🚀 go-pugleaf

In comp.lang.prolog goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au writes:

>There has been some discussion in both comp.lang.prolog and
>comp.lang.scheme recently concerning standards for the respective
>languages. ...

>1.  Adding and Subtracting 1.

-1 is a negative number, so cannot be a procedure: (- 0 1) -> -1

This was done as part of syntax cleanup for numbers (partly because
people found the procedure names 1+, -1+, etc. confusing; partly because
of parsing complex number syntax: e.g. "-1+3i").


>    Frankly, I am getting just a little bit tired of having to go
>    through Scheme code fixing references to 1+, 1-, and -1+.

This looks like a global-replace+educate to me.  (Note: given the
growth in the Scheme community, most Scheme code had yet to be
written).


>    However, sorting is not part of the Scheme standard or R^(3.99)RS.

This is because we were specifying the language, not a standard
library.  One of the joys of Scheme is the ability to add new data
types (e.g. Windows) without changing the language.


>That's looking at the effect of a `minimal' standard.
>Mind you, some of the things the standard _does_ say haven't received
>much in the way of conformance, so perhaps it doesn't really matter
>that these things _were_ left out of the standard.

As the IEEE standard was just published this month, this should not be
suprising.  Note that authors of virtually all Scheme compilers I know
of were represented on the standards committee (MIT, Chez, MacScheme,
Gambit, Scheme84, Scheme->C, PCScheme, Scheme XEROX, etc.--even a
Japanese group).  I expect all live compilers will be complient within
a few months.


-Ken Dickey				kend@data.uucp

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