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(guile.info)Records

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Records
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[FIXME: this is pasted in from Tom Lord's original guile.texi and should
be reviewed]

A "record type" is a first class object representing a user-defined
data type.  A "record" is an instance of a record type.

 - procedure: record? obj
     Returns `#t' if OBJ is a record of any type and `#f' otherwise.

     Note that `record?' may be true of any Scheme value; there is no
     promise that records are disjoint with other Scheme types.

 - procedure: make-record-type type-name field-names
     Returns a "record-type descriptor", a value representing a new data
     type disjoint from all others.  The TYPE-NAME argument must be a
     string, but is only used for debugging purposes (such as the
     printed representation of a record of the new type).  The
     FIELD-NAMES argument is a list of symbols naming the "fields" of a
     record of the new type.  It is an error if the list contains any
     duplicates.  It is unspecified how record-type descriptors are
     represented.

 - procedure: record-constructor rtd [field-names]
     Returns a procedure for constructing new members of the type
     represented by RTD.  The returned procedure accepts exactly as
     many arguments as there are symbols in the given list,
     FIELD-NAMES; these are used, in order, as the initial values of
     those fields in a new record, which is returned by the constructor
     procedure.  The values of any fields not named in that list are
     unspecified.  The FIELD-NAMES argument defaults to the list of
     field names in the call to `make-record-type' that created the
     type represented by RTD; if the FIELD-NAMES argument is provided,
     it is an error if it contains any duplicates or any symbols not in
     the default list.

 - procedure: record-predicate rtd
     Returns a procedure for testing membership in the type represented
     by RTD.  The returned procedure accepts exactly one argument and
     returns a true value if the argument is a member of the indicated
     record type; it returns a false value otherwise.

 - procedure: record-accessor rtd field-name
     Returns a procedure for reading the value of a particular field of
     a member of the type represented by RTD.  The returned procedure
     accepts exactly one argument which must be a record of the
     appropriate type; it returns the current value of the field named
     by the symbol FIELD-NAME in that record.  The symbol FIELD-NAME
     must be a member of the list of field-names in the call to
     `make-record-type' that created the type represented by RTD.

 - procedure: record-modifier rtd field-name
     Returns a procedure for writing the value of a particular field of
     a member of the type represented by RTD.  The returned procedure
     accepts exactly two arguments: first, a record of the appropriate
     type, and second, an arbitrary Scheme value; it modifies the field
     named by the symbol FIELD-NAME in that record to contain the given
     value.  The returned value of the modifier procedure is
     unspecified.  The symbol FIELD-NAME must be a member of the list
     of field-names in the call to `make-record-type' that created the
     type represented by RTD.

 - procedure: record-type-descriptor record
     Returns a record-type descriptor representing the type of the given
     record.  That is, for example, if the returned descriptor were
     passed to `record-predicate', the resulting predicate would return
     a true value when passed the given record.  Note that it is not
     necessarily the case that the returned descriptor is the one that
     was passed to `record-constructor' in the call that created the
     constructor procedure that created the given record.

 - procedure: record-type-name rtd
     Returns the type-name associated with the type represented by rtd.
     The returned value is `eqv?' to the TYPE-NAME argument given in
     the call to `make-record-type' that created the type represented by
     RTD.

 - procedure: record-type-fields rtd
     Returns a list of the symbols naming the fields in members of the
     type represented by RTD.  The returned value is `equal?' to the
     field-names argument given in the call to `make-record-type' that
     created the type represented by RTD.