> think this comes down to a more fundamental difference - I still don't think that functions should automatically map over arrays, and you do. If they did automatically map, then I would agree with you about array-ref, because then arrays wouldn't be fundamentally different types from the objects they contained.

I actually agree here! I don't want regular scheme functions to have things done to them around their back, it would be another language. I can accept why you want array-ref to be strict. Indeed my approach tends to a confusion between a 2-array of 2-arrays and a 4-array. In guile-ploy you can see this in collapse-array ---if the verb doesn't provide an output shape, I make an assumption. I also banish 0-rank arrays.

Best regards,

        Daniel