[Scheme-reports] For WG1: Byte-vector literal syntax

[Tony Garnock-Jones <tonygarnockjones@x>]

Hi all,

I've been following the recent WG1 discussion of byte-vector literal syntax with interest, but I'm not a working-group member, so I'll have to post here instead and hope the right people see the posting :-)

I
 wanted to point out the choices Erlang has made for its literal 
representation of byte-vectors.

• byte-vectors are enclosed between double angle-brackets, <<>>. In Scheme, this would naturally appear as #bs() or similar.
• the contents are given as either literal numeric values, comma-separated, or as double-quoted strings of ASCII; for example, <<1, 2, 3>> is a length-three byte-vector, as is <<"ABC">>. <<"ABC", 1, 2, 3, "DEF">> is a length-nine byte-vector.
• Erlang also supports a more sophisticated syntax for pattern-matching and unquoting other encoded values of various types and encodings, which I don't think would directly fit Scheme well at this point (and almost certainly not for WG1 at all).

So Scheme could have something like:

#bs(1 2 3)
#bs("ABC" 1 2 3 "DEF")
#bs(65 66 67 1 2 3 68 69 70)
#bs(#x41 #x42 #x43)

... with the restriction that only 
ASCII characters be used in the shorthand double-quoted subsyntax.

Regards,
 
 Tony
-- 
Tony Garnock-Jones
tonygarnockjones@x
http://homepages.kcbbs.gen.nz/tonyg/
_______________________________________________
Scheme-reports mailing list
Scheme-reports@x
http://lists.scheme-reports.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/scheme-reports