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ELK(1)			     General Commands Manual			  ELK(1)

NAME
     elk, scheme-elk - extensible Scheme interpreter

SYNOPSIS
     elk [ -l file ] [ -h KBytes ] [ -p load-path ] [ -g ] [ -i ] [ -v type ] [[
     -- ] args]

     elk...

DESCRIPTION
     Elk  (Extension Language Kit) is a Scheme implementation designed as a gen-
     eral extension language for applications written in C  or	C++.   Normally,
     Elk  is linked with the application it serves, but a stand-alone version of
     the Scheme interpreter is installed as well (usually under the  name  elk).
     This  interpreter,  together  with the standard Scheme toplevel, Elk can be
     used as an ordinary, stand-alone implementation of the Scheme language.

     When called without the -l option, Elk loads  the	standard  "toplevel"  to
     start  an	interactive  session.  When called with -l file, the contents of
     the specified file is loaded instead.  If a `-' is given as a filename  ar-
     gument, Elk loads from standard input.

     The  option  -p  load-path  can be used to override the standard load-path.
     The argument is a colon-separated list of directories.  If this  option  is
     not present and the environment variable ELK_LOADPATH is defined, the value
     of  this  variable  is  used  to  initialize  the	load-path.  The value of
     ELK_LOADPATH has the same format as the argument to the -p option.

     The -h KBytes option is used to specify a non-standard heap size.	The  de-
     fault heap size is 512 KBytes.

     If the option -i is specified, symbols are mapped to lower case.  Normally,
     Elk is case-sensitive.

     The -g option causes the interpreter to run the garbage collector each time
     memory  is allocated on the heap.	This is useful for writers of extensions
     who want to test the garbage collect behavior of an extension.  Running Elk
     with the -g option is likely to reveal GC-related bugs in extensions  (such
     as  not properly protected local objects), as it triggers a garbage collec-
     tion each time an object is allocated on the Scheme heap.	A dot is written
     to standard output each time a garbage collection is performed when -g  has
     been specified.

     When called with one or more -v type (``verbose'') options, the interpreter
     prints  additional  informational messages to standard output, depending on
     the value of the type argument.  If type is load, the  linker  command  and
     options  are  printed  each time an object file is loaded; if type is init,
     the names	of  extension  initialization  and  finalization  functions  are
     printed as they are called.

     The  remaining args are put into a list of strings, and the Scheme variable
     command-line-args is bound to this list in the global environment.  If  ar-
     guments  could  be interpreted as options, `--' can be used to indicate the
     end of the options.

FILES
     $TMPDIR/ldXXXXXX		Temporary files

AUTHOR
     Oliver Laumann

4th Berkeley Distribution	 15 January 1991			  ELK(1)
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