10.5 srfi-9 - Record types

Module: srfi-9

Contains a macro to use record types. A record type is implemented on top of Gauche's object system.

The SRFI-9 record type is not as powerful as the object system, but it will be useful if you want your program to be portable.

Macro: define-record-type name (constructor init-tag ...) predicate (field accessor [modifier]) ...

Creates a record type and binds it to name. In Gauche, a record type is just a subclass of <record>.

constructor is bound to a procedure that creates an instance of the record type, which takes as many arguments as init-tag .... Each init-tag corresponds to one of the field name, and the fields of the created record instance is initialized accordingly. Not all of fields need to appear in init-tag; uninitialized fields remain unbound.

predicate is bound to a procedure that takes one argument, and returns #t if the argument is an instance of the defined record type, #f otherwise.

Followings are field specifications. The record has fields field ..., and each field can be accessed by a method accessor. If modifier is given to the field, it is bound to a method that sets the value to the field.

Example:

(define-record-type pare (kons x y) pare? (x kar set-kar!) (y kdr)) => #<class pare> (pare? (kons 2 3)) => #t (pare? (cons 2 3)) => #f (kar (kons 2 3)) => 2 (kdr (kons 2 3)) => 3 (let ((x (kons 2 3))) (set-kar! x -1) (kar x)) => -1

Conceptually, the above example is expanded into the following sequence of forms.

(define-class pare (<record>) (x y)) (define (kons x y) (let ((obj (make pare))) (slot-set! obj 'x x) (slot-set! obj 'y y) obj)) (define (pare? obj) (is-a? obj pare)) (define-method kar ((obj pare)) (slot-ref obj 'x)) (define-method set-kar! ((obj pare) value) (slot-set! obj 'x value)) (define-method kdr ((obj pare)) (slot-ref obj 'y))