Programs use "names" to refer to various values and procedures.
The definition of what is a "name" is different in different
programming languages. A name in Scheme (and other Lisp-like
languages) can in principle contain any character (if using a
suitable quoting convention), but typically names consist of
"words" (one or more letters) separated by hyphens, such
as ‘make-temporary-file’. Digits
and some special symbols are also used. Standard Scheme
is case-insensitive; this means that the names ‘loop’,
‘Loop’, and ‘LOOP’ are all the same name. Kawa
is by default case-sensitive, but we recommend that you
avoid using upper-case letters as a general rule.
The Java language and the Java virtual machine uses names for
classes, variables, fields and methods. These names can
contain upper- and lower-case letters, digits, and the special
symbols ‘_’ and ‘$’.
Given a name in a Scheme program,
Kawa needs to map that name into a valid Java name. A typical
Scheme name such as ‘make-temporary-file’ is not a valid
Java name. The convention for Java names is to use
"mixed-case" words, such as ‘makeTemporaryFile’.
So Kawa will translate a Scheme-style name into a Java-style
name. The basic rule is simple: Hyphens are dropped, and
a letter that follows a hyphen is translated to its
upper-case (actually "title-case") equivalent. Otherwise,
letters are translated as is.
Some special characters are handled specially. A final ‘?’
is replaced by an initial ‘is’, with the following
letter converted to titlecase. Thus ‘number?’ is
converted to ‘isNumber’ (which fits with Java conventions),
and ‘file-exists?’ is converted to ‘isFileExists’
(which doesn't really).
The pair ‘->’ is translated to ‘$To$’.
For example ‘list->string’ is translated to ‘list$To$string’.
Some symbols are mapped to a mnemonic sequence, starting with a dollar-sign,
followed by a two-character abbreviation. For example, the less-than
symbol ‘<’ is mangled as ‘$Ls’.
See the source code to the mangleName method in the
gnu.expr.Compilation class for the full list.
Characters that do not have a mnemonic abbreviation are
mangled as ‘$’ followed by a four-hex-digit unicode value.
For example ‘Tamil vowel sign ai’ is mangled as ‘$0bc8’.
Note that this mapping may map different Scheme names to the
same Java name. For example ‘string?’, ‘String?’,
‘is-string’, ‘is-String’,
and ‘isString’ are all mapped to the same Java identifier
‘isString’. Code that uses such "Java-clashing" names
is not supported. There is very partial support for
renaming names in the case of a clash, and there may be better
support in the future. However, some of the nice features of
Kawa depend on being able to map Scheme name to Java names
naturally, so we urge you to not write code that
"mixes" naming conventions by using (say) the names ‘open-file’
and ‘openFile’ to name two different objects.
The above mangling is used to generate Java method names.
Each top-level definition is also mapped to a Java field.
The name of this field is also mangled, but using a mostly
reversible mapping: The Scheme function ‘file-exists?’
is mapped to the method name ‘file$Mnexists$Qu’.
Because ‘$’ is used to encode special characters, you
should avoid using it in names in your source file.