Kevin Wortman <xxxxxx@gmail.com> writes:

>     Mostly environment variables just feel like something that should
>     be outside the scope of Scheme specs.
>
> +1
>
> Scheme already has established, portable ways of varying runtime
> behavior: SRFI 39 parameter objects, R7RS feature identifiers, thunks,
> or simply procedure arguments.

Then please propose an API based on one of those which solves our
problem, without having any of the mentioned issues.  I haven't been
able to come up with a satisfactory one.

I do not understand why environment variables should not be used in
Scheme specifications.  They're a simple, ubiquitous mechanism for
controlling program behavior from the point of process creation onward,
some other alternatives being ARGV, the filesystem, and standard IO
ports, all of which seem inferior in this case.

Care has to be taken not to specify environment variables for
functionality that is essential, because then systems which don't
support them will lack that essential functionality.  No such
functionality is affected in the case of SRFI_126_HASH_SEED.

Let's please stay pragmatic. :-)

Taylan