scm

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SCM

This manual is for SCM (version 5f3, February 2020), an implementation of the algorithmic language Scheme.

Copyright © 1990-2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.”

Table of Contents


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1 Overview

SCM is a portable Scheme implementation written in C. SCM provides a machine independent platform for [JACAL], a symbolic algebra system. SCM supports and requires the SLIB Scheme library. SCM, SLIB, and JACAL are GNU projects.


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1.1 Features

  • Conforms to Revised^5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme [R5RS] and the [IEEE] P1178 specification.
  • Support for [SICP], [R2RS], [R3RS], and [R5RS] scheme code.
  • Runs under Amiga, Atari-ST, MacOS, MS-DOS, OS/2, NOS/VE, Unicos, VMS, Unix and similar systems. Supports ASCII and EBCDIC character sets.
  • Is fully documented in TeXinfo form, allowing documentation to be generated in info, TeX, html, nroff, and troff formats.
  • Supports inexact real and complex numbers, 30 bit immediate integers and large precision integers.
  • Many Common Lisp functions: logand, logor, logxor, lognot, ash, logcount, integer-length, bit-extract, defmacro, macroexpand, macroexpand1, gentemp, defvar, force-output, software-type, get-decoded-time, get-internal-run-time, get-internal-real-time, delete-file, rename-file, copy-tree, acons, and eval.
  • Char-code-limit, most-positive-fixnum, most-negative-fixnum, and internal-time-units-per-second constants. slib:features and *load-pathname* variables.
  • Arrays and bit-vectors. String ports and software emulation ports. I/O extensions providing ANSI C and POSIX.1 facilities.
  • Interfaces to standard libraries including REGEX string regular expression matching and the CURSES screen management package.
  • Available add-on packages including an interactive debugger, database, X-window graphics, BGI graphics, Motif, and Open-Windows packages.
  • The Hobbit compiler and dynamic linking of compiled modules.
  • User definable responses to interrupts and errors, Process-syncronization primitives. Setable levels of monitoring and timing information printed interactively (the verbose function). Restart, quit, and exec.

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1.2 Authors

Aubrey Jaffer (agj@alum.mit.edu)

Most of SCM.

Radey Shouman

Arrays, gsubrs, compiled closures, records, Ecache, syntax-rules macros, and safeports.

Jerry D. Hedden

Real and Complex functions. Fast mixed type arithmetics.

Hugh Secker-Walker

Syntax checking and memoization of special forms by evaluator. Storage allocation strategy and parameters.

George Carrette

Siod, written by George Carrette, was the starting point for SCM. The major innovations taken from Siod are the evaluator’s use of the C-stack and being able to garbage collect off the C-stack (see Garbage Collection).

There are many other contributors to SCM. They are acknowledged in the file ChangeLog, a log of changes that have been made to scm.


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1.3 Copyright

Authors have assigned their SCM copyrights to:


Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

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1.3.1 The SCM License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.


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1.3.3 GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.3, 3 November 2008
Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
http://fsf.org/

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
  1. PREAMBLE

    The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document free in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.

    This License is a kind of “copyleft”, which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.

    We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.

  2. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS

    This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The “Document”, below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as “you”. You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright law.

    A “Modified Version” of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.

    A “Secondary Section” is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document’s overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.

    The “Invariant Sections” are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero Invariant Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none.

    The “Cover Texts” are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. A Front-Cover Text may be at most 5 words, and a Back-Cover Text may be at most 25 words.

    A “Transparent” copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, that is suitable for revising the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. An image format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text. A copy that is not “Transparent” is called “Opaque”.

    Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML, PostScript or PDF designed for human modification. Examples of transparent image formats include PNG, XCF and JPG. Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML, PostScript or PDF produced by some word processors for output purposes only.

    The “Title Page” means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, “Title Page” means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work’s title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.

    The “publisher” means any person or entity that distributes copies of the Document to the public.

    A section “Entitled XYZ” means a named subunit of the Document whose title either is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in another language. (Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below, such as “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, “Endorsements”, or “History”.) To “Preserve the Title” of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a section “Entitled XYZ” according to this definition.

    The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that this License applies to the Document. These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to be included by reference in this License, but only as regards disclaiming warranties: any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no effect on the meaning of this License.

  3. VERBATIM COPYING

    You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.

    You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies.

  4. COPYING IN QUANTITY

    If you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed covers) of the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Document’s license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.

    If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.

    If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. If you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.

    It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.

  5. MODIFICATIONS

    You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:

    1. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
    2. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this requirement.
    3. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the publisher.
    4. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
    5. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices.
    6. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.
    7. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document’s license notice.
    8. Include an unaltered copy of this License.
    9. Preserve the section Entitled “History”, Preserve its Title, and add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If there is no section Entitled “History” in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence.
    10. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the “History” section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.
    11. For any section Entitled “Acknowledgements” or “Dedications”, Preserve the Title of the section, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.
    12. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles.
    13. Delete any section Entitled “Endorsements”. Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version.
    14. Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled “Endorsements” or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section.
    15. Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers.

    If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version’s license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.

    You may add a section Entitled “Endorsements”, provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties—for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.

    You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.

    The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.

  6. COMBINING DOCUMENTS

    You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.

    The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.

    In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled “History” in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled “History”; likewise combine any sections Entitled “Acknowledgements”, and any sections Entitled “Dedications”. You must delete all sections Entitled “Endorsements.”

  7. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS

    You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.

    You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.

  8. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

    A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation’s users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.

    If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Document’s Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.

  9. TRANSLATION

    Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will prevail.

    If a section in the Document is Entitled “Acknowledgements”, “Dedications”, or “History”, the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require changing the actual title.

  10. TERMINATION

    You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute it is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License.

    However, if you cease all violation of this License, then your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated (a) provisionally, unless and until the copyright holder explicitly and finally terminates your license, and (b) permanently, if the copyright holder fails to notify you of the violation by some reasonable means prior to 60 days after the cessation.

    Moreover, your license from a particular copyright holder is reinstated permanently if the copyright holder notifies you of the violation by some reasonable means, this is the first time you have received notice of violation of this License (for any work) from that copyright holder, and you cure the violation prior to 30 days after your receipt of the notice.

    Termination of your rights under this section does not terminate the licenses of parties who have received copies or rights from you under this License. If your rights have been terminated and not permanently reinstated, receipt of a copy of some or all of the same material does not give you any rights to use it.

  11. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

    The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.

    Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License “or any later version” applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document specifies that a proxy can decide which future versions of this License can be used, that proxy’s public statement of acceptance of a version permanently authorizes you to choose that version for the Document.

  12. RELICENSING

    “Massive Multiauthor Collaboration Site” (or “MMC Site”) means any World Wide Web server that publishes copyrightable works and also provides prominent facilities for anybody to edit those works. A public wiki that anybody can edit is an example of such a server. A “Massive Multiauthor Collaboration” (or “MMC”) contained in the site means any set of copyrightable works thus published on the MMC site.

    “CC-BY-SA” means the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license published by Creative Commons Corporation, a not-for-profit corporation with a principal place of business in San Francisco, California, as well as future copyleft versions of that license published by that same organization.

    “Incorporate” means to publish or republish a Document, in whole or in part, as part of another Document.

    An MMC is “eligible for relicensing” if it is licensed under this License, and if all works that were first published under this License somewhere other than this MMC, and subsequently incorporated in whole or in part into the MMC, (1) had no cover texts or invariant sections, and (2) were thus incorporated prior to November 1, 2008.

    The operator of an MMC Site may republish an MMC contained in the site under CC-BY-SA on the same site at any time before August 1, 2009, provided the MMC is eligible for relicensing.

ADDENDUM: How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just after the title page:

  Copyright (C)  year  your name.
  Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3
  or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
  with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
  Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the section entitled ``GNU
  Free Documentation License''.

If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace the “with…Texts.” line with this:

    with the Invariant Sections being list their titles, with
    the Front-Cover Texts being list, and with the Back-Cover Texts
    being list.

If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of the three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.

If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license, such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.


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1.4 Bibliography

[IEEE]

IEEE Standard 1178-1990. IEEE Standard for the Scheme Programming Language. IEEE, New York, 1991.

[R4RS]

William Clinger and Jonathan Rees, Editors. Revised(4) Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme. ACM Lisp Pointers Volume IV, Number 3 (July-September 1991), pp. 1-55.

[R5RS]

Richard Kelsey and William Clinger and Jonathan (Rees, editors) Revised(5) Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme. Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation Volume 11, Number 1 (1998), pp. 7-105, and ACM SIGPLAN Notices 33(9), September 1998.

[Exrename]

William Clinger Hygienic Macros Through Explicit Renaming Lisp Pointers Volume IV, Number 4 (December 1991), pp 17-23.

[SICP]

Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1985.

[Simply]

Brian Harvey and Matthew Wright. Simply Scheme: Introducing Computer Science MIT Press, 1994 ISBN 0-262-08226-8

[SchemePrimer]

犬飼大(Dai Inukai) 入門Scheme 1999年12月初版 ISBN4-87966-954-7

[SLIB]

Todd R. Eigenschink, Dave Love, and Aubrey Jaffer. SLIB, The Portable Scheme Library. Version 2c8, June 2000.

[JACAL]

Aubrey Jaffer. JACAL Symbolic Mathematics System. Version 1b0, Sep 1999.

scm.texi
scm.info

Documentation of scm extensions (beyond Scheme standards). Documentation on the internal representation and how to extend or include scm in other programs.

Xlibscm.texi
Xlibscm.info

Documentation of the Xlib - SCM Language X Interface.


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2 Installing SCM

SCM runs on a wide variety of platforms. “Distributions” is the starting point for all platforms. The process described in “GNU configure and make” will work on most Unix and GNU/Linux platforms. If it works for you, then you may skip the later sections of “Installing SCM”.


2.1 Distributions

The SCM homepage contains links to precompiled binaries and source distributions.

Downloads and instructions for installing the precompiled binaries are at http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/SCM#QuickStart.

If there is no precompiled binary for your platform, you may be able to build from the source distribution. The rest of these instructions deal with building and installing SCM and SLIB from sources.

Download (both SCM and SLIB of) either the last release or current development snapshot from http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/SCM#BuildFromSource.

Unzip both the SCM and SLIB zips. For example, if you are working in /usr/local/src/, this will create directories /usr/local/src/scm/ and /usr/local/src/slib/.


2.2 GNU configure and make

scm/configure and slib/configure are Shell scripts which create the files scm/config.status and slib/config.status on Unix and MinGW systems.

The config.status files are used (included) by the Makefile to control where the packages will be installed by make install. With GNU shell (bash) and utilities, the following commands should build and install SCM and SLIB:

bash$ (cd slib; ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/)
bash$ (cd scm
> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/
> make scmlit
> sudo make all
> sudo make install)
bash$ (cd slib; sudo make install)

If the install commands worked, skip to Testing.

If configure doesn’t work on your system, make scm/config.status and slib/config.status be empty files.

For additional help on using the configure script, run ‘./configure --help.

make all’ will attempt to create a dumped executable (see Saving Executable Images), which has very small startup latency. If that fails, it will try to compile an ordinary ‘scm’ executable.

Note that the compilation output may contain error messages; be concerned only if the ‘make install’ transcripts contain errors.

sudo’ runs the command after it as user root. On recent GNU/Linux systems, dumping requires that ‘make all’ be run as user root; hence the use of ‘sudo’.

make install’ requires root privileges if you are installing to standard Unix locations as specified to (or defaulted by) ‘./configure’. Note that this is independent of whether you did ‘sudo make all or ‘make all.


2.2.1 Making scmlit

The SCM distribution Makefile contains rules for making scmlit, a “bare-bones” version of SCM sufficient for running build. build is a Scheme program used to compile (or create scripts to compile) full featured versions of SCM (see Building SCM). To create scmlit, run ‘make scmlit in the scm/ directory.

Makefiles are not portable to the majority of platforms. If you need to compile SCM without ‘scmlit’, there are several ways to proceed:

  • Use the build web page to create custom batch scripts for compiling SCM.
  • Use SCM on a different platform to run build to create a script to build SCM;
  • Use another implementation of Scheme to run build to create a script to build SCM;
  • Create your own script or Makefile.

Finding SLIB

If you didn’t create scmlit using ‘make scmlit’, then you must create a file named scm/require.scm. For most installations, scm/require.scm can just be copied from scm/requires.scm, which is part of the SCM distribution.

If, when executing ‘scmlit’ or ‘scm’, you get a message like:

ERROR: "LOAD couldn't find file " "/usr/local/src/scm/require"

then create a file require.scm in the SCM implementation-vicinity (this is the same directory as where the file Init5f3.scm is). require.scm should have the contents:

(define (library-vicinity) "/usr/local/lib/slib/")

where the pathname string /usr/local/lib/slib/ is to be replaced by the pathname into which you unzipped (or installed) SLIB.

Alternatively, you can set the (shell) environment variable SCHEME_LIBRARY_PATH to the pathname of the SLIB directory (see Environment Variables). If set, this environment variable overrides scm/require.scm.

Absolute pathnames are recommended here; if you use a relative pathname, SLIB can get confused when the working directory is changed (see chmod). The way to specify a relative pathname is to append it to the implementation-vicinity, which is absolute:

(define library-vicinity
  (let ((lv (string-append (implementation-vicinity) "../slib/")))
    (lambda () lv)))

2.2.2 Makefile targets

Each of the following four ‘make’ targets creates an executable named scm. Each target takes its build options from a file with an ‘.opt’ suffix. If that options file doesn’t exist, making that target will create the file with the ‘-F’ features: cautious, bignums, arrays, inexact, engineering-notation, and dynamic-linking. Once that ‘.opt’ file exists, you can edit it to your taste and it will be preserved.

make scm4

Produces a R4RS executable named scm lacking hygienic macros (but with defmacro). The build options are taken from scm4.opt. If build or the executable fails, try removing ‘dynamic-linking’ from scm4.opt.

make scm5

R5RS; like ‘make scm4’ but with ‘-F macro’. The build options are taken from scm5.opt. If build or the executable fails, try removing ‘dynamic-linking’ from scm5.opt.

make dscm4

Produces a R4RS executable named udscm4, which it starts and dumps to a low startup latency executable named scm. The build options are taken from udscm4.opt.

If the build fails, then ‘build scm4’ instead. If the dumped executable fails to run, then send me a bug report (and use ‘build scm4 until the problem with dump is corrected).

make dscm5

Like ‘make dscm4’ but with ‘-F macro’. The build options are taken from udscm5.opt.

If the build fails, then ‘build scm5’ instead. If the dumped executable fails to run, then send me a bug report (and use ‘build scm5 until the problem with dump is corrected).

If the above builds fail because of ‘-F dynamic-linking, then (because they can’t be dynamically linked) you will likely want to add some other features to the build’s ‘.opt’ file. See the ‘-F’ build option in Build Options.

If dynamic-linking is working, then you will likely want to compile most of the modules as DLLs. The build options for compiling DLLs are in dlls.opt.

make x.so

The Xlib module; SCM Language X Interface in Xlibscm.

make myturtle

Creates a DLL named turtlegr.so which is a simple graphics API.

make wbscm.so

The wb module; B-tree database implementation in wb. Compiling this requires that wb source be in a peer directory to scm.

make dlls

Compiles all the distributed library modules, but not wbscm.so. Many of the module compiles are recursively invoked in such a way that failure of one (which could be due to a system library not being installed) doesn’t cause the top-level ‘make dlls’ to fail. If ‘make dlls’ fails as a whole, it is time to submit a bug report (see Reporting Problems).


2.3 Building SCM

The file build loads the file build.scm, which constructs a relational database of how to compile and link SCM executables. build.scm has information for the platforms which SCM has been ported to (of which I have been notified). Some of this information is old, incorrect, or incomplete. Send corrections and additions to agj@alum.mit.edu.


Next: , Previous: , Up: Building SCM   [Contents][Index]

2.3.1 Invoking Build

This section teaches how to use build, a Scheme program for creating compilation scripts to produce SCM executables and library modules. The options accepted by ‘build’ are documented in Build Options.

Use the any method if you encounter problems with the other two methods (MS-DOS, Unix).

MS-DOS

From the SCM source directory, type ‘build’ followed by up to 9 command line arguments.

Unix

From the SCM source directory, type ‘./build’ followed by command line arguments.

any

From the SCM source directory, start ‘scm’ or ‘scmlit’ and type (load "build"). Alternatively, start ‘scm’ or ‘scmlit’ with the command line argument ‘-ilbuild’. This method will also work for MS-DOS and Unix.

After loading various SLIB modules, the program will print:

type (b "build <command-line>") to build
type (b*) to enter build command loop

The ‘b*’ procedure enters into a build shell where you can enter commands (with or without the ‘build’). Blank lines are ignored. To create a build script with all defaults type ‘build’.

If the build-shell encouters an error, you can reenter the build-shell by typing ‘(b*)’. To exit scm type ‘(quit)’.

Here is a transcript of an interactive (b*) build-shell.

bash$ scmlit
SCM version 5e7, Copyright (C) 1990-2006 Free Software Foundation.
SCM comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `(terms)'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `(terms)' for details.
> (load "build")
;loading build
;  loading /home/jaffer/slib/getparam
;    loading /home/jaffer/slib/coerce
...
;  done loading build.scm
type (b "build <command-line>") to build
type (b*) to enter build command loop
;done loading build
#<unspecified>
> (b*)
;loading /home/jaffer/slib/comparse
;done loading /home/jaffer/slib/comparse.scm
build> -t exe
#! /bin/sh
# unix (linux) script created by SLIB/batch Wed Oct 26 17:14:23 2011
# [-p linux]
# ================ Write file with C defines
rm -f scmflags.h
echo '#define IMPLINIT "Init5e7.scm"'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define BIGNUMS'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define FLOATS'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define ARRAYS'>>scmflags.h
# ================ Compile C source files
gcc -c continue.c scm.c scmmain.c findexec.c script.c time.c repl.c scl.c eval.c sys.c subr.c debug.c unif.c rope.c
# ================ Link C object files
gcc -rdynamic -o scm continue.o scm.o scmmain.o findexec.o script.o time.o repl.o scl.o eval.o sys.o subr.o debug.o unif.o rope.o -lm -lc
"scm"
build> -t exe -w myscript.sh
"scm"
build> (quit)

No compilation was done. The ‘-t exe’ command shows the compile script. The ‘-t exe -w myscript.sh’ line creates a file myscript.sh containing the compile script. To actually compile and link it, type ‘./myscript.sh’.

Invoking build without the ‘-F’ option will build or create a shell script with the arrays, inexact, and bignums options as defaults. Invoking ‘build’ with ‘-F lit -o scmlit’ will make a script for compiling ‘scmlit’.

bash$ ./build
-|
#! /bin/sh
# unix (linux) script created by SLIB/batch 
# ================ Write file with C defines
rm -f scmflags.h
echo '#define IMPLINIT "Init5f3.scm"'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define BIGNUMS'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define FLOATS'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define ARRAYS'>>scmflags.h
# ================ Compile C source files
gcc -O2 -c continue.c scm.c scmmain.c findexec.c script.c time.c repl.c scl.c eval.c sys.c subr.c debug.c unif.c rope.c
# ================ Link C object files
gcc -rdynamic -o scm continue.o scm.o scmmain.o findexec.o script.o time.o repl.o scl.o eval.o sys.o subr.o debug.o unif.o rope.o -lm -lc

To cross compile for another platform, invoke build with the ‘-p’ or ‘--platform=’ option. This will create a script for the platform named in the ‘-p’ or ‘--platform=’ option.

bash$ ./build -o scmlit -p darwin -F lit
-|
#! /bin/sh
# unix (darwin) script created by SLIB/batch 
# ================ Write file with C defines
rm -f scmflags.h
echo '#define IMPLINIT "Init5f3.scm"'>>scmflags.h
# ================ Compile C source files
cc -O3 -c continue.c scm.c scmmain.c findexec.c script.c time.c repl.c scl.c eval.c sys.c subr.c debug.c unif.c rope.c
# ================ Link C object files
mv -f scmlit scmlit~
cc -o scmlit continue.o scm.o scmmain.o findexec.o script.o time.o repl.o scl.o eval.o sys.o subr.o debug.o unif.o rope.o

2.3.2 Build Options

The options to build specify what, where, and how to build a SCM program or dynamically linked module. These options are unrelated to the SCM command line options.

Build Option: -p platform-name
Build Option: ---platform=platform-name

specifies that the compilation should be for a computer/operating-system combination called platform-name. Note The case of platform-name is distinguised. The current platform-names are all lower-case.

The platforms defined by table platform in build.scm are:

Table: platform
name              processor         operating-system  compiler          
#f                processor-family  operating-system  #f                
symbol            processor-family  operating-system  symbol            
symbol            symbol            symbol            symbol            
================= ================= ================= ================= 
*unknown*         *unknown*         unix              cc                
acorn-unixlib     acorn             *unknown*         cc                
aix               powerpc           aix               cc                
alpha-elf         alpha             unix              cc                
alpha-linux       alpha             linux             gcc               
amiga-aztec       m68000            amiga             cc                
amiga-dice-c      m68000            amiga             dcc               
amiga-gcc         m68000            amiga             gcc               
amiga-sas         m68000            amiga             lc                
atari-st-gcc      m68000            atari-st          gcc               
atari-st-turbo-c  m68000            atari-st          tcc               
borland-c         i8086             ms-dos            bcc               
darwin            powerpc           unix              cc                
djgpp             i386              ms-dos            gcc               
freebsd           *unknown*         unix              cc                
gcc               *unknown*         unix              gcc               
gnu-win32         i386              unix              gcc               
highc             i386              ms-dos            hc386             
hp-ux             hp-risc           hp-ux             cc                
irix              mips              irix              gcc               
linux             *unknown*         linux             gcc               
linux-aout        i386              linux             gcc               
linux-ia64        ia64              linux             gcc               
microsoft-c       i8086             ms-dos            cl                
microsoft-c-nt    i386              ms-dos            cl                
microsoft-quick-c i8086             ms-dos            qcl               
ms-dos            i8086             ms-dos            cc                
netbsd            *unknown*         unix              gcc               
openbsd           *unknown*         unix              gcc               
os/2-cset         i386              os/2              icc               
os/2-emx          i386              os/2              gcc               
osf1              alpha             unix              cc                
plan9-8           i386              plan9             8c                
sunos             sparc             sunos             cc                
svr4              *unknown*         unix              cc                
svr4-gcc-sun-ld   sparc             sunos             gcc               
turbo-c           i8086             ms-dos            tcc               
unicos            cray              unicos            cc                
unix              *unknown*         unix              cc                
vms               vax               vms               cc                
vms-gcc           vax               vms               gcc               
watcom-9.0        i386              ms-dos            wcc386p           
Build Option: -f pathname

specifies that the build options contained in pathname be spliced into the argument list at this point. The use of option files can separate functional features from platform-specific ones.

The Makefile calls out builds with the options in ‘.opt’ files:

dlls.opt

Options for Makefile targets dlls, myturtle, and x.so.

gdb.opt

Options for udgdbscm and gdbscm.

libscm.opt

Options for libscm.a.

pg.opt

Options for pgscm, which instruments C functions.

udscm4.opt

Options for targets udscm4 and dscm4 (scm).

udscm5.opt

Options for targets udscm5 and dscm5 (scm).

The Makefile creates options files it depends on only if they do not already exist.

Build Option: -o filename
Build Option: ---outname=filename

specifies that the compilation should produce an executable or object name of filename. The default is ‘scm’. Executable suffixes will be added if neccessary, e.g. ‘scm’ ⇒ ‘scm.exe’.

Build Option: -l libname
Build Option: ---libraries=libname

specifies that the libname should be linked with the executable produced. If compile flags or include directories (‘-I’) are needed, they are automatically supplied for compilations. The ‘c’ library is always included. SCM features specify any libraries they need; so you shouldn’t need this option often.

Build Option: -D definition
Build Option: ---defines=definition

specifies that the definition should be made in any C source compilations. If compile flags or include directories (‘-I’) are needed, they are automatically supplied for compilations. SCM features specify any flags they need; so you shouldn’t need this option often.

Build Option: ---compiler-options=flag

specifies that that flag will be put on compiler command-lines.

Build Option: ---linker-options=flag

specifies that that flag will be put on linker command-lines.

Build Option: -s pathname
Build Option: ---scheme-initial=pathname

specifies that pathname should be the default location of the SCM initialization file Init5f3.scm. SCM tries several likely locations before resorting to pathname (see File-System Habitat). If not specified, the current directory (where build is building) is used.

Build Option: -c pathname
Build Option: ---c-source-files=pathname

specifies that the C source files pathname … are to be compiled.

Build Option: -j pathname
Build Option: ---object-files=pathname

specifies that the object files pathname … are to be linked.

Build Option: -i call
Build Option: ---initialization=call

specifies that the C functions call … are to be invoked during initialization.

Build Option: -t build-what
Build Option: ---type=build-what

specifies in general terms what sort of thing to build. The choices are:

exe

executable program.

lib

library module.

dlls

archived dynamically linked library object files.

dll

dynamically linked library object file.

The default is to build an executable.

Build Option: -h batch-syntax
Build Option: --batch-dialect=batch-syntax

specifies how to build. The default is to create a batch file for the host system. The SLIB file batch.scm knows how to create batch files for:

  • unix
  • dos
  • vms
  • amigaos (was amigados)
  • system

    This option executes the compilation and linking commands through the use of the system procedure.

  • *unknown*

    This option outputs Scheme code.

Build Option: -w batch-filename
Build Option: --script-name=batch-filename

specifies where to write the build script. The default is to display it on (current-output-port).

Build Option: -F feature
Build Option: ---features=feature

specifies to build the given features into the executable. The defined features are:

array

Alias for ARRAYS

array-for-each

array-map! and array-for-each (arrays must also be featured).

arrays

Use if you want arrays, uniform-arrays and uniform-vectors.

bignums

Large precision integers.

byte

Treating strings as byte-vectors.

byte-number

Byte/number conversions

careful-interrupt-masking

Define this for extra checking of interrupt masking and some simple checks for proper use of malloc and free. This is for debugging C code in sys.c, eval.c, repl.c and makes the interpreter several times slower than usual.

cautious

Normally, the number of arguments arguments to interpreted closures (from LAMBDA) are checked if the function part of a form is not a symbol or only the first time the form is executed if the function part is a symbol. defining ‘reckless’ disables any checking. If you want to have SCM always check the number of arguments to interpreted closures define feature ‘cautious’.

cheap-continuations

If you only need straight stack continuations, executables compile with this feature will run faster and use less storage than not having it. Machines with unusual stacks need this. Also, if you incorporate new C code into scm which uses VMS system services or library routines (which need to unwind the stack in an ordrly manner) you may need to use this feature.

compiled-closure

Use if you want to use compiled closures.

curses

For the curses screen management package.

debug

Turns on the features ‘cautious’ and ‘careful-interrupt-masking’; uses -g flags for debugging SCM source code.

differ

Sequence comparison

dont-memoize-locals

SCM normally converts references to local variables to ILOCs, which make programs run faster. If SCM is badly broken, try using this option to disable the MEMOIZE_LOCALS feature.

dump

Convert a running scheme program into an executable file.

dynamic-linking

Be able to load compiled files while running.

edit-line

interface to the editline or GNU readline library.

engineering-notation

Use if you want floats to display in engineering notation (exponents always multiples of 3) instead of scientific notation.

generalized-c-arguments

make_gsubr for arbitrary (< 11) arguments to C functions.

i/o-extensions

Commonly available I/O extensions: exec, line I/O, file positioning, file delete and rename, and directory functions.

inexact

Use if you want floating point numbers.

lit

Lightweight – no features

macro

C level support for hygienic and referentially transparent macros (syntax-rules macros).

mysql

Client connections to the mysql databases.

no-heap-shrink

Use if you want segments of unused heap to not be freed up after garbage collection. This may increase time in GC for *very* large working sets.

none

No features

posix

Posix functions available on all Unix-like systems. fork and process functions, user and group IDs, file permissions, and link.

reckless

If your scheme code runs without any errors you can disable almost all error checking by compiling all files with ‘reckless’.

record

The Record package provides a facility for user to define their own record data types. See SLIB for documentation.

regex

String regular expression matching.

rev2-procedures

These procedures were specified in the Revised^2 Report on Scheme but not in R4RS.

sicp

Use if you want to run code from:

Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman with Julie Sussman. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 1985.

Differences from R5RS are:

  • (eq? ’() ’#f)
  • (define a 25) returns the symbol a.
  • (set! a 36) returns 36.
single-precision-only

Use if you want all inexact real numbers to be single precision. This only has an effect if SINGLES is also defined (which is the default). This does not affect complex numbers.

socket

BSD socket interface. Socket addr functions require inexacts or bignums for 32-bit precision.

tick-interrupts

Use if you want the ticks and ticks-interrupt functions.

turtlegr

Turtle graphics calls for both Borland-C and X11 from sjm@ee.tut.fi.

unix

Those unix features which have not made it into the Posix specs: nice, acct, lstat, readlink, symlink, mknod and sync.

wb

WB database with relational wrapper.

wb-no-threads

no-comment

windows

Microsoft Windows executable.

x

Alias for Xlib feature.

xlib

Interface to Xlib graphics routines.


Previous: , Up: Building SCM   [Contents][Index]

2.3.3 Compiling and Linking Custom Files

A correspondent asks:

How can we link in our own c files to the SCM interpreter so that we can add our own functionality? (e.g. we have a bunch of tcp functions we want access to). Would this involve changing build.scm or the Makefile or both?

(see Changing Scm has instructions describing the C code format). Suppose a C file foo.c has functions you wish to add to SCM. To compile and link your file at compile time, use the ‘-c’ and ‘-i’ options to build:

bash$ ./build -c foo.c -i init_foo
-|
#! /bin/sh
rm -f scmflags.h
echo '#define IMPLINIT "/home/jaffer/scm/Init5f3.scm"'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define COMPILED_INITS init_foo();'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define BIGNUMS'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define FLOATS'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define ARRAYS'>>scmflags.h
gcc -O2 -c continue.c scm.c findexec.c script.c time.c repl.c scl.c \
        eval.c sys.c subr.c unif.c rope.c foo.c
gcc -rdynamic -o scm continue.o scm.o findexec.o script.o time.o \
        repl.o scl.o eval.o sys.o subr.o unif.o rope.o foo.o -lm -lc

To make a dynamically loadable object file use the -t dll option:

bash$ ./build -t dll -c foo.c
-|
#! /bin/sh
rm -f scmflags.h
echo '#define IMPLINIT "/home/jaffer/scm/Init5f3.scm"'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define BIGNUMS'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define FLOATS'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define ARRAYS'>>scmflags.h
echo '#define DLL'>>scmflags.h
gcc -O2 -fpic -c foo.c
gcc -shared -o foo.so foo.o -lm -lc

Once foo.c compiles correctly (and your SCM build supports dynamic-loading), you can load the compiled file with the Scheme command (load "./foo.so"). See Configure Module Catalog for how to add a compiled dll file to SLIB’s catalog.


Next: , Previous: , Up: Installing SCM   [Contents][Index]

2.4 Saving Executable Images

In SCM, the ability to save running program images is called dump (see Dump). In order to make dump available to SCM, build with feature ‘dump’. dumped executables are compatible with dynamic linking.

Most of the code for dump is taken from emacs-19.34/src/unex*.c. No modifications to the emacs source code were required to use unexelf.c. Dump has not been ported to all platforms. If unexec.c or unexelf.c don’t work for you, try using the appropriate unex*.c file from emacs.

The ‘dscm4’ and ‘dscm5’ targets in the SCM Makefile save images from udscm4 and udscm5 executables respectively.

Address space layout randomization interferes with dump. Here are the fixes for various operating-systems:

Fedora-Core-1

Remove the ‘#’ from the line ‘#SETARCH = setarch i386’ in the Makefile.

Fedora-Core-3

http://jamesthornton.com/writing/emacs-compile.html [For FC3] combreloc has become the default for recent GNU ld, which breaks the unexec/undump on all versions of both Emacs and XEmacs...

Override by adding the following to udscm5.opt: ‘--linker-options="-z nocombreloc"

Linux Kernels later than 2.6.11

http://www.opensubscriber.com/message/emacs-devel@gnu.org/1007118.html

mentions the exec-shield feature. Kernels later than 2.6.11 must do (as root):

echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space

before dumping. Makefile has this randomize_va_space stuffing scripted for targets ‘dscm4’ and ‘dscm5’. You must either set randomize_va_space to 0 or run as root to dump.

OS-X 10.6

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man1/dyld.1.html

The dynamic linker uses the following environment variables. They affect any program that uses the dynamic linker.

DYLD_NO_PIE

Causes dyld to not randomize the load addresses of images in a process where the main executable was built position independent. This can be helpful when trying to reproduce and debug a problem in a PIE.


2.5 Installation

Once scmlit, scm, and dlls have been built, these commands will install them to the locations specified when you ran ‘./configure’:

bash$ (cd scm; make install)
bash$ (cd slib; make install)

Note that installation to system directories (like ‘/usr/bin/’) will require that those commands be run as root:

bash$ (cd scm; sudo make install)
bash$ (cd slib; sudo make install)

Previous: , Up: Installing SCM   [Contents][Index]

2.6 Troubleshooting and Testing


2.6.1 Problems Compiling

FILEPROBLEM / MESSAGEHOW TO FIX
*.cinclude file not found.Correct the status of STDC_HEADERS in scmfig.h.
fix #include statement or add #define for system type to scmfig.h.
*.cFunction should return a value.Ignore.
Parameter is never used.
Condition is always false.
Unreachable code in function.
scm.cassignment between incompatible types.Change SIGRETTYPE in scm.c.
time.cCLK_TCK redefined.incompatablility between <stdlib.h> and <sys/types.h>.
Remove STDC_HEADERS in scmfig.h.
Edit <sys/types.h> to remove incompatability.
subr.cPossibly incorrect assignment in function lgcd.Ignore.
sys.cstatement not reached.Ignore.
constant in conditional expression.
sys.cundeclared, outside of functions.#undef STDC_HEADERS in scmfig.h.
scl.csyntax error.#define SYSTNAME to your system type in scl.c (softtype).

2.6.2 Problems Linking

PROBLEMHOW TO FIX
_sin etc. missing.Uncomment LIBS in makefile.

2.6.3 Testing

Loading r4rstest.scm in the distribution will run an [R4RS] conformance test on scm.

> (load "r4rstest.scm")
-|
;loading r4rstest.scm
SECTION(2 1)
SECTION(3 4)
 #<primitive-procedure boolean?>
    #<primitive-procedure char?>
       #<primitive-procedure null?>
          #<primitive-procedure number?>
…

Loading pi.scm in the distribution will enable you to compute digits of pi.

> (load "pi.scm")
;loading pi.scm
;done loading pi.scm
#<unspecified>
> (pi 100 5)
00003 14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399
37510 58209 74944 59230 78164 06286 20899 86280 34825 34211
70679
;Evaluation took 550 ms (60 in gc) 36976 cells work, 1548.B other
#<unspecified>

Performance

Loading bench.scm will compute and display performance statistics of SCM running pi.scm. ‘make bench’ or ‘make benchlit’ appends the performance report to the file BenchLog, facilitating tracking effects of changes to SCM on performance.


2.6.4 Problems Starting

PROBLEMHOW TO FIX
/bin/bash: scm: program not foundIs ‘scm’ in a ‘$PATH’ directory?
/bin/bash: /usr/local/bin/scm: Permission deniedchmod +x /usr/local/bin/scm
Opening message and then machine crashes.Change memory model option to C compiler (or makefile).
Make sure sizet definition is correct in scmfig.h.
Reduce the size of HEAP_SEG_SIZE in setjump.h.
Input hangs.#define NOSETBUF
ERROR: heap: need larger initial.Increase initial heap allocation using -a<kb> or INIT_HEAP_SIZE.
ERROR: Could not allocate.Check sizet definition.
Use 32 bit compiler mode.
Don’t try to run as subproccess.
remove <FLAG> in scmfig.h and recompile scm.Do so and recompile files.
add <FLAG> in scmfig.h and recompile scm.
ERROR: Init5f3.scm not found.Assign correct IMPLINIT in makefile or scmfig.h.
Define environment variable SCM_INIT_PATH to be the full pathname of Init5f3.scm.
WARNING: require.scm not found.Define environment variable SCHEME_LIBRARY_PATH to be the full pathname of the scheme library [SLIB].
Change library-vicinity in Init5f3.scm to point to library or remove.
Make sure the value of (library-vicinity) has a trailing file separator (like / or \).

2.6.5 Problems Running

PROBLEMHOW TO FIX
Runs some and then machine crashes.See above under machine crashes.
Runs some and then ERROR: … (after a GC has happened).Remove optimization option to C compiler and recompile.
#define SHORT_ALIGN in scmfig.h.
Some symbol names print incorrectly.Change memory model option to C compiler (or makefile).
Check that HEAP_SEG_SIZE fits within sizet.
Increase size of HEAP_SEG_SIZE (or INIT_HEAP_SIZE if it is smaller than HEAP_SEG_SIZE).
ERROR: Rogue pointer in Heap.See above under machine crashes.
Newlines don’t appear correctly in output files.Check file mode (define OPEN_… in Init5f3.scm).
Spaces or control characters appear in symbol names.Check character defines in scmfig.h.
Negative numbers turn positive.Check SRS in scmfig.h.
;ERROR: bignum: numerical overflowIncrease NUMDIGS_MAX in scmfig.h and recompile.
VMS: Couldn’t unwind stack.#define CHEAP_CONTINUATIONS in scmfig.h.
VAX: botched longjmp.

2.6.6 Reporting Problems

Reported problems and solutions are grouped under Compiling, Linking, Running, and Testing. If you don’t find your problem listed there, you can send a bug report to agj@alum.mit.edu or scm-discuss@gnu.org. The bug report should include:

  1. The version of SCM (printed when SCM is invoked with no arguments).
  2. The type of computer you are using.
  3. The name and version of your computer’s operating system.
  4. The values of the environment variables SCM_INIT_PATH and SCHEME_LIBRARY_PATH.
  5. The name and version of your C compiler.
  6. If you are using an executable from a distribution, the name, vendor, and date of that distribution. In this case, corresponding with the vendor is recommended.

Next: , Previous: , Up: SCM   [Contents][Index]

3 Operational Features


3.1 Invoking SCM

 scm  [-a kbytes] [-muvbiq] [--version] [--help]
[[-]-no-init-file] [--no-symbol-case-fold]
[-p int] [-r feature] [-h feature]
[-d filename] [-f filename] [-l filename]
[-c expression] [-e expression] [-o dumpname]
[-- | - | -s] [filename] [arguments …]

Upon startup scm loads the file specified by by the environment variable SCM_INIT_PATH.

If SCM_INIT_PATH is not defined or if the file it names is not present, scm tries to find the directory containing the executable file. If it is able to locate the executable, scm looks for the initialization file (usually Init5f3.scm) in platform-dependent directories relative to this directory. See File-System Habitat for a blow-by-blow description.

As a last resort (if initialization file cannot be located), the C compile parameter IMPLINIT (defined in the makefile or scmfig.h) is tried.

Unless the option -no-init-file or --no-init-file occurs in the command line, or if scm is being invoked as a script, Init5f3.scm checks to see if there is file ScmInit.scm in the path specified by the environment variable HOME (or in the current directory if HOME is undefined). If it finds such a file, then it is loaded.

Init5f3.scm then looks for command input from one of three sources: From an option on the command line, from a file named on the command line, or from standard input.

This explanation applies to SCMLIT or other builds of SCM.

Scheme-code files can also invoke SCM and its variants. See #!.


3.2 Options

The options are processed in the order specified on the command line.

Command Option: -a k

specifies that scm should allocate an initial heapsize of k kilobytes. This option, if present, must be the first on the command line. If not specified, the default is INIT_HEAP_SIZE in source file setjump.h which the distribution sets at 25000*sizeof(cell).

Command Option: -no-init-file
Command Option: ---no-init-file

Inhibits the loading of ScmInit.scm as described above.

Command Option: --no-symbol-case-fold

Symbol (and identifier) names will be case sensitive.

Command Option: ---help

prints usage information and URI; then exit.

Command Option: ---version

prints version information and exit.

Command Option: -r feature

requires feature. This will load a file from [SLIB] if that feature is not already provided. If feature is 2, 2rs, or r2rs; 3, 3rs, or r3rs; 4, 4rs, or r4rs; 5, 5rs, or r5rs; scm will require the features neccessary to support [R2RS]; [R3RS]; [R4RS]; or [R5RS], respectively.

Command Option: -h feature

provides feature.

Command Option: -l filename
Command Option: -f filename

loads filename. Scm will load the first (unoptioned) file named on the command line if no -c, -e, -f, -l, or -s option preceeds it.

Command Option: -d filename

Loads SLIB databases feature and opens filename as a database.

Command Option: -e expression
Command Option: -c expression

specifies that the scheme expression expression is to be evaluated. These options are inspired by perl and sh respectively. On Amiga systems the entire option and argument need to be enclosed in quotes. For instance ‘"-e(newline)"’.

Command Option: -o dumpname

saves the current SCM session as the executable program dumpname. This option works only in SCM builds supporting dump (see Dump).

If options appear on the command line after ‘-o dumpname’, then the saved session will continue with processing those options when it is invoked. Otherwise the (new) command line is processed as usual when the saved image is invoked.

Command Option: -p level

sets the prolixity (verboseness) to level. This is the same as the scm command (verobse level).

Command Option: -v

(verbose mode) specifies that scm will print prompts, evaluation times, notice of loading files, and garbage collection statistics. This is the same as -p3.

Command Option: -q

(quiet mode) specifies that scm will print no extra information. This is the same as -p0.

Command Option: -m

specifies that subsequent loads, evaluations, and user interactions will be with syntax-rules macro capability. To use a specific syntax-rules macro implementation from [SLIB] (instead of [SLIB]’s default) put -r macropackage before -m on the command line.

Command Option: -u

specifies that subsequent loads, evaluations, and user interactions will be without syntax-rules macro capability. Syntax-rules macro capability can be restored by a subsequent -m on the command line or from Scheme code.

Command Option: -i

specifies that scm should run interactively. That means that scm will not terminate until the (quit) or (exit) command is given, even if there are errors. It also sets the prolixity level to 2 if it is less than 2. This will print prompts, evaluation times, and notice of loading files. The prolixity level can be set by subsequent options. If scm is started from a tty, it will assume that it should be interactive unless given a subsequent -b option.

Command Option: -b

specifies that scm should run non-interactively. That means that scm will terminate after processing the command line or if there are errors.

Command Option: -s

specifies, by analogy with sh, that scm should run interactively and that further options are to be treated as program aguments.

Command Option: -
Command Option: ---

specifies that further options are to be treated as program aguments.


3.3 Invocation Examples

% scm foo.scm

Loads and executes the contents of foo.scm and then enters interactive session.

% scm -f foo.scm arg1 arg2 arg3

Parameters arg1, arg2, and arg3 are stored in the global list *argv*; Loads and executes the contents of foo.scm and exits.

% scm -s foo.scm arg1 arg2

Sets *argv* to ("foo.scm" "arg1" "arg2") and enters interactive session.

% scm -e `(write (list-ref *argv* *optind*))' bar

Prints ‘"bar"’.

% scm -rpretty-print -r format -i

Loads pretty-print and format and enters interactive session.

% scm -r5

Loads dynamic-wind, values, and syntax-rules macros and enters interactive (with macros) session.

% scm -r5 -r4

Like above but rev4-optional-procedures are also loaded.


3.4 Environment Variables

Environment Variable: SCM_INIT_PATH

is the pathname where scm will look for its initialization code. The default is the file Init5f3.scm in the source directory.

Environment Variable: SCHEME_LIBRARY_PATH

is the [SLIB] Scheme library directory.

Environment Variable: HOME

is the directory where Init5f3.scm will look for the user initialization file ScmInit.scm.

Environment Variable: EDITOR

is the name of the program which ed will call. If EDITOR is not defined, the default is ‘ed’.

3.5 Scheme Variables

Variable: *argv*

contains the list of arguments to the program. *argv* can change during argument processing. This list is suitable for use as an argument to [SLIB] getopt.

Variable: *syntax-rules*

controls whether loading and interaction support syntax-rules macros. Define this in ScmInit.scm or files specified on the command line. This can be overridden by subsequent -m and -u options.

Variable: *interactive*

controls interactivity as explained for the -i and -b options. Define this in ScmInit.scm or files specified on the command line. This can be overridden by subsequent -i and -b options.


3.6 SCM Session

  • Options, file loading and features can be specified from the command line. See System interface in SCM. See Require in SLIB.
  • Typing the end-of-file character at the top level session (while SCM is not waiting for parenthesis closure) causes SCM to exit.
  • Typing the interrupt character aborts evaluation of the current form and resumes the top level read-eval-print loop.
Function: quit
Function: quit n
Function: exit
Function: exit n

Aliases for exit (see exit in SLIB). On many systems, SCM can also tail-call another program. See execp.

Callback procedure: boot-tail dumped?

boot-tail is called by scm_top_level just before entering interactive top-level. If boot-tail calls quit, then interactive top-level is not entered.

Function: program-arguments

Returns a list of strings of the arguments scm was called with.

Function: getlogin

Returns the (login) name of the user logged in on the controlling terminal of the process, or #f if this information cannot be determined.

For documentation of the procedures getenv and system See System Interface in SLIB.

SCM extends getenv as suggested by draft SRFI-98:

Function: getenv name

Looks up name, a string, in the program environment. If name is found a string of its value is returned. Otherwise, #f is returned.

Function: getenv

Returns names and values of all the environment variables as an association-list.

(getenv)  ⇒
(("PATH" . "/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin")
 ("USERNAME" . "taro"))
Function: vms-debug

If SCM is compiled under VMS this vms-debug will invoke the VMS debugger.


3.7 Editing Scheme Code

Function: ed arg1 …

The value of the environment variable EDITOR (or just ed if it isn’t defined) is invoked as a command with arguments arg1 ….

Function: ed filename

If SCM is compiled under VMS ed will invoke the editor with a single the single argument filename.

Gnu Emacs:

Editing of Scheme code is supported by emacs. Buffers holding files ending in .scm are automatically put into scheme-mode.

If your Emacs can run a process in a buffer you can use the Emacs command ‘M-x run-scheme’ with SCM. Otherwise, use the emacs command ‘M-x suspend-emacs’; or see “other systems” below.

Epsilon (MS-DOS):

There is lisp (and scheme) mode available by use of the package ‘LISP.E’. It offers several different indentation formats. With this package, buffers holding files ending in ‘.L’, ‘.LSP’, ‘.S’, and ‘.SCM’ (my modification) are automatically put into lisp-mode.

It is possible to run a process in a buffer under Epsilon. With Epsilon 5.0 the command line options ‘-e512 -m0’ are neccessary to manage RAM properly. It has been reported that when compiling SCM with Turbo C, you need to ‘#define NOSETBUF’ for proper operation in a process buffer with Epsilon 5.0.

One can also call out to an editor from SCM if RAM is at a premium; See “under other systems” below.

other systems:

Define the environment variable ‘EDITOR’ to be the name of the editing program you use. The SCM procedure (ed arg1 …) will invoke your editor and return to SCM when you exit the editor. The following definition is convenient:

(define (e) (ed "work.scm") (load "work.scm"))

Typing ‘(e)’ will invoke the editor with the file of interest. After editing, the modified file will be loaded.


3.8 Debugging Scheme Code

The cautious option of build (see Build Options) supports debugging in Scheme.

CAUTIOUS

If SCM is built with the ‘CAUTIOUS’ flag, then when an error occurs, a stack trace of certain pending calls are printed as part of the default error response. A (memoized) expression and newline are printed for each partially evaluated combination whose procedure is not builtin. See Memoized Expressions for how to read memoized expressions.

Also as the result of the ‘CAUTIOUS’ flag, both error and user-interrupt (invoked by C-c) to print stack traces and conclude by calling breakpoint (see Breakpoints in SLIB) instead of aborting to top level. Under either condition, program execution can be resumed by (continue).

In this configuration one can interrupt a running Scheme program with C-c, inspect or modify top-level values, trace or untrace procedures, and continue execution with (continue).

If verbose (see verbose) is called with an argument greater than 2, then the interpreter will check stack size periodically. If the size of stack in use exceeds the C #define STACK_LIMIT (default is HEAP_SEG_SIZE), SCM generates a ‘stacksegment violation.

There are several SLIB macros which so useful that SCM automatically loads the appropriate module from SLIB if they are invoked.

Macro: trace proc1 …

Traces the top-level named procedures given as arguments.

Macro: trace

With no arguments, makes sure that all the currently traced identifiers are traced (even if those identifiers have been redefined) and returns a list of the traced identifiers.

Macro: untrace proc1 …

Turns tracing off for its arguments.

Macro: untrace

With no arguments, untraces all currently traced identifiers and returns a list of these formerly traced identifiers.

The routines I use most frequently for debugging are:

Function: print arg1 …

Print writes all its arguments, separated by spaces. Print outputs a newline at the end and returns the value of the last argument.

One can just insert ‘(print '<label>’ and ‘)’ around an expression in order to see its values as a program operates.

Function: pprint arg1 …

Pprint pretty-prints (see Pretty-Print in SLIB) all its arguments, separated by newlines. Pprint returns the value of the last argument.

One can just insert ‘(pprint '<label>’ and ‘)’ around an expression in order to see its values as a program operates. Note pretty-print does not format procedures.

When typing at top level, pprint is not a good way to see nested structure because it will return the last object pretty-printed, which could be large. pp is a better choice.

Procedure: pp arg1 …

Pprint pretty-prints (see Pretty-Print in SLIB) all its arguments, separated by newlines. pp returns #<unspecified>.

Syntax: print-args name
Syntax: print-args

Writes name if supplied; then writes the names and values of the closest lexical bindings enclosing the call to Print-args.

(define (foo a b) (print-args foo) (+ a b))
(foo 3 6)
-| In foo: a = 3; b = 6; 
⇒ 9

Sometimes more elaborate measures are needed to print values in a useful manner. When the values to be printed may have very large (or infinite) external representations, Quick Print in SLIB, can be used.

When trace is not sufficient to find program flow problems, SLIB-PSD, the Portable Scheme Debugger offers source code debugging from GNU Emacs. PSD runs slowly, so start by instrumenting only a few functions at a time.

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/ftpdir/scm/slib-psd1-3.tar.gz
ftp.maths.tcd.ie:pub/bosullvn/jacal/slib-psd1-3.tar.gz
ftp.cs.indiana.edu:/pub/scheme-repository/utl/slib-psd1-3.tar.gz

3.9 Debugging Continuations

These functions are defined in debug.c, all operate on captured continuations:

Procedure: frame-trace cont n

Prints information about the code being executed and the environment scopes active for continuation frame n of continuation CONT. A "continuation frame" is an entry in the environment stack; a new frame is pushed when the environment is replaced or extended in a non-tail call context. Frame 0 is the top of the stack.

Procedure: frame->environment cont n

Prints the environment for continuation frame n of continuation cont. This contains just the names, not the values, of the environment.

Procedure: scope-trace env

will print information about active lexical scopes for environment env.

Procedure: frame-eval cont n expr

Evaluates expr in the environment defined by continuation frame n of continuation CONT and returns the result. Values in the environment may be returned or SET!.

stack-trace also now accepts an optional continuation argument. stack-trace differs from frame-trace in that it truncates long output using safeports and prints code from all available frames.

(define k #f)
(define (foo x y)
   (set! k (call-with-current-continuation identity))
   #f)
(let ((a 3) (b 4))
  (foo a b)
  #f)
(stack-trace k)
-|
;STACK TRACE
1; ((#@set! #@k (#@call-with-current-continuation #@identity)) #f ...
2; (#@let ((a 3) (b 4))  (#@foo #@a #@b) #f)
…
#t
(frame-trace k 0)
-|
(#@call-with-current-continuation #@identity)
; in scope:
;   (x y)  procedure foo#<unspecified>
(frame-trace k 1)
-|
((#@set! #@k (#@call-with-current-continuation #@identity)) #f)
; in scope:
;   (x y)  procedure foo#<unspecified>
(frame-trace k 2)
-|
(#@let ((a 3) (b 4))  (#@foo #@a #@b) #f)
; in scope:
;   (a b . #@let)#<unspecified>
(frame-trace k 3)
-|
(#@let ((a 3) (b 4))  (#@foo #@a #@b) #f)
; in top level environment.
(frame->environment k 0)
-|
((x y) 2 foo)
(scope-trace (frame->environment k 0))
-|
; in scope:
;   (x y)  procedure foo#<unspecified>
(frame-eval k 0 'x) ⇒ 3

(frame-eval k 0 '(set! x 8))
(frame-eval k 0 'x) ⇒ 8

3.10 Errors

A computer-language implementation designer faces choices of how reflexive to make the implementation in handling exceptions and errors; that is, how much of the error and exception routines should be written in the language itself. The design of a portable implementation is further constrained by the need to have (almost) all errors print meaningful messages, even when the implementation itself is not functioning correctly. Therefore, SCM implements much of its error response code in C.

The following common error and conditions are handled by C code. Those with callback names after them can also be handled by Scheme code (see Interrupts). If the callback identifier is not defined at top level, the default error handler (C code) is invoked. There are many other error messages which are not treated specially.

ARGn

Wrong type in argument

ARG1

Wrong type in argument 1

ARG2

Wrong type in argument 2

ARG3

Wrong type in argument 3

ARG4

Wrong type in argument 4

ARG5

Wrong type in argument 5

WNA

Wrong number of args

OVFLOW

numerical overflow

OUTOFRANGE

Argument out of range

NALLOC

(out-of-storage)

THRASH

GC is (thrashing)

EXIT

(end-of-program)

HUP_SIGNAL

(hang-up)

INT_SIGNAL

(user-interrupt)

FPE_SIGNAL

(arithmetic-error)

BUS_SIGNAL

bus error

SEGV_SIGNAL

segment violation

ALRM_SIGNAL

(alarm-interrupt)

VTALRM_SIGNAL

(virtual-alarm-interrupt)

PROF_SIGNAL

(profile-alarm-interrupt)

Variable: errobj

When SCM encounters a non-fatal error, it aborts evaluation of the current form, prints a message explaining the error, and resumes the top level read-eval-print loop. The value of errobj is the offending object if appropriate. The builtin procedure error does not set errobj.

errno and perror report ANSI C errors encountered during a call to a system or library function.

Function: errno
Function: errno n

With no argument returns the current value of the system variable errno. When given an argument, errno sets the system variable errno to n and returns the previous value of errno. (errno 0) will clear outstanding errors. This is recommended after try-load returns #f since this occurs when the file could not be opened.

Function: perror string

Prints on standard error output the argument string, a colon, followed by a space, the error message corresponding to the current value of errno and a newline. The value returned is unspecified.

warn and error provide a uniform way for Scheme code to signal warnings and errors.

Function: warn arg1 arg2 arg3 …

Alias for slib:warn in SLIB. Outputs an error message containing the arguments. warn is defined in Init5f3.scm.

Function: error arg1 arg2 arg3 …

Alias for slib:error in SLIB. Outputs an error message containing the arguments, aborts evaluation of the current form and resumes the top level read-eval-print loop. Error is defined in Init5f3.scm.

If SCM is built with the ‘CAUTIOUS’ flag, then when an error occurs, a stack trace of certain pending calls are printed as part of the default error response. A (memoized) expression and newline are printed for each partially evaluated combination whose procedure is not builtin. See Memoized Expressions for how to read memoized expressions.

Also as the result of the ‘CAUTIOUS’ flag, both error and user-interrupt (invoked by C-c) are defined to print stack traces and conclude by calling breakpoint (see Breakpoints in SLIB). This allows the user to interract with SCM as with Lisp systems.

Function: stack-trace

Prints information describing the stack of partially evaluated expressions. stack-trace returns #t if any lines were printed and #f otherwise. See Init5f3.scm for an example of the use of stack-trace.


3.11 Memoized Expressions

SCM memoizes the address of each occurence of an identifier’s value when first encountering it in a source expression. Subsequent executions of that memoized expression is faster because the memoized reference encodes where in the top-level or local environment its value is.

When procedures are displayed, the memoized locations appear in a format different from references which have not yet been executed. I find this a convenient aid to locating bugs and untested expressions.

  • The names of memoized lexically bound identifiers are replaced with #@<m>-<n>, where <m> is the number of binding contours back and <n> is the index of the value in that binding countour.
  • The names of identifiers which are not lexiallly bound but defined at top-level have #@ prepended.

For instance, open-input-file is defined as follows in Init5f3.scm:

(define (open-input-file str)
  (or (open-file str open_read)
      (and (procedure? could-not-open) (could-not-open) #f)
      (error "OPEN-INPUT-FILE couldn't open file " str)))

If open-input-file has not yet been used, the displayed procedure is similar to the original definition (lines wrapped for readability):

open-input-file ⇒
#<CLOSURE (str) (or (open-file str open_read)
 (and (procedure? could-not-open) (could-not-open) #f)
 (error "OPEN-INPUT-FILE couldn't open file " str))>

If we open a file using open-input-file, the sections of code used become memoized:

(open-input-file "r4rstest.scm") ⇒ #<input-port 3>
open-input-file ⇒
#<CLOSURE (str) (#@or (#@open-file #@0+0 #@open_read)
 (and (procedure? could-not-open) (could-not-open) #f)
 (error "OPEN-INPUT-FILE couldn't open file " str))>

If we cause open-input-file to execute other sections of code, they too become memoized:

(open-input-file "foo.scm") ⇒

ERROR: No such file or directory
ERROR: OPEN-INPUT-FILE couldn't open file  "foo.scm"

open-input-file ⇒
#<CLOSURE (str) (#@or (#@open-file #@0+0 #@open_read)
 (#@and (#@procedure? #@could-not-open) (could-not-open) #f)
 (#@error "OPEN-INPUT-FILE couldn't open file " #@0+0))>

3.12 Internal State

Variable: *interactive*

The variable *interactive* determines whether the SCM session is interactive, or should quit after the command line is processed. *interactive* is controlled directly by the command-line options ‘-b’, ‘-i’, and ‘-s’ (see Invoking SCM). If none of these options are specified, the rules to determine interactivity are more complicated; see Init5f3.scm for details.

Function: abort

Resumes the top level Read-Eval-Print loop.

Function: restart

Restarts the SCM program with the same arguments as it was originally invoked. All ‘-l’ loaded files are loaded again; If those files have changed, those changes will be reflected in the new session.

Note When running a saved executable (see Dump), restart is redefined to be exec-self.

Function: exec-self

Exits and immediately re-invokes the same executable with the same arguments. If the executable file has been changed or replaced since the beginning of the current session, the new executable will be invoked. This differentiates exec-self from restart.

Function: verbose n

Controls how much monitoring information is printed. If n is:

0

no prompt or information is printed.

>= 1

a prompt is printed.

>= 2

messages bracketing file loading are printed.

>= 3

the CPU time is printed after each top level form evaluated; notifications of heap growth printed; the interpreter checks stack depth periodically.

>= 4

a garbage collection summary is printed after each top level form evaluated;

>= 5

a message for each GC (see Garbage Collection) is printed; warnings issued for top-level symbols redefined.

Function: gc

Scans all of SCM objects and reclaims for further use those that are no longer accessible.

Function: gc #t

Garbage-collects only the ecache.

Function: room
Function: room #t

Prints out statistics about SCM’s current use of storage. (room #t) also gives the hexadecimal heap segment and stack bounds.

Constant: *scm-version*

Contains the version string (e.g. 5f3) of SCM.

3.12.1 Executable path

In order to dump a saved executable or to dynamically-link using DLD, SCM must know where its executable file is. Sometimes SCM (see Executable Pathname) guesses incorrectly the location of the currently running executable. In that case, the correct path can be set by calling execpath with the pathname.

Function: execpath

Returns the path (string) which SCM uses to find the executable file whose invocation the currently running session is, or #f if the path is not set.

Function: execpath #f
Function: execpath newpath

Sets the path to #f or newpath, respectively. The old path is returned.

For other configuration constants and procedures See Configuration in SLIB.


3.13 Scripting


3.13.1 Unix Scheme Scripts

In reading this section, keep in mind that the first line of a script file has (different) meanings to SCM and the operating system (execve).

file: #! interpreter \ …

On unix systems, a Shell-Script is a file (with execute permissions) whose first two characters are ‘#!’. The interpreter argument must be the pathname of the program to process the rest of the file. The directories named by environment variable PATH are not searched to find interpreter.

When executing a shell-script, the operating system invokes interpreter with a single argument encapsulating the rest of the first line’s contents (if not just whitespace), the pathname of the Scheme Script file, and then any arguments which the shell-script was invoked with.

Put one space character between ‘#!’ and the first character of interpreter (‘/’). The interpreter name is followed by ‘ \’; SCM substitutes the second line of file for ‘\’ (and the rest of the line), then appends any arguments given on the command line invoking this Scheme-Script.

When SCM executes the script, the Scheme variable *script* will be set to the script pathname. The last argument before ‘!#’ on the second line should be ‘-’; SCM will load the script file, preserve the unprocessed arguments, and set *argv* to a list of the script pathname and the unprocessed arguments.

Note that the interpreter, not the operating system, provides the ‘\’ substitution; this will only take place if interpreter is a SCM or SCSH interpreter.

Read syntax: #! ignored !#

When the first two characters of the file being loaded are #! and a ‘\’ is present before a newline in the file, all characters up to ‘!#’ will be ignored by SCM read.

This combination of interpretatons allows SCM source files to be used as POSIX shell-scripts if the first line is:

#! /usr/bin/scm \

The following Scheme-Script prints factorial of its argument:

#! /usr/bin/scm \ %0 %*
- !#

(define (fact.script args)
  (cond ((and (= 1 (length args))
              (string->number (car args)))
         => (lambda (n) (print (fact n)) #t))
        (else (fact.usage))))

(define (fact.usage)
  (print *argv*)
  (display "\
Usage: fact N
  Returns the factorial of N.
"
           (current-error-port))
  #f)

(define (fact n) (if (< n 2) 1 (* n (fact (+ -1 n)))))

(if *script* (exit (fact.script (list-tail *argv* *optind*))))
./fact 32
⇒
263130836933693530167218012160000000

If the wrong number of arguments is given, fact prints its argv with usage information.

./fact 3 2
-|
("./fact" "3" "2") 
Usage: fact N
  Returns the factorial of N.

3.13.2 MS-DOS Compatible Scripts

It turns out that we can create scheme-scripts which run both under unix and MS-DOS. To implement this, I have written the MS-DOS programs: #!.bat and !#.exe, which are available from: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/ftpdir/scm/sharpbang.zip

With these two programs installed in a PATH directory, we have the following syntax for <program>.BAT files.

file: #! interpreter \ %0 %*

The first two characters of the Scheme-Script are ‘#!’. The interpreter can be either a unix style program path (using ‘/’ between filename components) or a DOS program name or path. The rest of the first line of the Scheme-Script should be literally ‘\ %0 %*, as shown.

If interpreter has ‘/’ in it, interpreter is converted to a DOS style filename (‘/’ ⇒ ‘\’).

In looking for an executable named interpreter, #! first checks this (converted) filename; if interpreter doesn’t exist, it then tries to find a program named like the string starting after the last ‘\’ (or ‘/’) in interpreter. When searching for executables, #! tries all directories named by environment variable PATH.

Once the interpreter executable path is found, arguments are processed in the manner of scheme-shell, with all the text after the ‘\’ taken as part of the meta-argument. More precisely, #! calls interpreter with any options on the second line of the Scheme-Script up to ‘!#’, the name of the Scheme-Script file, and then any of at most 8 arguments given on the command line invoking this Scheme-Script.

The previous example Scheme-Script works in both MS-DOS and unix systems.


3.13.3 Unix Shell Scripts

Scheme-scripts suffer from two drawbacks:

  • Some Unixes limit the length of the ‘#!’ interpreter line to the size of an object file header, which can be as small as 32 bytes.
  • A full, explicit pathname must be specified, perhaps requiring more than 32 bytes and making scripts vulnerable to breakage when programs are moved.

The following approach solves these problems at the expense of slower startup. Make ‘#! /bin/sh’ the first line and prepend every subsequent line to be executed by the shell with :;. The last line to be executed by the shell should contain an exec command; exec tail-calls its argument.

/bin/sh is thus invoked with the name of the script file, which it executes as a *sh script. Usually the second line starts ‘:;exec scm -f$0’, which executes scm, which in turn loads the script file. When SCM loads the script file, it ignores the first and second lines, and evaluates the rest of the file as Scheme source code.

The second line of the script file does not have the length restriction mentioned above. Also, /bin/sh searches the directories listed in the ‘PATH’ environment variable for ‘scm’, eliminating the need to use absolute locations in order to invoke a program.

The following example additionally sets *script* to the script argument, making it compatible with the scheme code of the previous example.

#! /bin/sh
:;exec scm -e"(set! *script* \"$0\")" -l$0 "$@"

(define (fact.script args)
  (cond ((and (= 1 (length args))
              (string->number (car args)))
         => (lambda (n) (print (fact n)) #t))
        (else (fact.usage))))

(define (fact.usage)
  (print *argv*)
  (display "\
Usage: fact N
  Returns the factorial of N.
"
           (current-error-port))
  #f)

(define (fact n) (if (< n 2) 1 (* n (fact (+ -1 n)))))

(if *script* (exit (fact.script (list-tail *argv* *optind*))))
./fact 6
⇒ 720 

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4 The Language


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4.1 Standards Compliance

Scm conforms to the IEEE Standard 1178-1990. IEEE Standard for the Scheme Programming Language. (see Bibliography), and Revised(5) Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme. All the required features of these specifications are supported. Many of the optional features are supported as well.

Optionals of [R5RS] Supported by SCM

- and / of more than 2 arguments
exp
log
sin
cos
tan
asin
acos
atan
sqrt
expt
make-rectangular
make-polar
real-part
imag-part
magnitude
angle
exact->inexact
inexact->exact

See Numerical operations in Revised(5) Scheme.

with-input-from-file
with-output-to-file

See Ports in Revised(5) Scheme.

load
transcript-on
transcript-off

See System interface in Revised(5) Scheme.

Optionals of [R5RS] not Supported by SCM

numerator
denominator
rationalize

See Numerical operations in Revised(5) Scheme.

[SLIB] Features of SCM and SCMLIT

delay
full-continuation
ieee-p1178
object-hash
rev4-report
source

See SLIB file Template.scm.

current-time

See Time and Date in SLIB.

defmacro

See Defmacro in SLIB.

getenv
system

See System Interface in SLIB.

hash

See Hashing in SLIB.

logical

See Bit-Twiddling in SLIB.

multiarg-apply

See Multi-argument Apply in SLIB.

multiarg/and-

See Multi-argument / and - in SLIB.

rev4-optional-procedures

See Rev4 Optional Procedures in SLIB.

string-port

See String Ports in SLIB.

tmpnam

See Input/Output in SLIB.

transcript

See Transcripts in SLIB.

vicinity

See Vicinity in SLIB.

with-file

See With-File in SLIB.

[SLIB] Features of SCM

array

See Arrays in SLIB.

array-for-each

See Array Mapping in SLIB.

bignum
complex
inexact
rational
real

See Require in SLIB.


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4.2 Storage

Function: vector-set-length! object length

Change the length of string, vector, bit-vector, or uniform-array object to length. If this shortens object then the remaining contents are lost. If it enlarges object then the contents of the extended part are undefined but the original part is unchanged. It is an error to change the length of literal datums. The new object is returned.

Function: copy-tree obj
Function: @copy-tree obj

See copy-tree in SLIB. This extends the SLIB version by also copying vectors. Use @copy-tree if you depend on this feature; copy-tree could get redefined.

Function: acons obj1 obj2 obj3

Returns (cons (cons obj1 obj2) obj3).

(set! a-list (acons key datum a-list))

Adds a new association to a-list.

Callback procedure: gc-hook

Allows a Scheme procedure to be run shortly after each garbage collection. This procedure will not be run recursively. If it runs long enough to cause a garbage collection before returning a warning will be printed.

To remove the gc-hook, (set! gc-hook #f).

Function: add-finalizer object finalizer

object may be any garbage collected object, that is, any object other than an immediate integer, character, or special token such as #f or #t, See Immediates. finalizer is a thunk, or procedure taking no arguments.

finalizer will be invoked asynchronously exactly once some time after object becomes eligible for garbage collection. A reference to object in the environment of finalizer will not prevent finalization, but will delay the reclamation of object at least until the next garbage collection. A reference to object in some other object’s finalizer will necessarily prevent finalization until both objects are eligible for garbage collection.

Finalizers are not run in any predictable order. All finalizers will be run by the time the program ends.

This facility was based on the paper by Simon Peyton Jones, et al, “Stretching the storage manager: weak pointers and stable names in Haskell”, Proc. 11th International Workshop on the Implementation of Functional Languages, The Netherlands, September 7-10 1999, Springer-Verlag LNCS.


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4.3 Time

Constant: internal-time-units-per-second

Is the integer number of internal time units in a second.

Function: get-internal-run-time

Returns the integer run time in internal time units from an unspecified starting time. The difference of two calls to get-internal-run-time divided by internal-time-units-per-second will give elapsed run time in seconds.

Function: get-internal-real-time

Returns the integer time in internal time units from an unspecified starting time. The difference of two calls to get-internal-real-time divided by internal-time-units-per-second will give elapsed real time in seconds.

Function: current-time

Returns the time since 00:00:00 GMT, January 1, 1970, measured in seconds. See current-time in SLIB. current-time is used in Time and Date in SLIB.


4.4 Interrupts

Function: ticks n

Returns the number of ticks remaining till the next tick interrupt. Ticks are an arbitrary unit of evaluation. Ticks can vary greatly in the amount of time they represent.

If n is 0, any ticks request is canceled. Otherwise a ticks-interrupt will be signaled n from the current time. ticks is supported if SCM is compiled with the ticks flag defined.

Callback procedure: ticks-interrupt

Establishes a response for tick interrupts. Another tick interrupt will not occur unless ticks is called again. Program execution will resume if the handler returns. This procedure should (abort) or some other action which does not return if it does not want processing to continue.

Function: alarm secs

Returns the number of seconds remaining till the next alarm interrupt. If secs is 0, any alarm request is canceled. Otherwise an alarm-interrupt will be signaled secs from the current time. ALARM is not supported on all systems.

Function: milli-alarm millisecs interval
Function: virtual-alarm millisecs interval
Function: profile-alarm millisecs interval

milli-alarm is similar to alarm, except that the first argument millisecs, and the return value are measured in milliseconds rather than seconds. If the optional argument interval is supplied then alarm interrupts will be scheduled every interval milliseconds until turned off by a call to milli-alarm or alarm.

virtual-alarm and profile-alarm are similar. virtual-alarm decrements process execution time rather than real time, and causes SIGVTALRM to be signaled. profile-alarm decrements both process execution time and system execution time on behalf of the process, and causes SIGPROF to be signaled.

milli-alarm, virtual-alarm, and profile-alarm are supported only on systems providing the setitimer system call.

Callback procedure: user-interrupt
Callback procedure: alarm-interrupt
Callback procedure: virtual-alarm-interrupt
Callback procedure: profile-alarm-interrupt

Establishes a response for SIGINT (control-C interrupt) and SIGALRM, SIGVTALRM, and SIGPROF interrupts. Program execution will resume if the handler returns. This procedure should (abort) or some other action which does not return if it does not want processing to continue after it returns.

Interrupt handlers are disabled during execution system and ed procedures.

To unestablish a response for an interrupt set the handler symbol to #f. For instance, (set! user-interrupt #f).

Callback procedure: out-of-storage
Callback procedure: could-not-open
Callback procedure: end-of-program
Callback procedure: hang-up
Callback procedure: arithmetic-error

Establishes a response for storage allocation error, file opening error, end of program, SIGHUP (hang up interrupt) and arithmetic errors respectively. This procedure should (abort) or some other action which does not return if it does not want the default error message to also be displayed. If no procedure is defined for hang-up then end-of-program (if defined) will be called.

To unestablish a response for an error set the handler symbol to #f. For instance, (set! could-not-open #f).


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4.5 Process Synchronization

An exchanger is a procedure of one argument regulating mutually exclusive access to a resource. When a exchanger is called, its current content is returned, while being replaced by its argument in an atomic operation.

Function: make-exchanger obj

Returns a new exchanger with the argument obj as its initial content.

(define queue (make-exchanger (list a)))

A queue implemented as an exchanger holding a list can be protected from reentrant execution thus:

(define (pop queue)
  (let ((lst #f))
    (dynamic-wind
        (lambda () (set! lst (queue #f)))
        (lambda () (and lst (not (null? lst))
                        (let ((ret (car lst)))
                          (set! lst (cdr lst))
                          ret)))
        (lambda () (and lst (queue lst))))))

(pop queue)         ⇒ a

(pop queue)         ⇒ #f
Function: make-arbiter name

Returns an object of type arbiter and name name. Its state is initially unlocked.

Function: try-arbiter arbiter

Returns #t and locks arbiter if arbiter was unlocked. Otherwise, returns #f.

Function: release-arbiter arbiter

Returns #t and unlocks arbiter if arbiter was locked. Otherwise, returns #f.


4.6 Files and Ports

These procedures generalize and extend the standard capabilities in Ports in Revised(5) Scheme.


4.6.1 Opening and Closing

Function: open-file string modes
Function: try-open-file string modes

Returns a port capable of receiving or delivering characters as specified by the modes string. If a file cannot be opened #f is returned.

Internal functions opening files callback to the SCM function open-file. You can extend open-file by redefining it. try-open-file is the primitive procedure; Do not redefine try-open-file!

Constant: open_read
Constant: open_write
Constant: open_both

Contain modes strings specifying that a file is to be opened for reading, writing, and both reading and writing respectively.

Both input and output functions can be used with io-ports. An end of file must be read or a two-argument file-position done on the port between a read operation and a write operation or vice-versa.

Function: _ionbf modestr

Returns a version of modestr which when open-file is called with it as the second argument will return an unbuffered port. An input-port must be unbuffered in order for char-ready? and wait-for-input to work correctly on it. The initial value of (current-input-port) is unbuffered if the platform supports it.

Function: _tracked modestr

Returns a version of modestr which when open-file is called with it as the second argument will return a tracked port. A tracked port maintains current line and column numbers, which may be queried with port-line and port-column.

Function: _exclusive modestr

Returns a version of modestr which when open-file is called with it as the second argument will return a port only if the named file does not already exist. This functionality is provided by calling try-create-file See I/O-Extensions, which is not available for all platforms.

Function: open-ports

Returns a list of all currently open ports, excluding string ports, see See String Ports in SLIB. This may be useful after a fork See Posix Extensions, or for debugging. Bear in mind that ports that would be closed by gc will be kept open by a reference to this list.

Function: close-port port

Closes port. The same as close-input-port and close-output-port.


4.6.2 Port Properties

Function: port-closed? port

Returns #t if port is closed.

Function: port-type obj

If obj is not a port returns false, otherwise returns a symbol describing the port type, for example string or pipe.

Function: port-filename port

Returns the filename port was opened with. If port is not open to a file the result is unspecified.

Function: file-position port
Function: file-position port #f

Returns the current position of the character in port which will next be read or written. If port is open to a non-file then #f is returned.

Function: file-position port k

Sets the current position in port which will next be read or written. If successful, #f is returned. If port is open to a non-file, then file-position returns #f.

Function: port-line port
Function: port-column port

If port is a tracked port, return the current line (column) number, otherwise return #f. Line and column numbers begin with 1. The column number applies to the next character to be read; if that character is a newline, then the column number will be one more than the length of the line.

Function: freshline port

Outputs a newline to optional argument port unless the current output column number of port is known to be zero, ie output will start at the beginning of a new line. port defaults to current-output-port. If port is not a tracked port freshline is equivalent to newline.

Function: isatty? port

Returns #t if port is input or output to a serial non-file device.

procedure: char-ready?
procedure: char-ready? port

Returns #t if a character is ready on the input port and returns #f otherwise. If char-ready? returns #t then the next read-char operation on the given port is guaranteed not to hang. If the port is at end of file then char-ready? returns #t. Port may be omitted, in which case it defaults to the value returned by current-input-port.

Rationale Char-ready? exists to make it possible for a program to accept characters from interactive ports without getting stuck waiting for input. Any input editors associated with such ports must ensure that characters whose existence has been asserted by char-ready? cannot be rubbed out. If char-ready? were to return #f at end of file, a port at end of file would be indistinguishable from an interactive port that has no ready characters.

procedure: wait-for-input x
procedure: wait-for-input x port1 …

Returns a list those ports port1 … which are char-ready?. If none of port1 … become char-ready? within the time interval of x seconds, then #f is returned. The port1 … arguments may be omitted, in which case they default to the list of the value returned by current-input-port.


4.6.3 Port Redirection

Function: current-error-port

Returns the current port to which diagnostic output is directed.

Function: with-error-to-file string thunk

thunk must be a procedure of no arguments, and string must be a string naming a file. The file is opened for output, an output port connected to it is made the default value returned by current-error-port, and the thunk is called with no arguments. When the thunk returns, the port is closed and the previous default is restored. With-error-to-file returns the value yielded by thunk.

Function: with-input-from-port port thunk
Function: with-output-to-port port thunk
Function: with-error-to-port port thunk

These routines differ from with-input-from-file, with-output-to-file, and with-error-to-file in that the first argument is a port, rather than a string naming a file.

Function: call-with-outputs thunk proc

Calls the thunk procedure while the current-output-port and current-error-port are directed to string-ports. If thunk returns, the proc procedure is called with the output-string, the error-string, and the value returned by thunk. If thunk does not return a value (perhaps because of error), proc is called with just the output-string and the error-string as arguments.


4.6.4 Soft Ports

A soft-port is a port based on a vector of procedures capable of accepting or delivering characters. It allows emulation of I/O ports.

Function: make-soft-port vector modes

Returns a port capable of receiving or delivering characters as specified by the modes string (see open-file). vector must be a vector of length 5. Its components are as follows:

  1. procedure accepting one character for output
  2. procedure accepting a string for output
  3. thunk for flushing output
  4. thunk for getting one character
  5. thunk for closing port (not by garbage collection)

For an output-only port only elements 0, 1, 2, and 4 need be procedures. For an input-only port only elements 3 and 4 need be procedures. Thunks 2 and 4 can instead be #f if there is no useful operation for them to perform.

If thunk 3 returns #f or an eof-object (see eof-object? in Revised(5) Scheme) it indicates that the port has reached end-of-file. For example:

If it is necessary to explicitly close the port when it is garbage collected, (see add-finalizer).

(define stdout (current-output-port))
(define p (make-soft-port
           (vector
            (lambda (c) (write c stdout))
            (lambda (s) (display s stdout))
            (lambda () (display "." stdout))
            (lambda () (char-upcase (read-char)))
            (lambda () (display "@" stdout)))
           "rw"))

(write p p) ⇒ #<input-output-soft#\space45d10#\>

4.7 Eval and Load

Function: try-load filename

If the string filename names an existing file, the try-load procedure reads Scheme source code expressions and definitions from the file and evaluates them sequentially and returns #t. If not, try-load returns #f. The try-load procedure does not affect the values returned by current-input-port and current-output-port.

Variable: *load-pathname*

Is set to the pathname given as argument to load, try-load, and dyn:link (see Compiling And Linking in Hobbit). *load-pathname* is used to compute the value of program-vicinity in SLIB.

Function: eval obj

Alias for eval in SLIB.

Function: eval-string str

Returns the result of reading an expression from str and evaluating it. eval-string does not change *load-pathname* or line-number.

Function: load-string str

Reads and evaluates all the expressions from str. As with load, the value returned is unspecified. load-string does not change *load-pathname* or line-number.

Function: line-number

Returns the current line number of the file currently being loaded.


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4.7.1 Line Numbers

Scheme code defined by load may optionally contain line number information. Currently this information is used only for reporting expansion time errors, but in the future run-time error messages may also include line number information.

Function: try-load pathname reader

This is the primitive for loading, pathname is the name of a file containing Scheme code, and optional argument reader is a function of one argument, a port. reader should read and return Scheme code as list structure. The default value is read, which is used if reader is not supplied or is false.

Line number objects are disjoint from integers or other Scheme types. When evaluated or loaded as Scheme code, an s-expression containing a line-number in the car is equivalent to the cdr of the s-expression. A pair consisting of a line-number in the car and a vector in the cdr is equivalent to the vector. The meaning of s-expressions with line-numbers in other positions is undefined.

Function: read-numbered port

Behaves like read, except that

  • bullet Load (read) sytnaxes are enabled.
  • bullet every s-expression read will be replaced with a cons of a line-number object and the sexp actually read. This replacement is done only if port is a tracked port See See Files and Ports.
Function: integer->line-number int

Returns a line-number object with value int. int should be an exact non-negative integer.

Function: line-number->integer linum

Returns the value of line-number object linum as an integer.

Function: line-number? obj

Returns true if and only if obj is a line-number object.

Function: read-for-load port

Behaves like read, except that load syntaxes are enabled.

Variable: *load-reader*
Variable: *slib-load-reader*

The value of *load-reader* should be a value acceptable as the second argument to try-load (note that #f is acceptable). This value will be used to read code during calls to scm:load. The value of *slib-load-reader* will similarly be used during calls to slib:load and require.

In order to disable all line-numbering, it is sufficient to set! *load-reader* and *slib-load-reader* to #f.


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4.8 Lexical Conventions


4.8.1 Common-Lisp Read Syntax

Read syntax: #\token

If token is a sequence of two or more digits, then this syntax is equivalent to #.(integer->char (string->number token 8)).

If token is C-, c-, or ^ followed by a character, then this syntax is read as a control character. If token is M- or m- followed by a character, then a meta character is read. c- and m- prefixes may be combined.

Read syntax: #+ feature form

If feature is provided? then form is read as a scheme expression. If not, then form is treated as whitespace.

Feature is a boolean expression composed of symbols and and, or, and not of boolean expressions.

For more information on provided?, See Require in SLIB.

Read syntax: #- feature form

is equivalent to #+(not feature) expression.

Read syntax: #| any thing |#

Is a balanced comment. Everything up to the matching |# is ignored by the read. Nested #|…|# can occur inside any thing.

Load sytax is Read syntax enabled for read only when that read is part of loading a file or string. This distinction was made so that reading from a datafile would not be able to corrupt a scheme program using ‘#.’.

Load syntax: #. expression

Is read as the object resulting from the evaluation of expression. This substitution occurs even inside quoted structure.

In order to allow compiled code to work with #. it is good practice to define those symbols used inside of expression with #.(define …). For example:

#.(define foo 9)                        ⇒ #<unspecified>
'(#.foo #.(+ foo foo))                  ⇒ (9 18)
Load syntax: #' form

is equivalent to form (for compatibility with common-lisp).


4.8.2 Load Syntax

#! is the unix mechanism for executing scripts. See Unix Scheme Scripts for the full description of how this comment supports scripting.

Load syntax: #?line
Load syntax: #?column

Return integers for the current line and column being read during a load.

Load syntax: #?file

Returns the string naming the file currently being loaded. This path is the string passed to load, possibly with ‘.scm’ appended.


4.8.3 Documentation and Comments

procedure: procedure-documentation proc

Returns the documentation string of proc if it exists, or #f if not.

If the body of a lambda (or the definition of a procedure) has more than one expression, and the first expression (preceeding any internal definitions) is a string, then that string is the documentation string of that procedure.

(procedure-documentation (lambda (x) "Identity" x)) ⇒ "Identity"
(define (square x)
    "Return the square of X."
    (* x x))
⇒ #<unspecified>
(procedure-documentation square) ⇒ "Return the square of X."
Function: comment string1 …

Appends string1 … to the strings given as arguments to previous calls comment.

Function: comment

Returns the (appended) strings given as arguments to previous calls comment and empties the current string collection.

Load syntax: #;text-till-end-of-line

Behaves as (comment "text-till-end-of-line").


4.8.4 Modifying Read Syntax

Callback procedure: read:sharp c port

If a # followed by a character (for a non-standard syntax) is encountered by read, read will call the value of the symbol read:sharp with arguments the character and the port being read from. The value returned by this function will be the value of read for this expression unless the function returns #<unspecified> in which case the expression will be treated as whitespace. #<unspecified> is the value returned by the expression (if #f #f).

Callback procedure: load:sharp c port

Dispatches like read:sharp, but only during loads. The read-syntaxes handled by load:sharp are a superset of those handled by read:sharp. load:sharp calls read:sharp if none of its syntaxes match c.

Callback procedure: char:sharp token

If the sequence #\ followed by a non-standard character name is encountered by read, read will call the value of the symbol char:sharp with the token (a string of length at least two) as argument. If the value returned is a character, then that will be the value of read for this expression, otherwise an error will be signaled.

Note When adding new # syntaxes, have your code save the previous value of load:sharp, read:sharp, or char:sharp when defining it. Call this saved value if an invocation’s syntax is not recognized. This will allow #+, #-, and Uniform Arrays to still be supported (as they dispatch from read:sharp).


4.9 Syntax

SCM provides a native implementation of defmacro. See Defmacro in SLIB.

When built with ‘-F macro’ build option (see Build Options) and ‘*syntax-rules*’ is non-false, SCM also supports [R5RS] syntax-rules macros. See Macros in Revised(5) Scheme.

Other Scheme Syntax Extension Packages from SLIB can be employed through the use of ‘macro:eval’ and ‘macro:load’; Or by using the SLIB read-eval-print-loop:

(require 'repl)
(repl:top-level macro:eval)

With the appropriate catalog entries (see Library Catalogs in SLIB), files using macro packages will automatically use the correct macro loader when ‘require’d.


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4.9.1 Define and Set

Special Form: defined? symbol

Equivalent to #t if symbol is a syntactic keyword (such as if) or a symbol with a value in the top level environment (see Variables and regions in Revised(5) Scheme). Otherwise equivalent to #f.

Special Form: defvar identifier initial-value

If identifier is unbound in the top level environment, then identifier is defined to the result of evaluating the form initial-value as if the defvar form were instead the form (define identifier initial-value) . If identifier already has a value, then initial-value is not evaluated and identifier’s value is not changed. defvar is valid only when used at top-level.

Special Form: defconst identifier value

If identifier is unbound in the top level environment, then identifier is defined to the result of evaluating the form value as if the defconst form were instead the form (define identifier value) . If identifier already has a value, then value is not evaluated, identifier’s value is not changed, and an error is signaled. defconst is valid only when used at top-level.

Special Form: set! (variable1 variable2 …) <expression>

The identifiers variable1, variable2, … must be bound either in some region enclosing the ‘set!’ expression or at top level.

<Expression> is evaluated, and the elements of the resulting list are stored in the locations to which each corresponding variable is bound. The result of the ‘set!’ expression is unspecified.

(define x 2)
(define y 3)
(+ x y)                              ⇒ 5
(set! (x y) (list 4 5))              ⇒ unspecified
(+ x y)                              ⇒ 9
Special Form: qase key clause1 clause2 …

qase is an extension of standard Scheme case: Each clause of a qase statement must have as first element a list containing elements which are:

  • literal datums, or
  • a comma followed by the name of a symbolic constant, or
  • a comma followed by an at-sign (@) followed by the name of a symbolic constant whose value is a list.

A qase statement is equivalent to a case statement in which these symbolic constants preceded by commas have been replaced by the values of the constants, and all symbolic constants preceded by comma-at-signs have been replaced by the elements of the list values of the constants. This use of comma, (or, equivalently, unquote) is similar to that of quasiquote except that the unquoted expressions must be symbolic constants.

Symbolic constants are defined using defconst, their values are substituted in the head of each qase clause during macro expansion. defconst constants should be defined before use. qase can be substituted for any correct use of case.

(defconst unit '1)
(defconst semivowels '(w y))
(qase (* 2 3)
  ((2 3 5 7) 'prime)
  ((,unit 4 6 8 9) 'composite))        ==>  composite
(qase (car '(c d))
  ((a) 'a)
  ((b) 'b))                            ==>  unspecified
(qase (car '(c d))
  ((a e i o u) 'vowel)
  ((,@semivowels) 'semivowel)
  (else 'consonant))                   ==>  consonant


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4.9.2 Defmacro

SCM supports the following constructs from Common Lisp: defmacro, macroexpand, macroexpand-1, and gentemp. See Defmacro in SLIB.

SCM defmacro is extended over that described for SLIB:

(defmacro (macro-name . arguments) body)

is equivalent to

(defmacro macro-name arguments body)

As in Common Lisp, an element of the formal argument list for defmacro may be a possibly nested list, in which case the corresponding actual argument must be a list with as many members as the formal argument. Rest arguments are indicated by improper lists, as in Scheme. It is an error if the actual argument list does not have the tree structure required by the formal argument list.

For example:

(defmacro (let1 ((name value)) . body)
    `((lambda (,name) ,@body) ,value))

(let1 ((x (foo))) (print x) x) ≡ ((lambda (x) (print x) x) (foo))

(let1 not legal syntax) error→ not "does not match" ((name value))

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4.9.3 Syntax-Rules

SCM supports [R5RS] syntax-rules macros See Macros in Revised(5) Scheme.

The pattern language is extended by the syntax (... <obj>), which is identical to <obj> except that ellipses in <obj> are treated as ordinary identifiers in a template, or as literals in a pattern. In particular, (... ...) quotes the ellipsis token ... in a pattern or template.

For example:

(define-syntax check-tree
  (syntax-rules ()
    ((_ (?pattern (... ...)) ?obj)
     (let loop ((obj ?obj))
       (or (null? obj)
           (and (pair? obj)
                (check-tree ?pattern (car obj))
                (loop (cdr obj))))))
    ((_ (?first . ?rest) ?obj)
     (let ((obj ?obj))
       (and (pair? obj)
            (check-tree ?first (car obj))
            (check-tree ?rest (cdr obj)))))
    ((_ ?atom ?obj) #t)))

(check-tree ((a b) ...) '((1 2) (3 4) (5 6))) ⇒ #t

(check-tree ((a b) ...) '((1 2) (3 4) not-a-2list) ⇒ #f

Note that although the ellipsis is matched as a literal token in the defined macro it is not included in the literals list for syntax-rules.

The pattern language is also extended to support identifier macros. A reference to an identifier macro keyword that is not the first identifier in a form may expand into Scheme code, rather than raising a “keyword as variable” error. The pattern for expansion of such a bare macro keyword is a single identifier, as in other syntax rules the identifier is ignored.

For example:

(define-syntax eight
    (syntax-rules ()
      (_ 8)))

(+ 3 eight) ⇒ 11
(eight) ⇒ ERROR
(set! eight 9) ⇒ ERROR

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4.9.4 Macro Primitives

Function: procedure->syntax proc

Returns a macro which, when a symbol defined to this value appears as the first symbol in an expression, returns the result of applying proc to the expression and the environment.

Function: procedure->macro proc
Function: procedure->memoizing-macro proc
Function: procedure->identifier-macro

Returns a macro which, when a symbol defined to this value appears as the first symbol in an expression, evaluates the result of applying proc to the expression and the environment. The value returned from proc which has been passed to PROCEDURE->MEMOIZING-MACRO replaces the form passed to proc. For example:

(defsyntax trace
  (procedure->macro
   (lambda (x env) `(set! ,(cadr x) (tracef ,(cadr x) ',(cadr x))))))

(trace foo) ≡ (set! foo (tracef foo 'foo)).

PROCEDURE->IDENTIFIER-MACRO is similar to PROCEDURE->MEMOIZING-MACRO except that proc is also called in case the symbol bound to the macro appears in an expression but not as the first symbol, that is, when it looks like a variable reference. In that case, the form passed to proc is a single identifier.

Special Form: defsyntax name expr

Defines name as a macro keyword bound to the result of evaluating expr, which should be a macro. Using define for this purpose may not result in name being interpreted as a macro keyword.


4.9.5 Environment Frames

An environment is a list of frames representing lexical bindings. Only the names and scope of the bindings are included in environments passed to macro expanders – run-time values are not included.

There are several types of environment frames:

((lambda (variable1 …) …) value1 …)
(let ((variable1 value1) (variable2 value2) …) …)
(letrec ((variable1 value1) …) …)

result in a single enviroment frame:


(variable1 variable2 …)

(let ((variable1 value1)) …)
(let* ((variable1 value1) …) …)

result in an environment frame for each variable:


variable1 variable2 …

(let-syntax ((key1 macro1) (key2 macro2)) …)
(letrec-syntax ((key1 value1) (key2 value2)) …)

Lexically bound macros result in environment frames consisting of a marker and an alist of keywords and macro objects:


(<env-syntax-marker> (key1 . value1) (key2 . value2))

Currently <env-syntax-marker> is the integer 6.

line numbers

Line numbers (see Line Numbers) may be included in the environment as frame entries to indicate the line number on which a function is defined. They are ignored for variable lookup.


#<line 8> 

miscellaneous

Debugging information is stored in environments in a plist format: Any exact integer stored as an environment frame may be followed by any value. The two frame entries are ignored when doing variable lookup. Load file names, procedure names, and closure documentation strings are stored in this format.


<env-filename-marker> "foo.scm" <env-procedure-name-marker> foo …

Currently <env-filename-marker> is the integer 1 and <env-procedure-name-marker> the integer 2.

Special Form: @apply procedure argument-list

Returns the result of applying procedure to argument-list. @apply differs from apply when the identifiers bound by the closure being applied are set!; setting affects argument-list.

(define lst (list 'a 'b 'c))
(@apply (lambda (v1 v2 v3) (set! v1 (cons v2 v3))) lst)
lst           ⇒ ((b . c) b c)

Thus a mutable environment can be treated as both a list and local bindings.


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4.9.6 Syntactic Hooks for Hygienic Macros

SCM provides a synthetic identifier type for efficient implementation of hygienic macros (for example, syntax-rules see Macros in Revised(5) Scheme) A synthetic identifier may be inserted in Scheme code by a macro expander in any context where a symbol would normally be used. Collectively, symbols and synthetic identifiers are identifiers.

Function: identifier? obj

Returns #t if obj is a symbol or a synthetic identifier, and #f otherwise.

If it is necessary to distinguish between symbols and synthetic identifiers, use the predicate symbol?.

A synthetic identifier includes two data: a parent, which is an identifier, and an environment, which is either #f or a lexical environment which has been passed to a macro expander (a procedure passed as an argument to procedure->macro, procedure->memoizing-macro, or procedure->syntax).

Function: renamed-identifier parent env

Returns a synthetic identifier. parent must be an identifier, and env must either be #f or a lexical environment passed to a macro expander. renamed-identifier returns a distinct object for each call, even if passed identical arguments.

There is no direct way to access all of the data internal to a synthetic identifier, those data are used during variable lookup. If a synthetic identifier is inserted as quoted data then during macro expansion it will be repeatedly replaced by its parent, until a symbol is obtained.

Function: identifier->symbol id

Returns the symbol obtained by recursively extracting the parent of id, which must be an identifier.

4.9.7 Use of Synthetic Identifiers

renamed-identifier may be used as a replacement for gentemp:

(define gentemp
  (let ((name (string->symbol "An unlikely variable")))
    (lambda ()
      (renamed-identifier name #f))))

If an identifier returned by this version of gentemp is inserted in a binding position as the name of a variable then it is guaranteed that no other identifier (except one produced by passing the first to renamed-identifier) may denote that variable. If an identifier returned by gentemp is inserted free, then it will denote the top-level value bound to its parent, the symbol named “An unlikely variable”. This behavior, of course, is meant to be put to good use:

(define top-level-foo
  (procedure->memoizing-macro
   (lambda (exp env)
     (renamed-identifier 'foo #f))))

Defines a macro which may always be used to refer to the top-level binding of foo.

(define foo 'top-level)
(let ((foo 'local))
  (top-level-foo))  ⇒ top-level

In other words, we can avoid capturing foo.

If a lexical environment is passed as the second argument to renamed-identifier then if the identifier is inserted free its parent will be looked up in that environment, rather than in the top-level environment. The use of such an identifier must be restricted to the lexical scope of its environment.

There is another restriction imposed for implementation convenience: Macros passing their lexical environments to renamed-identifier may be lexically bound only by the special forms let-syntax or letrec-syntax. No error is signaled if this restriction is not met, but synthetic identifier lookup will not work properly.

In order to maintain referential transparency it is necessary to determine whether two identifiers have the same denotation. With synthetic identifiers it is not necessary that two identifiers be eq? in order to denote the same binding.

Function: identifier-equal? id1 id2 env

Returns #t if identifiers id1 and id2 denote the same binding in lexical environment env, and #f otherwise. env must either be a lexical environment passed to a macro transformer during macro expansion or the empty list.

For example,

(define top-level-foo?
  (procedure->memoizing-macro
   (let ((foo-name (renamed-identifier 'foo #f)))
     (lambda (exp env)
       (identifier-equal? (cadr exp) foo-name env)))))

(top-level-foo? foo)  ⇒ #t

(let ((foo 'local))
  (top-level-foo? foo))  ⇒ #f
Function: @macroexpand1 expr env

If the car of expr denotes a macro in env, then if that macro is a primitive, expr will be returned, if the macro was defined in Scheme, then a macro expansion will be returned. If the car of expr does not denote a macro, the #f is returned.

Function: extended-environment names values env

Returns a new environment object, equivalent to env, which must either be an environment object or null, extended by one frame. names must be an identifier, or an improper list of identifiers, usable as a formals list in a lambda expression. values must be a list of objects long enough to provide a binding for each of the identifiers in names. If names is an identifier or an improper list then vals may be, respectively, any object or an improper list of objects.

Special Form: syntax-quote obj

Synthetic identifiers are converted to their parent symbols by quote and quasiquote so that literal data in macro definitions will be properly transcribed. syntax-quote behaves like quote, but preserves synthetic identifier intact.

Special Form: the-macro mac

the-macro is the simplest of all possible macro transformers: mac may be a syntactic keyword (macro name) or an expression evaluating to a macro, otherwise an error is signaled. mac is evaluated and returned once only, after which the same memoizied value is returned.

the-macro may be used to protect local copies of macros against redefinition, for example:

(@let-syntax ((let (the-macro let)))
   ;; code that will continue to work even if LET is redefined.
        …)
Special Form: renaming-transformer proc

A low-level “explicit renaming” macro facility very similar to that proposed by W. Clinger [Exrename] is supported. Syntax may be defined in define-syntax, let-syntax, and letrec-syntax using renaming-transformer instead of syntax-rules. proc should evaluate to a procedure accepting three arguments: expr, rename, and compare. expr is a representation of Scheme code to be expanded, as list structure. rename is a procedure accepting an identifier and returning an identifier renamed in the definition environment of the new syntax. compare accepts two identifiers and returns true if and only if both denote the same binding in the usage environment of the new syntax.


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5 Packages


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5.1 Dynamic Linking

If SCM has been compiled with dynl.c then the additional properties of load and ([SLIB]) require specified here are supported. The require form is preferred.

Function: require feature

If the symbol feature has not already been given as an argument to require, then the object and library files associated with feature will be dynamically-linked, and an unspecified value returned. If feature is not found in *catalog*, then an error is signaled.

Function: usr:lib lib

Returns the pathname of the C library named lib. For example: (usr:lib "m") returns "/usr/lib/libm.a", the path of the C math library.

Function: x:lib lib

Returns the pathname of the X library named lib. For example: (x:lib "X11") returns "/usr/X11/lib/libX11.sa", the path of the X11 library.

Function: load filename lib1 …

In addition to the [R5RS] requirement of loading Scheme expressions if filename is a Scheme source file, load will also dynamically load/link object files (produced by compile-file, for instance). The object-suffix need not be given to load. For example,

(load (in-vicinity (implementation-vicinity) "sc2"))
or (load (in-vicinity (implementation-vicinity) "sc2.o"))
or (require 'rev2-procedures)
or (require 'rev3-procedures)

will load/link sc2.o if it exists.

The lib1 … pathnames specify additional libraries which may be needed for object files not produced by the Hobbit compiler. For instance, crs is linked on GNU/Linux by

(load (in-vicinity (implementation-vicinity) "crs.o")
      (usr:lib "ncurses") (usr:lib "c"))
or (require 'curses)

Turtlegr graphics library is linked by:

(load (in-vicinity (implementation-vicinity) "turtlegr")
      (usr:lib "X11") (usr:lib "c") (usr:lib "m"))
or (require 'turtle-graphics)

And the string regular expression (see Regular Expression Pattern Matching) package is linked by:

(load (in-vicinity (implementation-vicinity) "rgx") (usr:lib "c"))

or

(require 'regex)

The following functions comprise the low-level Scheme interface to dynamic linking. See the file Link.scm in the SCM distribution for an example of their use.

filename should be a string naming an object or archive file, the result of C-compiling. The dyn:link procedure links and loads filename into the current SCM session. If successfull, dyn:link returns a link-token suitable for passing as the second argument to dyn:call. If not successful, #f is returned.

Function: dyn:call name link-token

link-token should be the value returned by a call to dyn:link. name should be the name of C function of no arguments defined in the file named filename which was succesfully dyn:linked in the current SCM session. The dyn:call procedure calls the C function corresponding to name. If successful, dyn:call returns #t; If not successful, #f is returned.

dyn:call is used to call the init_… function after loading SCM object files. The init_… function then makes the identifiers defined in the file accessible as Scheme procedures.

Function: dyn:main-call name link-token arg1 …

link-token should be the value returned by a call to dyn:link. name should be the name of C function of 2 arguments, (int argc, const char **argv), defined in the file named filename which was succesfully dyn:linked in the current SCM session. The dyn:main-call procedure calls the C function corresponding to name with argv style arguments, such as are given to C main functions. If successful, dyn:main-call returns the integer returned from the call to name.

dyn:main-call can be used to call a main procedure from SCM. For example, I link in and dyn:main-call a large C program, the low level routines of which callback (see Callbacks) into SCM (which emulates PCI hardware).

link-token should be the value returned by a call to dyn:link. The dyn:unlink procedure removes the previously loaded file from the current SCM session. If successful, dyn:unlink returns #t; If not successful, #f is returned.


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5.2 Dump

Dump, (also known as unexec), saves the continuation of an entire SCM session to an executable file, which can then be invoked as a program. Dumped executables start very quickly, since no Scheme code has to be loaded.

There are constraints on which sessions are savable using dump

  • Saved continuations are invalid in subsequent invocations; they cause segmentation faults and other unpleasant side effects.
  • Although DLD (see Dynamic Linking) can be used to load compiled modules both before and after dumping, ‘SUN_DL’ ELF systems can load compiled modules only after dumping. This can be worked around by compiling in those features you wish to dump.
  • Ports (other than current-input-port, current-output-port, current-error-port), X windows, etc. are invalid in subsequent invocations.

    This restriction could be removed; See Improvements To Make.

  • Dump should only be called from a loading file when the call to dump is the last expression in that file.
  • Dump can be called from the command line.
Function: dump newpath
Function: dump newpath #f
Function: dump newpath #t
Function: dump newpath thunk
  • Calls gc.
  • Creates an executable program named newpath which continues the state of the current SCM session when invoked. The optional argument thunk, if provided, should be a procedure of no arguments; boot-tail will be set to this procedure, causing it to be called in the restored executable.

    If the optional argument is missing or a boolean, SCM’s standard command line processing will be called in the restored executable.

    If the second argument to dump is #t, argument processing will continue from the command line passed to the dumping session. If the second argument is missing or #f then the command line arguments of the restoring invocation will be processed.

  • Resumes the top level Read-Eval-Print loop. This is done instead of continuing normally to avoid creating a saved continuation in the dumped executable.

dump may set the values of boot-tail, *argv*, restart, and *interactive*. dump returns an unspecified value.

When a dumped executable is invoked, the variable *interactive* (see Internal State) has the value it possessed when dump created it. Calling dump with a single argument sets *interactive* to #f, which is the state it has at the beginning of command line processing.

The procedure program-arguments returns the command line arguments for the curent invocation. More specifically, program-arguments for the restored session are not saved from the dumping session. Command line processing is done on the value of the identifier *argv*.

The following example shows how to create ‘rscm’, which is like regular scm, but which loads faster and has the ‘random’ package alreadly provided.

bash$ scm -rrandom
> (dump "rscm")
#<unspecified>
> (quit)
bash$ ./rscm -lpi.scm -e"(pi (random 200) 5)"
00003 14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399
37510 58209 74944 59230 78164 06286 20899 86280 34825 34211
70679 82148 08651 32823 06647 09384 46095 50582 23172 53594
08128 48111 74502 84102 70193 85211 05559 64462 29489 
bash$ 

This task can also be accomplished using the ‘-o’ command line option (see Options).

bash$ scm -rrandom -o rscm
> (quit)
bash$ ./rscm -lpi.scm -e"(pi (random 200) 5)"
00003 14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399
37510 58209 74944 59230 78164 06286 20899 86280 34825 34211
70679 82148 08651 32823 06647 09384 46095 50582 23172 53594
08128 48111 74502 84102 70193 85211 05559 64462 29489 
bash$ 

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5.3 Numeric

Constant: most-positive-fixnum

The immediate integer closest to positive infinity. See Configuration in SLIB.

Constant: most-negative-fixnum

The immediate integer closest to negative infinity.

Constant: $pi
Constant: pi

The ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle.

These procedures are in addition to those in See Irrational Integer Functions in SLIB.

Function: exact-round x
Function: exact-floor x
Function: exact-ceiling x
Function: exact-truncate x

Return exact integers.

These procedures augment the standard capabilities in Numerical operations in Revised(5) Scheme. Many are from See Irrational Real Functions in SLIB.

Function: pi* z

(* pi z)

Function: pi/ z

(/ pi z)

Function: sinh z
Function: cosh z
Function: tanh z

Return the hyperbolic sine, cosine, and tangent of z

Function: asinh z
Function: acosh z
Function: atanh z

Return the inverse hyperbolic sine, cosine, and tangent of z

Function: real-sqrt x
Function: real-exp x
Function: real-ln x
Function: real-sin x
Function: real-cos x
Function: real-tan x
Function: real-asin x
Function: real-acos x
Function: real-atan x
Function: atan y x
Function: real-sinh x
Function: real-cosh x
Function: real-tanh x
Function: real-asinh x
Function: real-acosh x
Function: real-atanh x

Real-only versions of these popular functions. The argument x must be a real number. It is an error if the value which should be returned by a call to these procedures is not real.

Function: real-log10 x

Real-only base 10 logarithm.

Function: $atan2 y x

Computes (angle (make-rectangular x y)) for real numbers y and x.

Function: real-expt x1 x2

Returns real number x1 raised to the real power x2. It is an error if the value which should be returned by a call to real-expt is not real.

Function: infinite? z
Function: finite? z

All IEEE-754 numbers except positive and negative infinity and NaN (non-a-number) are finite.


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5.4 Arrays


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5.4.1 Conventional Arrays

The following syntax and procedures are SCM extensions to feature array in Arrays in SLIB.

Arrays read and write as a # followed by the rank (number of dimensions) followed by the character #\a or #\A and what appear as lists (of lists) of elements. The lists must be nested to the depth of the rank. For each depth, all lists must be the same length.

(make-array '#(ho) 4 3) ⇒
#2A((ho ho ho) (ho ho ho) (ho ho ho) (ho ho ho))

Unshared, conventional (not uniform) 0-based arrays of rank 1 are equivalent to (and can’t be distinguished from) scheme vectors.

(make-array '#(ho) 3) ⇒ #(ho ho ho)
Function: transpose-array array dim0 dim1 …

Returns an array sharing contents with array, but with dimensions arranged in a different order. There must be one dim argument for each dimension of array. dim0, dim1, … should be integers between 0 and the rank of the array to be returned. Each integer in that range must appear at least once in the argument list.

The values of dim0, dim1, … correspond to dimensions in the array to be returned, their positions in the argument list to dimensions of array. Several dims may have the same value, in which case the returned array will have smaller rank than array.

examples:

(transpose-array '#2A((a b) (c d)) 1 0) ⇒ #2A((a c) (b d))
(transpose-array '#2A((a b) (c d)) 0 0) ⇒ #1A(a d)
(transpose-array '#3A(((a b c) (d e f)) ((1 2 3) (4 5 6))) 1 1 0) ⇒
                #2A((a 4) (b 5) (c 6))
Function: enclose-array array dim0 dim1 …

dim0, dim1 … should be nonnegative integers less than the rank of array. enclose-array returns an array resembling an array of shared arrays. The dimensions of each shared array are the same as the dimth dimensions of the original array, the dimensions of the outer array are the same as those of the original array that did not match a dim.

An enclosed array is not a general Scheme array. Its elements may not be set using array-set!. Two references to the same element of an enclosed array will be equal? but will not in general be eq?. The value returned by array-prototype when given an enclosed array is unspecified.

examples:

(enclose-array '#3A(((a b c) (d e f)) ((1 2 3) (4 5 6))) 1) ⇒
#<enclosed-array (#1A(a d) #1A(b e) #1A(c f)) (#1A(1 4) #1A(2 5) #1A(3 6))>

(enclose-array '#3A(((a b c) (d e f)) ((1 2 3) (4 5 6))) 1 0) ⇒
#<enclosed-array #2A((a 1) (d 4)) #2A((b 2) (e 5)) #2A((c 3) (f 6))>
Function: array->list array

Returns a list consisting of all the elements, in order, of array. In the case of a rank-0 array, returns the single element.

Function: array-contents array
Function: array-contents array strict

If array may be unrolled into a one dimensional shared array without changing their order (last subscript changing fastest), then array-contents returns that shared array, otherwise it returns #f. All arrays made by make-array may be unrolled, some arrays made by make-shared-array may not be.

If the optional argument strict is provided, a shared array will be returned only if its elements are stored internally contiguous in memory.


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5.4.2 Uniform Array

Uniform Arrays and vectors are arrays whose elements are all of the same type. Uniform vectors occupy less storage than conventional vectors. Uniform Array procedures also work on vectors, uniform-vectors, bit-vectors, and strings.

SLIB now supports uniform arrys. The primary array creation procedure is make-array, detailed in See Arrays in SLIB.

Unshared uniform character 0-based arrays of rank 1 (dimension) are equivalent to (and can’t be distinguished from) strings.

(make-array "" 3) ⇒ "$q2"

Unshared uniform boolean 0-based arrays of rank 1 (dimension) are equivalent to (and can’t be distinguished from) bit-vectors.

(make-array '#1at() 3) ⇒ #*000
≡
#1At(#f #f #f) ⇒ #*000

prototype arguments in the following procedures are interpreted according to the table:

prototype       type                              display prefix

()              conventional vector                     #A
+64i            complex (double precision)              #A:floC64b
64.0            double (double precision)               #A:floR64b
32.0            float (single precision)                #A:floR32b
32              unsigned integer (32-bit)               #A:fixN32b
-32             signed integer (32-bit)                 #A:fixZ32b
-16             signed integer (16-bit)                 #A:fixZ16b
#\a             char (string)                           #A:char
#t              boolean (bit-vector)                    #A:bool

Other uniform vectors are written in a form similar to that of general arrays, except that one or more modifying characters are put between the #\A character and the contents list. For example, '#1A:fixZ32b(3 5 9) returns a uniform vector of signed integers.

Function: array? obj prototype

Returns #t if the obj is an array of type corresponding to prototype, and #f if not.

Function: array-prototype array

Returns an object that would produce an array of the same type as array, if used as the prototype for list->uniform-array.

Function: list->uniform-array rank prot lst

Returns a uniform array of the type indicated by prototype prot with elements the same as those of lst. Elements must be of the appropriate type, no coercions are done.

In, for example, the case of a rank-2 array, lst must be a list of lists, all of the same length. The length of lst will be the first dimension of the result array, and the length of each element the second dimension.

If rank is zero, lst, which need not be a list, is the single element of the returned array.

Function: uniform-array-read! ura
Function: uniform-array-read! ura port

Attempts to read all elements of ura, in lexicographic order, as binary objects from port. If an end of file is encountered during uniform-array-read! the objects up to that point only are put into ura (starting at the beginning) and the remainder of the array is unchanged.

uniform-array-read! returns the number of objects read. port may be omitted, in which case it defaults to the value returned by (current-input-port).

Function: uniform-array-write ura
Function: uniform-array-write ura port

Writes all elements of ura as binary objects to port. The number of of objects actually written is returned. port may be omitted, in which case it defaults to the value returned by (current-output-port).

Function: logaref array index1 index2 …

If an index is provided for each dimension of array returns the index1, index2, …’th element of array. If one more index is provided, then the last index specifies bit position of the twos-complement representation of the array element indexed by the other indexs returning #t if the bit is 1, and #f if 0. It is an error if this element is not an exact integer.

(logaref '#(#b1101 #b0010) 0)       ⇒ #b1101
(logaref '#(#b1101 #b0010) 0 1)     ⇒ #f
(logaref '#2((#b1101 #b0010)) 0 0)  ⇒ #b1101
Function: logaset! array val index1 index2 …

If an index is provided for each dimension of array sets the index1, index2, …’th element of array to val. If one more index is provided, then the last index specifies bit position of the twos-complement representation of an exact integer array element, setting the bit to 1 if val is #t and to 0 if val is #f. In this case it is an error if the array element is not an exact integer or if val is not boolean.


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5.4.3 Bit Vectors

Bit vectors can be written and read as a sequence of 0s and 1s prefixed by #*.

#1At(#f #f #f #t #f #t #f) ⇒ #*0001010

Some of these operations will eventually be generalized to other uniform-arrays.

Function: bit-count bool bv

Returns the number of occurrences of bool in bv.

Function: bit-position bool bv k

Returns the minimum index of an occurrence of bool in bv which is at least k. If no bool occurs within the specified range #f is returned.

Function: bit-invert! bv

Modifies bv by replacing each element with its negation.

Function: bit-set*! bv uve bool

If uve is a bit-vector, then bv and uve must be of the same length. If bool is #t, then uve is OR’ed into bv; If bool is #f, the inversion of uve is AND’ed into bv.

If uve is a unsigned integer vector, then all the elements of uve must be between 0 and the LENGTH of bv. The bits of bv corresponding to the indexes in uve are set to bool.

The return value is unspecified.

Function: bit-count* bv uve bool

Returns

(bit-count (bit-set*! (if bool bv (bit-invert! bv)) uve #t) #t).

bv is not modified.


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5.4.4 Array Mapping

(require 'array-for-each)

SCM has some extra functions in feature array-for-each:

Function: array-fill! array fill

Stores fill in every element of array. The value returned is unspecified.

Function: serial-array:copy! destination source

Same as array:copy! but guaranteed to copy in row-major order.

Function: array-equal? array0 array1 …

Returns #t iff all arguments are arrays with the same shape, the same type, and have corresponding elements which are either equal? or array-equal?. This function differs from equal? in that a one dimensional shared array may be array-equal? but not equal? to a vector or uniform vector.

Function: array-map! array0 proc array1 …

If array1, … are arrays, they must have the same number of dimensions as array0 and have a range for each index which includes the range for the corresponding index in array0. If they are scalars, that is, not arrays, vectors, or strings, then they will be converted internally to arrays of the appropriate shape. proc is applied to each tuple of elements of array1 … and the result is stored as the corresponding element in array0. The value returned is unspecified. The order of application is unspecified.

Handling non-array arguments is a SCM extension of array-map! in SLIB

Function: serial-array-map! array0 proc array1 …

Same as array-map!, but guaranteed to apply proc in row-major order.

Function: array-map prototype proc array1 array2 …

array2, … must have the same number of dimensions as array1 and have a range for each index which includes the range for the corresponding index in array1. proc is applied to each tuple of elements of array1, array2, … and the result is stored as the corresponding element in a new array of type prototype. The new array is returned. The order of application is unspecified.

Function: scalar->array scalar array prototype
Function: scalar->array scalar array

Returns a uniform array of the same shape as array, having only one shared element, which is eqv? to scalar. If the optional argument prototype is supplied it will be used as the prototype for the returned array. Otherwise the returned array will be of the same type as array if that is possible, and a conventional array if it is not. This function is used internally by array-map! and friends to handle scalar arguments.


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5.5 Records

SCM provides user-definable datatypes with the same interface as SLIB, see See Records in SLIB, with the following extension.

Function: record-printer-set! rtd printer

Causes records of type rtd to be printed in a user-specified format. rtd must be a record type descriptor returned by make-record-type, printer a procedure accepting three arguments: the record to be printed, the port to print to, and a boolean which is true if the record is being written on behalf of write and false if for display. If printer returns #f, the default record printer will be called.

A printer value of #f means use the default printer.

Only the default printer will be used when printing error messages.


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5.6 I/O-Extensions

If 'i/o-extensions is provided (by linking in ioext.o), Line I/O in SLIB, and the following functions are defined:

Function: stat <port-or-string>

Returns a vector of integers describing the argument. The argument can be either a string or an open input port. If the argument is an open port then the returned vector describes the file to which the port is opened; If the argument is a string then the returned vector describes the file named by that string. If there exists no file with the name string, or if the file cannot be accessed #f is returned. The elements of the returned vector are as follows:

0 st_dev

ID of device containing a directory entry for this file

1 st_ino

Inode number

2 st_mode

File type, attributes, and access control summary

3 st_nlink

Number of links

4 st_uid

User ID of file owner

5 st_gid

Group ID of file group

6 st_rdev

Device ID; this entry defined only for char or blk spec files

7 st_size

File size (bytes)

8 st_atime

Time of last access

9 st_mtime

Last modification time

10 st_ctime

Last file status change time

Function: getpid

Returns the process ID of the current process.

Function: try-create-file name modes perms

If the file with name name already exists, return #f, otherwise try to create and open the file like try-open-file, See Files and Ports. If the optional integer argument perms is provided, it is used as the permissions of the new file (modified by the current umask).

Function: reopen-file filename modes port

Closes port port and reopens it with filename and modes. reopen-file returns #t if successful, #f if not.

Function: duplicate-port port modes

Creates and returns a duplicate port from port. Duplicate unbuffered ports share one file position. modes are as for open-file.

Function: redirect-port! from-port to-port

Closes to-port and makes to-port be a duplicate of from-port. redirect-port! returns to-port if successful, #f if not. If unsuccessful, to-port is not closed.

Function: opendir dirname

Returns a directory object corresponding to the file system directory named dirname. If unsuccessful, returns #f.

Function: readdir dir

Returns the string name of the next entry from the directory dir. If there are no more entries in the directory, readdir returns a #f.

Function: rewinddir dir

Reinitializes dir so that the next call to readdir with dir will return the first entry in the directory again.

Function: closedir dir

Closes dir and returns #t. If dir is already closed,, closedir returns a #f.

Function: directory-for-each proc directory

proc must be a procedure taking one argument. ‘Directory-For-Each’ applies proc to the (string) name of each file in directory. The dynamic order in which proc is applied to the filenames is unspecified. The value returned by ‘directory-for-each’ is unspecified.

Function: directory-for-each proc directory pred

Applies proc only to those filenames for which the procedure pred returns a non-false value.

Function: directory-for-each proc directory match

Applies proc only to those filenames for which (filename:match?? match) would return a non-false value (see Filenames in SLIB).

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(directory-for-each print "." "[A-Z]*.scm")
-|
"Init.scm" 
"Iedline.scm" 
"Link.scm" 
"Macro.scm" 
"Transcen.scm" 
"Init5f3.scm" 
Function: directory*-for-each proc path-glob

path-glob is a pathname whose last component is a (wildcard) pattern (see Filenames in SLIB). proc must be a procedure taking one argument. ‘directory*-for-each’ applies proc to the (string) name of each file in the current directory. The dynamic order in which proc is applied to the filenames is unspecified. The value returned by ‘directory*-for-each’ is unspecified.

Function: mkdir path mode

The mkdir function creates a new, empty directory whose name is path. The integer argument mode specifies the file permissions for the new directory. See The Mode Bits for Access Permission in Gnu C Library, for more information about this.

mkdir returns if successful, #f if not.

Function: rmdir path

The rmdir function deletes the directory path. The directory must be empty before it can be removed. rmdir returns if successful, #f if not.

Function: chdir filename

Changes the current directory to filename. If filename does not exist or is not a directory, #f is returned. Otherwise, #t is returned.

Function: getcwd

The function getcwd returns a string containing the absolute file name representing the current working directory. If this string cannot be obtained, #f is returned.

Function: rename-file oldfilename newfilename

Renames the file specified by oldfilename to newfilename. If the renaming is successful, #t is returned. Otherwise, #f is returned.

Function: copy-file oldfilename newfilename

Copies the file specified by oldfilename to newfilename. If the copying is successful, #t is returned. Otherwise, #f is returned.

Function: chmod file mode

The function chmod sets the access permission bits for the file named by file to mode. The file argument may be a string containing the filename or a port open to the file.

chmod returns if successful, #f if not.

Function: utime pathname acctime modtime

Sets the file times associated with the file named pathname to have access time acctime and modification time modtime. utime returns if successful, #f if not.

Function: umask mode

The function umask sets the file creation mask of the current process to mask, and returns the previous value of the file creation mask.

Function: fileno port

Returns the integer file descriptor associated with the port port. If an error is detected, #f is returned.

Function: access pathname how

Returns #t if the file named by pathname can be accessed in the way specified by the how argument. The how argument can be the logior of the flags:

  1. File-exists?
  2. File-is-executable?
  3. File-is-writable?
  1. File-is-readable?

Or the how argument can be a string of 0 to 3 of the following characters in any order. The test performed is the and of the associated tests and file-exists?.

x

File-is-executable?

w

File-is-writable?

r

File-is-readable?

Function: execl command arg0 …
Function: execlp command arg0 …

Transfers control to program command called with arguments arg0 …. For execl, command must be an exact pathname of an executable file. execlp searches for command in the list of directories specified by the environment variable PATH. The convention is that arg0 is the same name as command.

If successful, this procedure does not return. Otherwise an error message is printed and the integer errno is returned.

Function: execv command arglist
Function: execvp command arglist

Like execl and execlp except that the set of arguments to command is arglist.

Function: putenv string

adds or removes definitions from the environment. If the string is of the form ‘NAME=VALUE’, the definition is added to the environment. Otherwise, the string is interpreted as the name of an environment variable, and any definition for this variable in the environment is removed.

Names of environment variables are case-sensitive and must not contain the character =. System-defined environment variables are invariably uppercase.

Putenv is used to set up the environment before calls to execl, execlp, execv, execvp, system, or open-pipe (see open-pipe).

To access environment variables, use getenv (see getenv in SLIB).


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5.7 Posix Extensions

If 'posix is provided (by linking in posix.o), the following functions are defined:

Function: open-pipe string modes

If the string modes contains an r, returns an input port capable of delivering characters from the standard output of the system command string. Otherwise, returns an output port capable of receiving characters which become the standard input of the system command string. If a pipe cannot be created #f is returned.

Function: open-input-pipe string

Returns an input port capable of delivering characters from the standard output of the system command string. If a pipe cannot be created #f is returned.

Function: open-output-pipe string

Returns an output port capable of receiving characters which become the standard input of the system command string. If a pipe cannot be created #f is returned.

Function: broken-pipe port

If this function is defined at top level, it will be called when an output pipe is closed from the other side (this is the condition under which a SIGPIPE is sent). The already closed port will be passed so that any necessary cleanup may be done. An error is not signaled when output to a pipe fails in this way, but any further output to the closed pipe will cause an error to be signaled.

Function: close-port pipe

Closes the pipe, rendering it incapable of delivering or accepting characters. This routine has no effect if the pipe has already been closed. The value returned is unspecified.

Function: pipe

Returns (cons rd wd) where rd and wd are the read and write (port) ends of a pipe respectively.

Function: fork

Creates a copy of the processkey="p" rel="pbsp;

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