[gambit-list] Reading S-expressions

Marc Feeley feeley at iro.umontreal.ca
Fri May 1 18:40:49 EDT 2009


On 1-May-09, at 6:04 PM, Jamie Briggs wrote:

> > On 30-Apr-09, at 4:54 PM, Briggs, Jamie wrote:
> >
> > > The readtable stuff in gambit is different, obviously, so how  
> would
> > > I go about tackling this problem?
> > > I've done some reading and trying different things but my scheme  
> chops
> > > are weak and at this point I'm stumped.
> >
> >
> > You'll have to use some of the hidden readtable features.
> > Attached is what you want.
> >
> > Marc
>
> That did the trick, thank you!
>
> I'm curious, why are these features "hidden"?  Is the API still
> under development or is it just that the documentation hasn't
> caught up yet?

The API of that readtable functionality is imperative (it side-effects  
the readtable).  I would prefer a functional API (I admit, not too  
hard to do).  Anyway, the thing is that I view the "##" primitives as  
more fluid in their API as the non-## primitives.  There are no  
guarantees that the ## primitives will maintain their API over future  
versions of Gambit.  There are no guarantees for the non-## primitives  
either, but I would need a very good reason to change the API.  So the  
user can rely on the non-## primitives much more than the non-## ones.

Marc




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