Re: [Chicken-users] easyffi missing foreign-parse

[John Cowan]

Mark Carter scripsit:

> Hi, I'm a n00b to scheme, and I thought I'd check out Chicken. I tried
> to get the readline egg installed, which is dependent on easyffi. I
> installed the easyffi egg, but if I type
>     foreign-parse 
> I get the response
>     Error: unbound variable: foreign-parse

That's because foreign-parse is not a procedure but a new element of
syntax, like "if" or "do" or "lambda".  It is only recognized when in
the operator position of a form.

In general, it makes no sense to use easyffi in the interpreter; it is
meant to extend Chicken's ability to handle embedded C, which is only
available in the compiler.

In addition, nobody uses "foreign-parse" directly anyhow; it is normally
invoked through the #>...<# read-syntax for embedded C.  The only reason
that the readline egg depends on the easyffi egg is that the readline
egg makes use of this read-syntax to parse the C header for getline.

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