[r6rs-discuss] Why can ... and _ not be literals?

AndrevanTonder andre at het.brown.edu
Sun Jun 24 19:38:04 EDT 2007


I noticed the following in the descriptionm of SYNTAX-RULES in section 9.20:

"It is a syntax violation if an ellipsis or underscore appears in (<literal> 
...)."

I do not understand the justification for this.  It is incompatible with r5rs 
(I think, and so did at least some implementors of r5rs systems), so legacy 
macros will stop working.  If this is what the intention of r5rs was, I would 
consider such an intention buggy.  Also, it is incompatible with syntax-case, 
so if adopted it will cause much confusion when people convert back and forth 
between syntax-rules and syntax-case (as they often do).

Please drop this restriction.

Andre



More information about the r6rs-discuss mailing list