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Paul Schlie <schlie@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > There's a distinct advantage to keeping the character set in which the > language is specified in (and is capable of processing itself), distinct > from the character set it can utilize to process arbitrary language text, > as otherwise it becomes too easy to then rationalize utilizing characters > specified within the broader character set within program code, which would > then truly needlessly limit the code's portability, from both a machine as > well as human perspective. (As I don't believe it's productive to anyone to > attempt to interpret code utilizing symbols written/spelled in arbitrary > languages and corresponding character sets; but is clearly useful to enable > portable programs to be written to process such arbitrary text). Then these little program-representing thingies should not be called "characters". I don't know what the right word is, but it should be miles away from "character". If this is the interpretation you wish to offer of what is called a "character" in R5RS, then we have a problem: Scheme *has no* characters of any sort, though it does have a simulacrum which is good enough for implementing the Scheme language. But it seems obvious to me that this is *not* what was in the minds of the R5RS authors. I think they conceived of the R5RS character as not merely a thing for writing Scheme programs, but as roughly the "same thing" as char in C or Pascal. Thomas