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Naming help for a looping facility
From: |
Linus Björnstam |
Subject: |
Naming help for a looping facility |
Date: |
Fri, 05 Mar 2021 21:58:28 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Cyrus-JMAP/3.5.0-alpha0-206-g078a48fda5-fm-20210226.001-g078a48fd |
Hello fellow guilers!
I have been writing the bastard child of foof-loop/chibi loop
(https://mumble.net/~campbell/darcs/hack-foof-loop/foof-loop.txt) and racket's
for loops. The current pre-beta can be found here:
https://git.sr.ht/~bjoli/goof-loop/
I want to, just like the racket loops, provide simple forms, so that I instead
of
(loop ((:for a (up-from 0 10)) (:acc acc (listing (* a a)))) => acc)
can write
(NAME ((:for a (up-from 0 10))) (* a a)).
My struggle is what I should name this. In racket it is for/list. I could of
course call it loop/list, but that is inconsistent with the naming inherited
from (chibi loop): listing. loop/listing becomes verbose (it's scheme after
all) and is very clear what it does. But, as I already have a listing macro to
be used within the loop facility, wouldn't (listing ((:for a (up-from 0 10))
...) be a good name? Is it too magical?
I happen to think that it is elegant, but I don't know. It doesn't feel like
the scheme way. I am pretty sure I want a special form for these things, as it
allows for some optimization work. listing, as we all understand, has to
reverse it's arguments, whereas a special form easily can rewrite itself to be
a non-tail-recursive loop (which is faster than a reverse, yet without all the
nasty sides of reverse!)
The options as of right now:
(loop/list ...)
Upsides:
- pretty short
- loop/list works differently from listing, even tthough the end result is
the same. This signals that to some extent.
- If I am stealing from racket anyway...
Downsides:
- not as clear as (loop/listing ...). To be honest, this is a pretty big one.
If I _could_ I would make (loop (... ( ...(listing ...))) ...) work like the
simple form, but that is not possible if we have other accumulating clauses.
(loop/listing ...)
Upsides:
- The most clear
Downsides:
- Verbose, which is what we want to avoid.
(listing ...)
Upsides:
- We export fewer identifiers
- Is already used as an accumulating clause
- shortest
Downsides:
- Too much magic?
- One exported form does two related, but different things in different
contexts?
- (anding ...) makes sense, whereas (loop (... (:acc a (anding ...))) ...)
does almost not at all.
I somewhat prefer the last one, but it feels icky. So, scheme sages of
guile-user, what do you say?
Liebe Grüße
Linus Björnstam
- Naming help for a looping facility,
Linus Björnstam <=