Re: Using (defined? foo) from C.

[Marius Vollmer <mvo@zagadka.de>]

Thamer Al-Harbash <tmh@whitefang.com> writes:

> Is there anyway to create a symbol SCM in C without defining it
> in the current environment?

Yes.  Symbols are a data type of their own, independent of bindings,
environments and modules.  You can use

    scm_str2symbol ("foo")

in C to get the symbol with the name "foo".  Symbols in turn are used
to name things in environments and modules, but they can be used for
other things as well.

> If not is there a way of passing a C string as a symbol name to do
> reflection with? I'm looking for something as simple as evaluating
> (defined? foo) where foo is variable and receive the boolean value
> back.

Try this (with a big comment that Guile should provide it itself,
damnit):

    static SCM
    false (void *unused1, SCM unused2, SCM unused3)
    {
      return SCM_BOOL_F;
    }

    static SCM
    wrapped_scm_c_lookup (void *data)
    {
      return scm_c_lookup ((char *)data);
    }

    int
    defined_p (char *str)
    {
      return !SCM_FALSEP (scm_internal_catch (SCM_BOOL_T,
                                              wrapped_scm_c_lookup, str,
                                              false, NULL));
    }

The reason for this longwinded code is that scm_c_lookup either
returns a valid variable or throws an error.  We did this to have a
simple way to lookup variables and at the same time handle unbound
variables in a consistent manner.

Clearly, there should also be a function that return SCM_BOOL_F when a
name is unbound, but we don't have that yet.  It will appear when the
module system API as a whole, ahem, 'stabilizes'.

-- 
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