Re: why undefined return values?

[Mikael Djurfeldt <mdj at mdj dot nada dot kth dot se>]

Michael Livshin <mlivshin@bigfoot.com> writes:

> > It is a good idea to try to avoid these altogether.  It's likely that
> > such operations won't be as efficient as purely functional code in
> > future Scheme compilers and interpreters.
> 
> well, I would change it to "it's a good idea to avoid set!
> altogether, except when used on top-level bindings".  set-car! and
> set-cdr! look quite innocuous to me style-wise, but the performance in 
> the presence of a generational GC might suck.

Well, I said like I said mostly to be less controversial. :)

Personally, I prefer the functional style because it's more beautiful
and easier to understand.  If I don't have some special reason to do
otherwise, I actually prefer not to use set-car! and set-cdr! either.