I'm confused I thought pico didn't do anything else than integers? In effect if I write (1.2) I would expect to have a dotted pair (1 . 2), not something else (If I hadn't seen Tomas' example).
/Henrik On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 7:42 AM, Alexander Burger <[email protected]> wro= te: > On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 05:10:59PM +0200, Alexander Burger wrote: >> Hope this is OK now, and doesn't break anything. > > I have to say that I still don't like the situation. > > To me it does not feel "right" that the dot has such a dual nature. It > is now both a meta-character (in dotted pairs) and a normal character > (in atoms). > > While now, for example, the following works as Tomas desires > > =A0 : '(a .b) > =A0 -> (a .b) > > i.e. '.b' is a symbol (while we got (a . b) before), it is still not > possible to have the symbol '.' in a list. > > Is (a . b) a list of three symbols or a dotted pair? The list (a '. b) > is possible, on the other hand. > > The same applies to other meta-characters as well. As before, we have > > =A0 : '(abc"def"ghi) > =A0 -> (abc "def" ghi) > > which I think is consistent with > > =A0 : '(abc(def)ghi) > =A0 -> (abc (def) ghi) > > Or should we, here too, insist on white space surrounding > meta-characters? The we would end up having to write a list as > > =A0 ( a ( b ) c ) > > instead of > > =A0 (a (b) c) > > > I think the historical solution, where '.' was a plain meta-character, > was the most consistent one. The dot was simply not allowed within > internal symbols. Tt was only the representation of fixed point numbers > that broke it. > > What do other people think? > > Cheers, > - Alex > -- > UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:[email protected]?subject=3dunsubscribe > -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
