Scheme language standardization process
Following up only on the members list. On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 2:46 AM, John Cowan <cowan@x> wrote: > Alex Shinn scripsit: > > On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 3:54 PM, Christian Stigen Larsen > <csl@x> wrote: >> >> is there no procedure to create bytevectors beyond using the reader syntax >> #u8(n ...). Will there be a (bytevector n ...) constructor in the final >> R7RS? > >> This seems to be a oversight - we actually use `bytevector' >> in a number of the examples. I'll bring this up with the >> members. > > The oversight was using it in the examples. Version 4 of BlobAPI, which > is what we voted for in the first and second ballots, contained this > wording: > > Because there is no preferred way to interpret the data in a blob, > there is no `blob` function analogous to `list` or `vector` and no > second argument to `make-blob`. > > However, when we overrode the second part in the third ballot (ticket #215) > and added a second optional argument to `make-blob` (now `make-bytevector`), > we didn't reconsider the first part. I remember this now, and it seemed to make sense at the time, but I think it was still inconsistent regardless of the fill argument to make-blob. Granted, the data type of a blob is ambiguous, but for WG1 we are providing an otherwise complete u8 oriented API. Thus to match blob-u8-ref and the #u8(...) syntax we should have provided (blob-u8 ...). After the renaming to R6RS compatibility this becomes (bytevector ...). -- Alex