Re: [Scheme-reports] Scheme-reports Digest, Vol 10, Issue 1

["Thomas Bushnell, BSG" <tb@x>]

Based on long experience, I am skeptical about the ability of language designers to adequately model operating system facilities without becoming operating system designers in the process, and usually failing to provide adequate access to the operating systems already in use.

I would be happy if Scheme-2 said "this is how we map to Posix.1 facilities", and very unhappy if they started deciding what a good networking interface looks like.

My primary concern is that Scheme-1 shouldn't have any of this. I'm happy to see files removed from Scheme-1, but the backwards-compatibility expectations for Scheme-1 might make that implausible, and I'm content to see them stay.

Thomas

On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 11:10 AM, Larry D. Lee jr. <llee@x> wrote:

I talked with John Cowan and sketched out my argument that, for
consistency, IPC operations should be handled the same as File
operations.

Several IPC constructs, such as named pipes, are essentially files or
could be implemented as such. Any Implementation that provides access to
a system's filesystem should provide IPC support to remain consistent.

Certain environments don't have filesystems, however, and Scheme should
still target those environments. Obviously Scheme's requirements can not
require support for something that doesn't exist in a targeted
environment.

John Cowan, informed me that a proposal had be submitted to drop file
support from tiny Scheme and move it to WG2.

This proposal makes sense. It would allow Scheme to be implemented in
environments that don't have filesystems, while ensuring that a standard
IPC library exists for those environments that do.

Tiny scheme should drop support for file operations, and Extended scheme
should include support for IPC and socket operations.

On Fri, 2010-10-29 at 13:52 -0400, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> Not for working group one they aren't.
>
>
> Not every scheme even HAS files or a filesystem around, let alone a
> network. Part of the charter for WG1 is embedded devices.
>
>
> And what about non-Unix systems? Are we going to mandate that if the
> OS has no sockets or pipes, it isn't Scheme?
>
>
> Thomas
>
> On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Larry Lee <llee@x> wrote:
>         Are IPC functions under consideration? Sockets, pipes, etc are
>         as integral as filesystem operations.
>
>         "scheme-reports-request@x      "
>         <scheme-reports-request@x> wrote:
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>         >Today's Topics:
>         >
>         >   1. New features in WG1 Scheme (John Cowan)
>         >
>         >
>         >----------------------------------------------------------------------
>         >
>         >Message: 1
>         >Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:42:11 -0400
>         >From: John Cowan <cowan@x>
>         >Subject: [Scheme-reports] New features in WG1 Scheme
>         >To: scheme-reports-wg1@x,
>         >       scheme-reports@x
>         >Message-ID: <20101018034210.GG373@x">20101018034210.GG373@x>
>         >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>         >
>         >Here's a non-authoritative summary of the currently approved
>         new features
>         >in R7RS small Scheme:
>         >
>         >        Lexical syntax:
>         >
>         >Inexact values +inf.0, -inf.0, and +nan.0.
>         >
>         >Escaped symbols with |...|.
>         >
>         >Named character escapes (short and long names) in strings.
>         >
>         >Numeric character escapes in strings and symbols.
>         >
>         >#; S-_expression_ comments and #|...|# block comments.
>         >
>         >        Syntax:
>         >
>         >Internal DEFINE-SYNTAX.
>         >
>         >LETREC* is added, and internal DEFINE is made to use it.
>         >
>         >Tail patterns, ellipsis escaping, ellipsis redefinition, and
>         _ as wildcard
>         >in syntax-rules.
>         >
>         >        Modified procedures:
>         >
>         >MAP and FOR-EACH are allowed to take lists of unequal length,
>         and stop
>         >when the shortest list runs out.
>         >
>         >ASSOC and MEMBER take an optional third argument, the
>         predicate to use.
>         >
>         >        New procedures:
>         >
>         >random-integer, random-real, current-error-port, delete-file,
>         >file-exists?, make-list, copy-list, list-set!, string-map,
>         >string-for-each, string->vector, vector->string, copy-vector,
>         >vector-map, vector-for-each, exact-integer?.
>          exact-integer-sqrt,
>         >finite?, nan?, error, syntax-error, open-input-string,
>         >open-output-string, get-output-string,
>         read-with-shared-structure,
>         >write-with-shared-structure.
>         >
>         >--
>         >Values of beeta will give rise to dom!          John Cowan
>         >(5th/6th edition 'mv' said this if you tried
>          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
>         >to rename '.' or '..' entries; see
>          cowan@x
>         >http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/odd.html)
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >------------------------------
>         >
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>         >
>         >End of Scheme-reports Digest, Vol 10, Issue 1
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