Re: Using . in module names

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

Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net> writes:

> From reading the documentation, I would expect this to work, as . is
> valid in symbols? But from trying this out, it does not seem to (the
> module cannot be loaded).
>
> Does anyone have information about this?

While "." is valid in symbols, using it alone as a symbol is difficult,
since it's part of s-expression syntax denoting pairs.

In Guile, the syntax #{foo}# can be used to force something to be parsed
as a symbol.  For instance, #{abcd}# and abcd are the same, but #{123}#
is a symbol whereas 123 is parsed as a number.  Similarly, #{.}# can be
used to denote the symbol that consists of the sole character ".".

  (define-module (foo #{.}# bar) ...)

  (use-modules (foo #{.}# bar) ...)

By the way, R7RS has standardized the syntax |foo| to denote symbols,
which Guile already supports in a branch, though I don't know when it
will make it into a release.  With that, the above examples would be

  (define-module (foo |.| bar) ...)

  (use-modules (foo |.| bar) ...)

which is somewhat cleaner.


There is no way to avoid using something like #{}# or || here, since in
the s-expression

  (define-module (foo . bar) ...)

the "(foo . bar)" part parses as a pair object whose car is foo and cdr
is bar.


Taylan