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Re: eval


From: Dirk Herrmann
Subject: Re: eval
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 11:10:32 +0100 (MET)

On 6 Feb 2001, Neil Jerram wrote:

> Yes, but I'm reluctant to preempt the outcome of our module design
> process (which included discussion of this kind of syntax).  And it
> has to be balanced against the use of `,' as an identifier character,
> etc. etc.  And... "#m" is still a lot shorter than ",module" :-)

The reasons why I am not happy with #m is, that first, hash extension
characters are rare and it is likely that we will sooner or later run into
conflicts.  Second, #m can be put _anywhere_ in the code, for example
(list 1 2 #m foo 3 4), which does not make sense to me.  You could modify
the reader to treat #m specially and only accept it on the top-level, but
this does not seem to be a clean solution to me.  Using ',' does not
conflict with anything else, and it is common practice to use it for meta
commands.  If I understand things right, ',' can not be used as an
identifier character (at least not as the first character of an
identifier) because of it's unquote semantics, or am I missing something?  
The question, whether to use 'm' or 'module' is not of importance, since
we could easily provide both, as Keisuke already does it in his example
for a set of meta commands.

However, I don't think we are preempting the outcome of the module design
process:  What we are doing at the moment is _doing_ the module design
process.  It may be that some of the solutions suggested will not be used.  
But, we don't even have an impression how we would like to use the new
module system.  The only wishlist that I have found is a summary at
http://www.glug.org/docbits/modules.texi.txt, but most of the points
listed there need discussion.

Best regards,
Dirk Herrmann





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