Re: [Chicken-users] ditching syntax-case modules for the utf8 egg

[John Cowan]

Alex Shinn scripsit:

> I'm considering changing the utf8 egg to no longer use syntax-case
> modules, so that it would work like the numbers egg.

I am very much in favor of this, *provided* that it does not hurt
mmaintainability (not only by you, but by your eventual successor).

>  (declare (not usual-integrations string-ref string-set! ...))
> 
> for all the utf8-specific string procedures.

It would be handy to provide separately a file to be included
(in the native Chicken sense) that contained exactly this declaration.

> The bigger issue is that any existing code that uses utf8 currently will
> break on the (import utf8) form.  

I think this is minor.  Probably most people have just followed the
cookbook instructions and not tried to do anything complicated with
syntax-case (I myself use it only to provide syntax-rules), in which
case the breakage will be clean, detected early, and easily repaired.

-- 
John Cowan  address@hidden   http://ccil.org/~cowan
"The exception proves the rule."  Dimbulbs think: "Your counterexample proves
my theory."  Latin students think "'Probat' means 'tests': the exception puts
the rule to the proof."  But legal historians know it means "Evidence for an
exception is evidence of the existence of a rule in cases not excepted from."