Scheme 9 from Empty Space

A Guide to Implementing Scheme in C

Lulu Press, 2014 – 263 pages – 35 figures – large format – free code

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Scheme 9 from Empty Space reproduces the completely self-contained and heavily commented C and Scheme source code to a full, real-world interpreter for the Scheme programming language. By means of extensive annotations, examples, and numerous figures, it answers a lot of questions about crafting an interpreter, including:

• How does automatic memory management work?
• How is macro expansion implemented?
• How does lexical scoping work?
• How is arbitrary precision arithmetics implemented?
• How does tail call elimination work?
• How are first-class continuations implemented?

This textbook is intended as a practical guide for everybody who wants to take a deeper look at the techniques behind the interpretation of computer programs. It does not stop where other books do, and takes a deep look behind the scenes of a real interpreter.

What people say about S9fES: *
"Holm knows what he's doing"
"Fills a gap in the area of Scheme books"
"Best bootstrapping book ever"
"Faithful to the Lisp tradition"
"Pure awesomeness"

* From Lulu reviews, Reddit, and e-mail conversations