[r6rs-discuss] Programs and scripts

From: Abdulaziz Ghuloum <aghuloum>
Date: Mon Nov 27 13:56:14 2006

On Nov 27, 2006, at 10:53 AM, John Cowan wrote:

> William D Clinger scripsit:
>
>> Good point. Clearly there are no draft R6RS programs except for
>> scripts
>> plus the libraries they import. By the phrase "real programs", I
>> mean
>> the much larger category of programs that were defined by the R5RS
>> and
>> earlier reports, which some R6RS editors have insisted are not ruled
>> out by the R6RS. I welcome suggestions for a better way to refer to
>> these non-R6RS programs.
>
> I still do not understand. First of all, the standard cannot bind
> anything that does not claim to conform to it, neither a program nor a
> Scheme implementation. And second, what can one of this "larger
> category
> of programs" do that cannot be done by a script which imports
> libraries?
> I take scripts and libraries to be the R6RS units of program
> construction,
> as files are in C and classes in Java.

It's very simple, really. The "larger category of programs" is Scheme
implementations since we know this area dominates all uses of Scheme.
Can a Scheme implementation be written as a script? Maybe, but then
it would need another implementation to run it! To break the need for
having infinite scripts going all the way down, every Scheme
implementation, at its root, must be a non-script. Seriously :-)

Aziz,,,
Received on Mon Nov 27 2006 - 13:55:19 UTC