CHICKEN (Scheme implementation)

CHICKEN is a compiler and interpreter for the Scheme programming language that compiles Scheme code to standard C. It is mostly R5RS compliant and offers many extensions to the standard. CHICKEN is free software available under the BSD license. It is implemented mostly in Scheme, with some parts in C for performance or to make embedding into C programs easier.

Focus

CHICKEN's focus is immediately clear from its tagline: "A practical and portable Scheme system".

CHICKEN's main focus is the practical application of Scheme for writing "real-world" software. Scheme is well known for its use in computer science curricula and programming language experimentation, but it hasn't seen much use in business and industry. CHICKEN's community has produced a large set of libraries for performing a variety of tasks. The CHICKEN wiki (the software running it is also a CHICKEN program) also contains a list of software that people have written in CHICKEN.

CHICKEN's other goal is to be portable. By compiling to portable C (like Gambit and Bigloo), programs written in CHICKEN can be compiled for common popular platforms like Linux, Mac OS X and other Unix-like systems as well as Windows, Haiku and the mobile platforms iOS and Android. It also has built-in support for cross-compilation of programs and extensions, which allows it to be used on various embedded platforms.