[plt-scheme] Semantics of quote

On Jun 23, 2008, at 7:24 PM, Robby Findler wrote:

> While what Carl says is true, I believe the spirit of the question is
> more like "why isn't constructor (or quasiquote) printing the default
> for the 'scheme' and related languages"?
>
> To which I say "I have suggested this myself! :)"


By all means, go for it!












>
> Robby
>
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Carl Eastlund <cce at ccs.neu.edu>  
> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 6:57 PM, Aleks Bromfield  
>> <aleks at cs.brown.edu> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 04:06:55PM -0400, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
>>>> The sad thing is that this is needlessly confusing, especially for
>>>> beginners. It is one of the reasons we have teaching languages that
>>>> (1) don't allow quote for anything but symbols (pop quiz: is ''a a
>>>> symbol?) and (2) renders things as constructed values (think  
>>>> abstract
>>>> or universal algebra, if you're familiar with that).
>>>
>>> Out of curiosity, why isn't constructor-style printing the  
>>> default for
>>> the module language as well?
>>
>> One reason is that there's no way to know what the constructors "look
>> like" in the user's language.  They could be named anything; the
>> language's syntax may even vary from Scheme.  Student languages are
>> simpler; all the constructors are known ahead of time.
>>
>> A given language can always set up a custom printer based on its own
>> constructors, but DrScheme can't do that automatically.
>>
>> --
>> Carl Eastlund
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