Scheme (programming language)

Scheme
ParadigmsMulti-paradigm: functional, imperative, meta
FamilyLisp
Designed byGuy L. Steele
Gerald Jay Sussman
First appeared1975; 49 years ago (1975)
Stable release
R7RS / 2013; 11 years ago (2013)
Typing disciplineDynamic, latent, strong
ScopeLexical
Filename extensions.scm, .ss
Websitewww.scheme.org
Major implementations
Many
(see Scheme implementations)
Influenced by
ALGOL, Lisp, MDL
Influenced
Clojure, Common Lisp, Dylan, EuLisp, Haskell, Hop, JavaScript, Julia, Lua, MultiLisp, Python, R, Racket, Ruby, Rust,[1] S, Scala, T

Scheme is a dialect of the Lisp family of programming languages. Scheme was created during the 1970s at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) and released by its developers, Guy L. Steele and Gerald Jay Sussman, via a series of memos now known as the Lambda Papers. It was the first dialect of Lisp to choose lexical scope and the first to require implementations to perform tail-call optimization, giving stronger support for functional programming and associated techniques such as recursive algorithms. It was also one of the first programming languages to support first-class continuations. It had a significant influence on the effort that led to the development of Common Lisp.[2]

The Scheme language is standardized in the official Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard[3] and a de facto standard called the Revisedn Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme (RnRS). A widely implemented standard is R5RS (1998).[4] The most recently ratified standard of Scheme is "R7RS-small" (2013).[5] The more expansive and modular R6RS was ratified in 2007.[6] Both trace their descent from R5RS; the timeline below reflects the chronological order of ratification.

  1. ^ "Influences - The Rust Reference". The Rust Reference. Retrieved 2023-04-18.
  2. ^ Common LISP: The Language, 2nd Ed., Guy L. Steele Jr. Digital Press; 1981. ISBN 978-1-55558-041-4. "Common Lisp is a new dialect of Lisp, a successor to MacLisp, influenced strongly by ZetaLisp and to some extent by Scheme and InterLisp."
  3. ^ 1178-1990 (Reaff 2008) IEEE Standard for the Scheme Programming Language. IEEE part number STDPD14209, unanimously reaffirmed at a meeting of the IEEE-SA Standards Board Standards Review Committee (RevCom), March 26, 2008 (item 6.3 on minutes), reaffirmation minutes accessed October 2009. This document is available from IEEE for purchase only, and not online at time of writing: 2009.
  4. ^ Richard Kelsey; William Clinger; Jonathan Rees; et al. (August 1998). "Revised5 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme". Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation. 11 (1): 7–105. doi:10.1023/A:1010051815785. S2CID 14069423. Retrieved 2012-08-09.
  5. ^ "R7RS final available" (PDF). 2013-07-06.
  6. ^ Sperber, Michael; Dybvig, R. Kent; Flatt, Matthew; Van Straaten, Anton; et al. (August 2007). "Revised6 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme (R6RS)". Scheme Steering Committee. Retrieved 2011-09-13.