unofficial mirror of bug-guile@gnu.org 
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Richard Sent <richard@freakingpenguin.com>
To: 69919@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#69919: Inaccurate api-procedures manual sentence on lambda formal arguments
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2024 13:40:58 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87h6h0dcnp.fsf@freakingpenguin.com> (raw)

Hi Guile,

I noticed the following line in the manual on (lambda) in (info "(guile)
Lambda"). Emphasis in **.

> -- syntax: lambda formals body
>     ...
>     ‘(VARIABLE1 ... VARIABLEN . VARIABLEN+1)’
>          If a space-delimited period precedes the last variable, then
>          the procedure takes N or more variables where N is the number
>          of formal arguments before the period.  *There must be at
>          least one argument before the period.*

That would mean a procedure like

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
((lambda ( . args)
  args) 1) ;=>(1) runs fine in 3.0.9
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

is invalid because there isn't an argument before the period. I've
encountered Guile code that relies on this behavior before, even in the
Guile repo. For example, in guile/benchmark/measure.scm:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(define (measure . args)
 ...)
;; should be identical to
(define measure (lambda ( . args) ...))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Ergo, I think the sentence

> There must be at least one argument before the period

should be removed. This line seems to be from the R5RS standard [1], but
this sentence is in api-procedures.texi, not the R5RS manual, so I
assume it should reflect Guile's implementation.

[1] https://conservatory.scheme.org/schemers/Documents/Standards/R5RS/HTML/r5rs-Z-H-2.html#%_toc_%_sec_4.1.4

-- 
Take it easy,
Richard Sent
Making my computer weirder one commit at a time.





                 reply	other threads:[~2024-03-20 17:40 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: [no followups] expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

  List information: https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=87h6h0dcnp.fsf@freakingpenguin.com \
    --to=richard@freakingpenguin.com \
    --cc=69919@debbugs.gnu.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).