Hello,

I'd like to add another option for ways to represent symbols. As far
as I know, it's standard to write unprintable objects, like
procedures, with "#<procedure>" or something similar. How about using
the "#< ... >" syntax for symbols? It would probably look something
like #<symbol "......">.

It doesn't actually seem very elegant to me, but it has the advantage
that it won't step on any syntax that people are currently using for
other things.

Noah Lavine

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 1:31 AM, Alex Shinn <alexshinn@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 2:02 PM, John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
>> Andrew Robbins scripsit:
>>
>>> In terms of transmission, the (inline hex escape) lexical space of
>>> R6RS is sufficient to encompass most of the value space of (vertical
>>> bar) identifiers, with the added bonus of being able to be transmitted
>>> to interpreters and compilers via 8-bit unsafe channels and 7-bit
>>> encoded ASCII text files.
>>
>> Everything except ||, the result of (string->symbol "").
>>
>>> Neither (vertical bar) nor Unicode identifiers (also added in R6RS)
>>> can make this claim.
>>
>> Vertical bar as defined in draft 6 allows inline hex escapes within the
>> bars, so it allows everything that inline hex escapes do.
>>
>>> Why would we add 1114111 redundancies to Scheme identifier lexical
>>> space when the only addition to the value space is ||?
>>
>> Vertical bars allow mixed-case identifiers in a case-folding context to
>> be readable.  |Foo| is much more readable than \x46;oo, and |FOO| is
>> infinitely more readable than \x46;\x4F;\x4F;.  This is the example that
>> convinced me of the virtues of |...|.
>
> I had already recommended before to use \x46; and \|...|
> as the single and multiple escape mechanism.  That kills
> two birds with one character leaving |...| open.  I think it's
> also not overly antagonistic to Gambit's six notation since
> neither an initial "|" nor "xNN;" would be meaningful in six.
>
> I'll add this option to the ballot.
>
> --
> Alex
>
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