Re: [Chicken-users] readline egg v2.0 feedback
On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 09:10:31AM +0100, Shawn Rutledge wrote: On 26 January 2015 at 00:02, Matt Welland mattrwell...@gmail.com wrote: From http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/4/Using%20the%20interpreter the ,commands are called toplevel commands and you can define them with: (toplevel-command SYMBOL PROC [HELPSTRING]) Where does this tradition come from? Is it related somehow to the use of the comma as unquote inside a quasiquote? I suppose so: at the toplevel, you can enter any expression, so for example just entering X will evaluate it. For that reason you'll need a special character to indicate that you're talking to the interpreter itself instead of evaluating something at the toplevel. You can't unquote anything outside a quasiquote expression, so it's kind of natural to use that as a prefix: it's one of the few undefined characters to use without adding additional restrictions to the lexical syntax of symbols, for example. It always seems unintuitive to me to start anything with a comma. I've gotten used to it already, but then I'd used vi for such a long time that starting a command with a colon seems intuitive to me also :) Cheers, Peter signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ Chicken-users mailing list Chicken-users@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-users
Re: [Chicken-users] readline egg v2.0 feedback
Hi Alexej, My tuppence: On 2015-01-27 4:01, Alexej Magura wrote: I don't think I'll use the toplevel-command stuff after all: I can't promise that the toplevel symbols readline exports won't get overwritten, and I'm not entirely sure readline has any business providing private toplevel symbols that are only applicable to it. It might confuse less-experienced users*, for one, and for another there's the already mentioned possibility of symbol collision, unless somebody more knowledge on this subject can prove otherwise. It's your call of course, but I'd urge you not to let this stop you if you'd otherwise like to provide this feature. If all commands are prefixed by rl, for example, the ease of use would outweight any risk of conflicts, IMO. After all, extensions are expected to provide commands; that's part of what the feature's there for. chicken-doc uses it to great effect, for example. Perhaps you could address the concern that users will mistake readline-provided commands for builtins by adding a note that they come from the readline egg to the commands' help strings? Cheers, Evan ___ Chicken-users mailing list Chicken-users@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-users
Re: [Chicken-users] readline egg v2.0 feedback
On 26 January 2015 at 00:02, Matt Welland mattrwell...@gmail.com wrote: From http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/4/Using%20the%20interpreter the ,commands are called toplevel commands and you can define them with: (toplevel-command SYMBOL PROC [HELPSTRING]) Where does this tradition come from? Is it related somehow to the use of the comma as unquote inside a quasiquote? It always seems unintuitive to me to start anything with a comma. ___ Chicken-users mailing list Chicken-users@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-users
Re: [Chicken-users] readline egg v2.0 feedback
I don't think I'll use the toplevel-command stuff after all: I can't promise that the toplevel symbols readline exports won't get overwritten, and I'm not entirely sure readline has any business providing private toplevel symbols that are only applicable to it. It might confuse less-experienced users*, for one, and for another there's the already mentioned possibility of symbol collision, unless somebody more knowledge on this subject can prove otherwise. * In the sense that they may not realize that it's part of readline and so may expect it's behavior to remain consistent even when readline is not in use. On 01/27/2015 01:36 AM, Peter Bex wrote: On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 09:10:31AM +0100, Shawn Rutledge wrote: On 26 January 2015 at 00:02, Matt Welland mattrwell...@gmail.com wrote: From http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/4/Using%20the%20interpreter the ,commands are called toplevel commands and you can define them with: (toplevel-command SYMBOL PROC [HELPSTRING]) Where does this tradition come from? Is it related somehow to the use of the comma as unquote inside a quasiquote? I suppose so: at the toplevel, you can enter any expression, so for example just entering X will evaluate it. For that reason you'll need a special character to indicate that you're talking to the interpreter itself instead of evaluating something at the toplevel. You can't unquote anything outside a quasiquote expression, so it's kind of natural to use that as a prefix: it's one of the few undefined characters to use without adding additional restrictions to the lexical syntax of symbols, for example. It always seems unintuitive to me to start anything with a comma. I've gotten used to it already, but then I'd used vi for such a long time that starting a command with a colon seems intuitive to me also :) Cheers, Peter ___ Chicken-users mailing list Chicken-users@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-users ___ Chicken-users mailing list Chicken-users@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/chicken-users
