From: Andre van Tonder <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [r6rs-discuss] Proposed features for small Scheme, part 4B: 
case-sensitivity
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2009 08:51:21 -0400 (EDT)

> On Wed, 9 Sep 2009, Peter Bex wrote:
> 
> > I'm not familiar with the CL syntax, but I also really appreciate this
> > feature.  It makes a lot of sense too, since it makes it possible to
> > enter any kind of string as symbol literal.  This means that if you
> > can do (string->symbol <something>), you can also type in <something>
> > and get the symbol.
> 
> This, however, makes it difficult to write program transformers (for example 
> macro expanders), that need to insert generated symbols for which the 
> requirement is that they cannot be typed in user programs.

It's orthogonal to the symbol syntax.  *Any* interned symbol that
has external representation has potential of unintended conflict;
uninterned symbol can solve this, but I'm not sure having that in
Scheme standard is a good thing or not.  (Gauche has it.)

BTW, in R6RS, if I understand it correctly, I can create one
symbol that doesn't have external respresentation: (string->symbol "")
CL-style escape allows it to be printed as ||.

--shiro



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