Re: Baby-Doe and friends

[ramsdell@linus.mitre.org]

It sounds to me that we all agree WITH-VALUES is no longer a viable
name for BABY-DOE.

>> From: Pavel.pa@xerox.com
...
>> John says, ``The important fact about BABY-DOE is not that it calls a
>> procedure with some values.  Please verify my point by studying the formal
>> semantics.''
>> 
>> I disagree completely; to my mind, that is the entire significance of
>> BABY-DOE.  I don't see that there is anything ``unusual'' about the
>> continuation created by BABY-DOE.  .....

At the begining of the search for a compromise on multiple values, we
all forgot that continuations should integrate with multiple values in
the natural way given by viewing BABY-DOE as a way of calling a thunk
with no arguments and a doctored continuation.  This doctored
continuation is the result of prefixing the current continuation with
BABY-DOE's second argument.  It is easy for the average user to assume
that Scheme's BABY-DOE is much like Common Lisp's MULTIPLE-VALUE-CALL,
but it is not.  Let's find a name that will encourage users to make
the distinction.

I think the name CALL-WITH-CONTINUATION is too easily confused with
CALL-WITH-CURRENT-CONTINUATION.  I like the name COMPOSE-CONTINUATION.

>> From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com>
...
>>  - I have a problem with the morpheme "values" in the multiple values
>>    terminology.  It's the reason I suggested YIELD earlier.

I prefer YIELD to VALUES as well.  When I tried to create a
description of VALUES, I found it strange writing about VALUES and its
value.  Should we make this change, I hope there will not be a request
for CALL-WITH-YIELD as a name for BABY-DOE.

John