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2 points by rntz 5077 days ago | link | parent

It doesn't. It's just an arbitrary choice between using 'nil and '(). It turns out that using '() is easier when writing arc on top of mzscheme, but that pg decided to go with 'nil - why, who knows? Probably a holdover from the CL implementation, or it matches better with his way of thinking about these things.

In particular, it is completely possible to use () underneath as the list-terminator/false value and still have 'nil be arc-recognized "syntax" for (). See aw's nil-to-() hack, for example.



1 point by akkartik 5073 days ago | link

I'm having trouble finding this nil-to-() hack. Link please?

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2 points by fallintothis 5073 days ago | link

http://hacks.catdancer.ws/nil-impl-by-null.html

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1 point by akkartik 5073 days ago | link

I basically went through the same process 2 days ago! And yes it works.

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