[r6rs-discuss] Square brackets idea

From: David Van Horn <dvanhorn>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 13:54:02 -0400 (EDT)

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007, Jonathan A Rees wrote:
> Here is a compromise that satisfies concerns on both sides. Define
> [a b c] to be a special reader syntax for the four-element list
> (*square-bracketed* a b c), just as '(a b c) is special reader syntax
> for the two-element list (quote (a b c)). By "*square-bracketed*" here
> I really do mean the symbol of that name (although it could be some
> other symbol).

I would like to see a similar treatment for application so that (f x)
expands to (*app* f x), for example. It's wonderful that Scheme allows
the programmer to provide their own lambda, but it's of limited use
without being able to do the same for application. The lack of symmetry
is due only to the lambda syntax being named while application is not.

A number of features could be portably defined as a library if it were
possible to export both apply and lambda syntaxes (eg. lazy Scheme,
keywords, etc).

David
Received on Mon Jun 18 2007 - 13:54:02 UTC