Re: Inconsistencies

[Martin Grabmueller]

> From: Gary Benson <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 15:15:42 +0000 (GMT)
> 
> Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days says:
> 
> | Scheme symbols are normally case-insensitive. Thus the symbols Calorie and 
> | calorie are identical:
> | 
> |    (eqv? 'Calorie 'calorie)
> |    => #t

According to R5RS, the case of symbols does not matter, so `TYSIFD' is
right.  Guile (and some other Scheme implementations) do read symbols
case sensitively, though, by default.  I think this is because most
people are used to case-sensitive variable names when they come from
other languages.

> Guile says:
> 
> | guile> (eqv? 'Calorie 'calorie)
> | #f
> | guile> (eqv? 'calorie 'calorie)
> | #t

You can change Guile's behaviour by switching case-insensitive reading
on like this:

guile> (eqv? 'Calorie 'calorie)
#f
guile> (read-enable 'case-insensitive)
(keywords #f case-insensitive positions)
guile> (eqv? 'Calorie 'calorie)       
#t

Note that in most programs this is not a problem, because most Scheme
programmers never use upper-case letters anyway.

Regards,
  'martin