Re: Scheme pre-R6RS Workshop at ICFP - What is the Point?

[Matthias Blume <blume@CS.Princeton.EDU>]

From: "Guillermo J. Rozas" <gjr@martigny.ai.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: Scheme pre-R6RS Workshop at ICFP - What is the Point?
Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 22:44:34 -0400

> |   Subject: Re: Scheme pre-R6RS Workshop at ICFP - What is the Point?
> |   Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 15:34:36 -0400
> |   From: Matthias Blume <blume@CS.Princeton.EDU>
> |   
> |   Actually, I'd like to just make a note and then postpone the
> |   discussion of binary I/O.  Here is why:
> |   
> |   Most reasonable languages (and here I include C, C++, etc. along with
> |   my more favored ML etc.), I/O has been deliberately left out from the
> |   core language design.  Instead, it is provided by a "standard
> |   library".
> |   
> |   Now, some may say that standard library design is also language
> |   design, and I would agree with this to some extent.  But there still
> |   is a distinction.
> |   
> |   Before we are able to talk about library design, we must first come up
> |   with a standard way of dealing with libraries in general.  And _that_
> |   will have to be reflected in the design of the language itself.  What
> |   I am talking about, of course, is a module system.
> 
> I find it funny that you suggest C as a reasonable language, and then
> you claim that you _must_ have a module system in order to make
> libraries viable.

Any language that provides libraries has, by definition, a module
system.  C does have a module system.  A very primitive one, but it is
there.  My previous message has in no way detailed what kind of module
system I want to have.  I just pointed out that one has to answer the
question of what a library is before one begins defining one.

Now, as you pointed out, several trivial module systems can already be
embedded in Scheme.  If any one of those manages to satisfy most of
us, then we can designate it to be "the" module system.  (For
libraries to be compatible, I consider it preferable to have only one
module system.)

Personally, I believe that all those trivial module systems, just like
the C module system, have serious shortcomings from a SE point of
view.  Therefore, personally I'd like to see something better.  But
that was not the point of what I wrote and what you quoted above.

-Matthias