On 2012-01-04, at 1:32 PM, John Cowan wrote: > Marc Feeley scripsit: > >> My issue with these feature identifiers is that their semantics is >> vague. Are they a feature of the compile-time Scheme system, or >> run-time Scheme system, or something else? What can I infer from >> the "windows" feature? Is this windows 3.0 or 95 or ...? The only >> practical use I can see is to determine the filename syntax, but there >> are better ways to determine this or to isolate from the difference. >> Also, endianness is not a pure dichotomy (some systems store code one >> way and data another, some are middle-endian, etc). > > The PDP-11 has been dead for at least 15 years.
The ARM is definitely not dead, and probably the architecture with the largest market currently. >> Are the CPU architectures well defined? What is the set of features >> of i386? Aren't there differences in sub-variants of i386? So as a >> programmer, what are the guarantees I have if the feature i386 is on? >> >> Can you present a use-case for these feature identifiers? > > Not for strictly conforming R7RS-small programs, no. As I have said, > the need arises when talking to lower-level software, and the point of > enumerating them in the standard is to avoid silly incompatibilities: > "I say 'darwin', you say 'macosx', let's call the whole thing off!" Which lower-level software and how can I interface to them given that there's no FFI in R7RS-small? Marc _______________________________________________ Scheme-reports mailing list [email protected] http://lists.scheme-reports.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/scheme-reports
