On Apr 18, 2009, at 12:13 PM, Michele Simionato wrote:
Yep, I am playing this kind of games right now, finding all sort of
differences.
I think it will take at least six of my Adventures to explain the
R6RS module
system and the portability gotchas :-(
Probably more than 6, yes.
BTW, I do not think there is any public document describing all the
issues, right?
Right. There are lots of information scattered in newsgroups archives,
mailing lists, and private communications.
You, Will Clinger, Derick and probably a few others know all tricks,
There are more who know the issues, but all opinions are strongly
biased as you've witnessed.
but for mere mortals such a document would be pretty useful.
Very useful if you can give an unbiased informative account of the
similarities as well as the differences. I mean, one could write
such article and make it sound so grim that no library could ever
be written and shared between implementations. This is obviously
not the case. The portability problems are most visible when one
performs side effects, e.g., reading from stdin, printing, set!ing,
in times when the report does not mandate one specific behavior.
[FWIW, I don't think the report should have nailed each and every
such behavior; some of the issues are better left underspecified
as is done in every language specification.]
Aziz,,,
