What should other string-returning procedures do? John Cowan (20 Dec 2014 16:44 UTC)
Re: What should other string-returning procedures do? Per Bothner (23 Dec 2014 18:26 UTC)
Re: What should other string-returning procedures do? John Cowan (24 Dec 2014 01:33 UTC)

What should other string-returning procedures do? John Cowan 20 Dec 2014 16:21 UTC

I think this is an excellent SRFI, and I support it.

However, it specifies only that `make-string` must return
a variable-length string.  What about `string`, `string-*case`,
`substring`, `string-copy`, and `string-map`?

My notion is that `string` ought to be free to return either a
variable-length or a fixed-length string, and that the others ought
to be guaranteed to return variable-length strings if (not iff) their
string argument is variable-length.

Also, what about conversions between fixed-length and variable-length
strings?  On Kawa, these would be no-ops, but on other systems they
might not be.

--
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        xxxxxx@ccil.org
Original line from The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold:
"Only on Barrayar would pulling a loaded needler start a stampede toward one."
English-to-Russian-to-English mangling thereof: "Only on Barrayar you risk to
lose support instead of finding it when you threat with the charged weapon."