chickadee » scheme » call-with-current-continuation

Proc must be a procedure of one argument. The procedure call-with-current-continuation packages up the current continuation (see the rationale below) as an "escape procedure" and passes it as an argument to proc. The escape procedure is a Scheme procedure that, if it is later called, will abandon whatever continuation is in effect at that later time and will instead use the continuation that was in effect when the escape procedure was created. Calling the escape procedure may cause the invocation of before and after thunks installed using dynamic-wind.

The escape procedure accepts the same number of arguments as the continuation to the original call to call-with-current-continuation. Except for continuations created by the call-with-values procedure, all continuations take exactly one value. The effect of passing no value or more than one value to continuations that were not created by call-with-values is unspecified.

The escape procedure that is passed to proc has unlimited extent just like any other procedure in Scheme. It may be stored in variables or data structures and may be called as many times as desired.

The following examples show only the most common ways in which call-with-current-continuation is used. If all real uses were as simple as these examples, there would be no need for a procedure with the power of call-with-current-continuation.

(call-with-current-continuation
  (lambda (exit)
    (for-each (lambda (x)
                (if (negative? x)
                    (exit x)))
              '(54 0 37 -3 245 19))
    #t))                                ===>  -3

(define list-length
  (lambda (obj)
    (call-with-current-continuation
      (lambda (return)
        (letrec ((r
                  (lambda (obj)
                    (cond ((null? obj) 0)
                          ((pair? obj)
                           (+ (r (cdr obj)) 1))
                          (else (return #f))))))
          (r obj))))))

(list-length '(1 2 3 4))                    ===>  4

(list-length '(a b . c))                    ===>  #f

Rationale:

A common use of call-with-current-continuation is for structured, non-local exits from loops or procedure bodies, but in fact call-with-current-continuation is extremely useful for implementing a wide variety of advanced control structures.

Whenever a Scheme expression is evaluated there is a continuation wanting the result of the expression. The continuation represents an entire (default) future for the computation. If the expression is evaluated at top level, for example, then the continuation might take the result, print it on the screen, prompt for the next input, evaluate it, and so on forever. Most of the time the continuation includes actions specified by user code, as in a continuation that will take the result, multiply it by the value stored in a local variable, add seven, and give the answer to the top level continuation to be printed. Normally these ubiquitous continuations are hidden behind the scenes and programmers do not think much about them. On rare occasions, however, a programmer may need to deal with continuations explicitly. Call-with-current-continuation allows Scheme programmers to do that by creating a procedure that acts just like the current continuation.

Most programming languages incorporate one or more special-purpose escape constructs with names like exit, return, or even goto. In 1965, however, Peter Landin [16] invented a general purpose escape operator called the J-operator. John Reynolds [24] described a simpler but equally powerful construct in 1972. The catch special form described by Sussman and Steele in the 1975 report on Scheme is exactly the same as Reynolds's construct, though its name came from a less general construct in MacLisp. Several Scheme implementors noticed that the full power of the catch construct could be provided by a procedure instead of by a special syntactic construct, and the name call-with-current-continuation was coined in 1982. This name is descriptive, but opinions differ on the merits of such a long name, and some people use the name call/cc instead.