Re: [Scheme-reports] display should not guarantee termination

+1 for your reasoning. I feel the current wording is just a slip in order
to tell 'display' should handle cyclic structures. Lazy infinite list is
out of domain of r7rs, so what would happen when such structure
is given should be left unspecified. Gauche already has auto-forcing
lazy lists, so I cannot help but making display run infinitely...

If it is indeed the intention of the standard, can it be fixed by small
editing? e.g. "However, display must always terminate even when the
obj contains cycles"?

I think we could re-word this to say the termination

applies to cyclic data-structures, not necessarily

lazy infinite data structures.

Display is overly vague with respect to non-char/string

objects anyway, so you have a lot of leeway already.

Alex

On Thu, Nov 22, 2012 at 1:49 PM, Per Bothner <per@x> wrote:
> The specification for display is:
>
> However, display must always terminate. Thus if the nor-
> mal write representation is used, datum labels are needed
> to represent cycles as in write.
>
> I think this is wrong, and (arguably) misunderstands what
> display is about, which IMO is to produce plain unadorned
> human-readable output without extra delimiters. Infinite
> data structures *should* produce infinite output. Many
> programs are intended to run "indefinitely", and so any
> attempt to prohibit unbounded output is misguided.
>
> Consider for example an extension with infinite lists or strings,
> with automatic forcing. The semantics of such a string is like
> a regular string, but of unbounded length, with characters
> calculated as needed. In that case the "correct" implementation
> of display is to display each chunk of text as it becomes available.
>
> I.e. an infinite lazy data-structure should produce infinite
> output - and therefore an infinite non-lazy cyclic data-structure
> should produce infinite output, for consistency.
>
> I will not implement this rule in Kawa (unless I get around to
> doing at as part of a "pedantic" mode), as it conflicts with
> my conception of how to handle laziness.
> --
> --Per Bothner
> per@x http://per.bothner.com/
>
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