On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 21:39:06 EDT erik quanstrom <quans...@quanstro.net> wrote: > > The feature I want is the ability to pass not just character > > values in environment or pipes but arbitrary Scheme objects. > > But that requires changes at the OS level (or mapping them > > to/from strings, which is a waste if both sides can handle > > structured objects). > > !? the ability to pass typed records around is an idea that was > tarred, feathered, drawn and quartered by unix. files, and therefore > streams, have no type. they are byte streams.
I was not talking about "records" but s-expressions. "json" is kind of sort of the same thing. Without a generally useful and simple such mechanism, people end up devising their own. The 9p format for instance. And go has typed channels. > rc already passes structured data through the environment. > rc variables in the environment are defined as > > var: [^ctl-a]* > | ([^ctl-a]*) ctl-a list > > so there is precident for this in shells. And this.
