Re: Scheme bug in internal define

From: Christopher Oliver <oliver_at_fritz.co.traverse.com>
Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 20:38:02 -0500 (EST)

On 9 Nov 1997, Thomas Neumann wrote:
> I believe all (define ...) statements must appear first within
> a block and may not be intermixed with other code. If you do,
> the behaviour is undefined. I don't remember if this is defined
> in R4RS somewhere; it's briefly mentioned in SICP.

The proviso is on page 31 in the second edition of SICP in a foot-
note. R4RS is actually even less reassuring:

  Section 5.2.2: Internal definitions

    Some implementations of Scheme permit definitions to occur
  at the beginning of a <body> (that is, the body of a lambda,
  let, let*, letrec, or define expression).

To me this suggests that not only must the defines occur at the
beginning, but support for this syntax is not even a requirement.
I know that in beginner mode, DrScheme finds internal defines
offensive, and Keith's original "bug" is flagged in VSCM and
MzScheme as broken syntactically. I've no idea what IEEE says.

-- 
Christopher Oliver                     Traverse Communications
Systems Coordinator                    223 Grandview Pkwy, Suite 108
oliver_at_traverse.com                    Traverse City, Michigan, 49684
"You can even make Emacs look just like vi -- but why?"  - C. Musciano
Received on Sun Nov 09 1997 - 02:35:49 CET

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