Re: [Scheme-reports] Bytevectors should be called u8vectors

[Aaron W. Hsu <arcfide@x>]

Marc Feeley <feeley@x> wrote:

> On 2012-07-04, at 3:19 AM, John Cowan wrote:

> > Both the WG and I have avoided trying to specify which implementations
> > are "major" and which are not:  I have instead presented facts about the
> > implementations that I know about, and leave it up to the readers to
> > decide which ones matter to them and which do not.  Anyway, here's what
> > I know about what implementations *claim* to provide:
> > 
> > SRFI 4: Racket, Gauche, Gambit, Chicken, Bigloo, Guile, Kawa, Scheme48,
> > STklos, RScheme.  This information is probably out of date.
> > 
> > R6RS: Guile, Chez, Vicare, Larceny, Ypsilon, Mosh.
>
> As I suspected, common practice would favor the SRFI-4 API.

I have to point out how I think this list is misrepresentative.
Racket supports the R6RS language as a built-in, so to have it on
this list as an entry at all is misleading. It supports both, not one or the
other. This whole counting of implementations thing is a bit strange,
and this list in itself is prettly close a count, and not of much help
in this issue.

We have considered common practice in the lists, and my own thoughts on
the matters are also part of the archives. I prefer the R6RS approach,
but an interface that is cleaner than what R6RS provided for endianness 
and the like. Outside of that, I think the name itself is a bikeshed 
issue, and in R7RS we are not even talking about the larger issues of 
data extraction from vectors of bytes. However, as I like the R6RS 
mechanics (byte alignment rather than homogenous vectors) more than the
other, I prefer that we use the name bytevector, so as not to confuse
people in thinking that we are intending SRFI-4 style homogenous
vectors. 

However, we have already had a long discussion of this in the lists. I
am not sure that we are seeing anything new here. We made all of these 
arguments before, and counter-arguments were also made.

-- 
Aaron W. Hsu | arcfide@x | http://www.sacrideo.us
Programming is just another word for the lost art of thinking.

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