This page is part of the web mail archives of SRFI 44 from before July 7th, 2015. The new archives for SRFI 44 contain all messages, not just those from before July 7th, 2015.
On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Anton van Straaten wrote: > This could make a nice reference implementation. It's not completely clear > to me whether you're also suggesting that this should be something that the > spec requires of implementations, though. I don't see the need for it in > implementations that already provide a generic dispatch mechanism - it would > only add overhead. I'm advocating a public interface for collection-generic functions. The generic-dispatch mechanisms you're talking about aren't public. If the objective is that I can "drop-in" a collection library developed anywhere, on any scheme system, and have it work with the local SRFI-44 implementation, then we need a specific, published, data format for collection objects that allows the collection-generic functions to do efficient dispatch in an obvious way using R5RS semantics. Right now, vectors (or possibly records) are the highest level of compatibility that can be targeted by library code. So, yes, I'm advocating that the spec should require all collections that are going to work in this "generic collections framework" to adhere to a specific published data format -- probably as vectors or records encapsulating all the needed functions. Bear