2013/8/21 Ralf Mattes > On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 08:52:02AM +0200, Panicz Maciej Godek wrote: > > 2013/8/20 David Pirotte > > > > > Hello, > > > > > > > It seems following is invalid: > > > > > > > > (let ((a 2)) > > > > (define (foo x) (+ a x))) > > > > > > > > I prefer to reduce scope of variable as much as possible, so > > > > I find this restriction unconvinent. Is is part of standard or > technical > > > > limitation? Is it any workaround? > > > > > > > The Scheme's idiomatic way to achieve the effect that you > > probably want would be > > (define foo #f) > > (let ((a 2)) > > (set! foo (lambda (x) (+ a x)))) > > I'd say this is extremly contorted and non-schemish. > What's wrong with: > > (define foo > (let ((a 2)) > (lambda (arg) (+ a arg)))) > > This is the basic let-over-lambda closure .... > > You're right, but it only works if you want to export only one symbol from a lexical scope. If you wanted a few procedures accessing a single scope, you'd either need to use the solution with 'set!', or -- as Taylan suggested -- have a "define-values" form. Actually, I think should also be possible to write a "define-values" macro using the method I presented (define-macro (define-values symbols . body) (let ((value-identifiers (map gensym (map symbol->string symbols)))) `(begin ,@(map (lambda(x)`(define ,x #f)) symbols) (let-values ((,value-identifiers ,@body)) ,@(map (lambda(symbol value)`(set! ,symbol ,value)) symbols value-identifiers))))) So we can say that guile already has that ;] I don't know however how to write this using define-syntax, the idea is to transform (define-values (symbol1 symbol2 ...) body ...) into (begin (define symbol1 #f) (define symbol2 #f) ... (let-values (((value1 value2 ...) (begin body ...)) (set! symbol1 value1) (set! symbol2 value2) ...) but somehow we need to generate identifiers for symbol1 symbol2 ... (here I wrote symbolically value1 value2 ..., but I'd appreciate if someone more competent could provide a syntax-rules-based solution) regards