guile sandbox without guile

[Mark Polesky]

This may be totally obvious to everyone here, but Windows users
can't just run guile without running LilyPond (I'm thinking for
users who are working on learning scheme). At least not to my
knowledge.

I've been using a very simple trick (don't expect to be impressed)
to work around this. In a music file, I'll do something like this:

\version "2.13.1"

#(begin

(define (cube x) (* x x x))

(display (cube 2))

)

and then I can check the console for the output.

Well, that's a simplified version, but before I knew I could do
this, I downloaded Dr.Scheme (which uses PLT, not guile) and
started learning from a PLT-specific book (http://www.htdp.org/)
which was a slower way to learn LilyPond-specific scheme; I had to
relearn things differently once I realized how different PLT and
guile are.

Another problem is that Windows users compiling according to LM
2.1.1 won't know how to find the console output, which I mentioned
here:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2009-06/msg00434.html

I recall past discussions about an interactive guile environment
but I don't know if that ever got resolved.
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2004-03/msg00014.html
Will the technique work in Windows?

I tried just doing #(top-repl) with LilyPondTool but the program
stalled, and when I clicked the stop button, I got a pop-up:

Error running external command.
See the activity log about the problem.
Cannot run program "C:\Program Files\LilyPond\usr\bin\(+" (in
directory "C:\Documents and Settings\[etc]"): CreateProcess
error=2, The system cannot find the file specified

I'd like to incorporate some solution into the docs (maybe LM
appendix B), even if it's just my cheap trick. As simple as it is,
it was a *long* time before I realized I could've been doing that
all along. And I wonder if I'm overlooking something even simpler.

- Mark