Uniform vectors, user survey

[Marius Vollmer]

Hi,

I want to unify our two implementations of uniform vectors, and make
them more useful.

We do have (srfi srfi-4), which implements uniform vectors according
to SRFI-4, and we have the 'old' uniform vectors that are created with
'make-uniform-vector'.

I guess uniform vectors would be mainly useful for interfacing to
external code that deals with large arrays.  Like the GNU Scientific
Library, say, or maybe things like data compression, image
manipulation, binary file formats in general, etc.

Instead of using uniform vectors, one can always define a new smob
type that can wrap the large external array.  But maybe uniform
vectors would be preferable in some cases, if only you could convince
Guile to handle the external memory right (like you can with smobs).

I have close to zero experience with using uniform vectors myself, so
I appreciate your input.  Do you use uniform vectors?  What for?  Did
you try but couldn't make them work for you?  What do you wish would
be different about them?  Etc.

Thanks!