Scheme (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:54, 6 October 2001

Revision as of 15:51, 25 February 2002

Line 1:

The '''Scheme programming language''' is a [[functional programming language|functional]] [[programming language]] which is a dialect of [[Lisp]]. It was developed by [[Guy L. Steele]] and [[Gerald J. Sussman]] in the [[1970s]].

It was the first variety of Lisp to feature [[lexical variable scoping]] rather than [[dynamic variable scoping]].

Like Lisp, Scheme supports [[computer memory garbage collection|garbage collection]]

It was the first variety of Lisp to feature[[lexical variable scoping]] rather than [[dynamic variable scoping]].

Like Lisp, Scheme supports [[garbage collection]]

of unreferenced data. It uses lists as primary data structure, and list operations such as cdr and car.

Scheme's philosophy is unashamedly minimalist:

provide as few primitive notions as possible,

and let everything else be implemented on top

of them. For instance, the main mechanism for

governing control flow is [[tail recursion]].

Why the curious name? Well, it was originally

called "Schemer", in the tradition of the

languages [[Planner programming language|Planner]]

and [[Conniver programming language|Conniver]],

but its authors used the [[ITS operating system]]

which didn't allow filenames longer than 6 characters.

There are many [[Scheme Implementations|implementations]] and

[[Scheme Links|web resources]] related to Scheme.

mention the standards here: R4RS (and earlier!), R5RS, and the IEEE standard.