---------------------------------------- > Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:35:33 -0800 > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: [email protected] > Subject: Why not make "if" *not* be a special form in Scheme?. > > If I'm not mistaken, what makes a special form to be special is that > evaluation happens abnormally.... > > > (if (< x 0) "negative" "positive") > > The only way I can see that "if" is special is that for an optimization it > will > chose to not evaluate the last list element when the condition is TRUE. > Is that right? > > Wouldn't it be better/more minimalistic to just always evaluate the last list > element to cut down on the number of "special forms" by 1? > > I thought unnecessary special forms was bad and > unminimalistic which is not the Scheme-ic way!? > Think about that for a minute- do you really want every else to always be executed? Imagine that one branch of an if frees a resource (say closes a file). That'd be bad.
Gabe _________________________________________________________________ Helping your favorite cause is as easy as instant messaging. You IM, we give. http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/?source=text_hotmail_join -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
