Re: SRFI-22 -- scripts.

[Neil Jerram]

>>>>> "Neil" == Neil Jerram <address@hidden> writes:

    Neil> (And, anyway, I should probably go and read it before making
    Neil> any further statements...)

Well I know it's no good saying this now, and I ought to be subscribed
to the mailing list, and so on, but having read SRFI-22 I'm quite
unimpressed.

All the restrictive and inelegant design decisions that this SRFI
makes stem from a single unnecessary desire -- namely to support the
POSIX #! line.  Unnecessary, because supporting #! is not required in
order to achieve the SRFI's stated aim:

  "A user, given a Scheme program, has no standard way of running it,
  even if it is a single file written in R5RS-conformant Scheme, and
  if the underlying platform is known to be Unix."

This could be achieved more economically simply by specifying a
well-known executable or script name and that programs are invoked by,
for example

  scheme-r5rs [<options>] <script> <arguments> ...

On the other hand, from the desire to use #!, flow the following:

- The proposed programs must be executables, not scripts.

- The proposed programs must have convoluted names, rather than
  sensibly indicating the required standards compliance and SRFI
  support via options.

- The proposed mechanism must use the /usr/bin/env trampoline.

- The impliedly "portable" Scheme script files are not in fact
  portable or compliant to any Scheme standard, because they begin
  with an OS-dependent line.

- The mechanism does not benefit non-Unix-like OS's.

Hmmm.

        Neil