Andre van Tonder <xxxxxx@now.het.brown.edu> writes:

>> Andre van Tonder <xxxxxx@later.het.brown.edu> writes:
>>
>>> - Why do the field /name/s in the procedural layer /not/ need to be
>>>   distinct?
>>>   I could see this feature causing lots of pain.
>>
>> What kinda pain?
>
> [... lots ...]

So I believe the positive rationale is that the field names might get
generated by a macro based on the number of fields, where it's
difficult to impossible (SYNTAX-RULES) or awkward (SYNTAX-CASE) to
generate unique names.  You got any answers for that?

> - Instead, the current design makes positional indexing an irreducible
>   part of what it means to be a record [...]

That bothers me, too (personally, that is), and it suggests (to me,
personally) that there should actually be a layer underneath the
records which deals with subtyping and positional indexing only, and
leaves everything dealing with named fields for the procedural layer.
I want to play around with this more, but it may be a while.

In any case, all this surely warrants writing it up as an issue for
now, which I'll do.

--
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla