Submitter's name: Marc Feeley
Submitter's email: feeley at iro.umontreal.ca
Relevant draft: r7rs draft 6
Type: defect
Priority: minor
Relevant section of draft: 6.9. Bytevectors
Summary: Bytevectors should be called u8vectors
Many implementations of Scheme have adopted SRFI-4 where bytevectors are called u8vectors, and where the procedures operating on bytevectors have u8vector in their name.
I see no reason to introduce new names. It will require many implementations to implement the new names, and moreover the SRFI-4 names will have to be kept for code which uses SRFI-4. This is needless bloat.
The name u8vector is a very mnemonic way of expressing verbally the external representation #u8(...) which is used by R7RS for bytevectors.
I also find the names bytevector-u8-ref and bytevector-u8-set! very clumsy and verbose compared to u8vector-ref and u8vector-set!.
We voted for bytevector explicitly, and no new arguments have been given here. It would be inconsistent to use u8vector-ref given bytevector; the reason not to use simple bytevector-ref is for upward compatibility with BlobAPI or whatever replaces it.