6.7.8 SRFI-9 Records

SRFI-9 standardizes a syntax for defining new record types and creating predicate, constructor, and field getter and setter functions. In Guile this is the recommended option to create new record types (see section Record Overview). It can be used with:

(use-modules (srfi srfi-9))

Scheme Syntax: define-record-type type
(constructor fieldname …)
predicate
(fieldname accessor [modifier]) …

Create a new record type, and make various defines for using it. This syntax can only occur at the top-level, not nested within some other form.

type is bound to the record type, which is as per the return from the core make-record-type. type also provides the name for the record, as per record-type-name.

constructor is bound to a function to be called as (constructor fieldval …) to create a new record of this type. The arguments are initial values for the fields, one argument for each field, in the order they appear in the define-record-type form.

The fieldnames provide the names for the record fields, as per the core record-type-fields etc, and are referred to in the subsequent accessor/modifier forms.

predicate is bound to a function to be called as (predicate obj). It returns #t or #f according to whether obj is a record of this type.

Each accessor is bound to a function to be called (accessor record) to retrieve the respective field from a record. Similarly each modifier is bound to a function to be called (modifier record val) to set the respective field in a record.

An example will illustrate typical usage,

(define-record-type <employee>
  (make-employee name age salary)
  employee?
  (name    employee-name)
  (age     employee-age    set-employee-age!)
  (salary  employee-salary set-employee-salary!))

This creates a new employee data type, with name, age and salary fields. Accessor functions are created for each field, but no modifier function for the name (the intention in this example being that it’s established only when an employee object is created). These can all then be used as for example,

<employee> ⇒ #<record-type <employee>>

(define fred (make-employee "Fred" 45 20000.00))

(employee? fred)        ⇒ #t
(employee-age fred)     ⇒ 45
(set-employee-salary! fred 25000.00)  ;; pay rise

The functions created by define-record-type are ordinary top-level defines. They can be redefined or set! as desired, exported from a module, etc.

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