Guide: Racket

Version: 5.1

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Guide: Racket

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 Reference: Racket and other reference manuals.

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

6.2 Module Syntax

6.2.1 The module Form

6.2.2 The #lang Shorthand

6.3 Module Paths

6.4 Imports: require

6.5 Exports: provide

6.6 Assignment and Redefinition

7.1 Contracts and Boundaries

7.1.1 Contract Violations

7.1.2 Experimenting with Contracts and Modules

7.2 Simple Contracts on Functions

7.2.1 Styles of ->

7.2.2 any and any/c

7.2.3 Rolling Your Own Contracts

7.2.4 Contracts on Higher-order Functions

7.2.5 Contract Messages with “???”

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

7.8.1 Contracts and eq?

7.8.2 Exists Contracts and Predicates

7.8.3 Defining Recursive Contracts

7.8.4 Mixing set! and provide/contract

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 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

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 Macro-Generating Macros

16.1.7 Extended Example: Call-by-Reference Functions

16.2 General Macro Transformers

16.2.1 Syntax Objects

16.2.2 Mixing Patterns and Expressions: syntax-case

16.2.3 with-syntax and generate-temporaries

16.2.4 Compile and Run-Time Phases

16.2.5 Syntax Certificates

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

18.1 The Bytecode and Just-in-Time (JIT) Compilers

18.2 Modules and Performance

18.3 Function-Call Optimizations

18.4 Mutation and Performance

18.5 letrec Performance

18.6 Fixnum and Flonum Optimizations

18.7 Unchecked, Unsafe Operations

18.8 Memory Management

18.9 Parallelism with Futures

19 Running and Creating Executables

19.1 Running racket and gracket

19.1.1 Interactive Mode

19.1.2 Module Mode

19.1.3 Load Mode

19.2.1 Unix Scripts

19.2.2 Windows Batch Files

19.3 Creating Stand-Alone Executables

20 Compilation and Configuration

21 More Libraries

21.1 Graphics and GUIs

21.2 The Web Server

21.3 Using Foreign Libraries

22 Dialects of Racket and Scheme

22.1 More Rackets

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