3.11 Constructing Graphs: shared

The shared form is similar to letrec, except that special forms of expr are recognized (after partial macro expansion) to construct graph-structured data, where the corresponding letrec would instead produce a use-before-initialization error.

Each expr (after partial expansion) is matched against the following shared-expr grammar, where earlier variants in a production take precedence over later variants:

The prefix:make-id identifier above matches three kinds of references. The first kind is any binding whose name has make- in the middle, and where prefix:id has a transformer binding to structure information with a full set of mutator bindings; see Structure Type Transformer Binding. The second kind is an identifier that itself has a transformer binding to structure information. The third kind is an identifier that has a 'constructor-for syntax property whose value is an identifier with a transformer binding to structure information. A shell-id, meanwhile, must be one of the ids bound by the shared form to a shell-expr.

When the exprs of the shared form are parsed as shared-expr (taking into account the order of the variants for parsing precedence), the sub-expressions that were parsed via early-expr will be evaluated first when the shared form is evaluated. Among such expressions, they are evaluated in the order as they appear within the shared form. However, any reference to an id bound by shared produces a use-before-initialization errror, even if the binding for the id appears before the corresponding early-expr within the shared form.

The shell-ids and shell-exprs (not counting patchable-expr and early-expr sub-expressions) are effectively evaluated next:

• A shell-id reference produces the same value as the corresponding id will produce within the bodys, assuming that id is never mutated with set!. This special handling of a shell-id reference is one way in which shared supports the creation of cyclic data, including immutable cyclic data.

• A shell-expr of the form (mcons patchable-expr patchable-expr), (vector patchable-expr ...), (box patchable-expr), or (prefix:make-id patchable-expr ...) produces a mutable value whose content positions are initialized to undefined. Each content position is patched (i.e., updated) after the corresponding patchable-expr expression is later evaluated.

Next, the plain-exprs are evaluated as for letrec, where a reference to an id raises exn:fail:contract:variable if it is evaluated before the right-hand side of the id binding.

Finally, the patchable-exprs are evaluated and their values replace undefineds in the results of shell-exprs. At this point, all ids are bound, so patchable-exprs can create data cycles (but only with cycles that can be created via mutation).