Guile Scheme Lisp Ice-9 in Scifi

Guile Scheme Lisp Ice-9 in Scifi

Coding, linguistics, scifi. Interesting origin of guile scheme lib name, ice-9.

what does this mean

(use-modules
 ;; PEG parsing
 (ice-9 peg)
 ;; pattern matching
 (ice-9 match)
 ;; custom libs
 (aoclib fileio)
 (aoclib pipeline)
 (aoclib peg-tree-utils))

grok answer https://x.com/i/grok/share/X8h60mWmHUODo72gXRlHVgjPw

• why does guile lib name ice-9
• https://x.com/i/grok/share/iKxZkQapn8GEj7ZPZyCDdaTNt

The name (ice-9) for Guile's standard library modules (e.g., (ice-9 popen), (ice-9 rdelim)) is a deliberate reference to ice-nine, the fictional substance in Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle.

In the book, ice-nine is a dangerous alternative form of ice that remains solid at room temperature. When it contacts ordinary liquid water, it acts as a seed crystal, rapidly causing all the water to freeze into more ice-nine—potentially catastrophically crystallizing the world's oceans and ending life.