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Many Scheme implementations have keyword arguments, but they
have not been widely standardized. This SRFI defines the macros
keyword-lambda
and keyword-call
. They
can be used identically in every major implementation currently
in use, making it safe to use keyword arguments in portable code.
The macros expand to native keyword arguments in Schemes that
have them, letting programmers mix portable code and
implementation-specific code.
Keyword arguments are a very useful tool for managing complexity as programs grow. They are a natural solution to the "no, wait, this procedure still needs another argument" problem which is almost guaranteed to pop up many times over the lifetime of any non-trivial program. Humans simply cannot plan years ahead at this level of detail, and adding keyword arguments as an afterthought is less objectionable than accumulating long lists of optional positional arguments or refactoring central APIs every few years when third-party code depends on them.
While the same information can be passed using records,
keyword arguments are more convenient for simple jobs since a
separate record type does not have to be defined for each
procedure taking them. They are also less verbose at the call
site since an extra make-foo-record
call is not
needed.
Common Lisp (1994) has standard keyword arguments defined
with (lambda (foo &key bar) ...)
and
supplied with :bar
syntax. This has influenced
some Scheme implementations.
DSSSL (1996) is R4RS with some extensions, one
of them being keyword arguments defined with (lambda
(foo #!key bar) ...)
and supplied with
bar:
syntax.
SRFI 88: Keyword objects (2007) is implemented in Gambit Scheme and based on the DSSSL keyword syntax.
SRFI 89: Optional positional and named parameters
(2007) specifies define*
and
lambda*
, which can handle positional, optional,
rest and keyword arguments. The result approaches the
capabilities of Common Lisp function definitions, but also
their complexity. Keywords use SRFI 88 syntax.
These syntaxes work with the default settings of each Scheme at the time of writing. A couple of them optionally support an alternative read syntax for keywords.
Implementation | Defining keword arguments | Supplying them |
---|---|---|
Chicken | (lambda (foo #!key bar) ...) |
bar: |
Gambit | (lambda (foo #!key bar) ...) |
bar: |
Kawa | (lambda (foo #!key bar) ...) |
bar: |
Bigloo | (lambda (foo #!key bar) ...) |
:bar |
Gauche | (lambda (foo :key (bar #f)) ...) |
:bar |
Sagittarius | (lambda (foo :key (bar #f)) ...) |
:bar |
STklos | (lambda (foo :key (bar #f)) ...) |
:bar |
S7 | (lambda* (foo (bar #f)) ...) |
:bar |
Guile | (lambda* (foo #:key bar) ...) |
#:bar |
Racket | (lambda (foo #:bar (bar #f)) ...) |
#:bar |
From the above table it is clear that there is no portable
syntax to supply keyword arguments in a procedure call. While all
of the implementations support the syntax (proc arg1 arg2
#:key3 arg3 #:key4 arg4)
with the keys in any order, the
keyword prefix or suffix #:
varies. On the other
hand the implementations all have a low-level macro system, as
well as procedures to turn symbols into keywords. Hence the
easiest portable approach is to provide a macro that lets the
caller use ordinary symbols instead of keywords for the read
syntax. The symbols are then converted into the implementation’s
native keyword syntax by the macro. The keyword-call
procedure in this SRFI implements this pattern.
The next problem is how to define procedures that take keyword
arguments. Portable code cannot use any syntax that requires
keyword objects in the lambda list, since as noted above there is
no portable representation. Here too we need to use symbols in
place of keywords. For most of the implementations with native
keywords, we need to insert the constant #!key
or
#:key
into the lambda list. This turns out to be
trivially easy in all of them. For a few implementations, we need
to turn each keyword symbol bar
into (bar
#f)
to ensure that the default value is #f
instead of undefined. Finally, Racket requires an exotic syntax
#:bar (bar #f)
where the keyword’s name appears
twice (once as a keyword and again as a symbol). This is easy to
code as well.
For Schemes that don’t have keyword arguments, the best
approach is to use a rest argument as in (lambda (arg1 arg2
. kvs) ...)
. This argument takes a property list of
keywords and their values. As above, the keywords can be
represented by standard Scheme symbols.
Another approach would be to pass the keywords first:
(lambda (kvs arg1 arg2) ...)
. This is not ideal
since it’s really nice to be able to call a keyword procedure
just like an ordinary procedure when you don’t supply any keyword
arguments (i.e. they get default values). Using a rest argument
preserves this property; using one or more preceding arguments
does not. Using the rest argument for keywords implies that users
cannot have their own rest argument or optional positional
arguments. That's fine; the interplay of keywords with optional
and rest arguments is somewhat confusing to most people anyway.
And our keyword arguments are all optional, so a keyword argument
can be used for any purpose an optional or rest argument
might.
The keyword arguments could be passed in a vector. We cannot do this because it’s not portable to use a vector as the rest argument to a procedure; it has to be a list.
R5RS has the venerable
syntax-rules pattern-matching hygienic macro
system. It turns out to be powerful enough to implement keyword
arguments without too much effort or duct tape. Since
syntax-rules pattern matching is based mainly on
list structure and we don’t have any portable keyword syntax, we
have to rely solely on list structure to separate positional
arguments from keyword arguments. With the ubiquitous tail
patterns from SRFI 46 (Basic syntax-rules
extensions) we can check whether the last element of a list
is another list. Consequently we can achieve the syntax
(keyword-lambda (pos1 pos2 (key3 key4)) ...)
and
(keyword-call pos1 pos2 (key3 key4))
. This is
reasonably simple and unambiguous.
This SRFI provides keyword-lambda and keyword-call which are used as follows:
(define foo
(keyword-lambda (a b (c d e))
(list a b c d e)))
(foo 1 2) ; => (1 2 #f #f #f)
(apply foo 1 2 '()) ; => (1 2 #f #f #f)
(keyword-call foo 1 2 ()) ; => (1 2 #f #f #f)
(keyword-call foo 1 2 (d 4)) ; => (1 2 #f 4 #f)
(keyword-call foo 1 2 (d 4 e 5)) ; => (1 2 #f 4 5)
(keyword-call foo 1 2 (e 5 c 3 d 4)) ; => (1 2 3 4 5)
Syntax (keyword-lambda (formals... (keywords...)) body...)
Like lambda, but makes a procedure that can take keyword arguments in addition to positional arguments.
formals are zero or more symbols naming positional
arguments. keywords are zero or more symbols naming
keyword arguments. All positional arguments need to be supplied
by the caller on every call. There is no way to define optional
positional arguments or a rest argument. By contrast, all keyword
arguments are optional. Every keyword argument takes on the
default value #f
when no value is supplied by the
caller. There is no support for user-defined default values; this
simplifies the syntax of keyword lambdas and makes it easier to
write wrapper procedures for them since the wrapper can always
pass #f
to any keyword argument it does not use.
body is evaluated as if in the context (lambda (...) body...) so anything that can go at the beginning of a lambda can go at the beginning of body. But the lambda around body may be wrapped inside another lambda depending on the implementation. Within body, all of the arguments in formals and keywords can be accessed as variables using the symbols given by the user.
The returned procedure p can be called in any way
that an ordinary procedure can, e.g. (p
formals...) or (apply p
formals). If the number of arguments given to the
procedure is equal to the number of formals, all keyword
arguments take on the default value #f
. Giving more
arguments than that results in undefined behavior. To supply a
value for one or more keyword arguments in a well-defined and
portable way, call p via (keyword-call
p formals ... (keyword1
value1 ...)). There may be additional
implementation-defined ways to call p.
Syntax (keyword-call kw-lambda args... (kw-args...))
This macro expands to a call to kw-lambda with zero or more positional arguments args and zero or more keyword arguments kw-args. It is an error to pass a different number of args than the number of positional arguments expected by kw-lambda.
Keyword arguments may be passed in any combination, and in any order. It is valid to supply no kw-args at all. It is an error to have duplicate keywords in kw-args. As with ordinary procedure calls in Scheme, nothing is guaranteed about the evaluation order of args and kw-args. For a guaranteed evaluation order, bind arguments with let* before passing them in.
Each keyword argument in kw-args is written as two forms: keyword value. Each keyword is written as a standard Scheme symbol and is implicitly quoted (i.e. it has to be a symbol at read time; cannot be some other expression that evaluates to a symbol). The symbols are internally converted to native keywords in implementations that have them.
The sample implementation covers the following Scheme implementations that each have their own kind of native keywords:
There is also a generic R5RS implementation (relying on SRFI 46 tail patterns). This is used as the basis of generic R6RS and R7RS implementations for Schemes that don’t have native keywords.
The generic R6RS implementation works on the following Schemes:
The generic R7RS implementation works on the following Schemes:
Thanks to many Scheme implementors and standardization people on the srfi-discuss mailing list for partaking in a big discussion about keyword unification in July 2019. Although the problem of unifying keyword syntax and semantics proved too complex to solve in the near future, the discussion spurred this SRFI to solve the most urgent problem of letting people write portable code.
Special thanks to Robert Strandh, author of the SICL Common Lisp implementation, for taking the time to explain compiler optimization of keyword argument passing to us Schemers.
Thanks to John Cowan and Shiro Kawai for surveys of the native keyword syntax and semantics of different Scheme implementations.
Thanks to Göran Weinholt for collaborating on Docker containers that make it easy to work with exotic Scheme implementations.
Copyright © Lassi Kortela (2019)
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