On Mon, 15 Aug 2005, [ISO-8859-1] Jens Axel Søgaard wrote:

> If it is neccessary to wrap atoms, vectors, the empty list etc. then
> the only data structure left, that isn't represented by a special
> type is lists. Wouldn't it be simpler to demand all syntax to
> be represented as a separate type?

I would not wrap vectors either.  Still, you can think of syntax vectors and
syntax pairs as belonging to a special type, which happens to be a subtype
of vectors or pairs.  At the end of the day, you have an extra field - does
it matter whether this field is kept with the object or separately in a
hashtable?  Logically it is part of the object:

    The hashtable entry /is/ the wrap.

Genericity is certainly more complicated theoretically, and part of me
is drawn to the purity of requiring all conversions to be written explicitly.
However, I do not think this would be necessarily simpler for users, make
programs concise and readable, or aid in the reuse of existing libraries.

Andre