[plt-scheme] Re: What's the latest on the Scsh port?

From: Matthew Flatt (mflatt at cs.utah.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 15 10:58:03 EDT 2003

Michael Sperber [Mr. Preprocessor] wrote:
> Conclusion as of today: scsh's shell syntax is already heavily
> optimized towards minimizing the number of key strokes (while
> preserving most of the Scheme syntax and semantics), but the notation
> still isn't brief enough for interactive use.

To me, this suggests that a langauge isn't a solution to an environment
problem.

I'm a "command line" user, even under OS X and Windows, but I'm useless
with just sh or csh. I need at least the extra environment support
provided by tcsh. (Instead of driving the shell through pure csh
syntax, I use arrow keys, etc.)

DrScheme, of course, is a bigger example of an environment solution.
Most people who use PLT Scheme do so because DrScheme is a better
environment for their tasks, not because PLT's variation of Scheme is
better than the alternatives.

So, to have a "Scheme shell" that gracefully shifts between interaction
and scripting, maybe it helps to think of the interactive shell in a
mode other than a stream of language tokens.

Matthew



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