Re: [PATCH] add language/wisp to Guile?

[Maxime Devos]

On 23-02-2023 19:04, Maxime Devos wrote:
> > > > Still doesn't really address the problem though, as Scheme scripts (or
> > > > scripts in another language) may need to start with a shebang and
> > > > "#!lang" or "#lang" is not a valid comment in all languages.  (E.g., I
> > > > don't think it's valid Pascal, though I only have read some Pascal
> > > > code, I haven't looked at the specification.)
> > > I think itmust be ignored in all languages that work as scripts in
> > > POSIX. So I would expect that support for ignoring #!... in the first
> > > line is very widespread.
>
> The problem is that not all languages were made with POSIX-style scripts 
> in mind, e.g. Pascal, BASIC and Java (*).

I forgot about the following:

> > Also since the language implementation is in Guile, this could simply be
> > added for Guile. That may prevent using this file from other
> > implementations of the language, but it should work well enough as a
> > first step.

I disagree, because there is an alternative solution that should be 
straightforward and avoids the downside of making an extension to the 
language that could confuse other implementations.

Quoting myself:

> The '#lang whatever' stuff makes Scheme (*) files unportable between 
> implementations, as '#lang scheme' is not a valid comment -- there exist 
> Schemes beyond Guile and Racket.  If it were changed to recognising
> '-*- mode: scheme -*-' or '-*- language: scheme -*-' or such, it would be 
> better IMO, [...]
E.g.:

;; -*- insert-bikeshed-here: scheme -*-
// -*- insert-bikeshed-here: c++ -*-
#  -*- insert-bikeshed-here: ecmascript -*-
/* -*- insert-bikeshed-here: c -*- */
{*** *- insert-bikeshed-here: pascal -*- ***}
REM -*- insert-bikeshed-here: basic -*-

I suppose the decision could be made to add support for "#lang" for 
compatibility with Racket when 'lang' is some language Racket supports, 
despite the fact that "#lang" is invalid in some of those languages, but 
IMO we should avoid adding new extensions that confuse ‘native’ 
implementations when something compatible like "-*- ... -*-" can be done 
instead.

Greetings,
Maxime.

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