RE: Fundamental design flaws

["Anton van Straaten" <anton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bradd W. Szonye wrote:
> >> How do the generic procedures know whether '((a . 1) (b . 2)) is a
> >> list or an alist? If it's based on content, you have isomorphism
> >> issues to resolve. If you're now using something like a record type
> >> for alists, then you're not really handling primitive alists.
> 
> scgmille@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > They never receive ((a . 1) (b . 2)).  They receive an alist-dict,
> > which has structure beyond the stored values which it can dispatch on
> > (Taylor can comment more).  We don't handle primitive alists.
> 
> You make a big deal about how important it is to provide generic
> procedures for collections, but you don't support a very common
> collection type? Code that uses alists must choose between a complete
> port or no support? 

An adapter could be implemented, with type (alist -> collection).