What is the purpose of "compact" code paths in print.c?

[Thomas Dickerson]

I'm working on an enhancement for write/print/display, and thought I had it all implemented in io/print/main.rkt before realizing that code is only used for Racket-CS.

Now I'm working on making equivalent changes in print.c for the traditional implementation, and that code is substantially more complex.

Among other things, print has a bunch of checks against a variable called "compact", but I can't find any comments (either in the source or in the git log) as to what its for / when its used.

Can anyone comment?

[Ryan Culpepper]

Based on a quick look, I believe it has to do with serializing compiled code, including quoted values embedded in compiled code. Serializing compiled code uses the same entry point as the other printing functions. For example, try this:

    (write (compile '(quote (1 2 3))))

and compare the output against the contents of some .zo file.

You probably don't want to make any changes that affect the behavior when compact is true, unless you're trying to add support for a new quotable and readable data type. In that case, ask Matthew for help :)

Ryan

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[Thomas Dickerson]

Perfect, thanks for insight =)