GSI/GSC(1)

📦 version 4.9.3, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute

💖 GSI/GSC — Gambit Scheme Interpreter and Compiler 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, and let me tell you about the two little icons living in section 1 of your manual: gsi, the Gambit Scheme Interpreter, and gsc, the Gambit Scheme Compiler. 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

gsi [ -:arg,... ] [ -f ] [ -v ] [[-] [ -e ] [ file ]]...
gsc [options] [files]

so like, quick vibe check on the aliases: gsc-script, gsi-script, scheme-ieee-1178-1990, scheme-r4rs, scheme-srfi-0, six, and six-script are currently synonyms for gsi. yes, all of them. it's giving "many hats, one queen". 💅

and scheme-r5rs? that one is registered in the Debian alternatives system and can be configured to point at gsi. slay, configurable. ✨

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

This manual page briefly documents the gsi and gsc commands. (briefly! the real tea is elsewhere, more on that in SEE ALSO 🫶)

The Gambit programming system is a full implementation of the Scheme language which conforms to the R4RS, R5RS, and IEEE Scheme standards. no cap. it consists of two main programs: gsi, the Gambit Scheme interpreter, and gsc, the Gambit Scheme compiler.

  • the interpreter gives you an interactive environment with a debugger — it's giving cozy REPL energy 🎀
  • the compiler can produce stand-alone executables or modules which can be linked or loaded at run time
  • interpreted code and compiled code can be freely mixed 🌈
  • C modules can be linked with Scheme modules

The interpreter is executed in interactive mode when no file or - or -e option is given on the command line. but the moment at least one file or - or -e option shows up, the interpreter is executed in batch mode. the vibe check is literally just "did you pass it something". 😌

Entering ,q or (exit) at the interpreter's command prompt will exit the interpreter.

Entering ,? at the interpreter's command prompt will display a list of special commands. use it, bestie, it's the cheat sheet.

In batch mode the command line arguments denote files to be loaded, REPL interactions to start (- option), and expressions to be evaluated (-e option). Note that the - and -e options can be interspersed with the files on the command line and can occur multiple times. so go off, order them however.

The interpreter processes the command line arguments from left to right, loading files with the load procedure and evaluating expressions with the eval procedure in the global interaction environment. After this processing the interpreter exits. periodt. 💅

lowkey important side note: gsc-cc-o.bat is a script called by gsc to generate object files during compilation. It takes its data from environment variables and is not intended for user interaction. don't talk to it, it's working. 🙈

💅 OPTIONS 💅

A summary of options is included below. For a complete description, see the Info files. (the man page is the appetiser, the Info files are the meal 🍓)

  • - — Initiate a REPL at this point. (Continue by issuing a ,c command at the interpreter prompt)
  • -: — Comma separated list of run-time options
  • -e — Evaluate an expression.
  • -f — Skip initialization file.
  • -v — Show version of program.

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

The documentation for these programs is arguably too extensive to cover with man pages. Only the common command line options are given here. The programs are documented fully in Gambit, available on-line at the Gambit Homepage. Once package gambdoc is installed, this 200+ page document is available:

  • via the Info system (info gambit) 👑
  • in html via doc-base
  • or as files in /usr/share/doc/gambit (html, pdf, txt)

also go say hi to:

Gambit is Copyright (c) 1994-2015 by Marc Feeley, all rights reserved.

Gambit is released under a dual LGPL and Apache 2 license. For further information refer to /usr/share/doc/gambit/copyright.

This manual page is Copyright (c) 2006-2009 Marc Feeley and Kurt B. Kaiser <kbk@shore.net> Released under the same license as Gambit.

🦋 AUTHOR 🦋

Gambit was written by Marc Feeley <gambit@iro.umontreal.ca>.

Homepage: http://gambitscheme.org

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this was version 4.4.3, dated June 3, 2009, and honestly? it ate. go write some Scheme, ily 💖✨🫶

📦 where this page comes from