World: r3wp

In the DED (Data exchange dialect) none is a word, nobody wants to 
transform it to a value of a different type, and it actually never 
happens

...as Andreas demonstrated above, so why to pull out that strawman?

Generallly, "preprocessing REBOL scripts" means to work with the 
DED, not with the DD (Do dialect)

but one must understand that when you LOAD data, no evaluation occurs, 
which is why serialization into litterals does not occur. 

this is a big detail, which most REBOLers do not grasp.


the litteral notation allows you to load items AS data, not as DO 
dialect source code.


I guess what could be done is to remove the /ALL refinement and add 
a new refinement which forces the non /serialized format.  but that 
makes SAVE work opposite of other serialization handling ... which 
is why I'm not sure that is such a good thing.

for data exchange, I really think that a deeper serialization is 
required.   even MOLD/ALL is inadequate for any serious project. 
 I've been bitten many times.  things like recursive object molding 
or breaking can occur.  ex:

>> a: context [b: none]
>> b: context [a: none]
>> b/a: a
>> a/b: b
>> mold/all a
{#[object! [
    b: #[object! [
        a: #[object! [...]
    ]]
]]}

but one must understand that when you LOAD data, no evaluation occurs, 
which is why serialization into litterals does not occur.
 - this looks like a confused statement to me. Example:

mold/all load "true" ; == "true"
mold/all load "#[true]"; == "#[true]"

There is no rocket science involved.

in your first line... the loaded value is a word, not a #[true] value... 
but people don't get this.

it becomes obvious to advanced users, cause we've had to go deep 
into the bindology, but casual/intermediate REBOLers se all the datatype/binding/loading 
stuff as magic.

They should read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REBOL#Syntax

This has nothing to do with any bindology, no rocket science involved

even more of a reason why non-/all save needs to be abolished

exactly!

I don't agree, SAVE & SAVE/ALL have different uses.

They do? Then, would you be so kind, and explain to me what is the 
purpose of SAVE? (I never found any)

so what use do you have for non-/all save?

well, the same for mold & mold/all


by all accounts, we should also abolish non-/ALL mold then, cause 
they are symmetric.

(ok, i'll abstain. ladislav is faster :)

please, don't, have to run, bye

I personnally NEVER use SAVE/ALL in any manner.   I always use WRITE 
so I can't even give you a valid case for SAVE/ALL  ;-)


but I've used SAVE a few times to log data.  Even when doing script 
pre-processing, SAVE/ALL broke too often for me to afford the hassle.


I'll usually use MOLD/ALL process the data as a string with real 
control then use WRITE

and even then, I don't LOAD scripts because we loose all the comments, 
so I pretty much always use LOAD/next, & string parsing to process 
REBOL source scripts.

mentioning the perceived symmetry to mold and mold/all is kind of 
evading the argument. ladislav is arguing that SAVE should be useful 
with respect to LOAD. nothing stops us from defining SAVE as WRITE 
... MOLD/ALL ..., and there is no necessity to hold up this perceived 
symmetry.

btw, I *am* playing devil's advocate here... ;-)


It might be that for the general purpose, SAVE/ALL might be the better 
default.  but IMHO SAVE itself is usually inadequate for storing 
DATA.  it might be ok for storing dialect blocks though.

Ladislav, if you try to DO a script saved with SAVE/all or MOLD/all, 
it will fail if it contains functions or objects. And it definitely 
*won't* be "as close to original as possible". So /all can't be the 
default for SAVE.

>> save/all %foo.r load/all "foo: func [x] [x * x] foo 42"
>> do %foo.r
Script: "Untitled" Version: none Date: none
== 1764

works pretty well!

The primary purpose of SAVE is to save scripts that are to later 
be processed by DO.

Andreas, that isn't a function, it is a description of a function.

It's a script, you said scripts

and that's the whole point. if you load a script and then save it, 
the original script should be affected as little as possible

I also said functions and objects. That means function!, closure! 
and object! values, not their source.

Yes, and that's the strawman. Those literal objects will only be 
written from a script if it contained them in the first place.

{And it definitely *won't* be "as close to original as possible".} 
- this is a Goebbels' truth, would there be any example?

I gave one above.  if you try and save/all cross-referencing object! 
values the mold fails.

Yet another example of a Goebbels' truth:

>> do mold quote (1 + 2)
== 3

in fact basic SAVE fails as well.

Max, you did not give any example, that would not deserve the "strawman 
prize", your DATA surely is not a DED

BTW, my above DO example demonstrates quite pregnantly, that DO isn't 
a "counterpart" of MOLD

I don't get what you mean by strawman prize?

maxim, you have a good point regardign serialising circular datastructures 
and similar stuff

the objects could be within a block of data that you are trying to 
serialize... it would still fail.

but it is a different issue than what we are discussing here

You built a strawman, since your example does not relate to the subject 
at all. The subject is: SAVE is not good to process DED.

but SAVE is not only for DED, THAT is my point.

and in any case, you could have objects within your DED and SAVE 
would fail.

(*could* fail)

There is nothing that can be used to process non-DED and I agree 
with that, but that is a completely different subject

no, you could not

where is the DED defined?

LOAD

Data Exchange Dialect, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REBOL#Syntax
, if you do not know what it is

{but SAVE is not only for DED, THAT is my point.} - that is not a 
point, that is a falsehood. SAVE is not even for DED (SAVE/ALL is), 
less so for non-DED data