Re: [Scheme-reports] auxiliary syntax Peter Bex 06 Jan 2013 11:35 UTC

On Sat, Jan 05, 2013 at 08:28:09PM +0100, Andy Wingo wrote:
> I see that the report decided that the `_', `else', `...', etc auxiliary
> syntaxes are to be bound in (scheme base).  That's probably a good
> thing.  Good job.  I guess they'd be bound like:
>
>   (define-syntax else (syntax-rules ())
>
> Does that definition need to go in the report, along with the definition
> of `cond' et al?
>
> I do suspect that people that aren't used to bound auxiliary syntax will
> find it a bit odd.

Yep :)

Why should these be treated specially?  Should any auxiliary syntax be
treated specially?  Users would be pretty surprised to see a difference
in behavior when defining their own syntactic forms with auxiliary
keywords and seeing a different error message when using them "directly".

I think trying to catch these things is misguided.  It's fine if an
implementation like Racket does this to guide students, but seasoned
Scheme programmers don't need this kind of hand-holding.

Cheers,
Peter
--
http://sjamaan.ath.cx

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