Re: nested define syntax

[Dirk Herrmann]

On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Matthias Koeppe wrote:

> > That is, the syntactic extension does not provide too much of a
> > convenience, but leads to an incompatibility.  
> 
> Incompatibility with what.  Do you mean non-portability of code using
> this Guile extension?

Yes.  The availability of non-portable features leads to non-portable
code, like for example all the GNU extensions provided by gcc.  I think
it's a bad idea, but I can certainly accept other points of view.

> > then it should a) be documented in the manual and b) this should also be
> > documented in the implementation.
> 
> I would suggest to keep this feature and to document it.  It was
> present in Guile for a long time, and it was only forgotten in the
> documentation.

OK, I will take the part to document it in the implementation, since I am
currently looking through eval.c anyway.  It would be nice if someone
would take the time to document the feature in the manual.  Terms like
'currying' should also be documented somewhere, preferably not just as a
side note with some other function.  Currying for example is explained in
the context of define*.  The manual is probably more helpful if it does
not imply too much knowledge on scheme (or, more general, functional)
programming terminology, but instead provides cross references to the
corresponding explanation.

Best regards
Dirk Herrmann