ELK(1)ELK(1)NAME
elk, scheme-elk - extensible Scheme interpreter
SYNOPSISelk [ -l file ] [ -h KBytes ] [ -p load-path ] [ -g ] [ -i ] [ -v type
] [[ -- ] args]
elk...
DESCRIPTION
Elk (Extension Language Kit) is a Scheme implementation designed as a
general extension language for applications written in C or C++. Nor‐
mally, Elk is linked with the application it serves, but a stand-alone
version of the Scheme interpreter is installed as well (usually under
the name elk). This interpreter, together with the standard Scheme
toplevel, Elk can be used as an ordinary, stand-alone implementation of
the Scheme language.
When called without the -l option, Elk loads the standard “toplevel” to
start an interactive session. When called with -l file, the contents
of the specified file is loaded instead. If a `-' is given as a file‐
name argument, Elk loads from standard input.
The option -p load-path can be used to override the standard load-path.
The argument is a colon-separated list of directories. If this option
is not present and the environment variable ELK_LOADPATH is defined,
the value of this variable is used to initialize the load-path. The
value of ELK_LOADPATH has the same format as the argument to the -p
option.
The -h KBytes option is used to specify a non-standard heap size. The
default heap size is 512 KBytes.
If the option -i is specified, symbols are mapped to lower case. Nor‐
mally, Elk is case-sensitive.
The -g option causes the interpreter to run the garbage collector each
time memory is allocated on the heap. This is useful for writers of
extensions who want to test the garbage collect behavior of an exten‐
sion. Running Elk with the -g option is likely to reveal GC-related
bugs in extensions (such as not properly protected local objects), as
it triggers a garbage collection each time an object is allocated on
the Scheme heap. A dot is written to standard output each time a
garbage collection is performed when -g has been specified.
When called with one or more -v type (``verbose'') options, the inter‐
preter prints additional informational messages to standard output,
depending on the value of the type argument. If type is load, the
linker command and options are printed each time an object file is
loaded; if type is init, the names of extension initialization and
finalization functions are printed as they are called.
The remaining args are put into a list of strings, and the Scheme vari‐
able command-line-args is bound to this list in the global environment.
If arguments could be interpreted as options, `--´ can be used to indi‐
cate the end of the options.
FILES
$TMPDIR/ldXXXXXX Temporary files
AUTHOR
Oliver Laumann
4th Berkeley Distribution 15 January 1991 ELK(1)
