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On Sat, 1 Jan 2005 campbell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: >On Sat, 1 Jan 2005, bear wrote: >> Arrays, properly supported, are not an extension. They're a core language >> feature like lists. They deserve their own syntax. > There is very little reason, beyond the nebulous > aesthetics that Per Bothner has expressed, to give them as special > syntax as lists are given. Okay, I want to point a few things out: Aubrey Jaffer, on Sunday 25 December: > Arrays are a fundamental data organizing paradigm from the origins > of computing; FORTRAN has arrays; APL has arrays. I hope arrays > will become part of Scheme in R6RS. For a construct which > generalizes two of Scheme's three aggregate data types, a succinct > read-syntax does not seem overly burdensome. Myself, on Friday 31 December: > I think arrays are too fundamental to have any complicated or > verbose syntax. > Lispy lists are brilliant: open-paren, elements, close paren. I > would love to be able to have something that simple and elegant for > arrays. Per Bothner, Friday 31 December: > Requiring SRFI-10 notation for arrays but not for vectors, is > really ugly and makes arrays into second-class constructs, which is > unfortunate given that vectors are just a special case of arrays. My point is that the "nebulous aesthetic reasons expressed by Per Bothner" are in fact also expressed by everyone who has expressed an opinion in this matter except for yourself. So it looks a little silly to see you disparaging this opinion as the "nebulous aesthetic concern" of a single person - unless the single person you're talking about is yourself. Bear