Kawa — fast scripting on the Java platform

Posted Dec 4, 2014 20:49 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
In reply to: Kawa — fast scripting on the Java platform by peter-b
Parent article: Kawa — fast scripting on the Java platform

Thank you, I was aware that R6RS existed but I wasn't familiar enough with it to know whether it would be worth trying to find this requirement without greater Scheme expertise than I have.

There we are then, as you say, it's not possible.

Kawa — fast scripting on the Java platform

Posted Dec 4, 2014 22:31 UTC (Thu) by Per_Bothner (subscriber, #7375) [Link]

You can certainly implement a conformant Scheme on the JVM - the issue is how difficult is it, and what are the implications - for example for performance.

As discussed in my earlier reply (continue reading), Kawa does offer proper tail-recursion as an option, but it's not the default.

Similarly, Kawa does not currently implement full continuations, and the "obvious" way to do so doesn't work on the JVM unless you simulate your own call stack, which is expensive. However, a student is working on a smarter implementation for his master's thesis, so I expect we'll have it by the end of the school year. (Even then it will probably not be the default, but will be controlled by a switch, because of performance concerns.)