[plt-scheme] Higher-order contracts for variable-arity functions

--- Carl Eastlund <carl.eastlund at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/25/06, Robby Findler <robby at cs.uchicago.edu> wrote:
> > listof cannot accept higher-order contracts, due to the presence
> of
> > mutation. The tricky case is that someone hands you the list and,
> at
> > that point, the contract is check and the functions inside the
> list are
> > wrapped. Now, imagine that someone mutates the list -- what
> happens?
> > How do the contracts get onto the new functions in the list? (We
> could
> > change mutation operator, but we haven't taken that step ... yet)
> >
> > Note that if you could use immutable lists, that would work fine.
> >
> > Maybe time to petition any nearby R6RS committee members? ;)
> 
> My point is that I don't care about the list.  I care about the
> function arguments.  I want to apply a function contract to each
> argument to my function.  If they get taken out of the list, or
> other
> values get put into the list, I don't care, because the list itself
> was only a convenient delivery mechanism for my many arguments.

You can apply a contract to the rest args of a function using the ->*
contract constructor.

For the rest args, since you presumably don't plan to mutate the
list, how about using list-immutableof to construct the contract for
it? Does list-immutableof applied to a mutable list return an
immutable copy?

Ryan