Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
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From: "John Lacey" <johnl@cs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: define in R4RS ?
Message-ID: <1994Oct3.231149.6273@news.cs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Computer Science, Indiana University
References: <36odf5$jm5@news.tuwien.ac.at> <36pati$9ko@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 1994 23:11:47 -0500
Lines: 20

Enough. In R4RS, under "Basic Concepts" (section 3) we have
"3.1. Variables and regions":

    A variable may name a location where a value can be
    stored. A variable that does is said to be bound to the
    location.

You can't claim R4RS wasn't clear about this. Everything in Scheme
is a pointer. A good compiler will optimize this away when it
doesn't change the semantics, but the conceptual picture is clear.

Later in the same paragraph, we get two sentences that evidentally
should be revised: 

    By abuse of terminolgy, the variable is sometime said to
    name the value or to be bound to the value. This is not
    quite accurate, but confusion rarely results from this
    practice.

John L
