and ar-nil is falsy. So your example will work unmodified.
... oh. And now that I check, you're right about void:
arc> (seval '(if (void) 1 2))
1
I foolishly assumed that (void) in racket is falsy. But it's truthy. That rules out using racket's (void). `(null ? 1 : 2)` gives 2 in JS, and `if nil then 1 else 2 end` gives 2 in Lua, so it's surprising that `(if (void) 1 2)` gives 1 in Racket.
For what it's worth, in an experimental version, using #f for ar-nil and #t for ar-t worked. It's a bit of a strange idea, but it helps interop significantly due to being able to pass arc predicates right into racket.
It'd be better for me to show a working prototype with ar-nil set to #f rather than try to argue in favor of it here. But to your original question: yes, anything other than |nil| would be great, since that gets rid of the majority of interop headaches.
One thing that might be worth pointing out: The lack of void means it's back to the old question of "how do you express {"a": false, "b": []} in arc?" Choosing between #f and () for nil implies a choice between forcing {"a": false} or {"b": []} to be the only possible hash table structures, since one of them would be excluded from hash tables. But that might be a tangent.
Yes, the keyword section was poorly explained. My comment should have been prefixed with "some thoughts on arc, in case it's helpful" rather than "here is a proposal." And then I should have taken that comment and put it in a different thread, since keyword arguments are unrelated to the question of nil becoming (). I was mostly just excited for the possibility of leveraging more racket now that denil/niltree might be cut soon.
