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Character Ambiguity in Tutorial
1 point by jmah 6172 days ago | 3 comments
I was scanning the code examples in the tutorial document, and confused by this initially:

arc> ("foo" 0) #\f

I was reading #\f as #f, for false, as perhaps Arc's way of saying "Using a string as a function doesn't make sense". Of course, I then recalled Common Lisp's use of #\ to denote character. But changing "foo" to "bar" would clear this up.



2 points by fail 6172 days ago | link

It's not ambiguity.

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2 points by simonb 6172 days ago | link

No, it's not. But it can be confusing or at least not very didactic. Let's not forget the tutorial is framed as:

"It's intended for readers with little programming experience and no Lisp experience. It is thus also an introduction to Lisp."

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1 point by jmah 6158 days ago | link

Indeed, it's not ambiguity, but visually a bit confusing. ("Visual ambiguity"? Certainly not in meaning.) But simonb, targeting the document at that audience doesn't have to come at the expense of the Scheme-experienced; after all, a trivial change "foo" to "bar" (#\f to #\b) would remove the confusion. As an aside, I doubt "readers with little programming experience" would be reading the tutorial for a pre-alpha language.

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