[R6RS] R6RS = Common Scheme?

[Marc Feeley]

In a previous message to the scheme-strategy mailing list I have
suggested that the R6RS design process should focus on identifying
language features that are common in the major implementations of
Scheme, and to consider them for inclusion in R6RS.  This is not to
say that we should not also think about features that have not had
wide acceptance in the major implementations (e.g. module system), but
clearly if some features are deemed useful by many implementations
they are good candidates for standardization.  Just to give an idea,
here are two examples:

  - lexical syntax (multiline comments: #| ... |#, expression
    comments: #;<datum>, shared structure: #n=<datum> and #n#, ...)

  - access to filesystem: delete-file, rename-file, directory-files, ...

I should also point out that I strongly believe in a separation of a
"core" Scheme language from libraries.  I would like to see the core
be very small, and to place the operations on numbers, lists, vectors,
strings, ports in librairies.  So even though we have not even begun
discussion on a standard way to express modules, I think we can start
talking about a set of filesystem operations that will eventually
form the filesystem library.

Marc