On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 2:52 PM, Alan Watson <alan@alan-watson.org> wrote:
> While I understand that more complete operations on byte vectors are being left for the large language, their utility in the small language could be significantly improved by adding bitwise operations on bytes (and only bytes) along with perhaps bytevector-for-each and bytevector-map. Consider, for example, the awkwardness of using byte vectors to represent bit sets without bitwise operations.
>
> I would imagine that the burden on implementors would be small, since I can't think of a Scheme that doesn't have bitwise operations on fixnums at least and since the for-each and map procedures can be written in Scheme (although there are advantages to standardizing them).
>
> Have these possibilities been considered by the WG? Would they be interested in receiving a more complete proposal?

We did strongly consider incorporating bitwise operations
as in (srfi 33) / (rnrs arithmetic bitwise), and decided to
leave it to the large language.  There was no question of it
being controversial or of limited use, it's simply one place
we decided to draw the line between large and small.

--
Alex

_______________________________________________
Scheme-reports mailing list
Scheme-reports@scheme-reports.org
http://lists.scheme-reports.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/scheme-reports