[racket-dev] first and rest in racket/base

Vincent's proposal wasn't "let's treat car as first", his proposal was
"let's export it in racket/base".  If we don't like first/rest, we should
have a proposal to remove them from #lang racket... right?  Otherwise,
let's put them in racket/base.  They're very simple names for very, very
common operations.  I use them all the time, and it makes me write
different code in racket/base than in racket when I can't get them.  I
would like to either always have them, or be convinced of why I should
never have them.

Carl Eastlund



On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Jay McCarthy <jay.mccarthy at gmail.com>wrote:

> I agree with Eli. first is not car and shouldn't be treated as it.
>
> car : (Cons a b) -> a
> first : (List a) -> a
>
> I also agree with Carl that we should deprecate grandpa's names and
> give nice names. I suggest "fst" and "snd" and "pair"
>
> Jay
>
> On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Carl Eastlund <cce at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> > If they do the wrong thing, we should fix them, not deprecate them.
>  We're
> > not LISP, let's not promote car/cdr as the primary names for list
> > operations.
> >
> > Carl Eastlund
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 2:19 PM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> -1, since they are different from what some people would expect them
> >> to do.  -2 for the `empty', `cons?' etc aliases.
> >>
> >>
> >> An hour and a half ago, Vincent St-Amour wrote:
> >> > I just got tripped up, again, trying to traverse a list with `first'
> >> > and `rest' in a `racket/base' file. `first' and `rest' are only
> >> > available in `racket' and `racket/list', but not in `racket/base'.
> >> >
> >> > If we want to encourage use of `first' and `rest' over `car' and
> >> > `cdr' and of `racket/base' when possible (which, e.g., the style
> >> > guide does), I think it makes sense to provide `first' and `rest' in
> >> > `racket/base'.
> >> >
> >> > The attached patch implements that change.
> >> >
> >> > Does this sound reasonable?
> >>
> >> --
> >>           ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
> >>                     http://barzilay.org/                   Maze is
> Life!
> >> _________________________
> >>   Racket Developers list:
> >>   http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev
> >>
> >
> >
> > _________________________
> >   Racket Developers list:
> >   http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jay McCarthy <jay at cs.byu.edu>
> Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University
> http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay
>
> "The glory of God is Intelligence" - D&C 93
>
>
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