> >At any rate, I think there should be a debugging mode that detects ambiguous
> >uses. This may require a separate build of the system to avoid significant
> >overhead in runtime use, but it's pretty trivial to implement and will
> >make debugging much easier.
>
> I would have no problem providing this sort of feature.
Perhaps another way of looking at it is to ask what comparable systems
do. For example, do the following systems distinguish #f and '(): scsh,
elk, Stk, es?
If I had to make a gut decision about whether it was a good idea to
distinguish or not, I'd say that it was a good thing: Scheme is about
lists (and other things...), and the empty list ought to be
distinguishable from the boolean false. But maybe I'm completely
wrong, perhaps in practical terms (in a practical scripting and
programming language) it doesn't matter much (certainly the obvious
success of elisp suggests it doesn't).
-- Bruce Stephens | email: B.Stephens@math.ruu.nl Utrecht University | telephone: +31 30 2534630 Department of Mathematics | telefax: +31 30 2518394 P.O. Box 80010, 3508 TA Utrecht | The Netherlands |