Character and output-width proposals

["Aubrey Jaffer" <jaffer@martigny.ai.mit.edu>]

   From: Richard Mlynarik <mly@adoc.xerox.com>
   Date: 	Wed, 3 Jun 1992 15:56:45 PDT

   I see no reason why CHAR->INTEGER and INTEGER->CHAR should exist at
   all.  They are and can be of no portable use.

I am writing portable hash and hash-table functions for SLIB.  I need
to be able to turn strings, characters, and symbols into numbers.
These numbers do not need to be the same between different
implementations or even different sessions.  How do you propose I do
this without char->integer?

   They make about as much sense as having a standard INEXACT->INTEGER
   procedure which returns an integer with the same bit-pattern as that
   of the inexact number's internal representation.

This is not as useless as it seems.  I don't think that number->string
can be written in R4RS Scheme currently.