[r6rs-discuss] [Formal] Conflating programs and scripts

From: AndrevanTonder <andre>
Date: Mon Oct 9 17:49:07 2006

On Sun, 8 Oct 2006, Anton van Straaten wrote:

> An alternative perspective on this is that since the Unix design is unusual
> in that it intrudes on the source code of scripts, it is the only one which
> needs to be addressed explicitly.

- It is not really addressed, since the report allows one to write
   scripts that will not run on Unix without modification.

- The first line is not really part of the source code. It is a
   Unix-specific delimiter of the source code that follows. It is as much of the
   operating system infrastructure as the Windows file extension is.

- The fat that this infrastructure is described in Unix documentation proves
   taht it is orthogonal to Scheme. I don't really understand why it must be
   repeated in the Scheme language report. Language reports ignore all kinds of
   operating system specific delimiters of source code - why not this one?

- People who write Unix scripts will know how to add this infrastructure,
   just like people who write Windows scripts will know how to modify the
   file extension. I don't see a good reason to specify the former and
   not the latter.

- What about non-scripts, which are perhaps the majority of Scheme programs?

Cheers
Andre
Received on Mon Oct 09 2006 - 17:46:06 UTC