Re: More on Full Specification

[Paul Hudak <hudak-paul@YALE.ARPA>]

    	Presumably the motivation for this was to allow implementation
    	freedom, so why only stop half-way? 
    
    It would sure be nice if we could get an implicit PCALL without causing any 
    damage, but going the rest of the way will invalidate currently valid code.  

I think you missed the point -- I wasn't arguing for parallel semantics.
The question was whether or not PERMUTE was overspecified, which I claim
only goes half-way even in the sequential case.

        I wonder how many current implementations permute the arguments in 
        different ways depending on context?  Seems useful to me ... and fully 
        within the motivation for underspecification in the first place.
    
    It is useful.  My current compiler project uses it.
    	
Are you aware then that you are not in conformance with the report?

    ... It seems unreasonable to insist that all Scheme programmers must 
    follow Multilisp style standards if their code is to be portable, and 
    doubly so when we aren't providing any synchronization constructs.

I'm inclined to agree, but we're already doing that to some extent, by
requiring that portable code not depend on order-of-sequential-evaluation 
of arguments.  So you see it's really a matter of degree.

    -Paul
-------