4.1 Notation

► |  | The Racket Guide

1 | Welcome to Racket
2 | Racket Essentials
3 | Built-In Datatypes
4 | Expressions and Definitions
5 | Programmer-Defined Datatypes
6 | Modules
7 | Contracts
8 | Input and Output
9 | Regular Expressions
10 | Exceptions and Control
11 | Iterations and Comprehensions
12 | Pattern Matching
13 | Classes and Objects
14 | Units
15 | Reflection and Dynamic Evaluation
16 | Macros
17 | Creating Languages
18 | Concurrency and Synchronization
19 | Performance
20 | Parallelism
21 | Running and Creating Executables
22 | More Libraries
23 | Dialects of Racket and Scheme
24 | Command-Line Tools and Your Editor of Choice
| Bibliography
| Index

▼ | 4 | Expressions and Definitions

4.1 | Notation
4.2 | Identifiers and Binding
4.3 | Function Calls
4.4 | Functions: lambda
4.5 | Definitions: define
4.6 | Local Binding
4.7 | Conditionals
4.8 | Sequencing
4.9 | Assignment: set!
4.10 | Quoting: quote and ’
4.11 | Quasiquoting: quasiquote and ‘
4.12 | Simple Dispatch: case
4.13 | Dynamic Binding: parameterize

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#### 4.1`` Notation🔗ℹ

This chapter (and the rest of the documentation) uses a slightly different notation than the character-based grammars of the Racket Essentials chapter. The grammar for a use of a syntactic form something is shown like this:

> > (something [id ...+] an-expr ...)

The italicized meta-variables in this specification, such as id and an-expr, use the syntax of Racket identifiers, so an-expr is one meta-variable. A naming convention implicitly defines the meaning of many meta-variables:

- A meta-variable that ends in id stands for an identifier, such as x or my-favorite-martian.

- A meta-identifier that ends in keyword stands for a keyword, such as #:tag.

- A meta-identifier that ends with expr stands for any sub-form, and it will be parsed as an expression.

- A meta-identifier that ends with body stands for any sub-form; it will be parsed as either a local definition or an expression. The last body must be an expression; see also Internal Definitions.

Square brackets in the grammar indicate a parenthesized sequence of forms, where square brackets are normally used (by convention). That is, square brackets do not mean optional parts of the syntactic form.

A ... indicates zero or more repetitions of the preceding form, and ...+ indicates one or more repetitions of the preceding datum. Otherwise, non-italicized identifiers stand for themselves.

Based on the above grammar, then, here are a few conforming uses of something:

> (something [x])
> (something [x] (+ 1 2))
> (something [x my-favorite-martian x] (+ 1 2) #f)

Some syntactic-form specifications refer to meta-variables that are not implicitly defined and not previously defined. Such meta-variables are defined after the main form, using a BNF-like format for alternatives:

> > (something-else [thing ...+] an-expr ...)
> > thing |  | = |  | thing-id
> > |  | | |  | thing-keyword

The above example says that, within a something-else form, a thing is either an identifier or a keyword.

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