R7RS: Portable Guide

R7RS is the current standard. The language has been divided into two parts.

R7RS-small

defines the core language, and extends the earlier R5RS standard with exception handling, libraries and records, amongst other additions. The R7RS report can be found under the standards menu.

R7RS-large

is still under development, and aims to define a set of libraries "focused on the practical needs of mainstream software development." R7RS-large is being developed in dockets, each docket known by a color and focusing on a different set of libraries - for example, the Red docket mostly contains data structures. Information on the progress and planned future of R7RS-large is available at https://github.com/johnwcowan/r7rs-work/blob/master/R7RSHomePage.md

Implementation Support

The following table shows any command-line flags required to put the Scheme implementation into R7RS mode.

Implementation R7RS Mode Flags

Chibi-Scheme

chibi-scheme (R7RS mode is the default)

Chicken

csc -R r7rs and csi -R r7rs

Cyclone

cyclone and icyc (R7RS mode is the default)

Gambit

gsc -:r7rs and gsi -:r7rs

Gauche

gosh -r 7

Gerbil

gxi --lang r7rs

Guile

guile --r7rs

Kawa

kawa --r7rs

Larceny

larceny -r7rs

Sagittarius

sagittarius -r 7 and sash -r 7

The levels of R7RS-large support vary. Gauche and Sagittarius support all of the Red and Tangerine dockets, with the new R7RS-large names (see Gauche and Sagittarius manuals). Most implementations do, however, support many of the required SRFIs: SRFI support is documented at https://docs.scheme.org/srfi/support/.

R7RS Large Edition

The following series of tables give a summary of the libraries covered by the Red and Tangerine dockets (arranged into groups of related functionality) and the Yellow docket. The second column links to some documentation for each library: most of these libraries are based on existing SRFIs and, for portability, it is recommended to use the SRFI imports to get at these libraries.

Formatting

This library provides a scheme-like way of formatting text by constructing s-expressions, as opposed to using text interpolation. (Note: the Tangerine Edition refers to SRFI 159, but that has been withdrawn in favour of SRFI 166.)

R7RS Name Documentation Description

(scheme show)

(srfi 159)

Formatting text.

Regular Expressions

This library, like show, provides a scheme-like way of describing regular expressions using s-expressions.

R7RS Name Documentation Description

(scheme regex)

(srfi 115)

Regular expressions.

Data Types

Text

This library introduces an immutable form of a string, called a text. The rationale for this library is that more efficient operations can be implemented for strings which are immutable, particularly if they are unicode-encoded. Helpfully, many of the implemented operations work on "textual" objects, which includes both the new immutable text data type and regular string values.

R7RS Name Documentation Description

(scheme text)

(srfi 135)

Immutable strings.
Numbers

These libraries provide additional functionality and potentially efficient implementations for working with numbers.

R7RS Name Documentation Description

(scheme division)

(srfi 141)

Provides six different ways of computing the quotient and remainder (q and r) when dividing an integer n so that n = dq+r.

(scheme bitwise)

(srfi 151)

Treats integers as twos-complement numbers, and provides a complete set of operators for manipulating integers in bitwise form.

(scheme fixnum)

(srfi 143)

Provides efficient implementations of operations on integers which are "small enough" to be treated within a single machine word.

(scheme flonum)

(srfi 144)

Provides efficient implementations of operations on flonums, a subset of the full range of inexact real numbers.

Data Structures

Data structures (collections) have been a major focus of R7RS-large development. The small language has built-in the list and vector datatypes, a specialisation of vector to bytevectors, and a simple mapping pattern in the form of association lists.

Set-like

Designed to hold one or more values without any additional structure, such as order, imposed on them. Set-like structures may enforce unique values (sets) or permit multiple values (bags, or multi-sets).

R7RS Name Documentation Description

(scheme box)

(srfi 111)

Provides a single-item container.

(scheme set)

(srfi 113)

Provides both set and bag data structures, along with a wide-range of supporting functions.

(scheme charset)

(srfi 14)

Deals specifically with sets of characters, making available some predefined character sets, and operations to work with such sets.
List-like

Designed to hold one or more values in a specific order. Values can be duplicated within the data structure.

R7RS Name Documentation Description

(scheme list)

(srfi 1)

Provides a wide-range of functions working with the built-in list datatype.

(scheme ilist)

(srfi 116)

Provides an immutable version of the built-in list along with functions equivalent to those in the list library, where appropriate.

(scheme rlist)

(srfi 101)

An alternative to the built-in list, but offers more efficient references (rlist-ref is O(log n)) and a functional interface. Note that, unlike the SRFI, the R7RS-large version prefixes identifiers with "r" to avoid name-clashes with list.

(scheme ideque)

(srfi 134)

Provides an immutable deque data struture, a double-ended queue which supports efficient (O(1)) adding/removal of items from either end.

(scheme list-queue)

(srfi 117)

A mutable deque data structure, which offers efficient adding/removal of items from the front and adding of items to the back.

Vectors are a variant of lists, which hold values in a specific order and provide O(1) look-up time using a numeric index. The different types allow for specialisation in terms of the particular contents.

R7RS Name Documentation Description

(scheme vector)

(srfi 133)

Provides a wide-range of functions working with the built-in vector datatype.

(scheme bytevector)

(rnrs bytevectors)

Taken from R6RS.

(scheme vector @)

(srfi 160)

Provide homogeneous equivalents to the vector type and library for specific numeric types; these can potentially be implemented more efficiently than the general form.
Map-like

Collections of key-value pairs, where a key is used to retrieve a value stored within the collection. They can be thought of as a generalisation of the vector, except that any type of value can be used as the index, not just a number.

R7RS Name Documentation Description

(scheme hash-table)

(srfi 125)

Provides a standard hash table data structure.

(scheme mapping)

(srfi 146)

Provides a more general data structure than hash-table, supporting functional procedures.
Stream-like

These data structures do not store existing values, but instead construct new values on demand.

(scheme generator)

(srfi 158)

Provides both "generators" and "accumulators". A generator is a zero-argument procedure that acts as a source of values; an accumulator is a single-argument procedure that acts as a sink of values.

(scheme lseq)

(srfi 127)

A list where the "cdr" element is a generator; this is similar to stream except that the lists are odd, so the first element is eager evaluated.

(scheme stream)

(srfi 41)

Provides low-level and higher-level support for lazy lists; lists where each item is constructed on demand. These lists are even, so both elements are lazy evaluated.

Utility

These libraries are used to support data structures.

R7RS Name Documentation Description

(scheme comparator)

(srfi 128)

Bundles together the equality, comparison and hash functions for different data-types, so they can be used in the construction of a data structure for a specific type of data. This library is used in: hash-table, mapping, and set.

(scheme ephemeron)

(srfi 124)

Can be used to implement data structures with weak references, which permit garbage collection.

(scheme sort)

(srfi 132)

A collection of sort, merge and related functions, working on the built-in list and vector datatypes.

Yellow Edition (macros)

This edition appears to have been voted on, but there are not many details available yet, e.g. what the (scheme NAME) names will be. Here is a list of what might be expected:

R7RS Name Documentation Description

syntax-case

From R6RS

identifier-syntax

From R6RS

(srfi 139)

Syntax parameters

(srfi 188)

Splicing binding constructs for syntactic keywords

(srfi 212)

Aliases

(srfi 213)

Identifier properties

(srfi 61)

A more general cond clause

(srfi 8)

receive: Binding to multiple values

(srfi 31)

A special form rec for recursive evaluation

(srfi 26)

Notation for specializing parameters without currying

(srfi 219)

Define higher-order lambda

(srfi 210)

Procedures and syntax for multiple values

R7RS Large Edition dockets

R7RS-large is developed by assigning candidate SRFIs to color dockets that concern different aspects of the language. Over time, the language working group (WG2) selects the most appropriate SRFIs from each docket to go into the final language.

Docket Concerns

Red

data structures

Tangerine

numerics

Orange

numerics

Amber

syntax

Yellow

syntax

Lime

portable

Green

non-portable

Olive

non-portable

Aqua

portable but complex things

Blue

portable but advanced things

Indigo

stuff of dubious utility

Detailed list

Other SRFIs

The following SRFIs are the most widely supported ones for tasks that R7RS-large is not currently planned to cover:

Task

SRFI import

Environment variables

(srfi 98)

Contributing

doc.scheme.org is a community subdomain of scheme.org.