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 ELK(1)                                                               ELK(1)
                               15 January 1991



 NAME
      elk, scheme - extensible Scheme interpreter

 SYNOPSIS
      scheme [ -l file ] [ -h KBytes ] [ -p load-path ] [ -g ] [ -i ] [ -v
      type ] [[ -- ] args] elk...

 DESCRIPTION
      Elk (Extension Language Kit) is a Scheme implementation designed as a
      general extension language for applications written in C or C++.
      Normally, Elk is linked with the application it serves, but a stand-
      alone version of the Scheme interpreter is installed as well (usually
      under the name scheme).  This interpreter, together with the standard
      Scheme toplevel, Elk can be used as an ordinary, stand-alone
      implementation of the Scheme language.  When called without the -l
      option, Elk loads the standard toplevel to start an interactive
      session.  When called with -l file, the contents of the specified file
      is loaded instead.  If a `-' is given as a filename argument, Elk
      loads from standard input.  The option -p load-path can be used to
      override the standard load-path.  The argument is a colon-separated
      list of directories.  If this option is not present and the
      environment variable ELK_LOADPATH is defined, the value of this
      variable is used to initialize the load-path.  The value of
      ELK_LOADPATH has the same format as the argument to the -p option.
      The -h KBytes option is used to specify a non-standard heap size.  The
      default heap size is 512 KBytes.  If the option -i is specified,
      symbols are mapped to lower case.  Normally, Elk is case-sensitive.
      The -g option causes the interpreter to run the garbage collector each
      time memory is allocated on the heap.  This is useful for writers of
      extensions who want to test the garbage collect behavior of an
      extension.  Running Elk with the -g option is likely to reveal GC-
      related bugs in extensions (such as not properly protected local
      objects), as it triggers a garbage collection each time an object is
      allocated on the Scheme heap.  A dot is written to standard output
      each time a garbage collection is performed when -g has been
      specified.  When called with one or more -v type (``verbose'')
      options, the interpreter prints additional informational messages to
      standard output, depending on the value of the type argument.  If type
      is load, the linker command and options are printed each time an
      object file is loaded; if type is init, the names of extension
      initialization and finalization functions are printed as they are
      called.  The remaining args are put into a list of strings, and the
      Scheme variable command-line-args is bound to this list in the global
      environment.  If arguments could be interpreted as options, `--' can
      be used to indicate the end of the options.

 FILES
      $TMPDIR/ldXXXXXX           Temporary files

 AUTHOR
      Oliver Laumann



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