The Racket Guide

8.15.0.5

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The Racket Guide🔗ℹ

Matthew Flatt,
Robert Bruce Findler,
and PLT

This guide is intended for programmers who are new to Racket or new to some part of Racket. It assumes programming experience, so if you are new to programming, consider instead reading How to Design Programs. If you want an especially quick introduction to Racket, start with Quick: An Introduction to Racket with Pictures.

Chapter 2 provides a brief introduction to Racket. From Chapter 3 on, this guide dives into details—covering much of the Racket toolbox, but leaving precise details to The Racket Reference and other reference manuals.

The source of this manual is available on GitHub.

1 Welcome to Racket

1.1 Interacting with Racket

1.2 Definitions and Interactions

1.3 Creating Executables

1.4 A Note to Readers with Lisp/Scheme Experience

2 Racket Essentials

2.1 Simple Values

2.2 Simple Definitions and Expressions

2.2.1 Definitions

2.2.2 An Aside on Indenting Code

2.2.3 Identifiers

2.2.4 Function Calls (Procedure Applications)

2.2.5 Conditionals with if, and, or, and cond

2.2.6 Function Calls, Again

2.2.7 Anonymous Functions with lambda

2.2.8 Local Binding with define, let, and let*

2.3 Lists, Iteration, and Recursion

2.3.1 Predefined List Loops

2.3.2 List Iteration from Scratch

2.3.3 Tail Recursion

2.3.4 Recursion versus Iteration

2.4 Pairs, Lists, and Racket Syntax

2.4.1 Quoting Pairs and Symbols with quote

2.4.2 Abbreviating quote with '

2.4.3 Lists and Racket Syntax

3 Built-In Datatypes

3.4 Strings (Unicode)

3.5 Bytes and Byte Strings

3.8 Pairs and Lists

3.10 Hash Tables

3.12 Void and Undefined

4 Expressions and Definitions

4.2 Identifiers and Binding

4.3 Function Calls (Procedure Applications)

4.3.1 Evaluation Order and Arity

4.3.2 Keyword Arguments

4.3.3 The apply Function

4.4 Functions (Procedures): lambda

4.4.1 Declaring a Rest Argument

4.4.2 Declaring Optional Arguments

4.4.3 Declaring Keyword Arguments

4.4.4 Arity-Sensitive Functions: case-lambda

4.5 Definitions: define

4.5.1 Function Shorthand

4.5.2 Curried Function Shorthand

4.5.3 Multiple Values and define-values

4.5.4 Internal Definitions

4.6 Local Binding

4.6.1 Parallel Binding: let

4.6.2 Sequential Binding: let*

4.6.3 Recursive Binding: letrec

4.6.4 Named let

4.6.5 Multiple Values: let-values, let*-values, letrec-values

4.7 Conditionals

4.7.1 Simple Branching: if

4.7.2 Combining Tests: and and or

4.7.3 Chaining Tests: cond

4.8.1 Effects Before: begin

4.8.2 Effects After: begin0

4.8.3 Effects If...: when and unless

4.9 Assignment: set!

4.9.1 Guidelines for Using Assignment

4.9.2 Multiple Values: set!-values

4.10 Quoting: quote and ’

4.11 Quasiquoting: quasiquote and ‘

4.12 Simple Dispatch: case

4.13 Dynamic Binding: parameterize

5 Programmer-Defined Datatypes

5.1 Simple Structure Types: struct

5.2 Copying and Update

5.3 Structure Subtypes

5.4 Opaque versus Transparent Structure Types

5.5 Structure Comparisons

5.6 Structure Type Generativity

5.7 Prefab Structure Types

5.8 More Structure Type Options

6.1 Module Basics

6.1.1 Organizing Modules

6.1.2 Library Collections

6.1.3 Packages and Collections

6.1.4 Adding Collections

6.1.5 Module References Within a Collection

6.2 Module Syntax

6.2.1 The module Form

6.2.2 The #lang Shorthand

6.2.3 Submodules

6.2.4 Main and Test Submodules

6.3 Module Paths

6.4 Imports: require

6.5 Exports: provide

6.6 Assignment and Redefinition

6.7 Modules and Macros

6.8 Protected Exports

7.1 Contracts and Boundaries

7.1.1 Contract Violations

7.1.2 Experimenting with Contracts and Modules

7.1.3 Experimenting with Nested Contract Boundaries

7.2 Simple Contracts on Functions

7.2.1 Styles of ->

7.2.2 Using define/contract and ->

7.2.3 any and any/c

7.2.4 Rolling Your Own Contracts

7.2.5 Contracts on Higher-order Functions

7.2.6 Contract Messages with “???”

7.2.7 Dissecting a contract error message

7.3 Contracts on Functions in General

7.3.1 Optional Arguments

7.3.2 Rest Arguments

7.3.3 Keyword Arguments

7.3.4 Optional Keyword Arguments

7.3.5 Contracts for case-lambda

7.3.6 Argument and Result Dependencies

7.3.7 Checking State Changes

7.3.8 Multiple Result Values

7.3.9 Fixed but Statically Unknown Arities

7.4 Contracts: A Thorough Example

7.5 Contracts on Structures

7.5.1 Guarantees for a Specific Value

7.5.2 Guarantees for All Values

7.5.3 Checking Properties of Data Structures

7.6 Abstract Contracts using #:exists and #:∃

7.7 Additional Examples

7.7.1 A Customer-Manager Component

7.7.2 A Parameteric (Simple) Stack

7.7.3 A Dictionary

7.8 Building New Contracts

7.8.1 Contract Struct Properties

7.8.2 With all the Bells and Whistles

7.9.1 Contracts and eq?

7.9.2 Contract boundaries and define/contract

7.9.3 Exists Contracts and Predicates

7.9.4 Defining Recursive Contracts

7.9.5 Mixing set! and contract-out

8 Input and Output

8.1 Varieties of Ports

8.2 Default Ports

8.3 Reading and Writing Racket Data

8.4 Datatypes and Serialization

8.5 Bytes, Characters, and Encodings

8.6 I/O Patterns

9 Regular Expressions

9.1 Writing Regexp Patterns

9.2 Matching Regexp Patterns

9.3 Basic Assertions

9.4 Characters and Character Classes

9.4.1 Some Frequently Used Character Classes

9.4.2 POSIX character classes

9.5 Quantifiers

9.6.1 Backreferences

9.6.2 Non-capturing Clusters

9.6.3 Cloisters

9.7 Alternation

9.8 Backtracking

9.9 Looking Ahead and Behind

9.9.1 Lookahead

9.9.2 Lookbehind

9.10 An Extended Example

10 Exceptions and Control

10.1 Exceptions

10.2 Prompts and Aborts

10.3 Continuations

11 Iterations and Comprehensions

11.1 Sequence Constructors

11.2 for and for*

11.3 for/list and for*/list

11.4 for/vector and for*/vector

11.5 for/and and for/or

11.6 for/first and for/last

11.7 for/fold and for*/fold

11.8 Multiple-Valued Sequences

11.9 Breaking an Iteration

11.10 Iteration Performance

12 Pattern Matching

13 Classes and Objects

13.2 Initialization Arguments

13.3 Internal and External Names

13.4 Interfaces

13.5 Final, Augment, and Inner

13.6 Controlling the Scope of External Names

13.7.1 Mixins and Interfaces

13.7.2 The mixin Form

13.7.3 Parameterized Mixins

13.8.1 Traits as Sets of Mixins

13.8.2 Inherit and Super in Traits

13.8.3 The trait Form

13.9 Class Contracts

13.9.1 External Class Contracts

13.9.2 Internal Class Contracts

14 Units (Components)

14.1 Signatures and Units

14.2 Invoking Units

14.3 Linking Units

14.4 First-Class Units

14.5 Whole-module Signatures and Units

14.6 Contracts for Units

14.6.1 Adding Contracts to Signatures

14.6.2 Adding Contracts to Units

14.7 unit versus module

15 Reflection and Dynamic Evaluation

15.1.1 Local Scopes

15.1.2 Namespaces

15.1.3 Namespaces and Modules

15.2 Manipulating Namespaces

15.2.1 Creating and Installing Namespaces

15.2.2 Sharing Data and Code Across Namespaces

15.3 Scripting Evaluation and Using load

15.4 Code Inspectors for Trusted and Untrusted Code

16.1 Pattern-Based Macros

16.1.1 define-syntax-rule

16.1.2 Lexical Scope

16.1.3 define-syntax and syntax-rules

16.1.4 Matching Sequences

16.1.5 Identifier Macros

16.1.6 set! Transformers

16.1.7 Macro-Generating Macros

16.1.8 Extended Example: Call-by-Reference Functions

16.2 General Macro Transformers

16.2.1 Syntax Objects

16.2.2 Macro Transformer Procedures

16.2.3 Mixing Patterns and Expressions: syntax-case

16.2.4 with-syntax and generate-temporaries

16.2.5 Compile and Run-Time Phases

16.2.6 General Phase Levels

16.2.6.1 Phases and Bindings

16.2.6.2 Phases and Modules

16.2.7 Tainted Syntax

16.3 Module Instantiations and Visits

16.3.1 Declaration versus Instantiation

16.3.2 Compile-Time Instantiation

16.3.3 Visiting Modules

16.3.4 Lazy Visits via Available Modules

17 Creating Languages

17.1 Module Languages

17.1.1 Implicit Form Bindings

17.1.2 Using #lang s-exp

17.2 Reader Extensions

17.2.1 Source Locations

17.2.2 Readtables

17.3 Defining new #lang Languages

17.3.1 Designating a #lang Language

17.3.2 Using #lang reader

17.3.3 Using #lang s-exp syntax/module-reader

17.3.4 Installing a Language

17.3.5 Source-Handling Configuration

17.3.6 Module-Handling Configuration

18 Concurrency and Synchronization

18.2 Thread Mailboxes

18.3 Semaphores

18.5 Buffered Asynchronous Channels

18.6 Synchronizable Events and sync

18.7 Building Your Own Synchronization Patterns

19.1 Performance in DrRacket

19.2 Racket Virtual Machine Implementations

19.3 Bytecode, Machine Code, and Just-in-Time (JIT) Compilers

19.4 Modules and Performance

19.5 Function-Call Optimizations

19.6 Mutation and Performance

19.7 letrec Performance

19.8 Fixnum and Flonum Optimizations

19.9 Unchecked, Unsafe Operations

19.10 Foreign Pointers

19.11 Regular Expression Performance

19.12 Memory Management

19.13 Reachability and Garbage Collection

19.14 Weak Boxes and Testing

19.15 Reducing Garbage Collection Pauses

20.1 Parallelism with Futures

20.2 Parallelism with Places

20.3 Distributed Places

21 Running and Creating Executables

21.1 Running racket and gracket

21.1.1 Interactive Mode

21.1.2 Module Mode

21.1.3 Load Mode

21.2.1 Unix Scripts

21.2.2 Windows Batch Files

21.3 Creating Stand-Alone Executables

22 More Libraries

22.1 Graphics and GUIs

22.2 The Web Server

22.3 Using Foreign Libraries

23 Dialects of Racket and Scheme

23.1 More Rackets

24 Command-Line Tools and Your Editor of Choice

24.1 Command-Line Tools

24.1.1 Compilation and Configuration: raco

24.1.2 Interactive evaluation

24.1.3 Shell completion

24.2.1 Major Modes

24.2.2 Minor Modes

24.2.3 Packages specific to Evil Mode

24.3.1 Enhanced Racket Support

24.3.2 Indentation

24.3.3 Highlighting

24.3.4 Structured Editing

24.3.6 Scribble

24.3.7 Miscellaneous

24.3.8 Older Versions of Vim

24.4 Sublime Text

24.5 Visual Studio Code

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