On 13 Oct 2009, at 4:02 am, John Cowan wrote: > Alaric Snell-Pym scripsit: > >> For the programmer, what's the practical difference between writing >> (import bignums) and (feature-groups bignums)? > > Probably none, for %bignums. But lets take %inexacts, which does > bind some > identifiers (the transcendental functions). If they were a module, > you'd > have to import them to get them. Since they're a feature group, they > just work -- or don't. Using feature-groups is a polite way to > announce > that you are going to need them, allowing fail-fast behavior.
Ah-hah. So having feature groups separate like that is a way to allow programmers to omit to declare their requirements in order to create code that may break unexpectedly? :-) ABS -- Alaric Snell-Pym Work: http://www.snell-systems.co.uk/ Play: http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/ Blog: http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/author/alaric/ _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
