Re: binary-port?

[Andreas Rottmann <a.rottmann@gmx.at>]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Hello,
>
> I just pushed 96128014bfaabe9e123c4f4928ce4c20427eaa53, which makes
> ‘binary-port?’ deterministic for ports intended to be binary.
>
Glad to see that!

> However, I’m wondering whether we should not just squarely do away with
> the binary/textual distinction, and just write:
>
>   (define (binary-port? p) #t)
>
> What do people with experience with pure R6RS code think?  Is the
> distinction actually used, and how?
>
I can only find one example in the code I wrote:
`copy-port', which works (with the probably obvious semantics), on both
binary and textual ports.  On Guile, when `binary-port?' would return #t
for all ports, `copy-port' would break, losing the transcoding effect
you'd get when you pass two textual ports of different encodings.  With
the current behavior, you still have to watch the order of your port
type checks, testing for `binary-port?' first, whereas on systems
following R6RS strictly, you'd get the same behavior regardless of type
check order.  I can live with the latter, but the former would be
unfortunate, IMHO.

Regards, Rotty
-- 
Andreas Rottmann -- <http://rotty.yi.org/>