[gambit-list] Thinking of changing pp

David Rush kumoyuki at gmail.com
Sun Jun 1 14:47:13 EDT 2008


On Sun, Jun 1, 2008 at 5:21 PM, Marc Feeley <feeley at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> But I notice that I often need to pretty print more than one value,
> and I typically add labels to the values, for example:
>
>   (pp (list foo: foo bar: bar))
>
> This is tedious.

Actually I do much the same thing, except that I use the idiom

(pp `((foo ,foo) (bar ,bar)))

or more oftenly, I just use write/newline.

> Moreover I often add a call to pp to print the
> result of a function, and I want the result to be returned so I end up
> transforming:

> (define (square x) (* x x))
> =>
> (define (square x) (let ((result (* x x))) (pp result) result))

This *is* tedious, and I do it all the time, too.

> So I'm thinking of transforming pp into a special form which
> automatically adds keyword labels (when no keyword is explicitly
> given) and returns the value of the last expression.

I did have this once in my personal standard-library. I called it
IDEM-PRINT or some such stupid name. So yes, I think you;re looking at
something which definitely falls into the 'nice-to-have' category.

> Perhaps I shouldn't change pp and instead use a different short name,
> but which one?

I can't help you here, but PP and PRETTY-PRINT are widely implemented
and have expected meanings to those of us who regularly use multiple
Scheme implementations, so I would suggest that you find a different
name, anyway.

> What do you think?

There you have it.

david rush
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