mit-scheme REPL with command line history and tab completion

Question

I\'m reading SICP and I\'m using mit-scheme installed on my os x 10.8 laptop via homebrew.

Everything works as advertised, however I\'m spoiled by the ease with which I g

Answer 1

I would actually recommend that you use Emacs, and use Geiser within that to access both the REPL and to help with scheme file editing. It also makes dealing with various Scheme REPLs such as Chez Scheme, Racket, MIT Scheme, Guile, Chicken, Gambit and Chibi Scheme effortless. Emacs remains very well tuned to use with Scheme and LISP. Highly recommended.

Answer 2

Install the readline wrapper:

brew install rlwrap

Once installed, rlwrap scheme will give you persistent history, paren matching, and tab completion. I typically use rlwrap with the following arguments:

-r Put all words seen on in- and output on the completion list.

-c Complete filenames

-f Specify a list of words to use for tab completion. I'm using an abridged list of bindings from the MIT Scheme Reference Manual. Rather than republish the list here, you can find it in this gist. I have this file stored in "$HOME"/scheme_completion.txt

rlwrap -r -c -f "$HOME"/scheme_completion.txt scheme

1 ]=> (flo:a <tab tab>
flo:abs    flo:acos   flo:asin   flo:atan   flo:atan2  
1 ]=> (flo:abs -42.0)

;Value: 42.