Re: Using Guile as a runtime engine?

[Marius Vollmer]

Emiliano <address@hidden> writes:

> I'm looking for a runtime engine for a procedural language. Can
> guile be used for this?

Yes, I'd think so.  Are you worried that it might not be fit for
procedural languages because Guile implements the language Scheme,
which is sometimes referred to as a functional language?  IF this is
the case, fear not, as Guile has good support for the procedural style
of programming.

> Are there tools available which make it easier for me to generate
> the bytecode?

Guile does not have a official byte-code interface.  It does have a
internal form for fast execution, but it is not exported.  You would
have to translate your language into Scheme, and have Guile execute
that.  I think that this is a good way to go, in general.  Scheme code
should be easier to produce than low-level byte-codes.

Theoretically, Scheme has enough features to allow the translation of
all languages known to man, I think, but using these features might be
not as efficient as one might hope.  I'm thinking especially about
call/cc here.  If you use call/cc to break out of loops for example,
you might be disappointed with the performance of call/cc in Guile.
But I think it is safe to just ignore this until it becomes a problem
in reality.