Re: Reader option to permit brackets as parentheses

[Chris Bitmead <cbitmead@ozemail.com.au>]

Greg Badros wrote:

> You're looking at it in the wrong way-- other 
> implementations permit square brackets, so allowing Guile 
> to read that code natively increases the portability of 
> the code.  

Allowing Guile to process C++ code would make it more portable too, but
it does'nt mean that it's desirable. Anyway, if I remember right [] are
reserved tokens for possible future use in the standard. If you use them
like you would use () you are potentially digging yourself into a hole.
And if they're not reserved tokens, they should be allowed as
identifiers. I should be able to make a variable called [foo]][ if I
want. Either way, making [] and () interchangable is a waste of the
character namespace.

>Besides, several implementations let you
> use [], and as you pointed out, it's easy enough to add to 
> any other
> system that doesn't support [], why not make it easy for 
> Guile programmers to write more readable code?

I fail to see how it makes more readable code. Apart from anything else
your code will look alien to every other scheme programmer on the
planet. Can that be more readable? It would also make writing the code
more difficult. When to use a [] and when to use () ? You'll spend half
your day exchanging bracket types trying to make it more asthetically
pleasing. Write a text editor that does colour matching on parenthesis
or something.