ELK(1)							      General Commands Manual							    ELK(1)

NAME

       elk, scheme-elk - extensible Scheme interpreter

SYNOPSIS

       elk [ -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 elk).  This interpreter, together with the standard Scheme toplevel, Elk can be used as an ordinary, stand-alone implementa-
       tion 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  con-
       tents 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  environ-
       ment.  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

4th Berkeley Distribution					  15 January 1991							    ELK(1)