Warning: This is the manual of the legacy Guile 2.2 series. You may want to read the manual of the current stable series instead.

4.4.5 Error Handling

When code being evaluated from the REPL hits an error, Guile enters a new prompt, allowing you to inspect the context of the error.

scheme@(guile-user)> (map string-append '("a" "b") '("c" #\d))
ERROR: In procedure string-append:
ERROR: Wrong type (expecting string): #\d
Entering a new prompt.  Type `,bt' for a backtrace or `,q' to continue.
scheme@(guile-user) [1]>

The new prompt runs inside the old one, in the dynamic context of the error. It is a recursive REPL, augmented with a reified representation of the stack, ready for debugging.

,backtrace (abbreviated ,bt) displays the Scheme call stack at the point where the error occurred:

scheme@(guile-user) [1]> ,bt
           1 (map #<procedure string-append _> ("a" "b") ("c" #\d))
           0 (string-append "b" #\d)

In the above example, the backtrace doesn’t have much source information, as map and string-append are both primitives. But in the general case, the space on the left of the backtrace indicates the line and column in which a given procedure calls another.

You can exit a recursive REPL in the same way that you exit any REPL: via ‘(quit)’, ‘,quit’ (abbreviated ‘,q’), or C-d, among other options.