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Re: Have one-argument '<? et al function as 'make<? et al

This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 114 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 114 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.



On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 9:12 AM, John Cowan <cowan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Alan Manuel Gloria scripsit:
>
>> This is a rather SRFI-105-centric proposal, but I'd like to propose
>> that, if '<? and friends are given a single comparator argument, it
>> return a function predicate:
>
> I don't understand why this proposal in any way benefits SRFI 105-based
> code.  Can you explain further?

Mostly just a way of writing it shorter.

With make<?:

{x (make<? c) y (make<? c) z} ; ((make<? c) x y z)

With <? operating as make<? does now:

{x (<? c) y (<? c) z} ; ((<? c) x y z)

That's it, that's the only advantage for SRFI-105.

It's not clear to me if (<? c) would mean anything useful anyway, so
why not, but...

>
>> Admittedly, it's possible to just use 'make<? and friends if we're
>> going to use SRFI-105 anyway, but it seems clearer to use <? if
>> SRFI-105 is something to support.
>
> I don't see why.  The idea of <? and friends is that they are generalizations
> of < and friends (also string<? and friends, etc.); that is, they are
> predicates.  Rather than having the function be either a predicate or
> a predicate-maker, my idea is to separate the two purposes, so that
> in one case we always get a boolean result, in the other case a procedure.

...Well, I suppose I can agree with you here, there is such a thing as
clarity.  This is scheme, after all, not Perl, so something that is
convenient a few times for some people is not something to be
recklessly added to the language.

Sincerely,
Amkg