[racket-dev] proposal: `data' collection

On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 2:07 PM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> On Jun 24, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
>> On Jun 23, 2010, at 5:37 PM, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt wrote:
>>
>> > To clarify, I'm proposing that this be a part of the "core"
>>
>> I agree with this goal and the name.
>
> [BTW, when I talked about part of the core earlier, the meaning was
> the actual `racket' collection -- the area where it's difficult to get
> into because you're running into all kinds of circularity problems.
> IIUC, Sam's meaning is more of a "core distribution", which is much
> easier to deal with.]

Since I'm proposing that `racket/set' move to `data/set', that implies
that `racket' will depend on `data', and thus that `data' will have to
be in "core" in every sense.  Although I'm not sure why "the
dependencies of the `racket' collection" is the right definition of
"core".  For example, I think the `net' collection should be in any
definition of "core".  Further, there aren't any circularity issues
with `racket' depending on other collections - it already depends on
the `syntax' collection, for example.

>> We could call it 'collections' hierarchy as in Java, but I don't
>> think that this is a good name. Ideally, I'd like to call it
>> data-structure but that isn't a good path element.
>
> +1 on both.  `data' does seem to me better than both of these, but I
> still dislike it since it's a vague name like "etc".

I don't think it's possible to come up with a non-generic name that
encompasses sets, lists, vectors, queues, tables, etc.  In the absence
of a better suggestion, I'm sticking with `data'.
-- 
sam th
samth at ccs.neu.edu