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7 points by kens 5873 days ago | link | parent

I've been thinking that the Scheme code (ac.scm) should be split in two parts: an "axiomatic" part that defines car, cdr, set, annotate, etc; and a "library" part. The "library" part would define OS stuff like current-gc-milliseconds, open-socket, probably atomic-invoke, etc. There would probably be a "math" library that defines exp, sqrt, and all the missing math functions.

This structure would make it clear what parts of the language are really axioms, and what parts are in Scheme for performance, convenience, or because they are OS things that require low-level hooks.



3 points by sacado 5873 days ago | link

"in Scheme for performance" : in never thought I would ever read that sentence :) (You're right, by the way)

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1 point by CatDancer 5873 days ago | link

Being able to call out to MzScheme from Arc would be cool. Then all the "library" parts could be written in Arc.

  (def file-exists (name)
    (scheme-istrue ((scheme-fn file-exists?) name)))
Here "scheme-fn" is a macro that returns an Arc function that calls the named Scheme function, but still expects to be passed Scheme values and returns a Scheme value. Then various functions such as "scheme-istrue" can be used to convert Arc values to Scheme values and back again.

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5 points by kens 5873 days ago | link

Anarki provides the $ operator, which allows callout to MzScheme.

I've been thinking that support for a foreign function interface such as SWIG would also be good.

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6 points by nex3 5873 days ago | link

Anarki has a macro, $, for just this. In general, I've taken to using $ for what kens refers to as the "library" part. Note, for example, files.arc.

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1 point by CatDancer 5873 days ago | link

Very nice!

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