Racket features

Garbage Collection, Tail Calls, and Space Safety

Racket can use three different garbage collectors:

Like all implementations in the Scheme family, Racket implements full tail call elimination. Racket takes this further: the language is made fully safe-for-space, via live variable analysis. This complements the precise garbage collector and in some cases, like in the implementation of Lazy Racket, the two features are crucial for proper execution. This is in addition to additional compiler optimizations such as lambda lifting and just-in-time compilation.

System Interface and Scripting

Racket's system interface includes asynchronous non-blocking I/O, green threads, synchronization channels, semaphores, sub-processes, and TCP sockets.

The following program starts an "echo server" on port 12345.

The combination of dynamic compilation and a rich system interface makes Racket a capable scripting language, similar to Perl or Python.

The following example demonstrates walking a directory tree, starting at the current directory. It uses the in-directory function to construct a sequence that walks the tree. The for form binds path to each path in the sequence, and regexp-match? tests these paths against the given regexp pattern.

The next example uses a hash table to record previously seen lines and print only unique ones.

Both of these programs can be run in DrRacket, or on the command line, via the racket executable. Racket ignores an initial shebang line, making it possible to turn such programs to executable scripts. The following script demonstrates this, in addition to using Racket's library for command-line argument parsing:

The script is a grep-like utility, expecting three command-line arguments: a base directory, a filename extension, and a (perl-compatible) regular expression. It scans the base directory for files with the given suffix, and print lines matching the regexp pattern.

Resource Management and Sandboxing

Racket features the concept of a "custodian": a kind of value that acts as a resource manager. This is often used in network servers, where each connection is dealt with in a new custodian, making it easy to "clean-up" all resources that might have been left open by the handler (e.g., open ports). The following extends the "echo server" example with such a custodian use:

Custodians, combined with the memory accounting feature of the 3m garbage collector, and a number of additional runtime parameters that control additional aspects of the runtime, make it possible to create completely safe sandboxed execution contexts. The racket/sandbox library provides this kind of functionality in a simple way. The following example creates a "REPL server" on the specified port; connecting to this port will look like a plain Racket REPL, except that the evaluation is subject to the various protection aspects of the sandbox. For example, it is not possible to access the filesystem from this REPL, create network connection, run subprocesses, or use too much time or memory. (In fact, this REPL is safe enough to be given out publicly.)

Web and Network Programming

The next example implements a web server using the web-server/insta language. Each time a connection is made to the server, the start function is called to get the HTML to send back to the client.

Racket also includes the functions you would need to write scrapers and robots. As an example, the following function would list the Google results for a search string.

The library also includes support for protocols other than http:

Graphics

Graphic capabilities come in several different flavors that are intended for different audiences. The 2htdp/image library provides convenient functions for constructing images. This library is mainly used by students in HtDP-based courses. In the following example, a sierpinski function is defined and called (at the same time) to generate a Sierpinski triangle of depth 8.

DrRacket editors can contain images, and DrRacket displays image values just like any other type of value (such as integers or lists). Running the above program, for example, actually displays a Sierpinski triangle, which can be cut and pasted into another program.

The plot library constructs image values for more mature audiences and needs. For example, the following program plots the sum of two R × R × R → R (three-dimensional) Gaussians, as concentric, partially transparent surfaces:

Here, the isosurfaces3d function requires a three-argument function for its first argument, which the curried f3+ supplies. Besides constructing image values, plot can also write files in PNG, PDF, PostScript and SVG formats.

GUI Programming

Racket implements a portable GUI layer which the libraries mentioned above build on. It is implemented via the native Windows API, via Cocoa on Mac OS X, and via GTK+ on Linux and others. The Racket API is a class-based toolkit, somewhat related to wxWidgets which was used originally.

The following simple guessing game demonstrates coding with the GUI toolkit. The frame% class implements a top-level window, and button% implements a button. The check function defined here produces a function that is used for the button's callback action.

The GUI can be hand-coded in this way or with the help of a GUI designer program available on PLaneT.

Slideshow

Slide-based presentations can also be developed in Racket using the slideshow language, much like Beamer, but with Racket's programmatic facilities. Elements of the slides are pictures that can be combined.

For example, the following program displays in full-screen a title slide, followed by a slide with some pictures. The vc-append and hc-append functions combine pictures vertically and horizontally, respectively, and centered on the other axis.

Extension packages also exist on PLaneT, for example to include LaTeX elements.

Foreign Function Interface

Racket features a foreign function interface that is based on libffi. The interface allows writing unsafe low-level C-like code, that can allocate memory, dereference pointers, call out to functions in shared libraries, and send out callbacks to Racket functions (using libffi closures). The core implementation is a thin layer atop libffi (written in C), and the full interface is then implemented via Racket code. The interface uses macros extensively, resulting in an expressive Racket-based interface description language. This language has a number of useful features, such as uniform representation for higher-order functions (avoiding the pitfalls when callbacks and callouts are different), struct definitions that are similar to plain Racket structs, and custom function types that can represent input and output pointers, implicit arguments (e.g., an argument that provides the number of elements in a vector that is passed as another argument). By using this interface to access underlying GUI toolkits, Racket implements its own GUI layer completely in Racket.

The FFI can be used in a number of different ways: from writing a complete glue layer for a library (as done for Racket's OpenGL binding), to quickly pulling out a single foreign function. An example of the latter approach:

Language Extensions

Racket's most notable feature is its ability to build new domain-specific and general-purpose languages. This is the result of combining a number of important features:

The module system plays an important role in combining these features, and making it possible to write code that spans across a number of modules, where each can be written in a different language.

Such languages are used extensively in the Racket distribution and in user libraries. In fact, creating a new language is so straightforward, that there are some languages that have less than a handful of uses.

Racket comes with a number of useful languages, some are very different from Racket's default language.

Scribble

Scribble, Racket's documentation system, comes in the form of a number of languages that are used to write prose. It is used for Racket's documentation, as well as writing books and articles. Actually, rather than a single "scribble" language, it is a family of (very similar) dialects, each for a different purpose.

To run the following example, copy it into DrRacket and click one of the two scribble rendering buttons that will appear (PDF rendering requires pdfTeX). Alternatively, use the scribble executable on the file.

The most striking feature of the Scribble languages is their use of a new syntax, which is designed specifically for textually rich code. The syntax allows free-form text, string interpolation, customizable quotations, and is useful in other applications such as preprocessing text, generating text, and HTML template systems. Note that the syntax extends plain S-expressions, and is implemented as an alternative input for such expressions.

Typed Racket

Typed Racket is a statically typed variant of Racket. The type system that it implements is unique in that the motivation in developing it was accommodating as much idiomatic Racket code as possible—as a result, it includes subtypes, unions, and much more. Another goal of Typed Racket is to allow migration of parts of a program into the typed language, so it accommodates calling typed code from untyped code and vice versa, generating dynamic contracts to enforce type invariants. This is considered a desirable feature of an application's lifetime stages, as it matures from "a script" to "an application", where static typing helps in maintenance of a large body of code.

Lazy Racket

The lazy language is a language with lazy evaluation semantics, similar to Haskell. In the following example, fibs is an infinite list whose 1000th element will not be computed until its value is needed for the printout.

Logic Programming

Racket comes with three logic programming languages: Racklog, a Prolog-like language; a Datalog implementation; and a miniKanren port. Unlike the Scribble syntax, the first two of these languages use a completely new syntax rather than an extension of S-expressions. If you use it in DrRacket, you'll see that it provides proper highlighting, the usual host of tools check syntax, and a Prolog/Datalog REPL.

Educational Tools

The PLT group which develops Racket has traditionally been involved in education at all levels. One of the earliest research ideas that the group promoted is the use of language levels, which restrict new students while providing them with helpful error messages that fit the student's level of knowledge. This approach is heavily used in How to Design Programs, the textbook that several PLT developers have authored, as well as in the ProgramByDesign project. The following program uses the htdp/bsl—the "beginning student language". It uses the 2htdp/image library for creating pictures in the teaching languages, and the 2htdp/universe library for interactive animations.

Algol

Racket comes with a complete implementation of the ALGOL 60 language.

Plai and plai-typed

Another supported language is plai which like racket can be typed or untyped. "Modules written in plai export every definition (unlike scheme)." "The Typed PLAI language differs from traditional Racket most importantly by being statically typed. It also gives you some useful new constructs: define-type, type-case, and test."

Additional Languages

Finally, the following example is an implementation of a new language:

This language:

If this code is stored in a mylang.rkt file, you can use it as follows: