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Re: how useful are collecting lists?

This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 110 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 110 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.



Alan Manuel Gloria:

> Personally, even in my s-expressions era I started to dislike
> deeply-nested definitions... I now know that such deep
> defines are a *pain* to debug.

True, but sometimes you really do need them, particularly for
complex library modules and certain kinds of complex data structures.

I think using a collecting list after a "." will be rare,
but when you need it, there's just no substitute.  It can turn
a deeply indented expression that forbids blank lines into
a simpler format (and where blank lines end at a controlled point).
And as you noted, they follow from the definition
of <*...*>, so it would a surprise to the user if they are NOT allowed.

--- David A. Wheeler