Re: Bug in eval-string?

[rm]

On Sat, Aug 10, 2002 at 04:43:36PM +0200, Marius Vollmer wrote:
> address@hidden writes:
> 
> > I think i (wrongly) assumend that eval-string is "syntactic sugar" 
> > for eval.
> 
> There is a big difference between a macro and a function.  Why did you
> think that eval-string is a macro?  (The documentation of eval-string
> says that it is a procedure.)

Because sometimes, late at night, i tend to overlook the obvoius --
this is a sign of age, you'll experience it too ;-)

> > maybe the documentation should be modified:
> > 
> >         "Evaluation takes place in the environment returned by the\n"
> >         "procedure @code{interaction-environment}.")
> > 
> > to 
> >         "Evaluation takes place in the same environment as \n"
> >             "returned by the procedure @code{interaction-environment}.")
> 
> I don't see the difference between the two.  The question is, for
> both, what is "the procedure interaction-environment".  The name
> refers to the procedure bound to the global variable that is named
> "interaction-environment" in the guile-core module. 

Hmm, my english is probably not as clear as i want it to be: from the
first version i get the impression that by modifying the procedure
'interaction-environment' i have control over the environment in which
'Eval-string' takes place. The second version tries to be a bit clearer
over the fact that 'interaction-environment' just returns the environment
(of course, since eval-string isn't a macro this is pretty much of no
importance).

> Most of this is
> implicit and applies to all of the documentation.  Do we need to make
> this more explicit?

I think  'eval-string' takening an optional parameter is cleaner.

> > Wouldn't the 'eval*' interface be clearer and more orthogonal if
> > eval-string would have a second, optional parameter specifying the
> > environment/module in which evaluation should take place.
> 
> Yes, this sounds good to me.  I will make that change.
> 

Thanks

   Ralf