Re: nested define syntax

[Dirk Herrmann]

On 7 Nov 2001, Evan Prodromou wrote:

> >>>>> "MK" == Matthias Koeppe <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>     MK> Again, only *removing* the feature would be a source for
>     MK> incompatibilities
> 
> Does anybody even _use_ that whacked feature? I can't imagine what it
> would be useful for! I mean, cripes.

It surprised me that someone knew about it at all - I found it when
looking through the implementation of 'define'.

> OK, well, I guess you could use it for generating closures...
> 
>         (define ((make-adder n) a)
>                 (+ n a))
> 
> But it's so frickin' obscure!

Yes, that's what I think, too.  But, if people like it, I don't mind too
much - although I don't think that it improves the readability of the
code.  What I don't like is having such extensions being the default.  
For those who want to write portable code this is not very helpful.  It
means you have to provide something like gcc's -ansi and -pedantic options
to support people to find non-portable stuff in their code.

Best regards
Dirk Herrmann