[plt-scheme] Generating top-level definitions from inner syntax

On Wednesday, October 8, 2003, at 05:24  PM, Lauri Alanko wrote:

> I think I just expect self-evaluating values to be "trivial" to handle,
> and regexps don't quite fit the definition. Compiling a regexp is much
> more complicated than just creating a similar syntax object, and this 
> is
> where it differs from numbers and strings. It's just work done at the
> wrong phase. Of course the matter would be different if an actual
> compiled state machine were directly externalized, instead of just the
> posix string.
>
> But this is really just a matter of taste, nothing very fundamental.

I actually consider to be a good feature of MzScheme. The more such 
self contained values we have, the better. Scheme already has cons, 
numbers (which are a lot more complex than you might think, in 
Scheme...), vectors, and now Mz is adding hash tables and regular 
expressions and hopefully a few more in the future as we find good 
candidates.

Also, realize that this is not work done in the syntax transformer, but 
it is work done in the reader (aka, the parser that constructs the 
initial sexp tree) at least for #rx style syntax.

Robby