Formal comment #154 (enhancement)

Datums should be self-evaluating generally
Reported by: 	John Cowan
Version: 	5.92

At present, the only self-evaluating datums are numbers, booleans,
characters, and strings, as noted in report section 6.3. This list is
fundamentally historical.

There is no principled reason why other kinds of datums, such as the
empty list, vectors, and bytevectors should not be
self-evaluating. Let's make them so.


RESPONSE:

In the R5.92RS draft, parentheses (or brackets) always mark a compound
form where the first subform identifies the operator.  Making () a
literal would destroy this property.  Generally, Scheme has often
favored uniformity over succinctness, which is also why vector datums
are not literals.  However, bytevector datums will be made
self-evaluating in the next draft of the report.