From: "Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>
To: Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com>
Cc: guix-devel <guix-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: What's the meaning of the percent sign in variable names
Date: Tue, 04 May 2021 17:49:21 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <874kfipkhq.fsf@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <56kdRcoBgRuaTJ3WDZuJafflQQ4gld466rsxEpaHBkAv63kjjShKEEaQyL3n01WgUFyuUHpqLtW9VuZyeV6H4_C6NdB5nXd7BGxYJZ1UbXg=@protonmail.com> (Luis Felipe's message of "Fri, 23 Apr 2021 14:22:54 +0000")
Hi Luis!
Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> skribis:
> Are all these constants (%base-packages, for example)? Is this a Guix
> convention or does it come from Guile?
To complement Leo’s answer… The ‘%’ convention comes from Guile, which
may have borrowed it from other Schemes. Initially, it was meant to
read as “sys” (“system”), as can be seen in libguile, meaning that a
percent-binding somehow belongs to “the system”: ‘%load-path’,
‘%make-void-port’, ‘%load-hook’, etc.
In Guix it’s used with an extending meaning, typically for variables
holding Guixy constants: ‘%base-packages’, ‘%setuid-programs’,
‘%desktop-services’, etc. I hope it makes some sense!
Ludo’.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-05-04 15:49 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-04-23 14:22 What's the meaning of the percent sign in variable names Luis Felipe
2021-04-23 14:49 ` Leo Prikler
2021-04-24 13:29 ` Luis Felipe
2021-05-04 15:49 ` Ludovic Courtès [this message]
2021-05-05 14:18 ` Luis Felipe
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