[plt-scheme] Semantics of quote

On Jun 24, Robby Findler wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 12:28 AM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> > On Jun 24, Robby Findler wrote:
> >>
> >> None of those seem like good ideas. I can see why you don't like that!
> >> I wouldn't suggest that. FWIW, you can actually try this stuff out.
> >> There's the constructor-style printing in drscheme where you get:
> >
> > I know about it, of course, and it's a bad idea for general
> > hacking.
> >
> >  (define (a) 1)
> >  (define (b) 2)
> >  (list a b)
> 
> Obviously, this prints as
> 
>   (list a b)
> 
> or
> 
>   `(,a ,b)

That's not what it does now, and trying to do this properly won't work
with

  (list (let ([a (lambda () 1)]) a) (let ([a (lambda () 2)]) a))

> which seems just as good as
> 
>   '(#<procedure:a> #<procedure:b>)

That's the whole point -- the "'" is a kind of a "I'm readable, you
can type me" signal, and "#<" is the opposite.  Mixing them is bad.


> But I'd be fine with a different way to print (unquoted) procedures.
> Something like we do in the teaching languages perhaps:
> 
>   (list function:a function:b)
> 
> or a variation on that.

Then I no longer see any point in all this.  I thought it was supposed
to be printing values in a way that is readable (or looks like it's
readable) and this is now getting to just having verbose descriptions
that are unrelated to source.

-- 
          ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x)))          Eli Barzilay:
                  http://www.barzilay.org/                 Maze is Life!