Common Lisp solved this problem 20 years ago

[Alan Watson <a.watson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The prime goal of this SRFI seems to be to enable Scheme implementations 
to make the same type inferences that C implementations can make. Yes?

I aplaud this goal. However, rather than create this horrid mess of 
type-specific operators, I would much prefer an approach that used type 
declarations, perhaps:

  (with-flonum (x y) (/ x y))
  (with-fixnum (n m) (* n m))

Essentially, if you want to do this, follow Common Lisp.

Yes, I know that if you provide Lisp-like macros and these type-specific 
operators, then I can implement these myself. However, my gut tells me 
that this sort of thing should be provided by the compiler writer.

Regards,

Alan
--
Dr Alan Watson
Centro de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica
Universidad Astronómico Nacional de México