[r6rs-discuss] [Formal] Requirement to detect circular lists

[Abdulaziz Ghuloum]

On Oct 2, 2006, at 6:01 AM, Dan Muresan wrote:
>> so what?  Making Scheme easy to implement is not a goal
>> of R6RS as far as I can tell.
>
> Scary quote. When I first saw the spec size, I had the feeling that 
> making
> Scheme *harder* to implement was a goal of R6RS (though some of my
> concerns have been subsequently alleviated).

To clarify my statement:  I did not imply that R6RS aims at making
Scheme harder to implement.  For me, I see R6RS as a vehicle for
serving the *users* of Scheme first and foremost.  If serving the
users leads to (as a consequence) raising the bar for implementors
and forcing them to implement features that they would rather not
bother with (full numeric tower, useful I/O, unicode, hash tables,
records, libraries, exceptions, ...), then so be it.  As a master
Scheme implementor once said: There is no pity for the implementor.

Aziz,,,