[r6rs-discuss] "Unspecified" (naming)

From: AndrevanTonder <andre>
Date: Fri Sep 22 10:31:27 2006

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, Jonathan A Rees wrote:

> Andrzej Filinski, if I remember correctly, argues that the term "void" ought
> to be reserved for a type that is devoid of values

Actually, I agree with another poster that it would be nice if these
expressions returned zero values instead of the current 1. In that case,
maybe a "void" "type" would not be so far-fetched for such expressions
(ignoring for the moment that the language is untyped).

The reason I would like it if these expressions returned zero values is the
following: I sometimes get hard-to-debug errors due to inconsistent data
values containing #<unspecified>, due to obscure errors in logic, misplaced
parentheses, etc. I can imagine that newcomers would run into this kind of
error quite a bit more often.

The problem with these errors is that they often occur long after the
call that inserted the #<unspecified> value in the data structure. If these
expressions returned no value, the error would occur immediately, as it really
should, and one would not be able to build such inconsistent data values in the
first place.

Cheers
Andre
Received on Fri Sep 22 2006 - 10:29:31 UTC