At Fri, 8 Oct 2010 23:11:21 -0400, Eli Barzilay wrote: > Two hours ago, Matthew Flatt wrote: > > [Re-sending; an earlier post of this message seems to be delayed.] > > > > What if the default printing format for true and false values in > > Racket changed from `#t' and `#f' to `#true' and `#false'? > > > > The forms `#t', `#T', `#true', `#f', `#F', and `#false' would all be > > accepted as inputs forms. We could conceivably limit the change to > > `print' output and not change `write' or `display' output, but let's > > say for now that the proposal is to change the default for all > > output modes in Racket. [...] > > I'd prefer it if at least `write' keeps it as "#t". IMO `write' as a > quick way to serialize some data to a file in a way that is also > readable is a very big win, and having a single character (in addition > to the obligatory "#" syntax marker) used for booleans makes it fine > in most cases, even up to pretty big files. I can see how making it > much longer will encourage using some bad home-cooked serializations > to avoid the extra size -- and that would be bad.
I agree that serialization is a common use of `write', but if size is an issue, it seems like setting the `print-boolean-long-form' parameter would be easier than cooking a new serialization format. (Actually, `s-exp->fasl' and `fasl->s-exp' are better choices when size matters.) An even more common use of `write', I think, is to print code. If we switch to `#true' and `#false' as the default forms of the constants, I think we want all those uses of "~.s" that you recently fixed up to print with `#true' and `#false'. _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
