to its standard output ;; - the return value(s) of the evaluation. ;; Following the convention of the Emacs Lisp and Guile manuals, ;; return values are indicated by the symbol "=>". ;; To see what happens when an expression has multiple return values, ;; try evaluating this one: (values 'a (begin (display "hello world\n") 'b) 'c) ;; You can also evaluate a region of a buffer using `C-c C-r'. If the ;; code in the region consists of multiple expressions, GDS evaluates ;; them sequentially. For example, try selecting the following three ;; lines and typing `C-c C-r'. (display "Arctangent is: ") (display z) (newline) ;; If the code in the region evaluated isn't syntactically balanced, ;; GDS will indicate a read error, for example for this code: (let ((z (atan x y))) (display "Arctangent is: ") (display z) (newline) ;; Finally, if you want to evaluate something quickly that is not in a ;; buffer, you can use `C-c C-e' and type the code to evaluate at the ;; minibuffer prompt. The results are popped up in the same way as ;; for code from a buffer. ;; ** Breakpoints ;; Before evaluating Scheme code from an Emacs buffer, you may want to ;; set some breakpoints in it. With GDS you can set breakpoints in ;; Scheme code by typing `C-x SPC'. ;; ;; To see how this works, select the second line of the following code ;; (the `(format ...)' line) and type `C-x SPC'. (for-each (lambda (x) (format #t "~A cubed is ~A\n" x (* x x x))) (iota 6)) ;; The two opening parentheses in that line should now be highlighted ;; in red, to show that breakpoints have been set at the start of the ;; `(format ...)' and `(* x x x)' expressions. Then evaluate the ;; whole for-each expression by typing `C-M-x' ... ;; ;; In the upper half of your Emacs, a buffer appears showing you the ;; Scheme stack. ;; ;; In the lower half, the `(format ...)' expression is highlighted. ;; ;; What has happened is that Guile started evaluating the for-each ;; code, but then hit the breakpoint that you set on the start of the ;; format expression. Guile therefore pauses the evaluation at that ;; point and passes the stack (which encapsulates everything that is ;; interesting about the state of Guile at that point) to GDS. You ;; can then explore the stack and decide how to tell Guile to ;; continue. ;; ;; - If you move your mouse over any of the identifiers in the ;; highlighted code, a help echo (or tooltip) will appear to tell ;; you that identifier's current value. (Note though that this only ;; works when the stack buffer is selected. So if you have switched ;; to this buffer in order to scroll down and read these lines, you ;; will need to switch back to the stack buffer before trying this ;; out.) ;; ;; - In the stack buffer, the "=>" on the left shows you that the top ;; frame is currently selected. You can move up and down the stack ;; by pressing the up and down arrows (or `u' and `d'). As you do ;; this, GDS will change the highlight in the lower window to show ;; the code that corresponds to the selected stack frame. ;; ;; - You can evaluate an arbitrary expression in the local environment ;; of the selected stack frame by typing `e' followed by the ;; expression. ;; ;; - You can show various bits of information about the selected frame ;; by typing `I', `A' and `S'. Feel free to try these now, to see ;; what they do. ;; ;; You also have control over the continuing evaluation of this code. ;; Here are some of the things you can do - please try them as you ;; read. ;; ;; - `g' tells Guile to continue execution normally. In this case ;; that means that evaluation will continue until it hits the next ;; breakpoint, which is on the `(* x x x)' expression. ;; ;; - `SPC' tells Guile to continue until the next significant event in ;; the same source file as the selected frame. A "significant ;; event" means either beginning to evaluate an expression in the ;; relevant file, or completing such an evaluation, in which case ;; GDS tells you the value that it is returning. Pressing `SPC' ;; repeatedly is a nice way to step through all the details of the ;; code in a given file, but stepping over calls that involve code ;; from other files. ;; ;; - `o' tells Guile to continue execution until the selected stack ;; frame completes, and then to show its return value. ;; Local Variables: ;; mode: scheme ;; End: