Kawa 1.14 released

Fri, 04 Oct 2013 21:44:14 -0700
Scheme, kawa

Kawa 1.14 is now evailable from the usual places:
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/kawa/kawa-1.14.tar.gz (source code)
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/kawa/kawa-1.14.jar (runnable jar)

For a extended list of changes, see the news page. Below are some highlights.
More R7RS functions

The proposed new standard for Scheme R7RS has a number of new functions, and also extensions to existing functions. Kawa 1.14 implements (and documents) most of the new functions and extensions, and also implements a number of the syntactic changes:
After adding list procedures make-list, list-copy, list-set! all the R7RS list procedures are implemented.
Other added procedures: square, boolean=?, string-copy!, digit-value, get-environment-variable, get-environment-variables, current-second, current-jiffy, jiffies-per-second, and features.
The predicates finite?, infinite?, and nan? are generalized to complex numbers.
The procedures write, write-simple, and write-shared are now consistent with R7RS.
String and character comparison functions are generalized to more than two arguments (but restricted to strings or characters, respectively).
The procedures string-copy, string->list, and string-fill! now take optional (start,end)-bounds. All of the R7RS string functions are now implemented.
Support => syntax in case form.
Support backslash-escaped special characters in symbols when inside vertical bars, such as '|Hello\nworld|.
The new functions and syntax are documented in the Kawa manual; look for the functions in the index.

The most important functionality still missing is support for the library (module) system, and specifically the define-library form. Of course Kawa has its own powerful module system which is in spirit quite compatible, but we still need to decide on the pragmatic issues, including how modules are resolved to files (probably using a module search path), and translation to class names.
Another feature to ponder is how to handle the R7RS exception mechanism, and how it maps to JVM exceptions. We probably won't implement all of the R7RS semantics, but it would be desirable if (for example) some simple uses of guard would work on Kawa.
Better support for multi-line strings and templates
SRFI-109 specifies a syntax for quasi-literal strings. These have a numbers of advantages over traditional double-quote literals. The are quasi-literals in the sense that they can contain embedded expressions. For example, if name has the value "John", then:

&{Hello &[name]!}

evaluates to "Hello John!". Other benefits include control over indentation (layout), built-in support for format specifiers, and a huge number of named special characters. See the documentation and the SRFI-109 specification for details.
Named quasi-literals (SRFI-108)
SRFI-108 can be viewed as a generalization of SRFI-109, in that the constructors have names, and you can define new constructors. This could be used for writing documentation (similar to the Scribble system), or constructing complex nested data structures (a generalization of XML).
Better support for command scripts
A number of little improvements have been made to make it easier to write Kawa command scripts (simple one-file applications). Most importantly the documentation has been re-written. The value returned by (car (command-line)) (i.e. the "name" of the script/command invoked) is now accurate and useful in many more cases; you also have the option of setting explicitly it with the -Dkawa.command.name option.
Experimental Java 8 support

There is some very preliminary support for next year's Java 8. These are enabled if you run configure with the --with-java-source=8 (or if ant auto-detects java.util.stream.Stream). This flag doesn't yet do very much:

It sets the classfile major version number.
It adds an optimized version of the Stream#forEach method for gnu.lists.SimpleVector and its subclasses, which includes the FVector used to implement Scheme vectors.
Enhance gnu.lists.Consumer to implement java.util.function.Consumer and the specialized classes java.util.function.{Int,Long,Double}Consumer.
Because output port implements gnu.lists.Consumer, this means you can pass a port to the forEach method:

#|kawa:11|# ((['a 'b 'c 'd]:stream):forEach (current-output-port))
a b c d

Of course a large extent streams just Work Out of the Box with Kawa data types, because they implement the apropriate Java interfaces. For examples lists and vectors both implement java.util.List, and thus they automatically have the stream method.