# Chicanery: subtle, opinionated improvements to R7RS Scheme for CHICKEN

While I was reading the [R7RS specification][r7rs], I was a little annoyed by how broken up the standard library seemed to be.  While the most egregious example is maybe `(scheme case-lambda)`, which exports ...  only `case-lambda`, the other libraries like `(scheme write)` for `display`, `(scheme cxr)` for functions like `caddr` but not `cddr`, and the rest didn't really seem logical to me.  Plus, in CHICKEN scheme, the one I usually use, `utf8` is an egg you need to install separately...

To ameliorate these minor warts in what I otherwise consider to be an excellent
language, `chicanery` was born.  It's kind of like a prelude, I suppose?  It
imports all `r7rs` modules and re-exports their identifiers, and makes sure the
implementation is Unicode-aware.

## Chicanery extras

The following are included in the chicanery library because I like them.

- `(atom? x)` determines whether `x` is an atom (i.e., not a pair or null)
- `(slurp [port])` reads a port until hitting end-of-file (IDK
  why this isn't in R7RS!)
- `(with-input-from-string str thunk)` calls `thunk` with `str` bound as the current-input-port.
- `(with-output-to-string thunk)` calls `thunk` and returns a string of the output.
- `(displayed x)`, `(->string x)` returns `x` as a string (via `display`)
- `(written x)` returns `x` as a string (via `write`)
- `(print . xs)` displays `xs` followed by a newline

## Todo

- Support multiple scheme implementations.  I tried doing this (see the [multiple-impls][] branch), but it kept not working in weird ways, plus it was like whack-a-mole with all the different schemes and just exhausting.

## License

This software is licensed under the GWL, v 1.0.  See [COPYING][copying] for details.

[r7rs]: https://standards.scheme.org/official/r7rs.pdf
[multiple-impls]: https://git.acdw.net/chicanery/?h=multiple-impls
[copying]: https://git.acdw.net/chicanery/tree/COPYING