1.2 排版及符号约定
A standard procedure or syntactic form whose sole purpose is to perform some side effect is said to return unspecified. This means that an implementation is free to return any number of values, each of which can be any Scheme object, as the value of the procedure or syntactic form. Do not count on these values being the same across implementations, the same across versions of the same implementation, or even the same across two uses of the procedure or syntactic form. Some Scheme systems routinely use a special object to represent unspecified values. Printing of this object is often suppressed by interactive Scheme systems, so that the values of expressions returning unspecified values are not printed.
While most standard procedures return a single value, the language supports procedures that return zero, one, more than one, or even a variable number of values via the mechanisms described in Section 5.8. Some standard expressions can evaluate to multiple values if one of their subexpressions evaluates to multiple values, e.g., by calling a procedure that returns multiple values. When this situation can occur, an expression is said to return "the values" rather than simply "the value" of its subexpression. Similarly, a standard procedure that returns the values resulting from a call to a procedure argument is said to return the values returned by the procedure argument.
This book uses the words "must" and "should" to describe program requirements, such as the requirement to provide an index that is less than the length of the vector in a call to vector-ref. If the word "must" is used, it means that the requirement is enforced by the implementation, i.e., an exception is raised, usually with condition type &assertion. If the word "should" is used, an exception may or may not be raised, and if not, the behavior of the program is undefined.
The phrase "syntax violation" is used to describe a situation in which a program is malformed. Syntax violations are detected prior to program execution. When a syntax violation is detected, an exception of type &syntax is raised and the program is not executed.
The typographical conventions used in this book are straightforward. All Scheme objects are printed in a typewriter typeface, just as they are to be typed at the keyboard. This includes syntactic keywords, variables, constant objects, Scheme expressions, and example programs. An italic typeface is used to set off syntax variables in the descriptions of syntactic forms and arguments in the descriptions of procedures. Italics are also used to set off technical terms the first time they appear. In general, names of syntactic forms and procedures are never capitalized, even at the beginning of a sentence. The same is true for syntax variables written in italics.
In the description of a syntactic form or procedure, one or more prototype patterns show the syntactic form or forms or the correct number or numbers of arguments for an application of the procedure. The keyword or procedure name is given in typewriter font, as are parentheses. The remaining pieces of the syntax or arguments are shown in italics, using a name that implies the type of expression or argument expected by the syntactic form or procedure. Ellipses are used to specify zero or more occurrences of a subexpression or argument. For example, (or expr ...) describes the or syntactic form, which has zero or more subexpressions, and (member obj list) describes the member procedure, which expects two arguments, an object and a list.
A syntax violation occurs if the structure of a syntactic form does not match its prototype. Similarly, an exception with condition type &assertion is raised if the number of arguments passed to a standard procedure does not match what it is specified to receive. An exception with condition type &assertion is also raised if a standard procedure receives an argument whose type is not the type implied by its name or does not meet other criteria given in the description of the procedure. For example, the prototype for vector-set! is
(vector-set! vector n obj)
and the description says that n must be an exact nonnegative integer strictly less than the length of vector. Thus, vector-set! must receive three arguments, the first of which must be a vector, the second of which must be an exact nonnegative integer less than the length of the vector, and the third of which may be any Scheme value. Otherwise, an exception with condition type &assertion is raised.
In most cases, the type of argument required is obvious, as with vector, obj, or binary-input-port. In others, primarily within the descriptions of numeric routines, abbreviations are used, such as int for integer, exint for exact integer, and fx for fixnum. These abbreviations are explained at the start of the sections containing the affected entries.