Re: [PATCH] Avoid `SCM_VALIDATE_LIST ()'

[Mikael Djurfeldt]

2008/9/1 Ludovic Courtès <address@hidden>:
>> Are you sure about traversing circular lists?  From my reading of your
>> patch, I would expect:
>>
>> (memq 'not-in-the-list some-circular-list)
>> =>
>> (don't know, still waiting...)
>
> Yes, that's what I meant by "happily traverse circular lists".  :-)

>From my experience, there was a huge improvement in scheme program
development time when we moved to real type-checking of lists from the
kind of type-checking you seem to want to re-introduce. It's much
easier to debug code if you can assume that hangs are not due to
circular data structures.

Having been part of Guile development for some time, it's sad to see
how much work is put into changing code back and forth due to
vacillating development goals.  It's apparent how important it is to
have a written development policy with design decisions and
motivations.  Probably a lot of that should also be put directly into
the code in the form of comments.