Re: Questions about floating numbers, rethink and bug report

[Dirk Herrmann]

On Sun, 7 Oct 2001, Keith Wright wrote:

> Before getting into philosophy, I want to mention that while poking
> around and rethinking I found the following Bug.
> 
>     guile> (version)
>     "1.5.2"
>     guile> #E3
>     3
>     guile> #e3
>     ERROR: read:uniform-vector list not found
>     ABORT: (misc-error)
>     guile> 3
> 
> This violates both R5RS 7.1 ``Case is insignificant'' and 
> 
> > From: guile-1.5.2/doc/ref/guile.info-3 Line 568
> >
> >     The codes for indicating exactness (which can, incidentally, be
> >  applied to all numerical values) are:
> >
> >   * `#e', `#E' -- the number is exact

Some uniform vector is taking the #e prefix.  More details can be found in
ice-9/arrays.scm and unif.c and ramap.c.  I think this is a bug and should
be fixed.  It would do good to revamp the whole uniform vector stuff.  
Doesn't anybody have an opinion on my suggestion to virtualize the vector
interface (whine :-)?

Regarding the rest of your mail, I have no clear idea yet what to think
about the issue.

Best regards
Dirk Herrmann