Re: Scheme error message

[Urs Liska]

Am 21.04.2016 um 21:27 schrieb David Kastrup:
> Urs Liska <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I understand what this error message means:
>>
>> |guile> (1 2 3) standard input:98:1: In expression (1 2 3): standard
>> input:98:1: Wrong type to apply: 1 ABORT: (misc-error) |
>>
>> But I'm at a loss with that:
>>
>> |guile> (1 . 2) standard input:82:1: In expression (1 . 2): standard
>> input:82:1: Wrong number of arguments to 1 ABORT: (wrong-number-of-args) |
>>
>>
>> ||
>> Please, I don't want to know how to do it correctly (which I do) but
>> what Scheme "thinks" in the second case: What kind of "1" is it that
>> expects a "number of arguments"?
> "Wrong number of arguments" is apparently Guile's phrasing for "bad
> argument list".  Guile apparently never gets as far as checking whether
> 1 is callable.
>

Hm, strange. I can see your point but don't understand what really
happens. Makes a hard time explaining things you don't have a clue about ...

Interestingly Scheme *does* make a difference:

guile> (random . 2)
standard input:121:1: While evaluating arguments to random in expression
(random . 2):
standard input:121:1: Wrong number of arguments to #<primitive-procedure
random>
ABORT: (wrong-number-of-args)