Re: Configuring the repl to display strings with quotes

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

Ethan Herdrick wrote:
> Hi folks -
>
> Is there a way to make the repl show strings with quotes around them?
> In other words, instead of this:
> (abc def gef)
>
> I want this:
> ("abc" "def" "gef")

$ kawa --output-format readable-scheme
#|kawa:1|# '("abc" "def" "gef")
("abc" "def" "gef")

> Of course that list could have been this instead:
> ("abc" "defgef")
>>
> or one of several other things, which is why I don't like the default behavior.

A rationale for the default: A functional language shouldn't need
explicit display/write calls.  Instead, a program should be an
expression that returns a result.  In the Unix tradition, a program
by default prints its output on standard output.  But if a function
returns a formatted string, you don't want extra quotes printed.

But I agree in exploratory read-eval-print context having the quotes
might be useful.
--
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/