1.7 Organisation of this Manual

The rest of this manual is organised into the following chapters.

Chapter 2: Hello Guile!

A whirlwind tour shows how Guile can be used interactively and as a script interpreter, how to link Guile into your own applications, and how to write modules of interpreted and compiled code for use with Guile. Everything introduced here is documented again and in full by the later parts of the manual.

Chapter 3: Hello Scheme!

For readers new to Scheme, this chapter provides an introduction to the basic ideas of the Scheme language. This material would apply to any Scheme implementation and so does not make reference to anything Guile-specific.

Chapter 4: Programming in Scheme

Provides an overview of programming in Scheme with Guile. It covers how to invoke the guile program from the command-line and how to write scripts in Scheme. It also introduces the extensions that Guile offers beyond standard Scheme.

Chapter 5: Programming in C

Provides an overview of how to use Guile in a C program. It discusses the fundamental concepts that you need to understand to access the features of Guile, such as dynamic types and the garbage collector. It explains in a tutorial like manner how to define new data types and functions for the use by Scheme programs.

Chapter 6: Guile API Reference

This part of the manual documents the Guile API in functionality-based groups with the Scheme and C interfaces presented side by side.

Chapter 7: Guile Modules

Describes some important modules, distributed as part of the Guile distribution, that extend the functionality provided by the Guile Scheme core.

Chapter 8: GOOPS

Describes GOOPS, an object oriented extension to Guile that provides classes, multiple inheritance and generic functions.