From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Thien-Thi Nguyen Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Re: subbytevectors Date: Sat, 09 Jun 2012 17:16:02 +0200 Message-ID: <87obosbjnx.fsf@gnuvola.org> References: <878vfwg2vw.fsf@pobox.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1339254930 12343 80.91.229.3 (9 Jun 2012 15:15:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2012 15:15:30 +0000 (UTC) Cc: guile-devel To: Andy Wingo Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sat Jun 09 17:15:27 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1SdNNs-00089x-C3 for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 09 Jun 2012 17:15:24 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:59094 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SdNNr-0003dw-Uq for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Sat, 09 Jun 2012 11:15:23 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:55940) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SdNNg-00038n-Jw for guile-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 09 Jun 2012 11:15:13 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SdNNe-0002M8-QO for guile-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 09 Jun 2012 11:15:12 -0400 Original-Received: from smtp208.alice.it ([82.57.200.104]:46725) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1SdNNe-0002Ln-GI for guile-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 09 Jun 2012 11:15:10 -0400 Original-Received: from ambire (79.40.15.238) by smtp208.alice.it (8.6.023.02) id 4F056E8511B9D748; Sat, 9 Jun 2012 17:15:06 +0200 Original-Received: from ttn by ambire with local (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1SdNOU-0000o9-B2; Sat, 09 Jun 2012 17:16:02 +0200 In-Reply-To: <878vfwg2vw.fsf@pobox.com> (Andy Wingo's message of "Sat, 09 Jun 2012 13:07:15 +0200") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.92 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 82.57.200.104 X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:14571 Archived-At: () Andy Wingo () Sat, 09 Jun 2012 13:07:15 +0200 Again, the gain in expressiveness is probably worth it Overall, i am concerned about quick fixes and slow suffering in the Guile design. To break it down from different angles: Thinking positively: If you want to make a case for such a facility, why not show some code, both without (status quo) and with (proposed)? It should be clear what expressiveness is gained, and how. Thinking negatively:=20 Guile 1.4.x has =E2=80=98make-shared-substring=E2=80=99, which is similar in spirit (since strings of that era are basically byte vectors), but i believe later Guile versions dropped that. It might be instructive to (reconstruct if necessary and) follow that chain of reasoning to avoid repeating a similar flip-flop. Thinking abstractly: IIRC, SRFI 13 suggests that its support for substrings would not be necessary if programmers wrote code using "range" style. Could the client code you have in mind be rephrased like that?