[r6rs-discuss] Scheme should not be changed to be case sensitive

From: Aubrey Jaffer <agj>
Date: Thu Nov 23 10:40:40 2006

 | Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 02:42:29 -0500
 | From: Chris Hanson <cph_at_csail.mit.edu>
 |
 | As someone who has quite a bit of "legacy" Scheme code (about half
 | a million lines), I'm really unhappy about the suggestion that the
 | language be made case sensitive. This _despite_ the fact that
 | nearly all of my current work is based on XML and RDF, where case
 | sensitivity is a bonus.
 |
 | I'd like to suggest a compromise: R6RS requires implementations to
 | provide both case-sensitive and case-insensitive interning of
 | symbols, but provides a notation to specify which is to be used.
 | In the absence of any such notation, the default would be
 | implementation specific. This provides for portability of new
 | code, which would be marked to indicate its preference. It also
 | provides for backwards compatibility for the large body of older
 | code.

Lets say file "A.scm" defines case-sensitive symbols Foo and FOO.
Then a different file "a.scm" defines case-insensitive symbol foo.
Which symbol does foo refer to?

I don't think "case-insensitive" is the right term to describe a
reader where foo is neither Foo nor FOO.
Received on Wed Nov 22 2006 - 22:45:58 UTC