I can't say I'm surprised that breaking the abstraction of cons cells that way ended up being a problem. This new implementation, if anything, breaks the abstraction even more (exploiting the fact that viewing a cons cell as a vector happens to result in mutating certain parts of the "vector" having the desired effect on the cons). Arc (anarki at least) really should switch over to using racket's mutable pairs.
Actually, speaking of that, why not just use unsafe-set-mcar! and unsafe-set-mcdr!? I find it far more likely that the representation of mutable pairs will continue to coincide with that of pairs than that the representation of vectors will, and a quick examination at the mzscheme prompt seems to confirm my suspicion. unsafe-set-mcar! and unsafe-set-mcdr! work just fine on cons cells. I'm using plt scheme 4.2.2, not racket, though.
Egad, you are thoroughly right and I have rewritten the post. mentally smacks myself on the head Thank you, that is a much better implementation. I'm a little bit disappointed that it's so easy...
Uh-oh, the edit window has timed out on my post, and I've noticed that my version doesn't do any type-checking. That is el baddo. So far, it hasn't caused things to crash yet...
arc> (= x 'meh)
meh
arc> (= (car x) 2)
2
arc> x
meh
...but that's just luck and I wouldn't rely on it. [It does destroy the world when you set the car of a table.] Better version is here:
Man, I really wish I could continue editing my original post, 'cause without the type-checking, it's kind of a nuclear bomb in case someone accidentally uses it on a table. Perhaps I should just have left the post unchanged, or just added "Edit: Look in the comments for improvements" at the bottom.
