So far, I'm with Carl on this one. But perhaps you can explain what the bigger problem is? I will easily admit that I fall into this trap of seeing only the small problem.
Robby On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 3:25 PM, Carl Eastlund <c...@ccs.neu.edu> wrote: > It's not clear to me that this is a symptom, or that you have > identified the right fundamental problem. Function application is > another syntax -- I don't just mean we implement it as one, it is one. > We allow it to vary with language just like any other macro. The > issue here is that part of #%app's interface is that its first > argument must be a valid expression, and we want it to report problems > with that before problems with the rest of its arguments. I think > this really is a shallow problem. > > Carl Eastlund > > On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Matthias Felleisen > <matth...@ccs.neu.edu> wrote: >> >> That's a fix for the symptom, and it occurred to me too. >> Let's try to look at the large picture, too, instead of >> just looking for bandaids for symptoms. >> >> >> On Nov 17, 2010, at 4:17 PM, Carl Eastlund wrote: >> >>> Personally I would like to see the error here be that >>> define-struct/contract is not bound. If the order of either top level >>> expansion or #%app worked slightly differently, we could get that >>> error first and all would be clear. >>> >>> Carl Eastlund >>> >>> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Matthias Felleisen >>> <matth...@ccs.neu.edu> wrote: >>>> >>>> Isn't the true problem that we pretend uniformity of syntax and values? In >>>> this case, we specifically pretend that functions and syntaxes may consume >>>> the same kind of keyword-labeled arguments. Except that when you make a >>>> small mistake, the brittleness of this arrangement shows up and you get >>>> WEIRD ERROR MESSAGES. >>>> >>>> When systems work, nobody cares how they work. It's errors that make >>>> people notice, and errors happen all the time. >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Nov 17, 2010, at 3:55 PM, Jon Rafkind wrote: >>>> >>>>> I found this error message confusing. The problem is I forgot to require >>>>> racket/contract. >>>>> >>>>> #lang racket/base >>>>> >>>>> (define-struct/contract foo ([a any/c]) #:transparent) >>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> application: missing argument expression after keyword at: #:transparent >>>>> in: (#%app define-struct/contract foo ((a any/c)) #:transparent) >>>>> >>>>> I was confused because I thought I had a (require racket/contract) >>>>> somewhere but apparently I didn't. I don't know if anything at all can >>>>> be done about it.. > _________________________________________________ > For list-related administrative tasks: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users > _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
