Re: [Chicken-users] R6RS Rant

[Dan Muresan]

> Umm, I might see my 60th birthday before packaging is core Scheme. (I 
> don't think there should be anything else, except "optional.")

You forgot to mention your current age :)

> Well, 'require-extension' is an accepted SRFI. And Chicken does support 
> 'require' (I use it in the bloom-filter egg, however it isn't PLT-Scheme 
> compliant) & 'load' (I use it in the 'procedure-surface' egg).

require-extension is very useful, even just as a cross-platform way of 
loading SRFIs. But you should read the SRFI-55 mail archive to see the 
incredible opposition it draws from some folks. Or try asking for 
require-extension on the PLT or Scheme 48 mailing lists.

Anyway... Two glaring omissions related to (load):

1) (include ...) is not standardized

2) no one has thought of specifying what nested (load) or nested 
(include) should do. That is, what happens when you have

x.scm
dir/y.scm
dir/z.scm

where x.scm does (load "dir/y.scm"), and y.scm does (load "z.scm"). Does 
dir/y.scm load the correct dir/z.scm, or the non-existent z.scm? Same 
for (include), of course.

R5RS does not standardize this, neither do most implementations specify 
what they do. In practice, most schemes use the absolute path 
convention, while SISC uses the relative path convention.


Cheers,
Dan