comments on draft IEEE std

[William Clinger <will@fog.cs.uoregon.edu>]

I also favor using a boolean in place of a symbol as the third argument
in (string->number STRING RADIX EXACTNESS).  Not only are there only two
possible values, but I think this would be the only standard procedure
to perform a case dispatch on a symbol.

I am uncomfortable with the proposed WITH-INPUT-FROM-PORT and
WITH-OUTPUT-TO-PORT procedures.  One reason the R3RS did not specify a way
to change the default ports is that some people do not want them to be
changable.  Furthermore the implementation-dependent behavior of these
new procedures is a serious problem because they muck with a global
resource: the default ports.  The implementation-dependent behavior of
CALL-WITH-INPUT-FILE and CALL-WITH-OUTPUT-FILE is better isolated and
therefore less troublesome.

I'd like to see backquote in the IEEE standard, but I'm worried about
not having a good specification of its semantics.  Jonathan's code is great
but too specific.  Maybe the code could go in a non-binding appendix?

I think the => syntax of `cond' is a good example of the kind of thing that
can go in the Report but should stay out of the IEEE standard.

One person's random opinions.  Peace, Will