Re: scm_i_print_symbol_name() in libguile/print.c ...

[Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com>]

Hello again :)

On Mon 11 Apr 2011 15:08, Wolfgang J Moeller <wjm@heenes.com> writes:

> Having any sort of escapes mixed with #{ }# notation would be incompatible -
> maybe you ought no longer generate #{ }# on output, but switch to R6RS escapes
> throughout. Since there has been (in my understanding) no way to read symbols
> containing "}#" so far, just keep the "transparent" treatment of those
> guile-private brackets on input.

We have a choice of ensuring that:

  (equal? (with-input-from-string (object->string sym) read) sym)

or preserving the old behavior that introduced spurious backslashes in
the symbol names.  Incidentally it does appear that }# could be read, in
theory, given the fact that }# in a name would be written out as }\#.
Strange stuff.  I think interpreting \ as a general escape is compatible
with the intentions of that code, and \x...; is generally compatible as
well, if we assume that nobody was escaping x in their own code, because
Guile sure wasn't.

Anyway, I do think that providing an option to just use r6rs syntax for
serialization is a good idea.  Unfortunately you can't do it in general,
because there is the #{}# case to deal with, but oh well.

Cheers,

Andy
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