Standard-output: Scheme standardization

Abstract

This is a brief report of efforts to standardize the Scheme programming language. Scheme inherits Lisp's rich set of symbol manipulation primitives, latent storage allocation, dynamic type checking, and simple syntax. Scheme is distinguished from most Lisp dialects by a single variable environment, block structure with static scope, and uniform evaluation of the operator and operand positions of a procedure call. Since there is no storage penalty for tail-recursive procedure calls, they may be used to express iteration. Provision is made for a rich set of numerical types, and exact and inexact numbers are distinguished. The ability to create first-class escape procedures allows almost all known forms of sequential control to be expressed. Above all, Scheme achieves its expressive power through the simplicity and generality of its design, and not by the accumulation of features. (The draft standard is about 50 pages long.) The reader may wish to consult books by Abelson and Sussman [1], Springer and Friedman [2], and Dybvig [3], among others, for tutorial introductions to Scheme.