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From: sommerfeld@apollo.hp.com (Bill Sommerfeld)
Subject: Re: Why you should not use Tcl
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Date: Thu, 29 Sep 1994 03:55:28 GMT
References: <9409232314.AA29957@mole.gnu.ai.mit.edu> <RV.94Sep25192903@cslab6b.cs.brown.edu> <id.2XBD1.L1G@nmti.com> <RSANDERS.94Sep27065835@hrothgar.mindspring.com>
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu gnu.misc.discuss:18516 comp.lang.tcl:19590 comp.lang.scheme:10085

In article <RSANDERS.94Sep27065835@hrothgar.mindspring.com>,
Robert Sanders <rsanders@mindspring.com> wrote:
>To me, Scheme's one fault as an extension language is its weak set of
>string manipulation primitives.  I write many programs in Perl that
>I'd like to write in Scheme.

Actually, I'd say the main failing right now is a lack of standardized
functionality encompassing that found in the ANSI C library, POSIX.1,
and BSD sockets.  This does not have to be (and shouldn't be) part of
the base language... but it *should* be a commonly-implemented
extension.  Most, if not all, of this is in perl already.

slib appears to get part way there, but it seems to be missing a few
things needed for doing serious UNIX script programming; I find myself
using perl far too often for these things.

The secondary failing is that there are *too many* different Scheme
implementations for UNIX out there... which means that, IMHO:

 - Too many implementors are dinking around with the core language
when they should be working on useful extensions (STk seems to be an
exception -- but why does it have its *own* scheme implementation as
opposed to merely being a library for some other scheme
implementation?)

 - It's likely that someone wanting to start work on something in
scheme will pick up four or five different implementations, build
them, try them out, and find themselves wishing for a hybrid of two or
three of them.. and give up in disgust and use perl or tcl..
