18.6.5 Chicken Scheme

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CHICKEN Scheme combines an optimising compiler with a reasonably fast interpreter. It supports almost all of R7RS and the important SRFIs. The compiler generates portable C code that supports tail recursion, first-class continuations and lightweight threads, and the interface to and from C libraries is flexible, efficient, and easy to use. It runs on Linux, OS X, Windows, many Unix flavours

CHICKEN is a compiler that translates Scheme source files into C, which in turn can be fed to a C compiler to generate a standalone executable. An interpreter is also available and can be used as a scripting environment or for testing programs before compilation. The interpreter allows interactive use, fast prototyping, debugging, and scripting.

To invoke the CHICKEN interpreter, you use the csi command.

To run a script, add the following command header to the script file:

#! /usr/local/bin/csi -script

The parameter command-line-arguments is set to a list of the parameters that were passed to the Scheme script. Scripts can be compiled to standalone executables.