The Guile Reference Manual

This manual documents Guile version 3.0.11.

Copyright (C) 1996-1997, 2000-2005, 2009-2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Copyright (C) 2021 Maxime Devos
Copyright (C) 2024 Tomas Volf

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.”

Additionally, the documentation of the SRFI 64 module is adapted from its specification text, which is made available under the following Expat license:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Additionally, the documentation of the SRFI 197 module is adapted from its specification text, which is made available under the following MIT license:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Table of Contents

• Preface

  • Contributors to this Manual
  • The Guile License

• 1 Introduction

  • 1.1 Guile and Scheme
  • 1.2 Combining with C Code
  • 1.3 Guile and the GNU Project
  • 1.4 Interactive Programming
  • 1.5 Supporting Multiple Languages
  • 1.6 Obtaining and Installing Guile
  • 1.7 Organisation of this Manual
  • 1.8 Typographical Conventions

• 2 Hello Guile!

  • 2.1 Running Guile Interactively

  • 2.2 Running Guile Scripts

  • 2.3 Linking Guile into Programs

  • 2.4 Writing Guile Extensions

  • 2.5 Using the Guile Module System

    • 2.5.1 Using Modules
    • 2.5.2 Writing new Modules
    • 2.5.3 Putting Extensions into Modules

  • 2.6 Reporting Bugs

• 3 Hello Scheme!

  • 3.1 Data Types, Values and Variables

    • 3.1.1 Latent Typing
    • 3.1.2 Values and Variables
    • 3.1.3 Defining and Setting Variables

  • 3.2 The Representation and Use of Procedures

    • 3.2.1 Procedures as Values
    • 3.2.2 Simple Procedure Invocation
    • 3.2.3 Creating and Using a New Procedure
    • 3.2.4 Lambda Alternatives

  • 3.3 Expressions and Evaluation

    • 3.3.1 Evaluating Expressions and Executing Programs

      • 3.3.1.1 Evaluating Literal Data
      • 3.3.1.2 Evaluating a Variable Reference
      • 3.3.1.3 Evaluating a Procedure Invocation Expression
      • 3.3.1.4 Evaluating Special Syntactic Expressions

    • 3.3.2 Tail calls

    • 3.3.3 Using the Guile REPL

    • 3.3.4 Summary of Common Syntax

  • 3.4 The Concept of Closure

    • 3.4.1 Names, Locations, Values and Environments
    • 3.4.2 Local Variables and Environments
    • 3.4.3 Environment Chaining
    • 3.4.4 Lexical Scope
      • 3.4.4.1 An Example of Non-Lexical Scoping
    • 3.4.5 Closure
    • 3.4.6 Example 1: A Serial Number Generator
    • 3.4.7 Example 2: A Shared Persistent Variable
    • 3.4.8 Example 3: The Callback Closure Problem
    • 3.4.9 Example 4: Object Orientation

  • 3.5 Further Reading

• 4 Programming in Scheme

  • 4.1 Guile’s Implementation of Scheme

  • 4.2 Invoking Guile

    • 4.2.1 Command-line Options
    • 4.2.2 Environment Variables

  • 4.3 Guile Scripting

    • 4.3.1 The Top of a Script File
    • 4.3.2 The Meta Switch
    • 4.3.3 Command Line Handling
    • 4.3.4 Scripting Examples

  • 4.4 Using Guile Interactively

    • 4.4.1 The Init File, ~/.guile

    • 4.4.2 Readline

    • 4.4.3 Value History

    • 4.4.4 REPL Commands

      • 4.4.4.1 Help Commands
      • 4.4.4.2 Module Commands
      • 4.4.4.3 Language Commands
      • 4.4.4.4 Compile Commands
      • 4.4.4.5 Profile Commands
      • 4.4.4.6 Debug Commands
      • 4.4.4.7 Inspect Commands
      • 4.4.4.8 System Commands

    • 4.4.5 Error Handling

    • 4.4.6 Interactive Debugging

  • 4.5 Using Guile in Emacs

  • 4.6 Using Guile Tools

  • 4.7 Installing Site Packages

  • 4.8 Distributing Guile Code

• 5 Programming in C

  • 5.1 Parallel Installations

  • 5.2 Linking Programs With Guile

    • 5.2.1 Guile Initialization Functions
    • 5.2.2 A Sample Guile Main Program
    • 5.2.3 Building the Example with Make
    • 5.2.4 Building the Example with Autoconf

  • 5.3 Linking Guile with Libraries

    • 5.3.1 A Sample Guile Extension

  • 5.4 General concepts for using libguile

    • 5.4.1 Dynamic Types
    • 5.4.2 Garbage Collection
    • 5.4.3 Control Flow
    • 5.4.4 Asynchronous Signals
    • 5.4.5 Multi-Threading

  • 5.5 Defining New Foreign Object Types

    • 5.5.1 Defining Foreign Object Types
    • 5.5.2 Creating Foreign Objects
    • 5.5.3 Type Checking of Foreign Objects
    • 5.5.4 Foreign Object Memory Management
    • 5.5.5 Foreign Objects and Scheme

  • 5.6 Function Snarfing

  • 5.7 An Overview of Guile Programming

    • 5.7.1 How One Might Extend Dia Using Guile

      • 5.7.1.1 Deciding Why You Want to Add Guile
      • 5.7.1.2 Four Steps Required to Add Guile
      • 5.7.1.3 How to Represent Dia Data in Scheme
      • 5.7.1.4 Writing Guile Primitives for Dia
      • 5.7.1.5 Providing a Hook for the Evaluation of Scheme Code
      • 5.7.1.6 Top-level Structure of Guile-enabled Dia
      • 5.7.1.7 Going Further with Dia and Guile

    • 5.7.2 Why Scheme is More Hackable Than C

    • 5.7.3 Example: Using Guile for an Application Testbed

    • 5.7.4 A Choice of Programming Options

      • 5.7.4.1 What Functionality is Already Available?
      • 5.7.4.2 Functional and Performance Constraints
      • 5.7.4.3 Your Preferred Programming Style
      • 5.7.4.4 What Controls Program Execution?

    • 5.7.5 How About Application Users?

  • 5.8 Autoconf Support

    • 5.8.1 Autoconf Background
    • 5.8.2 Autoconf Macros
    • 5.8.3 Using Autoconf Macros

• 6 API Reference

  • 6.1 Overview of the Guile API

  • 6.2 Deprecation

  • 6.3 The SCM Type

  • 6.4 Initializing Guile

  • 6.5 Snarfing Macros

  • 6.6 Data Types

    • 6.6.1 Booleans

    • 6.6.2 Numerical data types

      • 6.6.2.1 Scheme’s Numerical “Tower”
      • 6.6.2.2 Integers
      • 6.6.2.3 Real and Rational Numbers
      • 6.6.2.4 Complex Numbers
      • 6.6.2.5 Exact and Inexact Numbers
      • 6.6.2.6 Read Syntax for Numerical Data
      • 6.6.2.7 Operations on Integer Values
      • 6.6.2.8 Comparison Predicates
      • 6.6.2.9 Converting Numbers To and From Strings
      • 6.6.2.10 Complex Number Operations
      • 6.6.2.11 Arithmetic Functions
      • 6.6.2.12 Scientific Functions
      • 6.6.2.13 Bitwise Operations
      • 6.6.2.14 Random Number Generation

    • 6.6.3 Characters

    • 6.6.4 Character Sets

      • 6.6.4.1 Character Set Predicates/Comparison
      • 6.6.4.2 Iterating Over Character Sets
      • 6.6.4.3 Creating Character Sets
      • 6.6.4.4 Querying Character Sets
      • 6.6.4.5 Character-Set Algebra
      • 6.6.4.6 Standard Character Sets

    • 6.6.5 Strings

      • 6.6.5.1 String Read Syntax
      • 6.6.5.2 String Predicates
      • 6.6.5.3 String Constructors
      • 6.6.5.4 List/String conversion
      • 6.6.5.5 String Selection
      • 6.6.5.6 String Modification
      • 6.6.5.7 String Comparison
      • 6.6.5.8 String Searching
      • 6.6.5.9 Alphabetic Case Mapping
      • 6.6.5.10 Reversing and Appending Strings
      • 6.6.5.11 Mapping, Folding, and Unfolding
      • 6.6.5.12 Miscellaneous String Operations
      • 6.6.5.13 Representing Strings as Bytes
      • 6.6.5.14 Conversion to/from C
      • 6.6.5.15 String Internals

    • 6.6.6 Symbols

      • 6.6.6.1 Symbols as Discrete Data
      • 6.6.6.2 Symbols as Lookup Keys
      • 6.6.6.3 Symbols as Denoting Variables
      • 6.6.6.4 Operations Related to Symbols
      • 6.6.6.5 Extended Read Syntax for Symbols
      • 6.6.6.6 Uninterned Symbols

    • 6.6.7 Keywords

      • 6.6.7.1 Why Use Keywords?
      • 6.6.7.2 Coding With Keywords
      • 6.6.7.3 Keyword Read Syntax
      • 6.6.7.4 Keyword Procedures

    • 6.6.8 Pairs

    • 6.6.9 Lists

      • 6.6.9.1 List Read Syntax
      • 6.6.9.2 List Predicates
      • 6.6.9.3 List Constructors
      • 6.6.9.4 List Selection
      • 6.6.9.5 Append and Reverse
      • 6.6.9.6 List Modification
      • 6.6.9.7 List Searching
      • 6.6.9.8 List Mapping

    • 6.6.10 Vectors

      • 6.6.10.1 Read Syntax for Vectors
      • 6.6.10.2 Dynamic Vector Creation and Validation
      • 6.6.10.3 Accessing and Modifying Vector Contents
      • 6.6.10.4 Vector Accessing from C
      • 6.6.10.5 Uniform Numeric Vectors

    • 6.6.11 Bit Vectors

    • 6.6.12 Bytevectors

      • 6.6.12.1 Endianness
      • 6.6.12.2 Manipulating Bytevectors
      • 6.6.12.3 Interpreting Bytevector Contents as Integers
      • 6.6.12.4 Converting Bytevectors to/from Integer Lists
      • 6.6.12.5 Interpreting Bytevector Contents as Floating Point Numbers
      • 6.6.12.6 Interpreting Bytevector Contents as Unicode Strings
      • 6.6.12.7 Accessing Bytevectors with the Array API
      • 6.6.12.8 Accessing Bytevectors with the SRFI-4 API
      • 6.6.12.9 Bytevector Procedures in R7RS
      • 6.6.12.10 Bytevector Slices

    • 6.6.13 Arrays

      • 6.6.13.1 Array Syntax
      • 6.6.13.2 Array Procedures
      • 6.6.13.3 Shared Arrays
      • 6.6.13.4 Arrays as arrays of arrays
      • 6.6.13.5 Accessing Arrays from C

    • 6.6.14 VLists

    • 6.6.15 Record Overview

    • 6.6.16 SRFI-9 Records

      • Non-toplevel Record Definitions
      • Custom Printers
      • Functional “Setters”

    • 6.6.17 Records

    • 6.6.18 Structures

      • 6.6.18.1 Vtables
      • 6.6.18.2 Structure Basics
      • 6.6.18.3 Vtable Contents
      • 6.6.18.4 Meta-Vtables
      • 6.6.18.5 Vtable Example

    • 6.6.19 Dictionary Types

    • 6.6.20 Association Lists

      • 6.6.20.1 Alist Key Equality
      • 6.6.20.2 Adding or Setting Alist Entries
      • 6.6.20.3 Retrieving Alist Entries
      • 6.6.20.4 Removing Alist Entries
      • 6.6.20.5 Sloppy Alist Functions
      • 6.6.20.6 Alist Example

    • 6.6.21 VList-Based Hash Lists or “VHashes”

    • 6.6.22 Hash Tables

      • 6.6.22.1 Hash Table Examples
      • 6.6.22.2 Hash Table Reference

    • 6.6.23 Other Types

  • 6.7 Procedures

    • 6.7.1 Lambda: Basic Procedure Creation

    • 6.7.2 Primitive Procedures

    • 6.7.3 Compiled Procedures

    • 6.7.4 Optional Arguments

      • 6.7.4.1 lambda* and define*.
      • 6.7.4.2 (ice-9 optargs)

    • 6.7.5 Case-lambda

    • 6.7.6 Higher-Order Functions

    • 6.7.7 Procedure Properties and Meta-information

    • 6.7.8 Procedures with Setters

    • 6.7.9 Inlinable Procedures

  • 6.8 Macros

    • 6.8.1 Defining Macros

    • 6.8.2 Syntax-rules Macros

      • 6.8.2.1 Patterns
      • 6.8.2.2 Hygiene
      • 6.8.2.3 Shorthands
      • 6.8.2.4 Reporting Syntax Errors in Macros
      • 6.8.2.5 Specifying a Custom Ellipsis Identifier
      • 6.8.2.6 Further Information

    • 6.8.3 Support for the syntax-case System

      • 6.8.3.1 Why syntax-case?
      • 6.8.3.2 Custom Ellipsis Identifiers for syntax-case Macros
      • 6.8.3.3 Syntax objects can be data too

    • 6.8.4 Syntax Transformer Helpers

    • 6.8.5 Lisp-style Macro Definitions

    • 6.8.6 Identifier Macros

    • 6.8.7 Syntax Parameters

    • 6.8.8 Eval-when

    • 6.8.9 Macro Expansion

    • 6.8.10 Hygiene and the Top-Level

    • 6.8.11 Internal Macros

  • 6.9 General Utility Functions

    • 6.9.1 Equality

    • 6.9.2 Object Properties

    • 6.9.3 Sorting

    • 6.9.4 Copying Deep Structures

    • 6.9.5 General String Conversion

    • 6.9.6 Hooks

      • 6.9.6.1 Hook Usage by Example
      • 6.9.6.2 Hook Reference
      • 6.9.6.3 Hooks For C Code.
      • 6.9.6.4 Hooks for Garbage Collection
      • 6.9.6.5 Hooks into the Guile REPL

  • 6.10 Definitions and Variable Bindings

    • 6.10.1 Top Level Variable Definitions
    • 6.10.2 Local Variable Bindings
    • 6.10.3 Internal definitions
    • 6.10.4 Querying variable bindings
    • 6.10.5 Binding multiple return values

  • 6.11 Controlling the Flow of Program Execution

    • 6.11.1 Sequencing and Splicing

    • 6.11.2 Simple Conditional Evaluation

    • 6.11.3 Conditional Evaluation of a Sequence of Expressions

    • 6.11.4 Iteration mechanisms

    • 6.11.5 Prompts

      • 6.11.5.1 Prompt Primitives
      • 6.11.5.2 Shift, Reset, and All That

    • 6.11.6 Continuations

    • 6.11.7 Returning and Accepting Multiple Values

    • 6.11.8 Exceptions

      • 6.11.8.1 Exception Objects
      • 6.11.8.2 Raising and Handling Exceptions
      • 6.11.8.3 Throw and Catch
      • 6.11.8.4 Exceptions and C

    • 6.11.9 Procedures for Signaling Errors

    • 6.11.10 Dynamic Wind

    • 6.11.11 Fluids and Dynamic States

    • 6.11.12 Parameters

    • 6.11.13 How to Handle Errors

      • 6.11.13.1 C Support
      • 6.11.13.2 Signaling Type Errors

    • 6.11.14 Continuation Barriers

  • 6.12 Input and Output

    • 6.12.1 Ports

    • 6.12.2 Binary I/O

    • 6.12.3 Encoding

    • 6.12.4 Textual I/O

    • 6.12.5 Simple Textual Output

    • 6.12.6 Buffering

    • 6.12.7 Random Access

    • 6.12.8 Line Oriented and Delimited Text

    • 6.12.9 Default Ports for Input, Output and Errors

    • 6.12.10 Types of Port

      • 6.12.10.1 File Ports
      • 6.12.10.2 Bytevector Ports
      • 6.12.10.3 String Ports
      • 6.12.10.4 Custom Ports
      • 6.12.10.5 Soft Ports
      • 6.12.10.6 Void Ports
      • 6.12.10.7 Low-Level Custom Ports
      • 6.12.10.8 Low-Level Custom Ports in C

    • 6.12.11 Venerable Port Interfaces

    • 6.12.12 Using Ports from C

    • 6.12.13 Non-Blocking I/O

    • 6.12.14 Handling of Unicode Byte Order Marks

  • 6.13 Regular Expressions

    • 6.13.1 Regexp Functions
    • 6.13.2 Match Structures
    • 6.13.3 Backslash Escapes

  • 6.14 LALR(1) Parsing

  • 6.15 PEG Parsing

    • 6.15.1 PEG Syntax Reference
    • 6.15.2 PEG API Reference
    • 6.15.3 PEG Tutorial
    • 6.15.4 PEG Internals

  • 6.16 Reading and Evaluating Scheme Code

    • 6.16.1 Scheme Syntax: Standard and Guile Extensions

      • 6.16.1.1 Expression Syntax
      • 6.16.1.2 Comments
      • 6.16.1.3 Block Comments
      • 6.16.1.4 Case Sensitivity
      • 6.16.1.5 Keyword Syntax
      • 6.16.1.6 Reader Extensions

    • 6.16.2 Reading Scheme Code

    • 6.16.3 Reading Scheme Code, For the Compiler

    • 6.16.4 Writing Scheme Values

    • 6.16.5 Procedures for On the Fly Evaluation

    • 6.16.6 Compiling Scheme Code

    • 6.16.7 Loading Scheme Code from File

    • 6.16.8 Load Paths

    • 6.16.9 Character Encoding of Source Files

    • 6.16.10 Delayed Evaluation

    • 6.16.11 Local Evaluation

    • 6.16.12 Local Inclusion

    • 6.16.13 Sandboxed Evaluation

    • 6.16.14 REPL Servers

    • 6.16.15 Cooperative REPL Servers

  • 6.17 Memory Management and Garbage Collection

    • 6.17.1 Function related to Garbage Collection

    • 6.17.2 Memory Blocks

    • 6.17.3 Weak References

      • 6.17.3.1 Weak hash tables
      • 6.17.3.2 Weak vectors

    • 6.17.4 Guardians

  • 6.18 Modules

    • 6.18.1 General Information about Modules
    • 6.18.2 Using Guile Modules
    • 6.18.3 Creating Guile Modules
    • 6.18.4 Modules and the File System
    • 6.18.5 R6RS Version References
    • 6.18.6 R6RS Libraries
    • 6.18.7 Variables
    • 6.18.8 Module System Reflection
    • 6.18.9 Declarative Modules
    • 6.18.10 Accessing Modules from C
    • 6.18.11 provide and require
    • 6.18.12 Environments

  • 6.19 Foreign Function Interface

    • 6.19.1 Foreign Libraries
    • 6.19.2 Foreign Extensions
    • 6.19.3 Foreign Pointers
    • 6.19.4 Foreign Types
    • 6.19.5 Foreign Functions
    • 6.19.6 Void Pointers and Byte Access
    • 6.19.7 Foreign Structs
    • 6.19.8 More Foreign Functions

  • 6.20 Foreign Objects

  • 6.21 Smobs

  • 6.22 Threads, Mutexes, Asyncs and Dynamic Roots

    • 6.22.1 Threads
    • 6.22.2 Thread-Local Variables
    • 6.22.3 Asynchronous Interrupts
    • 6.22.4 Atomics
    • 6.22.5 Mutexes and Condition Variables
    • 6.22.6 Blocking in Guile Mode
    • 6.22.7 Futures
    • 6.22.8 Parallel forms

  • 6.23 Configuration, Features and Runtime Options

    • 6.23.1 Configuration, Build and Installation

    • 6.23.2 Feature Tracking

      • 6.23.2.1 Feature Manipulation
      • 6.23.2.2 Common Feature Symbols

    • 6.23.3 Runtime Options

      • 6.23.3.1 Examples of option use

  • 6.24 Support for Other Languages

    • 6.24.1 Using Other Languages

    • 6.24.2 Emacs Lisp

      • 6.24.2.1 Nil
      • 6.24.2.2 Dynamic Binding
      • 6.24.2.3 Other Elisp Features

    • 6.24.3 ECMAScript

  • 6.25 Support for Internationalization

    • 6.25.1 Internationalization with Guile
    • 6.25.2 Text Collation
    • 6.25.3 Character Case Mapping
    • 6.25.4 Number Input and Output
    • 6.25.5 Accessing Locale Information
    • 6.25.6 Gettext Support

  • 6.26 Debugging Infrastructure

    • 6.26.1 Simple Debugging

    • 6.26.2 Evaluation and the Scheme Stack

      • 6.26.2.1 Stack Capture
      • 6.26.2.2 Stacks
      • 6.26.2.3 Frames

    • 6.26.3 Source Properties

    • 6.26.4 Programmatic Error Handling

      • 6.26.4.1 Catching Exceptions
      • 6.26.4.2 Pre-Unwind Debugging
      • 6.26.4.3 call-with-error-handling
      • 6.26.4.4 Stack Overflow
      • 6.26.4.5 Debug options

    • 6.26.5 Traps

      • 6.26.5.1 VM Hooks
      • 6.26.5.2 Trap Interface
      • 6.26.5.3 Low-Level Traps
      • 6.26.5.4 Tracing Traps
      • 6.26.5.5 Trap States
      • 6.26.5.6 High-Level Traps

    • 6.26.6 GDB Support

  • 6.27 Code Coverage Reports

• 7 Guile Modules

  • 7.1 SLIB

    • 7.1.1 SLIB installation
    • 7.1.2 JACAL

  • 7.2 POSIX System Calls and Networking

    • 7.2.1 POSIX Interface Conventions

    • 7.2.2 Ports and File Descriptors

    • 7.2.3 File System

    • 7.2.4 User Information

    • 7.2.5 Time

    • 7.2.6 Runtime Environment

    • 7.2.7 Processes

    • 7.2.8 Signals

    • 7.2.9 Terminals and Ptys

    • 7.2.10 Pipes

    • 7.2.11 Networking

      • 7.2.11.1 Network Address Conversion
      • 7.2.11.2 Network Databases
      • 7.2.11.3 Network Socket Address
      • 7.2.11.4 Network Sockets and Communication
      • 7.2.11.5 Network Socket Examples

    • 7.2.12 System Identification

    • 7.2.13 Locales

    • 7.2.14 Encryption

  • 7.3 HTTP, the Web, and All That

    • 7.3.1 Types and the Web

    • 7.3.2 Universal Resource Identifiers

    • 7.3.3 The Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol

    • 7.3.4 HTTP Headers

      • 7.3.4.1 HTTP Header Types
      • 7.3.4.2 General Headers
      • 7.3.4.3 Entity Headers
      • 7.3.4.4 Request Headers
      • 7.3.4.5 Response Headers

    • 7.3.5 Transfer Codings

    • 7.3.6 HTTP Requests

      • 7.3.6.1 An Important Note on Character Sets
      • 7.3.6.2 Request API

    • 7.3.7 HTTP Responses

    • 7.3.8 Web Client

    • 7.3.9 Web Server

    • 7.3.10 Web Examples

      • 7.3.10.1 Hello, World!
      • 7.3.10.2 Inspecting the Request
      • 7.3.10.3 Higher-Level Interfaces
      • 7.3.10.4 Conclusion

  • 7.4 The (ice-9 getopt-long) Module

    • 7.4.1 A Short getopt-long Example
    • 7.4.2 How to Write an Option Specification
    • 7.4.3 Expected Command Line Format
    • 7.4.4 Reference Documentation for getopt-long
    • 7.4.5 Reference Documentation for option-ref

  • 7.5 SRFI Support Modules

    • 7.5.1 About SRFI Usage

    • 7.5.2 SRFI-0 - cond-expand

    • 7.5.3 SRFI-1 - List library

      • 7.5.3.1 Constructors
      • 7.5.3.2 Predicates
      • 7.5.3.3 Selectors
      • 7.5.3.4 Length, Append, Concatenate, etc.
      • 7.5.3.5 Fold, Unfold & Map
      • 7.5.3.6 Filtering and Partitioning
      • 7.5.3.7 Searching
      • 7.5.3.8 Deleting
      • 7.5.3.9 Association Lists
      • 7.5.3.10 Set Operations on Lists

    • 7.5.4 SRFI-2 - and-let*

    • 7.5.5 SRFI-4 - Homogeneous numeric vector datatypes

      • 7.5.5.1 SRFI-4 - Overview
      • 7.5.5.2 SRFI-4 - API
      • 7.5.5.3 SRFI-4 - Relation to bytevectors
      • 7.5.5.4 SRFI-4 - Guile extensions

    • 7.5.6 SRFI-6 - Basic String Ports

    • 7.5.7 SRFI-8 - receive

    • 7.5.8 SRFI-9 - define-record-type

    • 7.5.9 SRFI-10 - Hash-Comma Reader Extension

    • 7.5.10 SRFI-11 - let-values

    • 7.5.11 SRFI-13 - String Library

    • 7.5.12 SRFI-14 - Character-set Library

    • 7.5.13 SRFI-16 - case-lambda

    • 7.5.14 SRFI-17 - Generalized set!

    • 7.5.15 SRFI-18 - Multithreading support

      • 7.5.15.1 SRFI-18 Threads
      • 7.5.15.2 SRFI-18 Mutexes
      • 7.5.15.3 SRFI-18 Condition variables
      • 7.5.15.4 SRFI-18 Time
      • 7.5.15.5 SRFI-18 Exceptions

    • 7.5.16 SRFI-19 - Time/Date Library

      • 7.5.16.1 SRFI-19 Introduction
      • 7.5.16.2 SRFI-19 Time
      • 7.5.16.3 SRFI-19 Date
      • 7.5.16.4 SRFI-19 Time/Date conversions
      • 7.5.16.5 SRFI-19 Date to string
      • 7.5.16.6 SRFI-19 String to date

    • 7.5.17 SRFI-23 - Error Reporting

    • 7.5.18 SRFI-26 - specializing parameters

    • 7.5.19 SRFI-27 - Sources of Random Bits

      • 7.5.19.1 The Default Random Source
      • 7.5.19.2 Random Sources
      • 7.5.19.3 Obtaining random number generator procedures

    • 7.5.20 SRFI-28 - Basic Format Strings

    • 7.5.21 SRFI-30 - Nested Multi-line Comments

    • 7.5.22 SRFI-31 - A special form ‘rec’ for recursive evaluation

    • 7.5.23 SRFI-34 - Exception handling for programs

    • 7.5.24 SRFI-35 - Conditions

    • 7.5.25 SRFI-37 - args-fold

    • 7.5.26 SRFI-38 - External Representation for Data With Shared Structure

    • 7.5.27 SRFI-39 - Parameters

    • 7.5.28 SRFI-41 - Streams

      • 7.5.28.1 SRFI-41 Stream Fundamentals
      • 7.5.28.2 SRFI-41 Stream Primitives
      • 7.5.28.3 SRFI-41 Stream Library

    • 7.5.29 SRFI-42 - Eager Comprehensions

    • 7.5.30 SRFI-43 - Vector Library

      • 7.5.30.1 SRFI-43 Constructors
      • 7.5.30.2 SRFI-43 Predicates
      • 7.5.30.3 SRFI-43 Selectors
      • 7.5.30.4 SRFI-43 Iteration
      • 7.5.30.5 SRFI-43 Searching
      • 7.5.30.6 SRFI-43 Mutators
      • 7.5.30.7 SRFI-43 Conversion

    • 7.5.31 SRFI-45 - Primitives for Expressing Iterative Lazy Algorithms

    • 7.5.32 SRFI-46 Basic syntax-rules Extensions

    • 7.5.33 SRFI-55 - Requiring Features

    • 7.5.34 SRFI-60 - Integers as Bits

    • 7.5.35 SRFI-61 - A more general cond clause

    • 7.5.36 SRFI-62 - S-expression comments.

    • 7.5.37 SRFI-64: A Scheme API for Test Suites

      • 7.5.37.1 SRFI-64 Abstract
      • 7.5.37.2 SRFI-64 Rationale
      • 7.5.37.3 SRFI-64 Writing Basic Test Suites
      • 7.5.37.4 SRFI-64 Conditonal Test Suites and Other Advanced Features
      • 7.5.37.5 SRFI-64 Test Runner
      • 7.5.37.6 SRFI-64 Test Results
      • 7.5.37.7 SRFI-64 Writing a New Test Runner

    • 7.5.38 SRFI-67 - Compare procedures

    • 7.5.39 SRFI-69 - Basic hash tables

      • 7.5.39.1 Creating hash tables
      • 7.5.39.2 Accessing table items
      • 7.5.39.3 Table properties
      • 7.5.39.4 Hash table algorithms

    • 7.5.40 SRFI-71 - Extended let-syntax for multiple values

    • 7.5.41 SRFI-87 => in case clauses

    • 7.5.42 SRFI-88 Keyword Objects

    • 7.5.43 SRFI-98 Accessing environment variables.

    • 7.5.44 SRFI-105 Curly-infix expressions.

    • 7.5.45 SRFI-111 Boxes.

    • 7.5.46 SRFI-119 Wisp: simpler indentation-sensitive Scheme.

    • 7.5.47 Transducers

      • 7.5.47.1 SRFI-171 General Discussion
      • 7.5.47.2 Applying Transducers
      • 7.5.47.3 Reducers
      • 7.5.47.4 Transducers
      • 7.5.47.5 Helper functions for writing transducers

    • 7.5.48 SRFI-197: Pipeline Operators

      • 7.5.48.1 Acknowledgements

    • 7.5.49 SRFI-207 String-notated bytevectors

      • 7.5.49.1 External Notation
      • 7.5.49.2 Constructors
      • 7.5.49.3 Conversion
      • 7.5.49.4 Selection
      • 7.5.49.5 Replacement
      • 7.5.49.6 Comparison
      • 7.5.49.7 Searching
      • 7.5.49.8 Joining And Splitting
      • 7.5.49.9 I/O
      • 7.5.49.10 Exceptions
      • 7.5.49.11 Acknowledgements

    • 7.5.50 SRFI-244 - Multiple-value Definitions

  • 7.6 R6RS Support

    • 7.6.1 Incompatibilities with the R6RS

    • 7.6.2 R6RS Standard Libraries

      • 7.6.2.1 Library Usage
      • 7.6.2.2 rnrs base
      • 7.6.2.3 rnrs unicode
      • 7.6.2.4 rnrs bytevectors
      • 7.6.2.5 rnrs lists
      • 7.6.2.6 rnrs sorting
      • 7.6.2.7 rnrs control
      • 7.6.2.8 R6RS Records
      • 7.6.2.9 rnrs records syntactic
      • 7.6.2.10 rnrs records procedural
      • 7.6.2.11 rnrs records inspection
      • 7.6.2.12 rnrs exceptions
      • 7.6.2.13 rnrs conditions
      • 7.6.2.14 I/O Conditions
      • 7.6.2.15 Transcoders
      • 7.6.2.16 rnrs io ports
      • 7.6.2.17 R6RS File Ports
      • 7.6.2.18 rnrs io simple
      • 7.6.2.19 rnrs files
      • 7.6.2.20 rnrs programs
      • 7.6.2.21 rnrs arithmetic fixnums
      • 7.6.2.22 rnrs arithmetic flonums
      • 7.6.2.23 rnrs arithmetic bitwise
      • 7.6.2.24 rnrs syntax-case
      • 7.6.2.25 rnrs hashtables
      • 7.6.2.26 rnrs enums
      • 7.6.2.27 rnrs
      • 7.6.2.28 rnrs eval
      • 7.6.2.29 rnrs mutable-pairs
      • 7.6.2.30 rnrs mutable-strings
      • 7.6.2.31 rnrs r5rs

  • 7.7 R7RS Support

    • 7.7.1 Incompatibilities with the R7RS
    • 7.7.2 R7RS Standard Libraries

  • 7.8 Pattern Matching

  • 7.9 Readline Support

    • 7.9.1 Loading Readline Support

    • 7.9.2 Readline Options

    • 7.9.3 Readline Functions

      • 7.9.3.1 Readline Port
      • 7.9.3.2 Completion

  • 7.10 Pretty Printing

  • 7.11 Formatted Output

  • 7.12 File Tree Walk

  • 7.13 Queues

  • 7.14 Streams

  • 7.15 Buffered Input

  • 7.16 Expect

  • 7.17 sxml-match: Pattern Matching of SXML

    • Syntax
    • Matching XML Elements
    • Ellipses in Patterns
    • Ellipses in Quasiquote’d Output
    • Matching Nodesets
    • Matching the “Rest” of a Nodeset
    • Matching the Unmatched Attributes
    • Default Values in Attribute Patterns
    • Guards in Patterns
    • Catamorphisms
    • Named-Catamorphisms
    • sxml-match-let and sxml-match-let*

  • 7.18 The Scheme shell (scsh)

  • 7.19 Curried Definitions

  • 7.20 Statprof

  • 7.21 SXML

    • 7.21.1 SXML Overview

    • 7.21.2 Reading and Writing XML

    • 7.21.3 SSAX: A Functional XML Parsing Toolkit

      • 7.21.3.1 History
      • 7.21.3.2 Implementation
      • 7.21.3.3 Usage

    • 7.21.4 Transforming SXML

      • 7.21.4.1 Overview
      • 7.21.4.2 Usage

    • 7.21.5 SXML Tree Fold

      • 7.21.5.1 Overview
      • 7.21.5.2 Usage

    • 7.21.6 SXPath

      • 7.21.6.1 Overview
      • 7.21.6.2 Basic Converters and Applicators
      • 7.21.6.3 Converter Combinators

    • 7.21.7 (sxml ssax input-parse)

      • 7.21.7.1 Overview
      • 7.21.7.2 Usage

    • 7.21.8 (sxml apply-templates)

      • 7.21.8.1 Overview
      • 7.21.8.2 Usage

  • 7.22 Texinfo Processing

    • 7.22.1 (texinfo)

      • 7.22.1.1 Overview
      • 7.22.1.2 Usage

    • 7.22.2 (texinfo docbook)

      • 7.22.2.1 Overview
      • 7.22.2.2 Usage

    • 7.22.3 (texinfo html)

      • 7.22.3.1 Overview
      • 7.22.3.2 Usage

    • 7.22.4 (texinfo indexing)

      • 7.22.4.1 Overview
      • 7.22.4.2 Usage

    • 7.22.5 (texinfo string-utils)

      • 7.22.5.1 Overview
      • 7.22.5.2 Usage

    • 7.22.6 (texinfo plain-text)

      • 7.22.6.1 Overview
      • 7.22.6.2 Usage

    • 7.22.7 (texinfo serialize)

      • 7.22.7.1 Overview
      • 7.22.7.2 Usage

    • 7.22.8 (texinfo reflection)

      • 7.22.8.1 Overview
      • 7.22.8.2 Usage

• 8 GOOPS

  • 8.1 Copyright Notice

  • 8.2 Class Definition

  • 8.3 Instance Creation and Slot Access

  • 8.4 Slot Options

  • 8.5 Illustrating Slot Description

  • 8.6 Methods and Generic Functions

    • 8.6.1 Accessors

    • 8.6.2 Extending Primitives

    • 8.6.3 Merging Generics

    • 8.6.4 Next-method

    • 8.6.5 method* and define-method*

      • 8.6.5.1 Advanced argument handling in method and define-method
      • 8.6.5.2 Type dispatch and redefinition for advanced argument handling
      • 8.6.5.3 next-method call in method*
      • 8.6.5.4 Advanced argument handling design choices

    • 8.6.6 Generic Function and Method Examples

    • 8.6.7 Handling Invocation Errors

  • 8.7 Inheritance

    • 8.7.1 Class Precedence List
    • 8.7.2 Sorting Methods
    • 8.7.3 Inheritance and accessors

  • 8.8 Introspection

    • 8.8.1 Classes
    • 8.8.2 Instances
    • 8.8.3 Slots
    • 8.8.4 Generic Functions
    • 8.8.5 Accessing Slots

  • 8.9 Error Handling

  • 8.10 GOOPS Object Miscellany

  • 8.11 The Metaobject Protocol

    • 8.11.1 Metaobjects and the Metaobject Protocol
    • 8.11.2 Metaclasses
    • 8.11.3 MOP Specification
    • 8.11.4 Instance Creation Protocol
    • 8.11.5 Class Definition Protocol
    • 8.11.6 Customizing Class Definition
    • 8.11.7 Method Definition
    • 8.11.8 Method Definition Internals
    • 8.11.9 Generic Function Internals
    • 8.11.10 Generic Function Invocation

  • 8.12 Redefining a Class

    • 8.12.1 Redefinable Classes
    • 8.12.2 Default Class Redefinition Behavior
    • 8.12.3 Customizing Class Redefinition

  • 8.13 Changing the Class of an Instance

• 9 Guile Implementation

  • 9.1 A Brief History of Guile

    • 9.1.1 The Emacs Thesis
    • 9.1.2 Early Days
    • 9.1.3 A Scheme of Many Maintainers
    • 9.1.4 A Timeline of Selected Guile Releases
    • 9.1.5 Status, or: Your Help Needed

  • 9.2 Data Representation

    • 9.2.1 A Simple Representation

    • 9.2.2 Faster Integers

    • 9.2.3 Cheaper Pairs

    • 9.2.4 Conservative Garbage Collection

    • 9.2.5 The SCM Type in Guile

      • 9.2.5.1 Relationship Between SCM and scm_t_bits
      • 9.2.5.2 Immediate Objects
      • 9.2.5.3 Non-Immediate Objects
      • 9.2.5.4 Allocating Heap Objects
      • 9.2.5.5 Heap Object Type Information
      • 9.2.5.6 Accessing Heap Object Fields

  • 9.3 A Virtual Machine for Guile

    • 9.3.1 Why a VM?

    • 9.3.2 VM Concepts

    • 9.3.3 Stack Layout

    • 9.3.4 Variables and the VM

    • 9.3.5 Compiled Procedures are VM Programs

    • 9.3.6 Object File Format

    • 9.3.7 Instruction Set

      • 9.3.7.1 Call and Return Instructions
      • 9.3.7.2 Function Prologue Instructions
      • 9.3.7.3 Shuffling Instructions
      • 9.3.7.4 Trampoline Instructions
      • 9.3.7.5 Non-Local Control Flow Instructions
      • 9.3.7.6 Instrumentation Instructions
      • 9.3.7.7 Intrinsic Call Instructions
      • 9.3.7.8 Constant Instructions
      • 9.3.7.9 Memory Access Instructions
      • 9.3.7.10 Atomic Memory Access Instructions
      • 9.3.7.11 Tagging and Untagging Instructions
      • 9.3.7.12 Integer Arithmetic Instructions
      • 9.3.7.13 Floating-Point Arithmetic Instructions
      • 9.3.7.14 Comparison Instructions
      • 9.3.7.15 Branch Instructions
      • 9.3.7.16 Raw Memory Access Instructions

    • 9.3.8 Just-In-Time Native Code

  • 9.4 Compiling to the Virtual Machine

    • 9.4.1 Compiler Tower

    • 9.4.2 The Scheme Compiler

    • 9.4.3 Tree-IL

    • 9.4.4 Continuation-Passing Style

      • 9.4.4.1 An Introduction to CPS
      • 9.4.4.2 CPS in Guile
      • 9.4.4.3 Building CPS
      • 9.4.4.4 CPS Soup
      • 9.4.4.5 Compiling CPS

    • 9.4.5 Bytecode

    • 9.4.6 Writing New High-Level Languages

    • 9.4.7 Extending the Compiler

• Appendix A GNU Free Documentation License

• Concept Index

• Procedure Index

• Variable Index

• Type Index

• R5RS Index