Re: bytevector-copy creates srfi-4 vector with greater length

[taylanbayirli@gmail.com (Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer)]

Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> writes:

> Thoughts?

I have no experience with SRFI-4 so don't know what would be most
pragmatic, but reading the specification, I see s8vector, u8vector,
s16vector, etc. are all distinct data types, though u8vector corresponds
to u8vector from SRFI-66, bytevectors from R6RS, and bytevectors from
R7RS.  Thus I would expect those four to be the same data type, and
distinct from the other SRFI-4 types.  Correspondingly, I'd expect the
SRFI-4/66 u8vector and R6/7RS bytevector APIs all to work on that type
and only that type.  Other types from SRFI-4 should have their dedicated
APIs, including a copy procedure.

That seems like the relatively obvious Right Way to me, unless I'm
missing something.

If useful, there could be a separate API of procedures that work on both
u8vector (i.e. bytevector) and other SRFI-4 data types, but otherwise
I'm of the opinion that any distinct data type exposed to Scheme users
should also have its dedicated API that works on no other types.

Taylan