This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 17 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 17 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.
Per Bothner wrote: > One reason for using a single name is that I'm interested in > experimenting with alternative syntaxes, including use of infix > operators. [...] I fail to see why a new operator, GENERALIZED-MUTATE (say), could not meet your needs just as well. You can already define GENERALIZED-MUTATE as a macro over SET! in your translator's preamble for the target code. If you decide it's a good thing to use the same syntax for both identifier and structure mutation, you can then extend GENERALIZED-MUTATE's macro. Why does the chosen name have to be SET! and nothing else? Note that I am *not* being critical of either an infix syntax, or of a conflated mutator, or of anything else. I just want to know why that one name, which already has a fixed syntax and semantics in standard Scheme. After all, if your source language has := rather than SET! (which would likely be a poor choice of name in a traditional infix syntax, since `!' may well mean something else), then your translator can pick any old name it wishes in the target language. 'shriram