CHICKEN is a compiler for the Scheme programming language. CHICKEN produces portable, efficient C, supports almost all of the R5RS Scheme language standard, and includes many enhancements and extensions. CHICKEN runs on Linux, MacOS X, Windows, and many Unix flavours.
FEATURES
Includes a full-featured interactive interpreter as well as an optimizing Batch compiler
Usable for interpreted scripts or compiled standalone executables with either dynamic or Static Linkage
Full support for tail recursion, first-class continuations and hygienic macros
Highly portable and known to run on many platforms, including x86, x86-64, IA-64, PowerPC, SPARC and UltraSPARC, Alpha, MIPS, ARM and S/390
Distributed free for use and modification under the terms of the BSD License
Transparent support for dynamically loadable compiled code and linkage to C
An easy to use foreign function interface for accessing C and C++ libraries from Scheme code
Lightweight user-level threads based on first-class continuations
Provides high- and low-level hygienic macros, including syntax-rules
Includes a powerful module system that integrates hygienic macros and separate compilation
Execution profiling, debugging, backtrace and single-stepping support
A POSIX interface that covers environment and filesystem access, pipes, processes, signals, Locks, sockets, and low-level and memory-mapped I/O
Perl compatible regular expressions, including support for SRE syntax (Structured Regular Expressions)
Support for interpreted or compiled shell scripts under Unix and Windows
Support for a large number of Scheme Requests For Implementation (SRFIs)
Many libraries and extensions are available at "Eggs Unlimited"
