Re: Property Lists

[Richard Kelsey <kelsey@xxxxxxx>]

   From: bear <bear@xxxxxxxxx>
   Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2003 12:41:30 +0200

   Whilst you were thinking about record types, did anyone have a look
   at common-lisp style property lists?

No.  The rationale begins:

 Many Scheme implementations provide means for creating new types,
 usually called either records or structures.

SRFI-9 is primarily a mechanism for creating new types.  A minimal
approach would have been for each record to contain a single, immutable
value.  The Scheme implementations mentioned above, along with many
other programming languages, extend this by allowing multiple, mutable
fields.   SRFI-9 specifies a common interface for this common feature.

Hashtable-based property lists are a distinctly different, less common
feature, and one that is usually not combined with creating new types.
If you think it would be a better approach, then by all means write a
SRFI for it.
                                      -Richard Kelsey