I believe the name ".iota" is a bad choice given R5RS's definition of valid
identifiers:

  Most identifiers allowed by other programming languages are also
  acceptable to Scheme. The precise rules for forming identifiers vary
  among implementations of Scheme, but in all implementations a sequence of
  letters, digits, and "extended alphabetic characters" that begins with a
  character that cannot begin a number is an identifier. In addition, +, -,
  and ... are identifiers.

"." is in fact a character that can begin a number, so one cannot conclude
from the above that ".iota" is a valid identifier (although it doesn't
explicitly rule it out either). A brief check with UMB Scheme (which is
what comes with Red Hat 5.2) shows that it doesn't accept identifiers that
begin with ".". Not that UMB Scheme is the last word on all things Scheme,
but it's a data point (and was easily tested).

Okay, I'll go back in my hole now. (NB: I'm not a recipient of the mailing
list.)

-dan
xxxxxx@milk.com