Hi, everyone!
I'm an educator. I've been reading Paul Graham's essays for a while and noticed Arc and decided to give it a try. I have downdoaded and installed racket and untared arc3.2, but I'm stuck at the installation instruction 3.Type racket -f as.scm and you should get an Arc prompt. Can anyone help, please? PS: I have almost no experience of coding; having learned Python a little bit and then quit.
> racket -f as.scm
; racket: undefined;
; cannot reference an identifier before its definition
; in module: top-level
; [,bt for context]
> ; -f: undefined;
; cannot reference an identifier before its definition
; in module: top-level
; [,bt for context]
> ; as.scm: undefined;
; cannot reference an identifier before its definition
; in module: top-level
; [,bt for context]
I think I have to somehow cd to the untarred arc3.2 but I'm not sure how to do so in the Racket App Terminal
It looks like you're trying to run racket -f as.scm inside Racket. It's just a terminal command. Open a new terminal (unrelated to Racket) and type it in there.
I got it set up in the regular terminal by adding the path to environment variables, however, it gave me the same message as before. Is there something more I should be doing with the untarred folder, maybe?
I downloaded and installed racket as described on arc installation page, and I got DrRacket version 8.0. The DrRacket window says: "Welcome to DrRacket, version 8.0 [cs].
Language: No language chosen; memory limit: 128 MB.
DrRacket cannot process programs until you choose a programming language.
Either select the “Choose Language…” item in the “Language” menu, or get guidance.
>
I've tried to type racket -f as.scm, but it doesn't work. I've type the same instruction in my MacBook Terminal, it doesn't work either. I don't know what to do next. Have I got the wrong racket?
Thanks, jsgrahamus, for your reply :)
The "racket -f as.scm" is supposed to be done in your terminal, you're right! DrRacket is a different thing that is very cool, but not the tool to run Arc with.
When you type it in your terminal, what does it say? If it says something like "racket not found", try downloading the racket installer from https://download.racket-lang.org/.
If it installs correctly, you should be able to type "racket" (without quotes) in your terminal, and get a message "Welcome to Racket 8.0". To quit, press Ctrl-D, or type (exit) with the parentheses, then hit enter.
If that works, you should be able to run "racket -f as.scm".
Thank you so much, zck :)
I've used a combination of your helpful suggestions, stack overflow, and cd command to get to the right folder, and now it works. I got the arc command prompt (arc>) in my terminal now. I will take my time to explore the tutorial on Arc.
I feel good that this community is really helpful. Thanks everyone!
