2.1 Basics of Starting Scheme

Under unix, MIT/GNU Scheme is invoked by typing

mit-scheme

at your operating system’s command interpreter. Under Windows, MIT/GNU Scheme is invoked by double-clicking on a shortcut. In either case, Scheme will load itself and print something like this:

Copyright (C) 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Image saved on Wednesday November 25, 2015 at 3:49:35 PM
  Release 9.2.1 || Microcode 15.3 || Runtime 15.7 || SF 4.41 || LIAR/i386 4.118

This information, which can be printed again by evaluating

(identify-world)

tells you the following version information. ‘Release’ is the release number for the entire Scheme system. This number is changed each time a new version of Scheme is released. ‘Microcode’ is the version number for the part of the system that is written in C. ‘Runtime’ is the version number for the part of the system that is written in Scheme.

Following this there may be additional version numbers for specific subsystems. ‘SF’ refers to the scode optimization program sf; ‘LIAR/ARCH’ is the native-code compiler, where ARCH is the native-code architecture it compiles to; ‘Edwin’ is the Emacs-like text editor. There are other subsystems you can load that will add themselves to this list.