[plt-scheme] dots

On 6/11/07, Richard Cobbe <cobbe at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2007 at 07:35:16PM +0200, Hans Oesterholt-Dijkema wrote:
> >  I don't understand the reason to  deviate from the standard
> >  prefix notation in scheme.
> >
> >  Why not use
> >
> >  (. a b)
> >
> >  ??
>
> You'd have to implement a custom reader, as the default reader treats the
> token "." specially.  (And I'm only mostly certain that a custom reader
> would do the trick, though the Algol & Honu languages would seem to
> indicate that custom readers are indeed powerful enough.)

The Algol language doesn't use anything like a reader (it parses the
text in the definitions window with a standard parser), and the #honu
reader is treated specially - it's not installed via the readtable
mechanism.

However, I nonetheless believe that you could make something like that
work, although you would probably have to change the reading of (.

-- 
sam th
samth at ccs.neu.edu