[racket] Contracts and submodules

On Nov 29, 2012, at 10:29 PM, Greg Hendershott wrote:

> AFIK these subtleties of contracts and modules arise with
> `provide/contract' -- by saying that the function should only use a
> contract outside the module (or submodule).
> 
> But I prefer to use `define/contract'. For one thing, I think it's
> easier and more-maintainable to group the contract near/with its
> function in the source. But I also prefer it on the starting
> assumption that if a procedure is worth contracting at all, it's worth
> contracting all the time -- inside the module as well as outside.


This is a complete misunderstanding. Contracts are specifications
that govern the flow of values across boundaries. We call this boundary
a 'module' but for several years now, module and #lang have been two 
distinct terms. In this spirit, 

 -- #lang with provide contract-out is a module 
 -- define/contract is a module 
 -- internal modules are modules but watch out for module+ 

In contrast, 
 -- units and classes are values and we have contracts for them
	but they do NOT establish contract boundaries, they are 
	NOT modules. 

In your specific case, define/contract splits an existing 'module'
into two pieces. 

;; --- 

As I have said many times, your use of contract is likely to be 
much better satisfied with the use of Typed Racket. I doubt that
many of your contracts are checking more than constructors, which 
roughly corresponds to type checking. For the remaining ones, Sam 
will provide 

  provide/typed with contract-out 
  require/typed with contract-in 

	ANY TIME SOON NOW. 

;; --- 


As for performance of contracts: 

On Nov 29, 2012, at 11:47 PM, Harry Spier wrote:

> And then to enable/disable contracts you can use the method Mathias
> pointed out here.
> http://www.mail-archive.com/users@racket-lang.org/msg12281.html


Thanks for reminding the list of this post. I should write this 
out as a blog post or an entry into our Contract Guide. 



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