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Re: symbol patch
- From: Bruce Lewis <brlewis at alum dot mit dot edu>
- To: Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>
- Cc: Chris Dean <Chris dot Dean at sokitomi dot com>, Kawa List <kawa at sources dot redhat dot com>
- Date: 31 Oct 2003 09:41:59 -0500
- Subject: Re: symbol patch
- References: <24716.1067410543@mercedsystems.com><3FA26503.9090903@bothner.com>
Per Bothner <per@bothner.com> writes:
> I don't think this is very "scheme-y" (or "lisp-y"). There are other
> Scheme implementations that support unintered symbols, and I believe
> in them symbol? returns true for an uninterned symbol.
Correct. Even R5RS acknowledges these implementations, and notes that
they generate exceptions to the rule that two symbols are the same if
and only if their names are spelled the same.
As for serialize/deserialize un-interning symbols, I think that's a bug
in Java's serialize/deserialize methods for strings. It should be
recorded that the string was interned. I can imagine interned strings
being useful for symbolic computation in Java. Apps that deserialize
will have to work around this bug.