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Re: features inconsistency
Gerardo Horvilleur wrote:
I've been thinking if it wouldn't be better to have a special Java
class to represent Kawa symbols instead of java.lang.String.
Kawa has gnu.mapping.Symbol, which it uses for Emacs Lisp, Common Lisp,
and colon-prefixed symbols in Scheme.
The master plan is to use gnu.mapping.Symbol for all symbols,
though I'm concerned how much existing code will break.
I believe that using a custom class for Kawa symbols would have the
following benefits:
1. No more broken symbol serialization (Java strings are not interned
on deserialization).
2. It might simplify the semantics of calling a Java method which
returns a String.
I am aware this might not be a trivial change in Kawa's implementation :)
It's not a huge change - I'm more concerned about user applications, and
whatever are the appropriate conversion rules.
--
--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com http://per.bothner.com/