I believe MIT Scheme compiled directly to C by intermingling switch statements a...

kkylin · 2025-10-06T16:07:58 1759766878

Thanks! Do you mean MIT Scheme's C backend? I've used MIT Scheme on and off for a long time and have never touched the C backend & have no idea how it works, so this is interesting.

(MIT Scheme also has a native code compiler for Intel CPUs, which seems to be what most users of MIT Scheme (an admittedly small community) actually use.)

glouwbug · 2025-10-06T18:45:04 1759776304

If you'd like to define the backend like this, it's the easiest way to compile to C; we're just repurposing C as a general-purpose assembler: https://glouw.com/2023/11/07/Switch.html

I believe MIT-scheme took it a step further with gnu extensions which allowed you to take the address of a label like &&label, which allowed for function pointers: https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Labels-as-Values.html

shawn_w · 2025-10-06T19:24:31 1759778671

I don't see anything in the manual about MIT scheme compiling to C, just to its own native code object files and some portable bytecode...

https://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/documentation/stable...

aag · 2025-10-07T00:17:47 1759796267

It's there, but the documentation is weak.

The release notes from long ago when that back end was released are here, and give some detail:

https://share.google/xmUnDhC7lndujD7TI

f1shy · 2025-10-06T16:19:08 1759767548

I think a very rudimentary implementation (which is easy to understand) is in the SICP book

soegaard · 2025-10-06T16:38:04 1759768684

Even MIT Scheme was used with SICP, the Scheme implementation in the book is different from MIT Scheme.

MIT Scheme was for a long period one of the leading Scheme implementations. It lacks support for Apple Silicon, so it is not as popular now, as it once was.

https://www.gnu.org/software/mit-scheme/

f1shy · 2025-10-06T18:13:23 1759774403

Yes. In Apple the memory can be writable XOR executable. MIT scheme needs to write on pages that will execute, so it will trigger the MMU..

anthk · 2025-10-07T15:58:32 1759852712

Install chicken scheme. Then:

       sudo chicken-install srfi-203

       sudo chicken-install srfi-216

At ~/.csirc put:

    (import scheme)
    (import (srfi 203))
    (import (srfi 216))

Now you can do nearly all the execises.