On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 10:56:53PM +0200, Thomas Chust wrote: > yes, I agree that this asymmetry looks clumsy, but I don't think a > low-level introspection tool like the environments egg can do much > better unless the internal representation of things is changed in > CHICKEN's runtime system and naming information from macro expansion > time is somehow preserved until runtime. Whether that would be a good > idea or not is a rather different question in my eyes.
Environments is not presented as a low-level introspection tool. > Nobody ever claimed that the term "binding" as used by the > environments egg was the same as the term "binding" as used by R5RS; > it certainly doesn't have to be, since the way you can access an > environment other than by eval is unspecified by the standard ;-) Wow, that's a nice feat of language lawyering ;) If it uses different terminology from R5RS, the environments egg's documentation should include big fat warnings stating this fact. > What I wanted to point out with my dlopen example is precisely that > such information can be lost in the compilation step and one cannot > expect that it should later be recovered magically. The environments > as used by CHICKEN's runtime system know nothing about the names used > for variables in the source code, only about the mangled names > actually generated by the compiler. But just because a program looks > different seen through a reflection API compared to the source code > doesn't mean the reflection tool is buggy to me. Yes, I appreciate this point now. However, it's still unclear whether this is its intention (is it intended as a "low-level tool" or as a more high-level one). If it is, it should certainly be documented because the "intuitive" notion would be that it's a high-level tool, reflecting the standard terminology and interface you see in regular code. I'd also be disappointed because I always expected it to be the high-level tool, and I have no use for the low-level tool you described. Cheers, Peter -- http://sjamaan.ath.cx -- "The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music." -- Donald Knuth
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