On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 11:08 AM, Derick Eddington <[email protected]> wrote:
>Why aren't you > complaining about how in PLT an explicit phasing (for --- expand) does > not instantiate the library at run-time? But you want an equivalent > import form in implicit phasing to do so... In PLT different phases have different instances, so a library can be instantiated at expand time but no at run-time. In implicit phasing there is a single instance for all phases, so I expect an imported library to be instantiated both a compile time and at runtime, even if it may be a waste (I am not arguing it is not a waste). >> >> Suppose I am importing a library >> >> purely for its side effects >> > >> > That is a major misuse of importing. Importing is purely a lexical >> > scope thing. It's far more confusing to have to figure-out that a >> > lexical import is being done to implicitly cause side-effects at >> > execution time. If you want to execute something in an imported >> > library, say so (in code), like you would for a zillion other cases. >> >> You say so, but at least the PLT people think in a different way. > > I'm pretty sure they'd agree that importing *only for causing > side-effects* (which is what we were talking about) is a major misuse. Let me declare officially that I am not fond of side effects and I dislike designs based on side effects; nevertheless, I use side effects for logging and debugging, so I do have modules depending on side effects when developing/debugging an application. > As increasingly seems to be your usual, you're twisting the conversation > into a maze in order to appear to defend what you previously said, when > in fact you don't address it. Or maybe you're just not paying > attention... Don't take it personally, Derick. We can just agree to disagree on the point of what is the "right" import semantics. >> I say the meaning of "import" is open to interpretation in the >> Scheme world and I do not know of any other implementation >> using the meaning in the strict sense of Ikarus. > > After searching all four R6RS documents for every occurrence of > "import", I now know they only talk about importing in the context of > lexical scope. Hmm... Let's close the discussion on this point, since I do not think it would be a productive one.
