Re: apply bug?

From: <soma_at_cs.unm.edu>
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 94 21:38:43 MST

I had forgotten that "and" is, by necessity, a special form in Scheme,
and so naturally it cannot be "applied" in the normal sense. I should
have remembered this, but I guess my brain wasn't on today. In any
case, thanks for all of the replies to my post - I am no longer
confused! (On this topic, at least.)

One thing I would like to point out, though, is that the STk
interpreter reports that both special forms and built-in functions are
"subr"'s. One nice aspect of this is that you can type things like

(define my-and and)

and now you have a new symbol referring to the same special form that
"and" did before - this is something that, for example, I believe you
can't do in MIT Scheme. However, it is somewhat misleading for the
interpreter to report that two objects are similar (ex. both being
"subr"'s), when in fact they are fundamentally different kinds of
Scheme operators.

But this is a picky point indeed. STk is a great package, and I have
to say thanks to Erick Gallesio and everyone else who have contributed
to STk! Currently I am TA'ing an introductory course in Scheme, and
it is truly wonderful, for example, to be able to show students
box-and-pointer diagrams of various Scheme data structures, to have
them play with turtle graphics, and to show them how real graphical
user interfaces can be combined with elegant languages like Scheme.

And again, thanks for all of the replies!

--Anil

----------------------------------------------------------------
Anil Somayaji 3600 Wellesley Dr. NE, #E349
(505)883-3881 Albuquerque, NM 87107
soma_at_cs.unm.edu USA
Received on Fri Nov 11 1994 - 05:39:45 CET