Re: setf.scm

[Chris.Bitmead@misys.com.au]

>> I believe it is should be "dynamic" (i.e. setter evalues PROC at
>> run-time), and that is what I have implemented.  Of course, if you
>> allow the compiler to inline or statically resolve some procedures,
>> then you can also inline or statically resolve the call to setter.
>
>I don't like the idea of extending Scheme with the new mechanism of a
>binding between procedure objects.  Of course you could look upon it
>as a simple table lookup, but it is not good to encourage people to
>use such a mechism for the elementary operation of storing a value in
>a location.

The thing is though, Scheme is already doing dynamic things with certain
objects. Things as basic as equal?, "+", write and display are dynamically
dispatched according to type. I can only see extending this concept to set!
as making the language smaller conceptually as well as more consistent.
When one primitive can be used with any possible type, I think language
bloat is reduced. I only wish other things were dynamic according to type
too, like map and for-each, so you could map vectors and other things.