Re: anonymous lists

[Alan Watson <alan@oldp.astro.wisc.edu>]

Sorry -- I slipped back into rc notation which obviously caused some
confusion.

(a) I don't want heirarchical lists.  (Well, I do but that wasn't what
I was suggesting.)

(b) Why are the following different?  Why is a list treated one way on
the RHS of assignment, but instantly flattened in any other context?

	; bar = (a b c d); foo bar
	; foo (a b c d)

(c) Consequently, I want the following to behave differently:

	; foo a b c d			# pass 4 args: a, b, c, and d
	; foo (a b c d)			# pass 1 arg: the list (a b c d)

I only want lists to be flattened if I EXPLICITY ask for it with $.  I
think this is both more useful and more consistent.

(d) I'm not sure if I want:

	; foo $(a b c d)

to be the same as:

	; foo 'a' 'b' 'c' 'd'

or:

	; foo 'a b c d'

Perhaps we could introduce another flattening operator, so that $(a b
c d) returns 'a' 'b' 'c' 'd', and %(a b c d) returns 'a b c d'.
Notice the change in terminology: $ is now a flattening operator
rather than an evaluation operator, as it is the only way to flatten a
list (other than picking the elements out one by one).

(e) More radically, I would like to see `{...} return a list, for
example:

	`{ echo a; echo b ; echo c ; echo d }

returns (a b c d), and needs to be explicitly flattened:

	; echo 	`{ echo a; echo b ; echo c ; echo d }
	('a' 'b' 'c' 'd')
	; echo $`{ echo a; echo b ; echo c ; echo d }
	a b c d

In summary, I'm suggesting making the primary data-type of es the list
rather than the string.  No list should be flattened unless EXPLICITY
preceded by $ (or %).

Am I making myself any clearer, or is this still not making any sense?

Alan.