Re: Format descriptors in NUMBER->STRING ?

[R. Kent Dybvig <dyb@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>]

> Date: Fri, 29 Dec 89 16:29:53 est
> From: cph@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Chris Hanson)
>    Date: Fri, 29 Dec 89 03:28:42 EST
>    From: "Michael R. Blair" <ziggy@hx.lcs.mit.edu>
> 
>    In the Revised 3.99 Report, why were format descriptors replaced by mere
>    <radix>? That is,
> 
>     (NUMBER->STRING number radix)  vs  (NUMBER->STRING number format)
> 
>    Was this ever voted on, for instance at an authors meeting which I missed,
>    or was this the result of editorial oversight?
> 
> This change was requested by the IEEE editors.  The reason for the
> request was that (1) it was felt that this was a baroque method for
> accomplishing this, somewhat like `format' of Common Lisp, and (2) to
> our knowledge, no one had implemented any of the formats except for
> `heur'.

This topic also came up in the Snowbird authors' meeting.  There was
general agreement in that meeting that the format language was too
baroque, and no one seemed to have implemented it fully at the time.  A
committee consisting of Alan Bawden, Gerry Sussman, and myself was
directed to deal with the problem, and we recommended that the format
argument be dropped.

Kent