Re: defining new character names?

[Lars J. Aas]

Keith Wright <address@hidden> wrote:
: > Cc: address@hidden
: > From: Marius Vollmer <address@hidden>
: > "Lars J. Aas" <address@hidden> writes:
: > 
: > > I'd like to be able to do something like this:
: > > 
: > > (define-character "paren-close" #\051) ; 051 is ")"
: > >   and then later
: > > (string-index line #\paren-close)
: > 
: > Not currently, but I think it's a good idea.
: 
: (A) Only in the context of a general mechanism to define constants.

Yes, that's what I was looking for.

: (B) The double quotes around "paren-close" in the definition
:      are surely wrong.

Yes, I wrote "something like" because I don't know what would be
possible for accomplishing this.  The most "transparent" solution
would be to allow

  (define #\paren-close #\051)

[If the first token looks like a character constant, the second must
be one too?]  Would that be possible to implement without any overhead
on the define implementation?  Would it break something?

: > > The reason i'd like to do this is that inserting #\) in the
: > > scheme file makes the vim "%" command unusable over those
: > > blocks
: > 
: > vim should be fixed then, no? ;)

Hehe, I sensed there was a generic problem below my concrete problem,
hence the mail.  If I thought this would only be good for vim-users,
I wouldn't have bothered...

  Lars J