Characters [No, *not* the authors ;-]

[Ken Dickey <intelhf!data!kend@uunet.uu.net>]

[Apologies if this is a repeat, our mailer apparently ate the original
posting]


I had occasion to deal with control characters recently and found that
I am unhappy with the wording in section 6.6 [Characters].

"Characters are objects that represent printed characters such as
letters and digits."

A strict reading of this permits the following code to be in error:

  (let ( (carriage-return-character (integer->char #x0D)) )
	(char=? carriage-return-character
	        (read-char (current-input-port)) 
  )     )

I would be happier if the wording were changed to allow the above to
have the obvious interpretation.  How about:

"Characters are objects that represent printed characters such as
letters and digits and non-printing characters such as the ASCII
control codes."

 -Ken			kend@data.uucp  <<note address change