Re: more guile for perl refugees (split, join)

[Clark McGrew <mcgrew at ale dot physics dot sunysb dot edu>]

Steve Tell wrote:

; some common idioms:
;
; for(i = 0; i < 5; i++) printf("hi\n");   becomes:
;
; (do ((i 0 (+ i 1))) ((>= i 5))
;  (display "hi\n"))

This has always been one of my bet peeves with scheme.  It's looping
constructs are lousy (IMNSHO).  Yeah, I can think of several ways to
do a loop, but they tend to obscure it's simple nature.  I guess what
I really want is a standard (schemified)

"for i = 1 to 10" 

or

"do i = 1, 10"

that is part of the normal guile environment.  This sort of trivial
convenience function can really improve the programing experience.  If
it doesn't belong directy in boot-9, maybe there should be a general
convenience module "(ice-9 convenience)" (or maybe "(ice-9 7-11)")
that collects this sort of stuff.

If people (ie the developers) don't think this qualifies as bloat I
can dig out and polish one of my macros that does a simple "for" loop
and post it.  I tend to use it like

(for (i 1 10)
     (display i) 
     (newline))

Cheers,
Clark