Re: [Chicken-users] Re: A few questions

[Elf]

i was bringing up the case-lambda and parameters as being special cases of
forms with the number of required args not necessarily the same as the 
maximum number of args, ie its  'rest?' but its not a true rest, in that only
certain values are valid arities.

im fundamentally opposed to returning with call-with-values any more than
absolutely required.  as this is inherently related data that would most
often be checked together, returning it as a call-with-values doesnt make
sense to me.  i wasnt necessarily thinking of it as a true pair, just trying
to mull over representations.  for my second thought, regarding simply
a valid-arity?, the representation would probably just be one extra byte 
per function (top bit - rest? bottom 127 = min arity).

-elf

On Thu, 31 Jan 2008, John Cowan wrote:

> Elf scripsit:
>
> > simplest arity is a pair, int . bool, required args and rest?.
>
> Better yet, return two values.
>
> > optionals present a problem: do we want to keep defaults, names, or just
> > ordering?
>
> I don't much care; the above would be plenty for me, as it allows you
> to correctly invoke the function via apply.  The documentation issue
> isn't so important.
>
> > additionally, whats the arity of case-lambda?  or of parameters?
>
> In both cases, it's 0 with rest params.  Case-lambda is a macro, not
> something fundamental.