perm filename COMMON.MSG[COM,LSP]37 blob
sn#826527 filedate 1986-10-21 generic text, type C, neo UTF8
COMMENT ⊗ VALID 00192 PAGES
C REC PAGE DESCRIPTION
C00001 00001
C00030 00002
C00031 00003 ∂29-Jul-86 0328 a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Re: exit-to-system
C00034 00004 ∂29-Jul-86 0623 Moon@RIVERSIDE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #7: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
C00037 00005 ∂29-Jul-86 0642 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Some easy ones (?)
C00039 00006 ∂29-Jul-86 0642 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #8: Clarifications to DEFCONSTANT
C00044 00007 ∂29-Jul-86 0642 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #14: THE and VALUES
C00049 00008 ∂29-Jul-86 0642 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #11: Contents of Tagbody
C00053 00009 ∂29-Jul-86 0643 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
C00059 00010 ∂29-Jul-86 0643 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #13: Structure Sharing in Arguments
C00068 00011 ∂29-Jul-86 0644 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
C00070 00012 ∂29-Jul-86 0649 DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5 status
C00073 00013 ∂29-Jul-86 0652 NGALL@G.BBN.COM Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
C00076 00014 ∂29-Jul-86 0658 DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5 status
C00079 00015 ∂29-Jul-86 1123 DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: PARSE-BODY
C00082 00016 ∂29-Jul-86 1215 @SU-SCORE.ARPA,@REAGAN.AI.MIT.EDU:MLY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU Re: PARSE-BODY
C00096 00017 ∂29-Jul-86 1218 Miller.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
C00099 00018 ∂29-Jul-86 1219 DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Staus of proposals 10, 11, and 12
C00102 00019 ∂29-Jul-86 1220 @MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA,@GOLD-HILL-ACORN.LCS.MIT.EDU:mike%gold-hill-acorn@MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA Re: Proposal #7 Status: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
C00108 00020 ∂29-Jul-86 1255 RPG Yapper of the Month Club
C00109 00021 ∂29-Jul-86 1456 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposed moratorium (clarification)
C00111 00022 ∂29-Jul-86 1734 pyramid!bein@SUN.COM closing standard channels
C00113 00023 ∂29-Jul-86 1835 NGALL@G.BBN.COM Re: Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
C00116 00024 ∂29-Jul-86 1848 NGALL@G.BBN.COM Re: Staus of proposals 10, 11, and 12
C00119 00025 ∂29-Jul-86 1854 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposal #8: Clarifications to DEFCONSTANT
C00122 00026 ∂29-Jul-86 1920 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
C00125 00027 ∂30-Jul-86 0640 MASINTER.PA@Xerox.COM declarations in macrolet puzzle
C00127 00028 ∂30-Jul-86 0705 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU Declarations in MACROLET
C00129 00029 ∂30-Jul-86 1001 gls@Think.COM Motivation for PARSE-BODY
C00131 00030 ∂30-Jul-86 1049 Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Motivation for PARSE-BODY
C00134 00031 ∂30-Jul-86 1137 gls@Think.COM Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
C00136 00032 ∂30-Jul-86 1252 DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5, or somewhere around there (rather long, constructive, and non-flaming(!))
C00143 00033 ∂30-Jul-86 1259 berman@vaxa.isi.edu Conference
C00145 00034 ∂30-Jul-86 1330 berman@vaxa.isi.edu Conference
C00147 00035 ∂30-Jul-86 1339 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Handout at Lisp Conference
C00155 00036 ∂30-Jul-86 1356 FREEMAN@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Re: Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
C00158 00037 ∂30-Jul-86 1400 jbarnett@nrtc Re: Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
C00160 00038 ∂30-Jul-86 1418 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
C00162 00039 ∂30-Jul-86 1434 Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Motivation for PARSE-BODY
C00164 00040 ∂30-Jul-86 1719 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5 (aside)
C00166 00041 ∂30-Jul-86 1720 KMP@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM #5, #5A, #6, #7, #8, #9, #9A, #9B, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14
C00182 00042 ∂30-Jul-86 1720 BSG@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: exit-to-system
C00185 00043 ∂30-Jul-86 1720 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Status of declare UNSPECIAL
C00189 00044 ∂30-Jul-86 2018 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposal #5 (aside)
C00193 00045 ∂31-Jul-86 0451 @MCC.COM,@HAL.MCC.DialNet.Symbolics.COM:Loeffler@[10.3.0.62] Re: exit-to-system
C00196 00046 ∂31-Jul-86 1143 alatto@cc5.bbn.com Re: #13, #14
C00203 00047 ∂31-Jul-86 1502 @QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM:Zippy@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Staus of proposals 10, 11, and 12
C00207 00048 ∂31-Jul-86 1506 @QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM:Zippy@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5 (aside)
C00210 00049 ∂31-Jul-86 1514 hoey@nrl-aic Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
C00212 00050 ∂31-Jul-86 1533 @YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM:Zippy@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
C00216 00051 ∂31-Jul-86 1827 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
C00218 00052 ∂31-Jul-86 1848 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU What's going on?
C00221 00053 ∂31-Jul-86 1943 NGALL@G.BBN.COM Re: declarations in macrolet puzzle
C00223 00054 ∂31-Jul-86 1949 NGALL@G.BBN.COM Re: Declarations in MACROLET
C00225 00055 ∂31-Jul-86 2155 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Japanese Subset Proposal
C00227 00056 ∂31-Jul-86 2211 KMP@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Comments on DCP's revised &BODY proposal
C00232 00057 ∂31-Jul-86 2229 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5, or somewhere around there (rather long, constructive, and non-flaming(!))
C00234 00058 ∂31-Jul-86 2230 KMP@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM QUIT
C00246 00059 ∂01-Aug-86 0357 hpfclp!hpfcjrd!diamant@hplabs.HP.COM Proposal #13: Structure Sharing in Arguments
C00249 00060 ∂01-Aug-86 0536 DCP@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
C00252 00061 ∂01-Aug-86 0955 hoey@nrl-aic Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
C00255 00062 ∂01-Aug-86 0956 gls@Think.COM Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
C00258 00063 ∂01-Aug-86 1533 Hadden.CSCES@HI-MULTICS.ARPA Re: Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
C00260 00064 ∂04-Aug-86 1300 Dan@Think.COM ignore this message
C00261 00065 ∂05-Aug-86 0908 pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM synonym streams..
C00263 00066 ∂05-Aug-86 1111 Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM Re: synonym streams..
C00265 00067 ∂06-Aug-86 1100 @QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM DPB, DPBS, something like that
C00268 00068 ∂06-Aug-86 1724 @QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM:Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: synonym streams..
C00270 00069 ∂06-Aug-86 1904 SOLEY@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU DPB, DPBS, something like that
C00272 00070 ∂09-Aug-86 2041 mips!earl@glacier.stanford.edu :allow-other-keys query
C00274 00071 ∂09-Aug-86 2104 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU :allow-other-keys query
C00276 00072 ∂09-Aug-86 2320 Hvatum.DLAB@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA &rest destruction
C00283 00073 ∂10-Aug-86 1205 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU &rest destruction
C00287 00074 ∂10-Aug-86 1350 shebs%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa TAGBODY vs LABELS
C00289 00075 ∂10-Aug-86 2132 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU TAGBODY vs LABELS
C00291 00076 ∂10-Aug-86 2327 masinter.PA@Xerox.COM tagbody using labels
C00294 00077 ∂11-Aug-86 0916 gls@Think.COM ,',@
C00295 00078 ∂11-Aug-86 1120 gls@Think.COM tagbody using labels
C00296 00079 ∂11-Aug-86 2258 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM TAGBODY vs LABELS
C00300 00080 ∂11-Aug-86 2307 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM :allow-other-keys query
C00303 00081 ∂12-Aug-86 1246 snyder%hplsny@hplabs.HP.COM Re: Proposal #7 Status: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
C00308 00082 ∂13-Aug-86 1051 Moon@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #7: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
C00313 00083 ∂13-Aug-86 2151 LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA question about subtypep
C00315 00084 ∂14-Aug-86 0353 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU question about subtypep
C00318 00085 ∂14-Aug-86 0559 Hvatum.DLAB@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA &rest destruction
C00321 00086 ∂14-Aug-86 1444 Pavel.pa@Xerox.COM More words on the scoping of declarations
C00341 00087 ∂14-Aug-86 1602 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU More words on the scoping of declarations (FTYPE)
C00343 00088 ∂15-Aug-86 0734 cvfong@mitre.ARPA drop out
C00344 00089 ∂18-Aug-86 1101 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU More words on the scoping of declarations
C00347 00090 ∂18-Aug-86 1459 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:File-Server@DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM string-/=, etc.
C00349 00091 ∂18-Aug-86 1725 HEDRICK@RED.RUTGERS.EDU close on synonym streams, etc
C00351 00092 ∂18-Aug-86 1825 franz!fizzy!jkf@kim.Berkeley.EDU Re: synonym streams..
C00355 00093 ∂19-Aug-86 1045 ACUFF@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Re: synonym streams..
C00357 00094 ∂19-Aug-86 1240 KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM close on synonym streams, etc
C00363 00095 ∂19-Aug-86 1556 pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM streams ...
C00368 00096 ∂19-Aug-86 1827 sridhar%tekecs.tek.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA documentation strings in BOA constructors ?
C00370 00097 ∂19-Aug-86 1840 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU documentation strings in BOA constructors ?
C00373 00098 ∂20-Aug-86 0540 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM "fonted" characters in CL
C00377 00099 ∂20-Aug-86 1040 RICE@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Defstruct and Documentation.
C00378 00100 ∂22-Aug-86 1333 @MC.LCS.MIT.EDU,@SEBASTIAN.THINK.COM:gls@AQUINAS.THINK.COM 1986 Lisp conference bibliography
C00417 00101 ∂25-Aug-86 1059 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Defstruct and Documentation.
C00419 00102 ∂25-Aug-86 1105 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM question about subtypep
C00423 00103 ∂25-Aug-86 1117 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: synonym streams..
C00425 00104 ∂25-Aug-86 1201 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU question about subtypep
C00428 00105 ∂25-Aug-86 2029 @MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA,@GOLD-HILL-ACORN.LCS.MIT.EDU:mike%gold-hill-acorn@MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA More words on the scoping of declarations
C00433 00106 ∂25-Aug-86 2154 @MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA,@GOLD-HILL-ACORN.LCS.MIT.EDU:mike%gold-hill-acorn@MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA "fonted" characters in CL
C00439 00107 ∂26-Aug-86 0057 pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM re: synonym streams..
C00447 00108 ∂26-Aug-86 0653 preece%ccvaxa@gswd-vms.ARPA Re: More words on the scoping of dec
C00450 00109 ∂26-Aug-86 0904 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU More words on the scoping of declarations
C00453 00110 ∂27-Aug-86 0925 Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM Fixing optional arguments?
C00456 00111 ∂27-Aug-86 1058 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Fixing optional arguments?
C00458 00112 ∂27-Aug-86 1846 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Fixing optional arguments?
C00462 00113 ∂28-Aug-86 1122 Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Fixing optional arguments?
C00465 00114 ∂28-Aug-86 1216 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU Fixing optional arguments?
C00467 00115 ∂29-Aug-86 0956 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM,@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Fixing optional arguments?
C00470 00116 ∂31-Aug-86 1341 LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA question about pprint, *print-pretty*
C00472 00117 ∂02-Sep-86 0909 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM question about pprint, *print-pretty*
C00476 00118 ∂02-Sep-86 0909 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM question about pprint, *print-pretty*
C00480 00119 ∂02-Sep-86 1149 KMP@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM PRINT
C00483 00120 ∂02-Sep-86 1234 Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM Re: close on synonym streams, etc
C00486 00121 ∂03-Sep-86 1409 RICE@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Documentation strings and function.
C00489 00122 ∂03-Sep-86 1636 VERACSD@A.ISI.EDU Deletion from Mailing-List
C00490 00123 ∂03-Sep-86 1810 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documentation strings and function.
C00492 00124 ∂03-Sep-86 1929 @WAIKATO.S4CC.SYMBOLICS.COM:KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Documentation strings and function.
C00497 00125 ∂04-Sep-86 0739 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Documentation strings and function.
C00500 00126 ∂04-Sep-86 0853 allen@bfly-vax.bbn.com Re: Documentation strings and function.
C00502 00127 ∂04-Sep-86 0945 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documentation strings and function.
C00505 00128 ∂04-Sep-86 1038 LINNDR%VUENGVAX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU Problems with Notation in CLtL
C00509 00129 ∂04-Sep-86 1102 allen@bfly-vax.bbn.com Re: Documentation strings and function.
C00511 00130 ∂04-Sep-86 1222 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documentation strings and function.
C00513 00131 ∂04-Sep-86 1421 Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Documentation strings and function.
C00515 00132 ∂04-Sep-86 1421 Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Documentation strings and function.
C00517 00133 ∂04-Sep-86 1518 @ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Documentation strings and function.
C00520 00134 ∂04-Sep-86 1639 @ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Documentation strings and function.
C00522 00135 ∂04-Sep-86 1842 @REAGAN.AI.MIT.EDU:cfry@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU Re: Documentation strings and function.
C00527 00136 ∂05-Sep-86 1236 gls@Think.COM Problems with Notation in CLtL
C00529 00137 ∂05-Sep-86 2358 ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Programmer Notes
C00533 00138 ∂07-Sep-86 1646 KMP@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM #+FOO:BAR
C00535 00139 ∂08-Sep-86 0909 @ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Programmer Notes
C00537 00140 ∂11-Sep-86 0839 MATT@LL.ARPA
C00538 00141 ∂12-Sep-86 0311 bradley@Think.COM An example of where setf does not do what I want.
C00540 00142 ∂12-Sep-86 0814 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU An example of where setf does not do what I want.
C00544 00143 ∂12-Sep-86 0844 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM An example of where setf does not do what I want.
C00548 00144 ∂12-Sep-86 0942 fateman@renoir.Berkeley.EDU OPS-5 in Common Lisp
C00550 00145 ∂12-Sep-86 1030 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM An example of where setf does not do what I want.
C00553 00146 ∂13-Sep-86 1846 ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Locally
C00556 00147 ∂14-Sep-86 1337 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Locally
C00559 00148 ∂14-Sep-86 1543 Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM Portable CommonLoops port liasons
C00561 00149 ∂15-Sep-86 1357 fateman@renoir.Berkeley.EDU ops-5
C00563 00150 ∂15-Sep-86 1438 jeff%aiva.edinburgh.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK Re: OPS-5 in Common Lisp
C00566 00151 ∂15-Sep-86 1937 NGALL@G.BBN.COM defstruct slots' default-inits
C00568 00152 ∂17-Sep-86 1044 tsf@theory.cs.cmu.edu Readtables and prin1
C00570 00153 ∂17-Sep-86 1813 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Readtables and prin1
C00572 00154 ∂17-Sep-86 1847 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Readtables and prin1
C00574 00155 ∂17-Sep-86 2001 Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Readtables and prin1
C00578 00156 ∂17-Sep-86 2216 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DDYER@RIVERSIDE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Readtables and prin1
C00581 00157 ∂18-Sep-86 0701 @UR-ACORN.ARPA,@UR-CASHEW.ARPA:miller@UR-ACORN.ARPA Re: Readtables and prin1
C00584 00158 ∂18-Sep-86 1037 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Readtables and prin1
C00587 00159 ∂18-Sep-86 1039 yuasa%kurims.kurims.kyoto-u.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Re: OPS5 in Common Lisp
C00589 00160 ∂18-Sep-86 1100 LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA *applyhook* question
C00590 00161 ∂18-Sep-86 1104 LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA *applyhook* question (hopefully I'll get it right this time)
C00592 00162 ∂18-Sep-86 1538 pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM testing addresses ... please ignore
C00593 00163 ∂19-Sep-86 1853 cross@afit-ab.ARPA please add my name
C00594 00164 ∂20-Sep-86 1751 cross@afit-ab.ARPA xlisp query
C00595 00165 ∂22-Sep-86 1734 @RIVERSIDE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@BIS-ALICE-LIDDELL.DialNet.Symbolics.COM:Stever@BIS-ALICE-LIDDELL.BISCC.DIALNET.SYMBOLICS.COM " macro character
C00597 00166 ∂22-Sep-86 1749 Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM *applyhook* question (hopefully I'll get it right this time)
C00601 00167 ∂23-Sep-86 0352 ma←jpf%ux63.bath.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK OPS-5
C00602 00168 ∂24-Sep-86 1159 ACUFF@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Re: Readtables and prin1
C00603 00169 ∂24-Sep-86 1932 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Mailing list requests
C00604 00170 ∂24-Sep-86 1943 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Readtables and prin1
C00606 00171 ∂25-Sep-86 0640 @MC.LCS.MIT.EDU:STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU Are strings adjustable arrays?
C00608 00172 ∂25-Sep-86 1358 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Are strings adjustable arrays?
C00611 00173 ∂25-Sep-86 1416 RPG Jim Meehan Comments
C00614 00174 ∂26-Sep-86 0558 Dan@Think.COM Jim Meehan Comments
C00617 00175 ∂29-Sep-86 1037 DALY@IBM.COM getting on the common lisp list
C00618 00176 ∂03-Oct-86 1337 @MC.LCS.MIT.EDU:STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU
C00620 00177 ∂03-Oct-86 1429 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU
C00622 00178 ∂03-Oct-86 1853 @REAGAN.AI.MIT.EDU:RDZ@AI.AI.MIT.EDU Printing DEFSTRUCTs
C00624 00179 ∂03-Oct-86 2100 DT50@A.CS.CMU.EDU printing structures
C00626 00180 ∂04-Oct-86 0023 bader@spice.cs.cmu.edu Re: printing structures
C00627 00181 ∂04-Oct-86 1817 RWK@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: printing structures
C00630 00182 ∂05-Oct-86 2017 Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM Re: printing structures
C00633 00183 ∂05-Oct-86 2115 SOLEY@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU printing structures
C00635 00184 ∂05-Oct-86 2223 ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Printing Structures
C00638 00185 ∂06-Oct-86 1045 DLW@ALDERAAN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Printing Structures
C00641 00186 ∂06-Oct-86 2103 RWK@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: printing structures
C00645 00187 ∂07-Oct-86 0917 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: printing structures
C00648 00188 ∂16-Oct-86 0123 KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM DEFVAR
C00650 00189 ∂16-Oct-86 0123 KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM ADJUST-ARRAY
C00653 00190 ∂16-Oct-86 1604 Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM ADJUST-ARRAY
C00658 00191 ∂16-Oct-86 1801 Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM ADJUST-ARRAY
C00663 00192 ∂20-Oct-86 1046 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU DEFVAR
C00665 ENDMK
C⊗;
∂29-Jul-86 0328 a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Re: exit-to-system
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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 16:14:11+0900
From: Masayuki Ida <a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Message-Id: <8607290714.AA22657@ccut.u-tokyo.junet>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA, gls%aquinas.think.com@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA,
ida%u-tokyo.junet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
Subject: Re: exit-to-system
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 86 15:01 EDT
From: Guy Steele <gls%ZARATHUSTRA.THINK.COM@u-tokyo.junet>
Subject: Re: exit-to-system
...
Well, we do have ED, which is clearly a user-interface thing.
Here is a stab at defining QUIT:
QUIT [Function]
This function is intended to terminate the running Lisp system in some
appropriate manner. ...
...
--Guy
I agree. The name QUIT sounds reasonable.
ida@utokyo-relay.csnet
-----
∂29-Jul-86 0623 Moon@RIVERSIDE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #7: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
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Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 20:24 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #7: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12224580594.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
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TYPE-SPECIFIER-P is an appropriate name for a function that takes an
(OR SYMBOL LIST) and tells whether it's a valid specifier. If you're
going to replace this with a function that takes a SYMBOL and tells
whether it's the name of a type, call it TYPE-NAME-P.
However, I agree with Masinter's comment that we should concentrate on
fixing what is wrong with the language rather than adding more features.
I have no objection to either of TYPE-SPECIFIER-P or TYPE-NAME-P if
someone can show why these are needed to fix something wrong with the
language. Perhaps Guy can comment on why the original proposal 51 in
his clarifications list was tagged with an asterisk indicating that it
corrects an important flaw or resolves an ambiguity in the
specification.
∂29-Jul-86 0642 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Some easy ones (?)
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Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 17:32 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Some easy ones (?)
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12224580594.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860728173256.1.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I would find it much easier to follow these discussions if there
weren't ten discussions going on simultaneously in the -same-
messages. If each discussion was conducted in a different set
of messages, I could sort the messages into individual discussions
and read each discussion as an uninterrupted, coherent whole.
To practice what I preach, I am going to respond to each of the
ten proposals in your message of 21 July with a separate message
(except for the ones that I don't respond to at all).
∂29-Jul-86 0642 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #8: Clarifications to DEFCONSTANT
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Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 20:57 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #8: Clarifications to DEFCONSTANT
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12224580594.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
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Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1986 21:46 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Proposal #8: Clarifications to DEFCONSTANT
Clarify that using DEFCONSTANT to redefine any constant described in the
Common Lisp specification is an error.
Non-controversial.
Clarify that if the user defines a constant, compiles code that refers
to that constant, and then redefines the constant, then behavior of the
compiled code may be unpredictable. It is an error to execute such
code.
Non-controversial, and "is an error" seems clearly the right level, rather
than "signals an error."
Clarify that it is not an error to issue a second DEFCONSTANT command
for an existing constant iff the new value is EQL to the old one.
[That last clarification has not been discussed previously, as far as I
know, but seems to be needed for reloading certain compiled code files,
etc.]
Do you mean EQL or EQUAL? Consider the example
(defconstant error-message-69 "Le *terminal-io* n'est pas une pipe.")
I don't see any good justification for reading and evaluating that form
twice to be an error. Consider that many Lisp dialects consider EQUAL
constants equivalent and coalesce them into EQ objects. Of course EQUAL
isn't exactly the right test either, since (equal #(1 2 3) #(1 2 3)) is nil.
The appropriate test would be one that compares all elements of structured
objects and compares atoms with EQL, which doesn't exist as a predefined
function in Common Lisp. Equality was one of the areas where we decided
to punt in the interests of getting a language specification out in a
finite time, since there wasn't complete agreement on what to do.
Perhaps parts 2 and 3 of this proposal properly belong to the system
environment, rather than to the programming language, especially when
you start talking about such concepts as "compiled code files".
∂29-Jul-86 0642 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #14: THE and VALUES
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Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 21:21 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #14: THE and VALUES
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
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<RAM.12224974495.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
<860723125416.0.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<860723130828.1.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<[G.BBN.COM]23-Jul-86 22:40:33.NGALL>,
<FAHLMAN.12226167693.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860728212151.9.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1986 21:46 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Specify that in (THE (VALUES ...) form), the form may return more
values, but not fewer, than the number of types specified in the (VALUES
...) form, and that any extra values are of unrestricted type.
Also specify that (THE type form) where type is not (VALUES ...) is
equivalent to (THE (VALUES type) form).
I agree completely with MacLachlan's comments, enclosed. Both parts of
the proposal should be rejected. I do have one query; see below.
Plummer's suggestion of a standardized way to coerce a result to a
particular number of values sounds useful but should be raised as a
separate issue.
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1986 09:50 EDT
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Well, I think everyone is wrong about this one. (THE (VALUES ...) ...)
specifies the functional type of the continuation. This is in effect
what CLTL already says: "...indicates the parameter list of a function
that, when given to multiple-value-call along with the values, would
be suitable for receiving those values."
My question is whether the quoted text (CLtL p.48) is a mistake. It could
have been accidentally retained from the days when multiple-value-bind
allowed & keywords, or it could be intentional.
I strongly disagree with any proposal which gives THE mandatory
run-time semantics. THE is a declaration --- its presence should not
change the meaning of a correct program. If the form returns too many
values, then the program is in error and the result is undefined.
I agree that it is highly desirable to be able to specify the
type of the first value without worrying about the actual number of
values. To this end, I propose that (THE FOO ...) should be
synonomous with the (THE (VALUES FOO &REST T) ...). This allows one
to say things like (THE FIXNUM (TRUNCATE ...)).
It should also be clarified that the VALUES type specifier may
have &ALLOW-OTHER-KEYS.
∂29-Jul-86 0642 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #11: Contents of Tagbody
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Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 21:07 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #11: Contents of Tagbody
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12224580594.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
<860722174822.6.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
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The message of 23 Jul 86 15:30 EDT from "BACH::VANROGGEN" <vanroggen%bach.decnet@hudson.dec.com>,
<FAHLMAN.12226158847.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860728210754.8.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1986 21:46 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Proposal #11: Contents of Tagbody
Specify that constant forms such as strings may appear at top-level in a
tagbody, but that only symbols and integers are considered to be tags.
It is an error to use anything else as the destination tag for a GO.
[Several forms of this have been kicked around. This seems as good as
any. The original issue was whether you could put something like a
string at top-level and, if so, whether you could go to it.]
I prefer Steele's original proposal, which was:
Specify explicitly that anything in a TAGBODY other than
a symbol, integer, or list is an error.
The manual already implies this, so the change would not be incompatible.
I can see nothing but user confusion resulting from allowing strings or
any other object that is not self-evidently either a form or a tag.
I'm more than willing to take (tagbody #1="bar" (print 1) (go #1#))
out of the Symbolics interpreter (the compiler already complains).
I think we should continue to allow integers as tags, for two reasons.
(1) Removing them would be an unnecessary incompatibility.
(2) Some people may be used to using integers as tags in other languages
(Basic, Pascal, Fortran) and these are the people most likely to be using
GO directly (rather than as part of the expansion of a macro).
∂29-Jul-86 0643 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
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Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 22:10 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12224580594.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
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<12225052592.76.FREEMAN@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>,
<[G.BBN.COM]23-Jul-86 21:39:54.NGALL>,
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The message of 25 Jul 86 00:30 EDT from Dave.Touretzky@A.CS.CMU.EDU,
<[G.BBN.COM]25-Jul-86 01:45:01.NGALL>,
The message of 25 Jul 86 09:15 EDT from "BACH::VANROGGEN" <vanroggen%bach.decnet@hudson.dec.com>,
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Message-ID: <860728221058.2.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1986 22:02 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Proposal #9A:
It is an error for two parameters (including supplied-p and &aux
parameters) in the same lambda list to be represented by the same (EQ)
symbol. This also holds for parameters bound by LET, LET*, DO, DO*,
FLET, LABELS, PROGV, MACROLET, MV-BIND, and PROG.
There is no such thing as MV-BIND; I expect you meant MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND.
You forgot PROG*. You omitted COMPILER-LET and PROGV, but I can't guess
whether this was accidental or intentional.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Proposal #9B:
Same, but don't include LET*.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Although I favor 9A, I have to point out that Fahlman has used his power
as moderator to make proposal 9B look bad. Surely the real 9B would
treat all of the sequential binding forms in a consistent way.
This appears to be one of those situations where the answer is obviously
correct, but the obviously correct answer is different for different
individuals. The only comment I can add is that no matter which
proposal is adopted, it is very easy for the proponents of the other
proposal to define a LET+ macro which is LET* done the way they wanted,
and similarly for the other sequential binding forms.
∂29-Jul-86 0643 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #13: Structure Sharing in Arguments
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Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 21:54 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #13: Structure Sharing in Arguments
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12224580594.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
<860722174822.6.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
The message of 23 Jul 86 00:39 EDT from hpfclp!diamant@hplabs.HP.COM,
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<8607232003.AA00325@tekchips.TEK>,
<860724141621.4.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<FAHLMAN.12225382154.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
<FAHLMAN.12225383753.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
<8607251827.AA05634@utah-orion.ARPA>,
<860725150616.3.GLS@IGNATIUS.THINK.COM>,
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The message of 26 Jul 86 18:38 EDT from SCOTT <SAFIER%cgi.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>,
<8607262326.AA01397@utah-orion.ARPA>,
<FAHLMAN.12225931299.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
<FAHLMAN.12226167028.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860728215406.0.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 86 15:06 EDT
From: Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>
I think the lesson here is that, in general, you shouldn't ever clobber
a CONS if you don't know where it has been. Certain CL primitives do
guarantee to cons up fresh lists, and you can safely clobber their
results. Everything else you ought to be careful with, and that
includes &rest arguments, the results of PARSE-BODY, the results of FOO,
and so on. Unless a function or other construct is clearly documented
to indicate that it is okay to clobber its result, then you should avoid
doing so.
I agree so strongly with the above statement that I'm going to waste
hundreds of people's time by including it in my message so that they
have to read it again. The negation of this statement is practically
the definition of poor programming practice.
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 86 21:39:37 pdt
From: hpfclp!diamant@hplabs.HP.COM
....it better be clear that the
list returned may not be something which will go away on exiting the
function (which could happen if the parameter list were stored on the
stack and a pointer to that list was returned -- apparently what
Symbolics does).
Symbolics has always agreed that this aspect of our implementation is
not in conformance with Common Lisp, and have said so in our
documentation. We just haven't gotten around to fixing the bug yet, for
engineering reasons that I won't bore you by expounding. No one should
think that we oppose Diamant's statement above.
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1986 23:01 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
13A: Specify that the &REST or &BODY argument to a macro may be the very
list from the macro call, and not a copy. Therefore, if this argument
is destructively modified, the originl text of the macro may also be
altered.
Agreed. Make sure the word is "might", not "must", where you now use
the ambiguous word "may" in two places.
Vanroggen brought up &WHOLE. The manual already implies that the &WHOLE
argument is required to be the original form, and not a copy, but this
should be made more explicit. Is this big enough to be a separate issue?
13B: Specify explicitly that the &REST argument in a function has
indefinite extent and may, for example, be returned to the function's
caller.
Agreed.
13C: The &REST list in a function is not necessarily a freshly-consed
list. If the function is called with APPLY, the &REST list may share
top-level structure with the last argument to the APPLY. Users should
keep this in mind if they are considering destructive modifications to
such a list.
Agreed, but the wording should be changed to say that an &REST argument
might share structure with something else regardless of how the function
was called, and simply use APPLY as an example. There is no reason to
put extra restrictions on the implementation here.
- OR -
13C': The &REST list in a function is freshly consed upon function entry.
It shares no top-level structure with any pre-existing list.
It's a bad idea to base the language specification on the idiosyncracies
of a particular implementation.
∂29-Jul-86 0644 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
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Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 21:58 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
To: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <[G.BBN.COM]23-Jul-86 23:55:15.NGALL>
Message-ID: <860728215820.1.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 23 Jul 1986 23:55-EDT
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
The following thought just struck me. If we change CL to outlaw
things like (lambda (x x ...)...), then people who have been writing
code like (lambda (ignore x ignore) (declare (ignore ignore))...)
may be upset when their code breaks.
Since it "is an error", not "signals an error", those people are free to
criticize their compiler for wasting their time with worthless warnings
if it warns about this. It seems clear enough that warning about duplicate
parameter names when the parameters are explicitly ignored does no one
any good.
∂29-Jul-86 0649 DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5 status
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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 09:48 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #5 status
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12226431936.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860729094823.0.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1986 23:16 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
4. The macro-expansion for the first form in return value 3, if any.
Why the macroexpansion of the first form of the body? Why not the body
with the first form possibly expanded?
It saves a CONS.
As if macroexpansion doesn't cons up the wazoo?
It saves a CONS.
What's a CONS among friends?
It saves a CONS.
Let the GC take care of it.
It saves a CONS.
Since when does saving a single CONS dictate language design?
Why not toss in the kitchen sink? It looks to me like
design-by-committee disease is striking.
Why is it always the guy who endlessly nit-picks every last unimportant
detail who accuses others of design by committee?
If there isn't at least one nit-picking asshole (who unfortunately
doesn't read the 2 messages about etiquette burried in the middle of 30
messages before responding to half of the remaining 28), there is the
possibility that real issues won't be raised and that what some people
think are unimportant issues might turn out to be huge timebombs.
∂29-Jul-86 0652 NGALL@G.BBN.COM Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
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Date: 29 Jul 1986 09:50-EDT
Sender: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
Subject: Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
To: Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[G.BBN.COM]29-Jul-86 09:50:57.NGALL>
In-Reply-To: <860728215820.1.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 21:58 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 23 Jul 1986 23:55-EDT
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
The following thought just struck me. If we change CL to outlaw
things like (lambda (x x ...)...), then people who have been writing
code like (lambda (ignore x ignore) (declare (ignore ignore))...)
may be upset when their code breaks.
Since it "is an error", not "signals an error", those people are free to
criticize their compiler for wasting their time with worthless warnings
if it warns about this. It seems clear enough that warning about duplicate
parameter names when the parameters are explicitly ignored does no one
any good.
But under some of the new declaration-semantics proposals, the ignore
decl. would apply to only one of the parameters, thus given
(lambda (x y x z x) (declare (ignore x))...)
a compiler should still warn (or signal an error) that two of the
parameters illegally share a name. [Perhaps this can be used as an
argument against the proposal that a decl only affect only one of the
identically named entities to which it refers.]
-- Nick
∂29-Jul-86 0658 DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5 status
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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 09:55 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #5 status
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12226431936.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860729095530.1.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1986 23:16 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
As I pointed out in another message, the argument should be called
stop-parsing-on-string-p or something like that. I gave examples that
the current definition of parse-body implies are errors.
FYI, The normal way things appear in the manual is
{ declaration | doc-string }*
and that is also the order I have seen it (declarations before
doc-string) in code at Symbolics.
?? I assume somebody has convinced themselves that the ordering or
separation of declares has no semantic meaning in CL?
Yes, unless you have a counter-example.
I can't think of any, but I wanted to make sure somebody has convinced
themselves.
∂29-Jul-86 1123 DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: PARSE-BODY
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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 11:55 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: PARSE-BODY
To: Masinter.pa@XEROX.COM, common-lisp@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <860728-140217-2923@Xerox>
Message-ID: <860729115514.7.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 28 Jul 86 13:43 PDT
From: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
a) it is of little general utility
Given the addition of &body variables for macros, I can think of no
examples where I would want to directly call parse-body instead of just
using the macro-expansion option. (I currently have lots of examples
that call parse-body, but they're all in macros that could use the new
&body options instead.)
(defmacro condition-bind (list &body body)
(expand-condition-bind ''t list body))
(defmacro conditin-bind-if (predicate list &body body)
(expand-condition-bind predicate list body))
Why should I be forced to destructure the body in the defmacro instead
of the common expansion routine?
∂29-Jul-86 1215 @SU-SCORE.ARPA,@REAGAN.AI.MIT.EDU:MLY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU Re: PARSE-BODY
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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 11:54 EDT
From: Richard Mlynarik <MLY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: PARSE-BODY
To: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM, common-lisp@sail.stanford.edu
In-Reply-To: <860728-140217-2923@Xerox>
Message-ID: <860729115443.3.MLY@RICKY.AI.MIT.EDU>
Date: 28 Jul 86 13:43 PDT
From: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
I am (now) opposed to adding PARSE-BODY to the Common Lisp standard (as
long as the parse-body option is added to the macro expansion argument
list) for the following reasons:
a) it is of little general utility
Given the addition of &body variables for macros, I can think of no
examples where I would want to directly call parse-body instead of just
using the macro-expansion option. (I currently have lots of examples
that call parse-body, but they're all in macros that could use the new
&body options instead.)
I disagree; here's an example, of which I could provide many more:
[I named it extract-declarations in some code I wrote to avoid a possible
conflict with anybody who had already implemented a function named PARSE-BODY]
(defmacro condition-case (form &rest clauses &environment environment)
"Execute FORM with conditions handled according to CLAUSES.
Each element of CLAUSES specifies one or more condition names,
and what to do if they are signalled.
More specifically, each clause is a list:
(<conditions> <arglist> . <body-forms...>)
<conditions> is not evaluated, and should be either a condition name
or a list of condition names to be handled.
<arglist> is either a list of a single symbol specifying a variable
to be bound to the condition being handled,
or () meaning that the clause is not interested in the particular
condition object.
<body-forms> are evaluated if a condition specified by <conditions>
is signalled. The value of the last of the forms is returned from
CONDITION-CASE in this case.
The clauses are considered in order, as in TYPECASE.
If no clause is executed to handle a condition, the values of FORM are returned."
#+lispm (declare (zwei:indentation 0 3 1 1))
(flet ((lose (&rest format)
(apply #'lisp:error "Error macro-expanding ~S: ~?"
'condition-case format)))
(dolist (clause clauses)
(cond ((not (consp clause))
(lose "clauses must be lists: ~S" clause))
((not (or (null (cadr clause))
(and (consp (cadr clause))
(null (cdr (cadr clause)))
(symbolp (car (cadr clause))))))
(lose "second element of a clause must be () or a list of a variable to bind: ~S"
clause))
;... other error checks...
))
(let ((gensym (gensym)))
`(block ,gensym
;; this depends on the order in which condition-bind and condition-case
;; clauses are defined to be searched
(condition-bind
;; I get a Gold Star for not using LOOP
(,@(mapcar #'(lambda (clause)
(multiple-value-bind (body decls)
(extract-declarations (cddr clause) environment)
`(,(car clause)
#'(lambda ,(or (cadr clause) (list gensym))
(declare
,@(if (cadr clause) () `((ignore ,gensym)))
,@decls)
#+symbolics
,@(if (cadr clause) () (list gensym))
(return-from ,gensym
(progn ,@body))))))
clauses))
,form)))))
If anything, I think that PARSE-BODY is more essential than the proposed
extensions to &BODY. (I am not overly fond of the &body-extensions
because of their dissimilarity to other defmacro destructuring, but
acknowledge their usefulness)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
b) it is controversial
While every implementation will have SOMETHING like parse-body (if only
to implement the handing of macro arguments) there seems to be little
agreement on what its arguments might be or what values it might return.
It would seem that every implementation wants something slightly
different (e.g., it depends on whether you cache macro translations as
for whether you want to save the macro translation & the work of
obtaining it or recompute it.)
The `controversy' I think you will find is over rather minor (even stupid)
details. (Like order arguments and returned values, and the stuff you
cite relating to Fahlman's 4th and 5th values)
I find your last argument (about macroexpansion efficiency) rather spurious.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
c) it isn't very simple
(This is isn't a simple argument to make, unfortunately.) The value of
features is inversly proportional to the complexity of their interfaces.
Functions that have a "process-it-this-way-p" arguments and "returns 3
values, but maybe just the first" should be viewed with suspicion, that
they don't represent the "true" interface to what is going on in the
system. That is, "parse-body" is just a piece of some more complex
processing of macros, arguments & bodies that is part of the language
writers toolkit, that isn't very isolated. Motivating it (what's this
for?) would be difficult without a lot more context.
Here's what I think is a pretty-much-adequate implementation (so much
for complexity!)
(defun extract-declarations (body &optional environment doc-string-valid-p)
"Extract declarations and documentation string from BODY and return them.
The first value is what is left of BODY after any doc string and decls are
removed. It is BODY missing some number of its initial elements.
The second value is the list of declarations found.
Each element of a DECLARE found in body is a declaration
and goes on this list.
The third value is the doc string found in BODY, if there was one.
However, doc strings are only processed if DOC-STRING-VALID-P is non-NIL."
#+lmnil (declare (values body declarations doc-string))
(let (form (doc nil) (decls ()))
(loop
;; Macro-expand the form, but don't worry if we get an error.
;; In that case, we will not see it as a declaration,
;; it will get macroexpanded again, and generate a warning then.
;;>> We can't use condition:condition-case since in this toy
;;>> implementation MACROEXPAND probably doesn't signal `our' errors
(setq form #+lmnil (si:condition-case ()
(macroexpand (car body) environment)
(si:error (return)))
#+lucid ;is buggy for (macroexpand '(declare)) [bugous?]
; Of course, this means we lose if DECLARE is
; lexically defined in ENVIRONMENT.
(if (and (consp (car body))
(eq (caar body) 'declare))
(car body)
;; this is about as good as I could figure
;; out without sources or a disassembler
(let ((tem (lucid::with-error-trapping
(macroexpand (car body)
environment))))
(if (and (consp tem)
(member (car tem)
'(lisp:error lisp:cerror))
(consp (cdr tem))
(string= (cadr tem) "Error")
(consp (cddr tem))
(stringp (caddr tem))
(consp (cdddr tem))
(listp (cadddr tem)))
form
tem)))
;; other implementations probably have some way to hack
;; ignore-errors
#-(or lmnil lucid)
(macroexpand (car body) environment)
)
(cond ((and doc-string-valid-p
(stringp form))
;; If the string is the last thing in the body,
;; don't inhale it, since it needs to be the return value.
(or (cdr body) (return))
;; We skip any number of strings, but use only the first.
(or doc (setq doc form)))
((and (consp form) (eq (car form) 'declare))
;; silently ignore badly-formed declare forms. Probably should warn.
(let ((decl (remove-if-not #'consp (the list (cdr form)))))
;; hack the DOCUMENTATION declaration specially
(let ((tem (assoc 'documentation decl)))
(when (and tem doc-string-valid-p)
(when (and (null doc)
(stringp (cadr tem)))
(setq doc (cadr tem)))
(setq decl (delete 'documentation decl :key #'car))))
(if decl
;; We allow any number of DECLAREs, and process them all.
(setq decls (append decl decls)))))
(t (return)))
(pop body))
(values body decls doc)))
∂29-Jul-86 1218 Miller.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
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Date: 29 Jul 86 11:37 PDT
From: Miller.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
In-reply-to: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>'s
message of Mon, 28 Jul 86 21:58 EDT
To: Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
cc: NGALL@G.BBN.COM, common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860729-113809-3801@Xerox>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 21:58 EDT
From: David A. Moon
Date: 23 Jul 1986 23:55-EDT
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
The following thought just struck me. If we change CL to outlaw
things like (lambda (x x ...)...), then people who have been
writing
code like (lambda (ignore x ignore) (declare (ignore ignore))...)
may be upset when their code breaks.
Since it "is an error", not "signals an error", those people are free
to
criticize their compiler for wasting their time with worthless warnings
if it warns about this. It seems clear enough that warning about
duplicate
parameter names when the parameters are explicitly ignored does no one
any good.
"it is an error" means that a correct compiler may generate arbitrary
and worthless code when it encounters this case. If "(lambda (ignore x
ignore) (declare (ignore ignore))...)" is an error, then it may do worse
than break. This should either be legal, specified to signal an error,
or at least specified that, if not caught, will be harmless (not one of
the error catagories I know of)
∂29-Jul-86 1219 DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Staus of proposals 10, 11, and 12
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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 11:50 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Staus of proposals 10, 11, and 12
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12226438578.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860729115038.6.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1986 23:53 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Proposal #10: Forms That Allow Declarations
I did question the need/usefullness of allowing declarations in
MACROLET. Nobody has responded and I still can't think of any.
It would come as a nasty surprise to people if MACROLET were different
from FLET and LABELS in this respect.
I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, I'm saying we should acknowledge we
don't know what to do with it yet. There have been parts of the
Symbolics documentation that say "We think this is useful but haven't
figured out for what yet. We encourage experimentation and reports of
its usage." I may have thought of one usage:
(macrolet ((print-them (list)
`(mapc #'print ,list)))
(declare (notinline mapc))
...)
If anybody else believes this, perhaps it should be one of the examples?
∂29-Jul-86 1220 @MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA,@GOLD-HILL-ACORN.LCS.MIT.EDU:mike%gold-hill-acorn@MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA Re: Proposal #7 Status: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 12:47 EST
Sender: mike%gold-hill-acorn@mit-live-oak.arpa
To: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
From: mike%gold-hill-acorn@mit-live-oak.arpa
Subject: Re: Proposal #7 Status: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
cc: common-lisp@su-ai.arpa
Date: 28 Jul 86 1301 PDT
......
From:
Subject: Re: Proposal #7 Status: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
In-reply-to: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>'s message of Sun,
27 Jul 86 21:44 EDT
......
On some further thought, TYPE-SPECIFIER-P is ambiguous in some cases
where the argument is a symbol:
Suppose you have
(deftype relatively-prime-to (n) `(satisfies (lambda (x) (= 1 (gcd x
,n)))))
In this case, relatively-prime-to by itself is not "a valid type
specifier".
(relatively-prime-to 10) is a valid type specifier, and
(relatively-prime-to t) is not.
Your point about deftype can be looked at differently.
If I have a deftype, i.e., (deftype mod (n) ...) etc. then
"mod" is a parameterized type.
The polymorphic lambda calculus has abstraction and
beta reduction defined for types, so following its example, the
type of "mod" might be (type-lambda (n) <type-expression in n>), where
type-lambda is the type abstraction.
In the light of this, (type-specifier-p 'relatively-prime-to) should
be true (independent of whether we add any type-abstraction notations to CL).
{ aside:: By the way, the polymorphic lambda calculus is fairly
interesting, so for those of you interested in fixing up the type
system, I suggest you look at it carefully. If you want, send me
mail (NO NOT TO THE CL MAILING LIST!!) and I will send some
references. :-) }
Any attempt to make type-specifier-p tell you whether a type specifier
specifies any real class of objects cannot work due to undecidability
problems. What we want is a SYNTACTIC property.
Is the intent "is this something I can hand to typep?" If so, it would
be false for "relatively-prime-to". If the intent is "does this *name* a
type-specifier" then we could allow it, but the usefulness of such a
thing is unclear to me.
Note that (typep 'relatively-prime-to...) should be invalid, since
'relatively-prime-to is not a type, but it IS a valid specifier.
Note, there are no objects of type (type-lambda (n) ...) since those
objects would be TYPES, not instances of types.
.....
d) of all of the proposals to consider, proposals to add new constructs
should get much lower priority than those to clarify or standardize
current constructs.
Amen.
I just think we should plan to revise the type system somewhat, instead of
just adding features. I agree that this is fairly low priority, and in
the light of...
e) there is another proposal (before the Object Oriented Programming
committee in this case) which satisfies at least part of the original
requirement in a different way.
Most object-oriented stuff impacts the type system dramatically, so
we should reexamine the type-system in light of object oriented extentions.
...mike beckerle
Gold Hill Computers
∂29-Jul-86 1255 RPG Yapper of the Month Club
To: common-lisp@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
From May 14 through July 28 there were 690 messages to
Common-Lisp, around 9 a day. Here are the top message senders
with the number of messages sent during that period. There is
a fairly sharp break between these folks and the rest, with several
having 10 messages or so.
132 Fahlman
56 Plummer
44 Gall
30 Masinter
27 Steele
25 Moon
24 Weinreb
23 Pitman
20 Loosemore
18 Foderaro
18 Beckerle (Mike@a)
18 Shebs
Er, congratulations.
-rpg-
∂29-Jul-86 1456 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposed moratorium (clarification)
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Tue 29 Jul 86 17:56:41-EDT
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1986 17:56 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12226635848.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Proposed moratorium (clarification)
At the end of my suggestion for a Lisp Conference moratorium on
technical mail, I said "this is only a suggestion, but I can't guarantee
that mail arriving during that itme will be read." This was a feeble
attempt at a joke. All mail will be read eventually. I still think it
would be a good idea to ease up on the mail during this period, however.
Sometimes I get comedy and tragedy confused, I'm afraid.
-- Scott
∂29-Jul-86 1734 pyramid!bein@SUN.COM closing standard channels
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id AA02084; Tue, 29 Jul 86 17:10:26 pdt
Date: 29 Jul 1986 17:07-PDT
From: David Bein <pyramid!bein@SUN.COM>
Subject: closing standard channels
To: common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Message-Id: <523066026/bein@pyramid>
I know this question may have been asked before..
What seems to be the consensus on closing streams
like *terminal-io*,*standard-input*, etc? Should it
be an error to try to close them, should it be a
noop or what?
--David
∂29-Jul-86 1835 NGALL@G.BBN.COM Re: Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
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Date: 29 Jul 1986 21:33-EDT
Sender: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
Subject: Re: Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
To: Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[G.BBN.COM]29-Jul-86 21:33:23.NGALL>
In-Reply-To: <860728221058.2.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 22:10 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1986 22:02 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Proposal #9A:
It is an error for two parameters (including supplied-p and &aux
parameters) in the same lambda list to be represented by the same (EQ)
symbol. This also holds for parameters bound by LET, LET*, DO, DO*,
FLET, LABELS, PROGV, MACROLET, MV-BIND, and PROG.
There is no such thing as MV-BIND; I expect you meant MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND.
You forgot PROG*. You omitted COMPILER-LET and PROGV, but I can't guess
whether this was accidental or intentional.
I think I submitted this list of var. binding forms. I abbreviated
MULTIPLE-VALUE to MV, sorry if it wasn't clear. PROGV wasn't omitted
(see?). The omission of compiler-let and prog* was accidental
(compiler-let wasn't in the list on page 154 (which was all I looked
at) and I guess I didn't see prog* under prog).
-- Nick
∂29-Jul-86 1848 NGALL@G.BBN.COM Re: Staus of proposals 10, 11, and 12
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Date: 29 Jul 1986 21:47-EDT
Sender: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
Subject: Re: Staus of proposals 10, 11, and 12
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Message-ID: <[G.BBN.COM]29-Jul-86 21:47:02.NGALL>
In-Reply-To: <860729115038.6.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 11:50 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I may have thought of one usage:
(macrolet ((print-them (list)
`(mapc #'print ,list)))
(declare (notinline mapc))
...)
If anybody else believes this, perhaps it should be one of the examples?
I don't believe it. The stuff inside the backquoted list is not code,
it is data. Here's a similar one that I believe:
(macrolet ((print-them (list)
`(progn ,@(mapcar #'(lambda (item) `(print ',item))
list)))
(declare (notinline mapcar))
...)
In this, the mapcar funcall form IS code. Note that this still is not
a strong argument for decls in the body of a macrolet, since the decl
could have been put in the body of the print-them macro definition.
But I agree that we should allow decls in the body of a macrolet.
-- Nick
∂29-Jul-86 1854 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposal #8: Clarifications to DEFCONSTANT
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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1986 21:53 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12226678969.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "David A. Moon" <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Proposal #8: Clarifications to DEFCONSTANT
In-reply-to: Msg of 28 Jul 1986 20:57-EDT from David A. Moon <Moon at STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Clarify that it is not an error to issue a second DEFCONSTANT command
for an existing constant iff the new value is EQL to the old one.
Do you mean EQL or EQUAL? Consider the example
(defconstant error-message-69 "Le *terminal-io* n'est pas une pipe.")
I don't see any good justification for reading and evaluating that form
twice to be an error.
Well, we prohibit compilers from replacing a constant reference with
inline code that is merely EQUAL to the constant; it must be EQL. This
was so that you could do things like
(defconstant terminator '(nil))
and then do EQL testing for instances of TERMINATOR. Perhaps this is
bogus, but if we keep that, we can't allow users to redefine constants
to other values that are merely EQUAL, because it will break such code.
I am not sure if it is safe to detect that the new constant value is
EQUAL to the old one and, if so, to leave the old one in place.
-- Scott
∂29-Jul-86 1920 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
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From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "David A. Moon" <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
Although I favor 9A, I have to point out that Fahlman has used his power
as moderator to make proposal 9B look bad. Surely the real 9B would
treat all of the sequential binding forms in a consistent way.
If I were to propose something along these lines, it would be to treat
all of the sequential binding forms (including LAMBDA/DEFUN) in a
consistent way. I believe that Andy Freeman was the one who first
argued for what became 9B, and he specifically said that LAMBDA/DEFUN
should not allow multiple args of the same name. He couldn't decide
about DO*.
If, in summarizing, I replace the opposition's proposals with something
I think is better, that's an abuse of power. If I faithfully report
what was proposed when I know better, I'm making them look bad,
and that's also an abuse of power. Oh, well.
-- Scott
∂30-Jul-86 0640 MASINTER.PA@Xerox.COM declarations in macrolet puzzle
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Date: 30 Jul 86 6:40:17 PDT
Subject: declarations in macrolet puzzle
To: common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Message-ID: <860730-064109-1194@Xerox>
(macrolet ((specials () (specials) '(declare (special special-list ,@special-list))))
(specials)
special-list))
since macros can expand into declarations
and bodies have to have macros expanded before declarations can be seen
yet macrolet macros are visible in the body then ...
∂30-Jul-86 0705 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU Declarations in MACROLET
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From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Declarations in MACROLET
I don't think that it would be correct for a declaration at the
head of a macrolet to affect the bodies of any of the macros, since
the bodies of the macros are defined to be in the null environment.
The only use for declarations in this place would be to make pervasive
declarations which affect the body of the MACROLET. Of course this
could be done by LOCALLY.
Rob
∂30-Jul-86 1001 gls@Think.COM Motivation for PARSE-BODY
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Date: Wed, 30 Jul 86 13:01 EDT
From: Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>
Subject: Motivation for PARSE-BODY
To: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM, common-lisp@sail.stanford.edu
Cc: gls@AQUINAS
In-Reply-To: <860728-140217-2923@Xerox>
Message-Id: <860730130117.1.GLS@BOETHIUS.THINK.COM>
Some of us, at least, use Lisp for the inventing of new embedded languages, and
one of the great things about Lisp is that is lets you get at various tools that
are used within the Lisp implementation itself (or were, at a time when a
particular paradigm was standard). Examples of these are READ, PRINT, PROGV,
ASSOC, and PAIRLIS. (You might not think of READ and PRINT as peculiarly part
of the interpreter, but consider how many language implementations have a very
complicated routine for reading and parsing programs but don't let the user get
at it? Consider APL, for example, whose program editor is not invocable by user
programs.)
If I want to invent my own interpreter (and I often do), having PARSE-BODY around
would be very convenient.
--Guy
∂30-Jul-86 1049 Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Motivation for PARSE-BODY
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From: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: Motivation for PARSE-BODY
In-reply-to: Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>'s message of Wed, 30 Jul 86
13:01 EDT
To: gls@Think.COM
cc: common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Message-ID: <860730-104707-1440@Xerox>
Guy,
I refer you to the compatibility note on pp 364-365 in a book written by
some random fellow, where there was a claim that "This design is an
attempt to make the reader as simple as possible to understand, use, and
implement." and "It is unnecessary, however, to cater to more complex
lexical analysis or parsing than that needed for Common Lisp."
Even if PARSE-BODY were as generally useful as, say, splicing reader
macros, the argument that it should be in Common Lisp because it >might
be convenient< for writers of embedded languages is a very weak one.
As has been pointed out, anyone who wants to write an embedded language
can write their own PARSE-BODY trivially relying only on MACROEXPAND and
a few CONSes and EQLs. Maybe we could even put PARSE-BODY it in the
(whatever-happened-to-the) yellow pages.
Just as Common Lisp doesn't provide built-in support for BNF parsing,
there's no reason to put something as awkward as parse-body into the
standard.
∂30-Jul-86 1137 gls@Think.COM Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
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From: Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>
Subject: Re: Proposal about lambda-list params
To: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA, gls@AQUINAS
In-Reply-To: <[G.BBN.COM]29-Jul-86 09:50:57.NGALL>
Message-Id: <860730143746.5.GLS@BOETHIUS.THINK.COM>
Date: 29 Jul 1986 09:50-EDT
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
...
But under some of the new declaration-semantics proposals, the ignore
decl. would apply to only one of the parameters, thus given
(lambda (x y x z x) (declare (ignore x))...)
a compiler should still warn (or signal an error) that two of the
parameters illegally share a name. ...
Maybe one should have to write
(lambda (x y x z x) (declare (ignore x) (ignore x) (ignore x))...)
to suppress all warnings.
--Quux :-)
∂30-Jul-86 1252 DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5, or somewhere around there (rather long, constructive, and non-flaming(!))
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From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #5, or somewhere around there (rather long, constructive, and non-flaming(!))
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860730143900.6.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Alternate proposal that has a declarative syntax, and is probably a lot
more comprehensible.
[ &DECLARATIONS declares-var [ &DOC-STRING doc-string-var ]] &BODY body-var
If somebody wants to call it &DOCUMENTATION-STRING, go ahead; CLtL
usuually abbreviates "documentation-string" it to "doc-string".
Full semantics:
- Since &BODY can only be used in macros, these extensions may
only be used in macros.
- &DECLARATIONS may only appear if &BODY appears.
- &DOC-STRING may only appear if &DECLARATIONS appears.
- If any of these extensions appear, they appear in the order given, on
the grounds that is the normal order found within code. It probably
makes parsing defmacro's lambda-list a bit easier, and uniformity
will make code easier to understand by other than the author.
- declares-var is a catenation of the declarations. If the original
body had
(declare (ignore a))
(declare (ignore b) (inline aref))
then declares-var would get bound to
((ignore a) (ignore b) (inline aref))
- If &DOC-STRING is present, the first string of the unpruned body is
the documentation string, and parsing/pruning stops with the second
string, which is considered part of the implicit progn. [The
exception is a string that is the last form of the body, in that case
it is part of the implicit and not a doc-string, just like now.]
- If &DOC-STRING is not present, then the first string stops the
parsing/pruning of body. Any declares after a string are part of the
implicit progn and "are an error". Presumably the code that groks
implicit progns will complain about the presence of declares.
- body-var is the body without the declarations and/or doc-string, and
also with the first form NOT macroexpanded, even though
macroexpansion was necessary to search for declarations and
doc-strings. If the first form is a macro, it may get expanded
again. Tough, macros shouldn't have side effects.
I believe this nests correctly, as all the other defmacro destructuring
does. [Example deleted because even the simplest one is 16 lines long.]
I am willing to endorse this; I more-or-less believe it. I do not
believe the original
&BODY body-var [something-var [something-else-var]]
because it is totally lacking in syntax and comprehensibility.
Aside #1: I personally think &KEY and &BODY are mutually exclusive
because of their semantics; more-so when we worry about the presence of
declarations and a doc-string. This is because the semantics of a body
includes an implicit progn, whereas the semantics of keyword/values is of
markers and values. For those that do want &KEY and &BODY at the same
time it is probably necessary to require that the &KEY parsing happens
after the declarations/doc-string pruning.
Aside #2: If we had a simply specified PARSE-BODY, the simple
implementation of the above would be
(multiple-value-bind (declares-var doc-string-var body-var)
(parse-body original-body want-doc-string environment)
...)
I think we should have a (simply specified) PARSE-BODY even if (some)
extension to &BODY is adopted. The compiler and special-form groker
need them for the same reason users want them for defmacro. I think
PARSE-BODY and an &BODY extension should look very similar to each
other. I believe the ideas in this messages show such a similarity.
∂30-Jul-86 1259 berman@vaxa.isi.edu Conference
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From: berman@vaxa.isi.edu (Richard Berman)
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Date: 30 Jul 1986 1259-PDT (Wednesday)
To: common-lisp@su-ai.arpa
Cc:
Subject: Conference
Hi ya. I just found out that I'm going to the conference to meet with some
developers and what-not. So...I haven't been following the conference info
closely. Could somebody please post the times/locations for the Common Lisp
specific events?
Thanks.
RB
∂30-Jul-86 1330 berman@vaxa.isi.edu Conference
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From: berman@vaxa.isi.edu (Richard Berman)
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Date: 30 Jul 1986 1329-PDT (Wednesday)
To: common-lisp@su-ai.arpa
Subject: Conference
Hi ya. I just found out that I'm going to the conference to meet with some
developers and what-not. So...I haven't been following the conference info
closely. Could somebody please post the times/locations for the Common Lisp
specific events?
Thanks.
RB
∂30-Jul-86 1339 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Handout at Lisp Conference
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From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Handout at Lisp Conference
We plan to hand out the following informational flier at the Lisp
Conference registration. People who read it here won't have to take
one.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
STATUS OF COMMON LISP STANDARDIZATION EFFORTS
Common Lisp is fast becoming a de facto standard for Lisp, especially in
the commercial world where the need for a standard, widely accepted Lisp
dialect has long been felt. Almost all Lisp suppliers in the U.S. now
offer, or intend to offer, implementations of Common Lisp. The language
is now available on most of the workstations and mainframes that are
used by the AI research community. Several Japanese companies have also
been active in Common Lisp development, and a Japanese standardization
committee has been established. Common Lisp is being used in Europe,
and the European efforts at Lisp standardization are taking Common Lisp
as one important input.
At a meeting in Boston in December, 1985, representatives from the
Common Lisp community agreed to form technical and steering committees
to work on Common Lisp standardization. The technical committee is to
develop a detailed language specification for Common Lisp; the steering
committee is to work on the non-technical aspects of the standardization
process. A group of people, including five key contributors to the
original Common Lisp design, was chosen to select the members for these
new committees; that task was completed in March of 1986.
The technical committee members are Alan Bawden, Daniel Bobrow, Richard
Gabriel, Martin Griss, David Moon, Jonathan Rees, Guy Steele, and Scott
Fahlman (chairman). The steering committee members are Richard Gabriel,
John McCarthy, Ronald Ohlander, Stephen Squires, Guy Steele, and Robert
Mathis (chairman). It is expected that some non-U.S. members will be
added to both committees in the near future. Both of these committees
are interim bodies that will be integrated into the normal standards
process, once that process is operating fully.
A formal proposal was made to X3, the accredited U.S. standards
committee for information processing systems, to establish a technical
committee for Common Lisp standardization. This proposal was accepted;
the Common Lisp committee is called X3J13. Plans are also being made
for the establishment of an international committee for Lisp
standardization under ISO. The formation of an X3 technical committee
is the normal way for the U.S. to participate in ISO activities.
Most of the technical discussion on Common Lisp occurs on the ARPAnet
via the mailing list "common-lisp@@sail.stanford.edu", administered by
Richard Gabriel (rpg@@sail.stanford.edu). A number of other networks
have mail gateways to the ARPAnet, making it possible for almost all
interested parties to participate in the technical discussions.
Electronic mail communication has been established with participants in
Japan and Europe.
The first meeting of X3J13, the U.S. Technical Committee for the
standardization of Lisp, will be Tuesday and Wednesday, September 23 and
24, 1986, in Washington, DC, at the headquarters of CBEMA, Suite 500,
311 First St, NW. On Tuesday (23) the meeting will be from 10am to 5pm;
on Wednesday (24) the meeting will be from 9am to 3pm. No special hotel
arrangements are being made.
Membership in X3 technical committees is open to all who actively
participate (attend meetings or correspond) and pay an annual service
fee (about $175). US citizenship or residency is not required. The
first meeting is important since policies and procedures for X3
technical committees will be discussed and specific plans for the Lisp
activity will be made.
Anyone interested in joining X3J13, and particularly anyone planning to
attend the first meeting, should contact the convenor for X3J13: Dr.
Robert Mathis, 9712 Ceralene Dr., Fairfax, VA 22032. Phone: (703)
425-5923. Arpanet: mathis@@b.isi.edu.
∂30-Jul-86 1356 FREEMAN@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Re: Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
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Date: Wed 30 Jul 86 13:51:18-PDT
From: Andy Freeman <FREEMAN@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12226683825.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <12226886097.79.FREEMAN@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Fahlman wrote:
If I were to propose [something like let* can have repeated names],
it would be to treat all of the sequential binding forms (including
LAMBDA/DEFUN) in a consistent way.
Lambda and defun are not sequential binding forms; the order of
argument evaluation is irrelevant. "Lambda and defun are sequential
binding forms because the arguments they are applied to are evaluated
sequentially" is the only interpretation of Fahlman's statement I
could think of. I'm certain he had something else in mind; that's
much like Masinter's position which neither Fahlman nor I agree with.
I didn't think Fahlman's proposal 9B wording was unfair; some of his
"moderator's summary" wasn't as fair as it could have been. There is
a reason for Proposal 9; it just doesn't apply to let* or do*. (Under
Masinter's lambda model, all of 9 is wrong.)
Fahlman's concerns (about let* and do*) can be included as a warning
in the manual much like the *specials* *suggestion*. That's a
compromise 9B that I could live with.
Declarations (at least non-specials) should be decided before Proposal
9. I think pervasive declarations are a good idea and much more
important than 9A vs 9B. If we settle on 9A, then that argues
(weakly) against pervasive declarations. If we decide on pervasive
declarations, then 9A vs 9B goes on its merits.
-andy
-------
∂30-Jul-86 1400 jbarnett@nrtc Re: Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
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Date: Wed, 30 Jul 86 13:55:54 PDT
From: Jeff Barnett <jbarnett@nrtc>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
cc: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Subject: Re: Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
It was assumed in this and a previous message that looking for duplicate
names in the variable-list argument of a PROGV is an N**2 operation. Not
true. In the first place, if the list is short N**2 is small. In the
second place it can be done in N*log N time. To wit: (1) copy the list--
order n, (2) sort the list--order N*log N, and (3) search the ordered
list for adjacent duplicates--order N.
Jeff
∂30-Jul-86 1418 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
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Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1986 17:18 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Andy Freeman <FREEMAN@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Proposal #9: Variable Name Conflicts
In-reply-to: Msg of 30 Jul 1986 16:51-EDT from Andy Freeman <FREEMAN at SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Lambda and defun are not sequential binding forms; the order of
argument evaluation is irrelevant. "Lambda and defun are sequential
binding forms because the arguments they are applied to are evaluated
sequentially" is the only interpretation of Fahlman's statement I
could think of. I'm certain he had something else in mind; that's
much like Masinter's position which neither Fahlman nor I agree with.
Well, DEFUN and LAMBDA are partly sequential-binding forms. They
process defaults and &aux vars sequentially. That's what I was
referring to.
-- Scott
∂30-Jul-86 1434 Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Motivation for PARSE-BODY
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Date: 30 Jul 86 14:28 PDT
Sender: Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM
From: Gregor Kiczales <Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM>
Subject: Re: Motivation for PARSE-BODY
In-reply-to: Masinter.pa's message of 30 Jul 86 10:46 PDT
To: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
cc: gls@Think.COM, common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Message-ID: <860730-142922-1699@Xerox>
From: Masinter.pa
Even if PARSE-BODY were as generally useful as, say, splicing reader
macros, the argument that it should be in Common Lisp because it
>might
be convenient< for writers of embedded languages is a very weak one.
Independent of this sub-debate, I think the example the was already
given (by MLY I think) of:
(defmacro foo (&body body) (foo-internal body nil))
(defmacro foo* (&body body) (foo-internal body t))
(defun foo-internal (body sequentialp)
(multiple-value-bind (decls doc real-body) (parse-body body) ...)))
Is enough motivation for having PARSE-BODY.
∂30-Jul-86 1719 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5 (aside)
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Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 22:46 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #5 (aside)
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12224580594.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860729224641.7.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1986 21:46 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Proposal #5: PARSE-BODY
....PARSE-BODY may perform macro-expansion (using the given
environment) in order to determine whether an initial macro-call expands
into a DECLARE form or documentation string.
Since when can macros expand into documentation strings?
∂30-Jul-86 1720 KMP@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM #5, #5A, #6, #7, #8, #9, #9A, #9B, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14
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Date: Wed, 30 Jul 86 01:32 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: #5, #5A, #6, #7, #8, #9, #9A, #9B, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12224580594.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
References: <FAHLMAN.12226116535.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
<12226310687.19.LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>,
The message of 25 Jul 86 00:30-EDT from Dave.Touretzky@A.CS.CMU.EDU,
<860728202419.3.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<860728205756.7.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<860728212151.9.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<RAM.12224974495.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860730013252.8.KMP@RIO-DE-JANEIRO.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Proposals #5, #5A: PARSE-BODY
I think it's important to standardize on PARSE-BODY in some
form, distinct from &BODY. Most people probably wouldn't need
it, but those who did need it should -not- be encouraged to
write their own.
Don't call the argument DOCUMENTATION-ALLOWED-P. The issue
isn't whether a doc string is accepted, it's whether a string
in that position should be assumed to be a doc string or
assumed to be a literal constant. (DEFUN FOO (X) "hi" X)
would be a valid program even if there were no such thing
as a doc string. Call the arg PARSE-DOCUMENTATION-P.
The additional return values suggested in proposal 5A seem
misguided to me. I prefer returning just body, declares,
and doc in that order.
I think the BODY should be a list of forms with the first
form potentially macroexpanded since the pre-expanded form
is easy to recover by doing something like:
(CAR (LAST (LDIFF unparsed-body (CDR parsed-body))))
Actually, though, the macro might have smashed the macro
call's argument list, perhaps not even leaving it in a
semantically meaningful form, though more commonly just
displacing the macro expansion in place. So claiming you
were going to return an unexpanded form would be impossible
to really do in the general case.
Related questions: Is there anything in CLtL that specifies
that the "foo" in (LAMBDA FOO () "foo") has a body form of
"foo" and not just a doc string of "foo" with a null body list?
Is there anything that says whether
(LAMBDA (X) "foo" (DECLARE (IGNORE X)))
is well-formed or what it returns? Regardless of the answers
to these questions, having PARSE-BODY around would mean that
individual users would not have to develop private heuristic
solutions.
When everyone's done with this initial round of comments,
I'd want to see a reworked proposal so that I could give
a boolean vote.
Proposal #6: Parsing in &BODY
I strongly lean toward the syntax I proposed. In addition to
the issues of upward-compatibility with existing code and the
argument about symmetry with &REST, it just involves less parens.
Also, I'm inclined to agree with Sandra that &REST and &BODY
need not be mutually exclusive. This would be properly consistent
with the conjoined use of &REST and &KEY, and with the conjoined
use of &WHOLE and other arguments.
Proposal #7: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
I agree with Moon that this should only be called TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
if it were going to really predicate type expressions and not type
symbols. I'm content to include only TYPE-NAME-P for now. The need
for this comes up in my error proposal implementation in a situation
where SYMBOLP ends up sufficing (modulo reduced error checking). I
think TYPE-NAME-P is an important primitive to have.
Proposal #8: Clarifications to DEFCONSTANT
I concur with most of Moon's remarks here. Also, I think it's pretty
clear that EQUAL is an acceptable predicate since even in the case of
(DEFCONSTANT FOO (LIST 'A 'B))
where the person is obviously going to work to get something less
EQL than
(DEFCONSTANT FOO '(A B))
would have gotten him, the compiler is under no contract to preserve
that absence of sharing in the inlined code it outputs to binary files.
Perhaps we should say explicitly that it is an error to side-effect
a system constant, and permit systems to warn in compiled code about
things like (SETF (CAR FOO) 3), to signal an error at runtime (eg, by
putting such constants in read-only areas), etc.
I would prefer that the warning about redefining a constant be
refined to make the "is an error" part dependent on whether the programs
have made assumptions about the value of the constant, not just whether
they refer to the constant. eg, macros might have called functions which
use the old value even if they do not themselves refer to the constant
explicitly.
I would also prefer that the warning about redefining constants refer
not only to compiled code being invalidated but also to interpreted code.
If particular implementations happen to not make assumptions about
constants in interpreted code, that's ok but should not be part of any
guarantee offered by CL. That way, implementations are not precluded from
doing prelimary Scheme-style semantic analysis even in interpreted code.
Proposal #9, #9A, #9B: Variable Name Conflicts
My feeling is that &AUX and LET* should not be subject to the variable
name conflict rule. I agree with completely with Dave Touretzky's comment
that "outlawing duplicate names in LET* promotes too shallow a notion of
consistency: one based on syntax rather than semantics."
The case of DO* is interesting. Although superficially this seems similar
to DO in the same way as LET* is to LET, I think at a deeper level it is
not quite as analagous. Could someone please explain to me what a repeated
variable would mean? Would the second one be a side-effect at the same
level or would it actually shadow something? If shadowed, is the shadowing
magically undone when you get to stepping the variable or do both steps
refer to the value of the second variable in the init column? Unless
someone can suggest a meaning for repeated variables in this context, I'd
suggest that repeated var names in DO* be made illegal even if it's allowed
in &AUX and LET*.
In my mind, there's no real basis for Masinter's claim that the
declaration issue needs to get involved here. If you have
(DEFUN FOO (X &AUX (X (F X)) (X (G X))) (DECLARE (SPECIAL X)) (H X))
and you're wondering which of F, G, and H will see the special X, I
think we should say arbitrarily -- only H. People should break up the &AUX
into nested LET expressions with explicit declarations as appropriate if
they want otherwise. Ditto for LET*.
I cannot agree to any of #9, #9A, or #9B.
Proposal #10: Forms That Allow Declarations
I'd like to see declarations allowed in a LABELS or FLET.
I agree with those who've suggested that this would not be appropriate for
MACROLET. Unlike FLET, LABELS, LET, etc. which introduce semantic terms,
MACROLET introduces only syntactic terms. If DECLARE was ever needed
inside a MACROLET, it is probably just a coincidence and not a result
of the MACROLET.
Proposal #11: Contents of Tagbody
I hate arbitrary little rules that say things like only symbols and
integers are allowed. The reason we can get away with tags at all
is that they're atoms and atoms can't have side-effects. I think all
atoms should be allowed here. I think we should just define the
predicate that gets used, and I think the predicate should be EQL.
Maybe someone will come up with a creative use of character objects
as tags. I see no reason to preclude that.
I note that in your proposal 12, you say "... the same (EQL) tag ...",
and I put that forth as evidence that this is how people already like
to think about tag equivalence.
Proposal #12: Unique Names For Tags
This seems non-controversial.
Proposal #13: Structure Sharing in Arguments
In the case of &REST in macros, I see no reason to not simply say
that the argument list is -always- shared. Is there an argument for
why this might not always be possible? In the case of &BODY, it may
not be possible to do the sharing, so I'm willing to leave this
undefined and say it "is an error" to modify the list.
For a function that takes &REST arguments, I would prefer that a copy
always be made unless the interpreter or compiler can prove that it
won't be necessary. If we cannot agree to do that, then it must be
noted both that it "is an error" to modify such a list AND that it
is an error to pass such a list to someone else using APPLY and then
later modify it. eg, (PROGN (APPLY #'FOO L) (SETF (CDR L) ...))
may screw up state that FOO has encached for later use.
Proposal #14: THE and VALUES
I'm not happy with this form of the clarification.
I agree with Moon that the discussion of &keywords in the VALUES
declaration seems pretty out of place. We don't check number of return
values or do &keyword-hacking on return values anywhere else so
doing it here seems out of place.
If we did keep it, though, I'd want (THE type form) to be equivalent
to (THE (VALUES type &REST T) form) and would want any use of
(VALUES ...) to mean that I expected exactly the indicated number
of values.
Others seem to be disagreeing, though, so it may be better to agree
to think harder on the issue and for now not bother to try gratuitously
"clarifying" something we don't adequately understand.
∂30-Jul-86 1720 BSG@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: exit-to-system
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Date: Wed, 30 Jul 86 12:12 EDT
From: Bernard S. Greenberg <BSG@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: exit-to-system
To: a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA,
common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA, gls%aquinas.think.com@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA,
ida%u-tokyo.junet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <8607290714.AA22657@ccut.u-tokyo.junet>
Message-ID: <860730121244.3.BSG@SORA.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 16:14:11+0900
From: Masayuki Ida <a37078%ccut.u-tokyo.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 86 15:01 EDT
From: Guy Steele <gls%ZARATHUSTRA.THINK.COM@u-tokyo.junet>
Subject: Re: exit-to-system
...
Well, we do have ED, which is clearly a user-interface thing.
Here is a stab at defining QUIT:
QUIT [Function]
This function is intended to terminate the running Lisp system in some
appropriate manner. ...
...
--Guy
I agree. The name QUIT sounds reasonable.
ida@utokyo-relay.csnet
-----
The name QUIT does not sound reasonable. Quit what? Is ease of typing
an issue, for something which is typed once per session and probably
appears once in even the largest subsystem? EXIT-LISP sounds much
better. I can easily (and have) had internal functions, and macros
called QUIT. I don't think the name should be used up in this way.
∂30-Jul-86 1720 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Status of declare UNSPECIAL
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Date: Wed, 30 Jul 86 12:26 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Status of declare UNSPECIAL
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860725110937.0.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <860730122659.0.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 86 11:09 EDT
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
For the record, I also remember that we decided explicitly not to have
an "UNSPECAL" (whatever you call it) declaration, and I also don't
remember why. Unfortunately, I remember this discussing occurring
during a physical meeting, but someone should poke into the old archives
and see if there was any good reasoning that we should all know about.
Otherwise, I agree that there should be such a declaration.
I don't remember either, but here is my guess. Maclisp and Zetalisp
declaration scoping follows essentially the rules proposed by Bawden, in
which all declarations are pervasive, and therefore they need UNSPECIAL.
Once you switch to the current Common Lisp rules, in which a binding
of a variable shadows a SPECIAL declaration of the same name in an outer
contour, and creates a lexical binding rather than a special binding, you
no longer need an UNSPECIAL declaration to get that lexical binding.
UNSPECIAL was probably removed because of the mistaken argument that
the above implies that UNSPECIAL is never needed. It is still possible
to concoct more complicated situations where UNSPECIAL would not be a
no-op in the current Common Lisp rules, which I think all involve UNSPECIAL
applying to references rather than to a binding. Also of course UNSPECIAL
is the only way to shadow a SPECIAL proclamation, but perhaps it was
considered undesirable to allow that.
Among the declaration types listed in chapter 9, the only ones that
cannot be turned off by another declaration are SPECIAL, IGNORE, and
DECLARATION.
I'm not taking a stand on whether UNSPECIAL should or should not be included
in the language, especially not until we have settled the scoping rules
for declarations, but I thought the above facts and conjectures might
be interesting.
∂30-Jul-86 2018 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposal #5 (aside)
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Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1986 23:17 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12226956455.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "David A. Moon" <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Proposal #5 (aside)
In-reply-to: Msg of 29 Jul 1986 22:46-EDT from David A. Moon <Moon at STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Since when can macros expand into documentation strings?
My reading of the manual on this point may be faulty or perhaps
"rabbinical", but here is what I think the book says:
On page 154, it says that it is permissible for a macro call to expand
into a declaration and be recognized as such, provided that the macro
call appears where a declaration may legitimately appear.
On page 67 it says that declarations may follow a doc string.
Suppose you have
(defun foo (...)
(MACRO1 ...)
(MACRO2 ...)
... more forms...)
Suppose MACRO1 expands into a string and MACRO2 expands into a DECLARE
form. If we expand MACRO1 and get a string, I would say that this is
the documentation string and we should then expand MACRO2 to see if it
is a declaration, since it is in a place where a declaration may
legitimately appear. That seems like the most reasonable interpretation
to me. I agree that we could say that a string obtained from a leading
MACRO is not allowed to be a doc-string, in which case it is a body form
and we can stop looking for macros.
The book doesn't seem to come down on one side or the other. Note,
however, that it is allowed to expand all the macros at defun time (some
implementations actually do this), and in that case my interpretation
would fall out automatically unless special care is taken to disallow
this.
-- Scott
∂31-Jul-86 0451 @MCC.COM,@HAL.MCC.DialNet.Symbolics.COM:Loeffler@[10.3.0.62] Re: exit-to-system
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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 06:51 CDT
From: David D. Loeffler <Loeffler@[10.3.0.62]>
Subject: Re: exit-to-system
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860730121244.3.BSG@SORA.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <860731065106.0.LOEFFLER@HAL.MCC.DialNet.Symbolics.COM>
Reply-To: Loeffler@[10.3.0.62]
Postal-address: P.O. Box 200195, 9430 Research Blvd., Austin, TX 78720
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 86 12:12 EDT
From: Bernard S. Greenberg <BSG@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
The name QUIT does not sound reasonable. Quit what? Is ease of typing
an issue, for something which is typed once per session and probably
appears once in even the largest subsystem? EXIT-LISP sounds much
better. I can easily (and have) had internal functions, and macros
called QUIT. I don't think the name should be used up in this way.
I agree with Bernie on this one. EXIT-LISP is better than QUIT. I used
to work on a system that had a very uniform command set and QUIT meant
"exit" from almost every one of the subsystems. Other system used EXIT.
If a programmer wants to put an escape out of lisp in their code then
EXIT-LISP is the right thing. Vendors may wish to incorporate their own
QUIT or EXIT functions so that users will know how to get out of the
interpreter.
-- Dave
∂31-Jul-86 1143 alatto@cc5.bbn.com Re: #13, #14
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To: Kent M Pitman <KMP@scrc-stony-brook.ARPA>
cc: Common-Lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Subject: Re: #13, #14
In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 30 Jul 86 01:32 EDT.
<860730013252.8.KMP@RIO-DE-JANEIRO.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
References: <FAHLMAN.12226116535.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
<12226310687.19.LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>,
The message of 25 Jul 86 00:30-EDT from Dave.Touretzky@A.CS.CMU.EDU,
<860728202419.3.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<860728205756.7.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<860728212151.9.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<RAM.12224974495.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: 31 Jul 86 14:26:30 EDT (Thu)
From: Andy Latto <alatto@cc5.bbn.com>
Proposal #13: Structure Sharing in Arguments
Kent says:
...
For a function that takes &REST arguments, I would prefer that a copy
always be made unless the interpreter or compiler can prove that it
won't be necessary. If we cannot agree to do that, then it must be
noted both that it "is an error" to modify such a list AND that it
is an error to pass such a list to someone else using APPLY and then
later modify it. eg, (PROGN (APPLY #'FOO L) (SETF (CDR L) ...))
may screw up state that FOO has encached for later use.
I don't see why allowing the &rest list to be the same list that was
passed to apply requires any of the above suggestions about what "is an error".
Lisp functions are allowed to modify their arguments, or save them for
later use. Proposal 13 says that APPLY, like NCONC, is such a function in
the case where the function being APPLYed does destructive operations on
its &rest argument. (apply #'rplacd args) and (apply #'foo args) both
modify their arguments if foo is a function that does destructive
operations on its &rest argument, and I don't see a big difference
between them. In general, if I write a function that destructively
modifies its arguments (or use an existing one, like NCONC), I
must be careful that no other part of the code assumes that the
structure I have modified will not change. If you use argument-modifing
functions recklessly, you will produce obscure, hard-to-find, bugs. This is
certainly true of normal arguments to functions, and I don't see why it
shouldn't be true of &rest arguments as well, particularly if it can make
some implementations more efficient.
I also believe their should be some kind of &temp-rest lambda
list keyword that produces an &rest list with dynamic extent, but that's
a separate proposal that should be dealt with later.
Proposal #14: THE and VALUES
The purpose of THE is to give the compiler or interpreter
information on the type of the value(s) returned by the form, since
this may help produce more efficient code. Information on the
number of values reuturned can presumably be put to similar use.
It would be nice to have syntax to say either "These are the
types of the first two returned values, and I don't know the types
of any others, if any" or "Exactly two values will be returned, and here
are their types". (THE (VALUES type1 type2 &rest T)) and
(THE (VALUES type1 type2)) seems like as good a syntax as any
for expressing these two concepts.
I have no strong feelings as to whether (THE type1) should
be equivalent to (THE (VALUES type1)) or (THE (VALUES type1 &rest T)).
On the subject of VALUES, I noticed that Cltl says, on the
issue of checking the type of the value(s) returned by a form in a
THE special form, "Implementations are encouraged to make an explicit
error check when running interpretively" (P 163). It seems to me that this
check should be made if it is declared (optimize (safety 3) (speed 0)),
and should not be made if it is declared (optimize (safety 0) (speed 3)), regardless
of whether it is interpreted or compiled, and that the reference to the
interpreter should be removed.
Andy Latto
alatto@bbn.ARPA
∂31-Jul-86 1502 @QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM:Zippy@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Staus of proposals 10, 11, and 12
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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 15:04 EDT
From: dcp@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
Sender: Zippy@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
Subject: Re: Staus of proposals 10, 11, and 12
To: NGALL@G.BBN.COM, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
cc: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
In-Reply-To: <[G.BBN.COM]29-Jul-86 21:47:02.NGALL>
Message-ID: <860731150441.4.LISP-MACHINE@CREEPER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 29 Jul 1986 21:47-EDT
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 11:50 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I may have thought of one usage:
(macrolet ((print-them (list)
`(mapc #'print ,list)))
(declare (notinline mapc))
...)
If anybody else believes this, perhaps it should be one of the examples?
I don't believe it. The stuff inside the backquoted list is not code,
it is data. Here's a similar one that I believe:
(macrolet ((print-them (list)
`(progn ,@(mapcar #'(lambda (item) `(print ',item))
list)))
(declare (notinline mapcar))
...)
In this, the mapcar funcall form IS code.
You misunderstand. Declarations have a scoping for code that it sees.
My intention was that anybody who calls (print-them some-list) expands into
(mapc #'print some-list)
and that the declaration forces MAPC to be open coded. Your definition
has two differences from mine: (1) Your declaration tries to affect the
expansion PROCESS (mine affects the processing of the expansion), and
(2) your contract is different than mine (mine takes a runtime list,
your's takes a compile time list). To get (1), I claim your declaration
is in the wrong place. It should have been
(macrolet ((print-them (list)
(declare (notinline mapcar))
`(progn ,@(mapcar #'(lambda (item) `(print ',item))
list))))
...)
Note that this still is not
a strong argument for decls in the body of a macrolet, since the decl
could have been put in the body of the print-them macro definition.
"must" not "could"
But I agree that we should allow decls in the body of a macrolet.
∂31-Jul-86 1506 @QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM:Zippy@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5 (aside)
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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 15:08 EDT
From: dcp@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
Sender: Zippy@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
Subject: Proposal #5 (aside)
To: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860729224641.7.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <860731150815.5.LISP-MACHINE@CREEPER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 86 22:46 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1986 21:46 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Proposal #5: PARSE-BODY
....PARSE-BODY may perform macro-expansion (using the given
environment) in order to determine whether an initial macro-call expands
into a DECLARE form or documentation string.
Since when can macros expand into documentation strings?
Sidestepping the issue of whether or not it is currently allowed, I see
no reason it shouldn't be allowed. Consider a program-writing-program
that generates some code like
(defun helper-function-259 (...args...)
(declare (safety 2) (speed 1))
(compute-documentation-string :safety 2 :speed 1
:parent "helper-function"
:contract "factor the number 259")
(declare (inline aref))
...)
∂31-Jul-86 1514 hoey@nrl-aic Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 18:11:20 edt
From: Dan Hoey <hoey@nrl-aic>
Message-Id: <8607312211.AA13507@nrl-aic>
To: jbarnett@nrtc.ARPA, common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Subject: Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
From: Jeff Barnett <jbarnett@nrtc>
It was assumed in this and a previous message that looking for
duplicate names in the variable-list argument of a PROGV is an
N**2 operation.... It can be done in N*log N time.
You can put a mark on the property lists of the variables
for a linear algorithm.
Dan
∂31-Jul-86 1533 @YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM:Zippy@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 14:59 EDT
From: DCP@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
Sender: Zippy@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
Subject: Re: Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA, Jeff Barnett <jbarnett@NRTC.ARPA>
In-Reply-To: The message of 30 Jul 86 16:55 EDT from Jeff Barnett <jbarnett@nrtc>
Message-ID: <860731145915.3.LISP-MACHINE@CREEPER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 86 13:55:54 PDT
From: Jeff Barnett <jbarnett@nrtc>
It was assumed in this and a previous message that looking for duplicate
names in the variable-list argument of a PROGV is an N**2 operation. Not
true. In the first place, if the list is short N**2 is small. In the
second place it can be done in N*log N time. To wit: (1) copy the list--
order n, (2) sort the list--order N*log N, and (3) search the ordered
list for adjacent duplicates--order N.
Any implementation that did this would probably discourage users from
using PROGV because it would be costly (inefficient) to use. copying
the list conses and takes time. Sorting can potentially cons, may be
NlogN, but is quite expensive in the smaller cases. PROGV has so real
and valid uses; it should be relatively inexpensive to use.
I think PROGV should be removed from the list of forms that check for
variable name conflicts. I think variable name conflicts should be
detected by the compiler; not the runtime system. I think the semantics
of PROGV are that the LAST symbol/value pair takes presedence in case
there is more than one pair for a given symbol.
∂31-Jul-86 1827 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1986 21:27 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12227198519.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
In response to: DCP@TENEX.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
I think PROGV should be removed from the list of forms that check for
variable name conflicts. I think variable name conflicts should be
detected by the compiler; not the runtime system. I think the semantics
of PROGV are that the LAST symbol/value pair takes presedence in case
there is more than one pair for a given symbol.
As I said in response to this question earlier, nobody is proposing a
"list of forms that CHECK FOR variable name conflicts". There is a
proposal for forms in which the use of duplicate variable names "is an
error". Not the same thing.
-- Scott
∂31-Jul-86 1848 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU What's going on?
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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1986 21:47 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: What's going on?
Several people have asked what became of the summaries I promised for
issue #14 and for the declaration scope stuff.
I have not sent these out yet. It has become clear to me that the
discussion/decision process is not working at all well: the mail volume
is too high, the load on the moderator is MUCH too high, the rate of
progress is negligible, a lot of time is being wasted discussing issues
that don't really matter, and my efforts to improve all this have
antagonized a lot of people without solving any of the problems.
My top-level task right now is to discuss these problems with the
technical committee members and others to see if we can figure out some
procedural changes that will get things moving in useful directions with
less wear and tear on everyone. Until we've decided how to proceed,
I won't be pushing too hard to make progress on specific technical
issues.
-- Scott
∂31-Jul-86 1943 NGALL@G.BBN.COM Re: declarations in macrolet puzzle
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Date: 31 Jul 1986 22:39-EDT
Sender: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
Subject: Re: declarations in macrolet puzzle
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
To: MASINTER.PA@XEROX.COM
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[G.BBN.COM]31-Jul-86 22:39:13.NGALL>
In-Reply-To: <860730-064109-1194@Xerox>
Date: 30 Jul 86 6:40:17 PDT
From: MASINTER.PA@Xerox.COM
(macrolet ((specials () (specials) '(declare (special special-list ,@special-list))))
(specials)
special-list))
...
The missing piece to your puzzle is that declarations are expanded
BEFORE any bindings take place (perhaps this should be stated
explicitly in CLtL). Thus, the call to specials in the body of the
macrolet does NOT refer to the specials being bound in the head of
macrolet. This is true, not only of bindings made by macrolet, but
also those made by let, flet, etc.
-- Nick
∂31-Jul-86 1949 NGALL@G.BBN.COM Re: Declarations in MACROLET
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Date: 31 Jul 1986 22:49-EDT
Sender: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
Subject: Re: Declarations in MACROLET
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
To: RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[G.BBN.COM]31-Jul-86 22:49:06.NGALL>
In-Reply-To: <RAM.12226812298.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1986 10:05 EDT
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
I don't think that it would be correct for a declaration at the
head of a macrolet to affect the bodies of any of the macros, since
the bodies of the macros are defined to be in the null environment.
You raise an interesting question:
(flet ((foo ()))
(locally (declare (inline foo))
(macrolet ((bar () (foo 1 2 3)))
(foo)...)))
Currently, does the inline decl affect both calls to foo? I can't
tell from CLtL.
-- Nick
∂31-Jul-86 2155 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Japanese Subset Proposal
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Japanese Subset Proposal
Profesor Masayuki Ida, the chairman of the Common Lisp subcomittee of
JEIDA in Japan, has sent me a draft of a subset proposal that a number
of Japanese researchers have been working on. He is interested in
discussing this with the U.S. Common Lisp community, and especially
those people interested in subsets. The proposal is too long to send to
the whole Common-Lisp mailing list, so I have put it on C.CS.CMU.EDU
as file "prva:<slisp.standard>japan-core.txt". Discussion of this
proposal should probably take place on the CL-SUBSET mailing list.
-- Scott
∂31-Jul-86 2211 KMP@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Comments on DCP's revised &BODY proposal
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Date: Fri, 1 Aug 86 00:44 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: Comments on DCP's revised &BODY proposal
To: DCP@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860730143900.6.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <860801004440.1.KMP@RIO-DE-JANEIRO.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I mostly like this variation of the &BODY proposal.
I would prefer the name &DOCUMENTATION.
In fact, given that we have &ENV instead of &ENVIRONMENT, it might be more
consistent to have a short names like &DOC and &DECLS. I'm won't champion
that very strongly, but I think it's worth pointing out both for the sake
of consistency and the sake of reducing indentation. By using &DOCUMENTATION
and &DECLARATIONS you're virtually assuring that things like:
(DEFUN SOMETHING (NAME BVL &DECLARATIONS DECLS &DOCUMENTATION DOC &BODY FORMS)
...)
will be pushing the right margin on an 80-column screen even given reasonably
concice choices of macro and variable names.
In the presence of displacing macros, I feel fairly strongly that we can't
currently guarantee that the &BODY will contain unexpanded forms. My feeling
is that we should either guarantee that the expanded (rather than unexpanded)
form be returned if an expansion happened, or that we should be explicitly
vague. It would be very unwise to document something we couldn't reliably
provide.
With regard to your aside about &KEY, I agree that &KEY and &BODY should be
exclusive. Alternatively, though, we could revise the description of &KEY to
do something useful. It comes up in the current error proposal that there
are a lot of forms with bodies that have leading keywords. ie,
(name bvl :key1 :value1 :key2 :value2 ... . body)
The body is defined to start when the keyword pairs run out. Right now, these
have to be "manually" parsed. It would be amazingly convenient to be able to
say
(NAME BVL &KEY KEY1 KEY2 &BODY FORMS)
I'd be content for now to just leave this syntax undefined and let people
think about a proposal on this subject later, but my desire to have this
work makes this it seem very desirable to at least just disallow the current
meaning to a coupled &BODY/&KEY configuration for the interim.
∂31-Jul-86 2229 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #5, or somewhere around there (rather long, constructive, and non-flaming(!))
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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 17:01 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #5, or somewhere around there (rather long, constructive, and non-flaming(!))
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860730143900.6.DCP@FIREBIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <860731170132.9.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I believe that Plummer's suggestion of adding &DECLARATIONS and &DOC-STRING
is superior to the previous two proposals for extensions to DEFMACRO for
parsing bodies.
I disagree with Plummer's suggestion that &KEY and &BODY are mutually
exclusive. The semantics of &BODY is not an implicit progn; the only
semantics of &BODY involves code formatting and indentation (CLtL p.145).
I agree that &KEY and &DECLARATIONS are mutually exclusive.
∂31-Jul-86 2230 KMP@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM QUIT
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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 16:04 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: QUIT
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
cc: KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA
References: <860730121244.3.BSG@SORA.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<8607290714.AA22657@ccut.u-tokyo.junet>
Message-ID: <860731160402.3.KMP@RIO-DE-JANEIRO.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I'm sorry, but I just will not support the idea of a single function QUIT
as is currently being discussed. If the problem were re-cast, it might be
soluble, but I believe the problem as I've seen it stated thus far is just
plain insoluble.
I base my criticisms on experience that I have from create a portable
QUIT function for use in Macsyma internals. I created such a function
using various non-portable primitives provided by particular dialects
I was studying. As with the GC problem, I found that the idea seemed
superficially plausible but just didn't work out in practice. Here are
some of my observations and conclusions ...
1. Where is control transfered?
Of the implementations which primitively offer some variant of QUIT,
all that I know of are on partitioned address space machines which
have a basically tree-structured process system that offers a
distinguished superior (usually an exec) to which it is obvious that
control should be transfered upon call to QUIT.
Shared address space machines (ie, Lisp Machines) have the problem
that there is no tree of processes. All occupy an equal status and
there is no obvious process to which control should be returned.
2. What is a process?
On partitioned address space machines, each process typically
comes with its own "global" state. Killing a process means killing its
"global" state. On shared address machines, killing the process will
generally kill only its dynamic state, not its global state (which
is generally intertwined with the global state of other processes).
To kill its global state means killing the global state of sibling
activities, which may be highly undesirable.
3. Can the process be resumed?
Even among partitioned address space machines, there is disagreement
about whether exiting (to the exec) means that you can re-enter later.
4. What does it mean for a process to be resumed?
Presumably resuming leaves the global state intact. Does it restart
the process or does the call to QUIT just return NIL?
5. If a process is killed permanently, are the associated UNWIND-PROTECT
cleanup forms guaranteed to run first?
Obviously, some of these issues cannot be answered by the Common-Lisp
committee. They are architectural issues beyond the scope of the
language. If we standardize on any meaning for QUIT, however, it must be
guided by an understanding that people do not use linguistic primitives
in the absence of intent, and that we should not provide primitives
which do not allow the programmer to clearly specify some meaningful
intent. In light of the questions I've raised above, I hope it's clear
that definitions like "Exits the Lisp system" do not make any intent
clear.
Here are some real-life scenarios that I see...
1. If the intent was to exit, what if there was no place to go?
On the 3600, the Lisp Listener doubles as an exec. It is the
standard place to which programmers return to give commands,
not a place to be returned from. Having a "user interface"
function named QUIT which was a no-op when typed to Lisp would
be very confusing. Having it randomly select another activity
would be fairly useless. I feel that people don't interactively
ask to exit something unless they think there is an obvious
place to go.
2. If the intent is to exit temporarily and the exit turns out to
be permanent, this can have remarkably drastic consequences. A
user of Macsyma would be phenomenally irritated if I offered a
temporary-exit function and it ended up exiting permanently
before s/he had a chance to save the MACSYMA's state.
3. If the intent was to exit permanently and the program was
allowed to proceed, the effects of continuing could be very
strange. I've found myself resorting to things like:
(PROGN (QUIT) ;Try a permanent exit
(...)) ;If we got here, the QUIT didn't work,
;so try cleaning up enough to continue
or even:
(LOOP (QUIT)) ;Insist on a permanent exit!
4. If the intent was to exit "lisp" permanently, destroying global
state, I'd argue that it could not possibly have been the intent
of any portable program to really kill everything on the machine
since those other things are beyond the scope of Common Lisp and
not something that CL programs have any obvious way to reason
about.
On the 3600, you can't opt to "start over" without taking the
Editor, Mail Reader, Peek, Telnet Windows, etc. with it. Some
people here at Symbolics do all their work from the same Lisp for
several weeks at a time, building up lots of state which they
don't want thrown away casually. There is no "starting over" that
is not synonymous with "cold booting". In the case of server
machines, this would mean that file connections would be broken,
mail would stop being delivered until the (sometimes long) cold
boot sequence had run, etc. In fact, the boot sequence may not
begin automatically just because I halt my machine. If I was
dialing in from home, I might have to go to work to initialize
the system again.
Some non-Lispms have an in-Lisp editor even though they have
other processes which are separable. Perhaps some of those
users use that editor only for editing Lisp and are content to
have the editor and the lisp go away as a unit because they do
other text editing in an editor that doesn't go away with Lisp,
but that's presumably a property of the user rather than the
system.
The real problem here is that there is no such thing as exiting in the
pure abstract. Exiting means to pass through an abstract boundary
between an abitrarily chosen inside and outside. In the CL spec, we have
remained intentionally silent on the issue of where that line is drawn
in order to accomodate both Lispm-based and conventional systems. I
think that corollary to this silence is the fact that functions which
attempt to cross the boundary are ill-defined. Not only do some systems
draw the boundary in different places than others, but some
intentionally don't draw it at all.
I don't care whether the primitive is called QUIT, EXIT, EXIT-TO-SYSTEM,
or whatever. The names themselves are not the problem. I only care that
any names we choose have a very clear behavior and that I can reason
about at coding time, or that my programs can reason about at runtime
prior to actually invoking the primitive which actually attempts to exit.
I don't plan to seriously consider any proposal for a QUIT primitive
which does not carefully address these issues.
∂01-Aug-86 0357 hpfclp!hpfcjrd!diamant@hplabs.HP.COM Proposal #13: Structure Sharing in Arguments
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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 23:49:27 mdt
From: John Diamant <hpfcjrd!diamant@hplabs.HP.COM>
Return-Path: <hpfcjrd!diamant>
To: common-lisp@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: Proposal #13: Structure Sharing in Arguments
Subject: #5, #5A, #6, #7, #8, #9, #9A, #9B, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14
From: Kent M Pitman <hplabs!KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Proposal #13: Structure Sharing in Arguments
In the case of &REST in macros, I see no reason to not simply say
that the argument list is -always- shared. Is there an argument for
why this might not always be possible? In the case of &BODY, it may
not be possible to do the sharing, so I'm willing to leave this
undefined and say it "is an error" to modify the list.
A language specification has no business specifying implementation details.
Requiring that the list be shared is an efficiency requirement, not a
language specification. I agree with the warning that the list may be
shared, but I certainly wouldn't require it!
John
∂01-Aug-86 0536 DCP@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
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Date: Fri, 1 Aug 86 08:36 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
To: Dan Hoey <hoey@NRL-AIC.ARPA>, jbarnett@NRTC.ARPA,
common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <8607312211.AA13507@nrl-aic>
Message-ID: <860801083615.2.DCP@CREEPER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 86 18:11:20 edt
From: Dan Hoey <hoey@nrl-aic>
From: Jeff Barnett <jbarnett@nrtc>
It was assumed in this and a previous message that looking for
duplicate names in the variable-list argument of a PROGV is an
N**2 operation.... It can be done in N*log N time.
You can put a mark on the property lists of the variables
for a linear algorithm.
Nit: no you can't. Putting a mark on a property list takes linear time
(length of the property list to see if it is already there), and you
have to do this for N variables. So you are back to N↑2 again, and you
are likely consing, and misusing property lists, and...
∂01-Aug-86 0955 hoey@nrl-aic Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
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Date: 1 Aug 1986 12:31:26 EDT (Fri)
From: Dan Hoey <hoey@nrl-aic.ARPA>
Subject: Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
To: David C. Plummer <DCP@scrc-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Cc: jbarnett@NRTC.ARPA, common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-Id: <523297888/hoey@nrl-aic>
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 86 08:36 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@scrc-QUABBIN.arpa>
From: Dan Hoey <hoey@nrl-aic>
From: Jeff Barnett <jbarnett@nrtc>
...looking for duplicate names in the variable-list argument
of a PROGV ... can be done in N*log N time.
You can put a mark on the property lists of the variables
for a linear algorithm.
Nit: no you can't.
Antinit: Sure you can.
Putting a mark on a property list takes linear time
(length of the property list to see if it is already there)
I had in mind putting a GENSYMmed on the front of the property list and
only testing for it there. (Nit me no nits about multiple processes
until they're in CLtL.)
and you have to do this for N variables. So you are back to
N↑2 again,
Nit: That's N E(L), for L the length of a property list.
and you are likely consing,
My PROGV checker would keep all its conses for use the next time.
and misusing property lists,
I would spend the extra CONS to keep the plists legal.
and...
if there is further discussion, we can do it between ourselves. Anyone
out there who wants to write a PROGV checker should check with David or
me for the latest in variable uniqueness theory.
Dan
∂01-Aug-86 0956 gls@Think.COM Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
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Date: Fri, 1 Aug 86 12:56 EDT
From: Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>
Subject: Proposal #9: Fast testing in PROGV
To: DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM, hoey@NRL-AIC.ARPA, jbarnett@NRTC.ARPA,
common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@AQUINAS
In-Reply-To: <860801083615.2.DCP@CREEPER.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-Id: <860801125635.6.GLS@THORLAC.THINK.COM>
Moon: 3 days, 19 hours, 20 minutes since the last quarter of the moon.
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 86 08:36 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Putting a mark on a property list takes linear time
(length of the property list to see if it is already there), and you
have to do this for N variables. So you are back to N↑2 again, and you
are likely consing, and misusing property lists, and...
Barf! Who says you have to search the entire property list? One of the
reasons we are having such an explosion of mail is that many people are
failing to think for more than three seconds before shooting from the hip.
(defun does-a-list-of-symbols-contain-duplicates-p (symbols)
(let ((unique (list 'foo)))
(unwind-protect
(dolist (s symbols)
(when (eq (car (symbol-plist s)) unique)
(return-from does-a-list-of-symbols-contain-duplicates-p t))
(setf (symbol-plist s) (list* unique t (symbol-plist s))))
(dolist (s symbols)
(if (eq (car (symbol-plist s)) unique)
(setf (symbol-plist s) (cddr (symbol-plist s)))
(return))))
nil))
Looks like linear time to me. (Historical note: the implementation of
SUBLIS in MacLisp used to pull a similar trick.)
--Guy
∂01-Aug-86 1533 Hadden.CSCES@HI-MULTICS.ARPA Re: Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
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Acknowledge-To: Hadden@HI-MULTICS.ARPA
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 86 09:46 CDT
From: Hadden@HI-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: Re: Proposal #9 Status: Variable Name Conflicts
To: Jeff Barnett <jbarnett@NRTC.ARPA>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: Message of 30 Jul 86 15:55 CDT from "Jeff Barnett"
Message-ID: <860801144651.291022@HI-MULTICS.ARPA>
actually, i think it can be done in order N. the idea is to scan down
the list checking each symbol's property list for a flag. if it's not
there, put it there; if it is, you've already seen it. the following
(untested) code may give you the idea:
(defun dup-p (arg-list)
(do ((l arg-list (cdr l))
(foo (gensym)))
((null l) (mapc #'(lambda (x) (remprop x foo)) arg-list) nil)
(if (get (car l) foo)
(progn (mapc #'(lambda (x) (remprop x foo)) arg-list)
(return t))
(setf (get (car l) foo) t))))
-geo
∂04-Aug-86 1300 Dan@Think.COM ignore this message
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Date: Mon, 4 Aug 86 16:00 EDT
From: Dan Aronson <Dan@Think.COM>
Subject: ignore this message
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-Id: <860804160059.2.DAN@EPICURUS.THINK.COM>
Please ignore this test of our local mailing list.
--dan
∂05-Aug-86 0908 pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM synonym streams..
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id AA16356; Tue, 5 Aug 86 09:06:34 PDT
Date: 5 Aug 1986 09:05-PDT
From: David Bein <pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM>
Subject: synonym streams..
To: common-lisp@su-ai
Message-Id: <523641937/bein@pyramid>
Should a close on a synonym-stream merely close what it is
synonymous with or should it too be rendered useless
after the close (regardless of what happens to the underlying
stream -- see my last note re: standard streams) ??
--David
∂05-Aug-86 1111 Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM Re: synonym streams..
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Date: 5 Aug 86 11:09 PDT
From: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: synonym streams..
In-reply-to: David Bein <pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM>'s message of 5 Aug
86 09:05 PDT
To: common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Message-ID: <860805-111034-2460@Xerox>
I propose the following rule: "It is an error to attempt to close a
stream that wasn't created with open."
With this rule, it would follow that, since synonym, broadcast and
two-way streams are not created with open, it is an error to perform
"close" on them.
∂06-Aug-86 1100 @QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM DPB, DPBS, something like that
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Date: Wed, 6 Aug 86 10:31 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: DPB, DPBS, something like that
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860806103157.4.DCP@FIREBIRD.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
When writing system code especially, but sometimes when writing normal
code, I have often had to write long chains of DPBs, such as
(dpb val1 spec1
(dpb val2 spec2
(dpb val3 spec3
...)))
This (a) gets tedious and (b) looks bad. I would either like to extend
DPB to take an odd number of arguments, or have a new function which
does. (It probably wants to be a function rather than a macro.) Thus,
(dpb val1 spec1
val2 spec2
val3 spec3
...
background-integer)
Have others had a need for this and would find this generally useful?
∂06-Aug-86 1724 @QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM:Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: synonym streams..
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Date: Wed, 6 Aug 86 20:23 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: synonym streams..
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860805-111034-2460@Xerox>
Message-ID: <860806202341.0.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 5 Aug 86 11:09 PDT
From: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
I propose the following rule: "It is an error to attempt to close a
stream that wasn't created with open."
With this rule, it would follow that, since synonym, broadcast and
two-way streams are not created with open, it is an error to perform
"close" on them.
I think this is a fine suggestion.
∂06-Aug-86 1904 SOLEY@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU DPB, DPBS, something like that
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Date: Wed, 6 Aug 1986 22:09 EDT
Message-ID: <SOLEY.12228779029.BABYL@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
From: SOLEY@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
To: "David C. Plummer" <DCP@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: DPB, DPBS, something like that
In-reply-to: Msg of 6 Aug 1986 10:31-EDT from David C. Plummer <DCP at QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Wednesday, 6 August 1986 10:31-EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP at QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
To: common-lisp at SU-AI.ARPA
Re: DPB, DPBS, something like that
(dpb val1 spec1 (dpb val2 spec2 (dpb val3 spec3 ... int)))
==>
(dpb val1 spec1 val2 spec2 val3 spec3 ... int)
Have others had a need for this and would find this generally useful?
I too have written this a million times. It's an obvious
upward-compatible extension.
∂09-Aug-86 2041 mips!earl@glacier.stanford.edu :allow-other-keys query
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Date: Sat, 9 Aug 86 19:30:20 pdt
From: mips!earl@glacier.stanford.edu (Earl Killian)
Message-Id: <8608100230.AA13610@pachyderm.UUCP>
To: common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Subject: :allow-other-keys query
Given
(defun bah (&key humbug)
...)
which of the following are legal?
1 (bah :allow-other-keys nil :other 'blah)
2 (bah :allow-other-keys t :other 'blah)
3 (bah :allow-other-keys nil)
Certainly 1 is in error and 2 is legal. What about 3? The way I read
the manual this is an error, which I don't think is the intent of this
feature. Opinions?
∂09-Aug-86 2104 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU :allow-other-keys query
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Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1986 00:04 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: mips!earl@λglacier.stanford.edu (Earl Killian)λ
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: :allow-other-keys query
In-reply-to: Msg of 9 Aug 1986 22:30-EDT from mips!earl at glacier.stanford.edu (Earl Killian)
Given
(defun bah (&key humbug)
...)
which of the following are legal?
1 (bah :allow-other-keys nil :other 'blah)
2 (bah :allow-other-keys t :other 'blah)
3 (bah :allow-other-keys nil)
Certainly 1 is in error and 2 is legal. What about 3? The way I read
the manual this is an error, which I don't think is the intent of this
feature. Opinions?
I agree with your analysis: a strict reading of the current wording of
the manual would suggest that case 3 is an error, but it would make more
sense if this were not treated as an error.
∂09-Aug-86 2320 Hvatum.DLAB@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA &rest destruction
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Date: Sun, 10 Aug 86 02:11 EDT
From: Hvatum@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: &rest destruction
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860810061145.560694@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA>
From: Steve Bacher (CSDL)
Subject: What's all this fuss about &rest destruction?
Having been watching while just about everyone on the CL mailing list
has argued about the &REST proposal, I have to jump in and make a point.
Many of you are now contending that there is no difference between
restricting the user from destroying a list passed as an argument to a
function and restricting the user from passing same list back as a
return value or storing it in "stable" storage (e.g. SETQ'ing some
global variable thereto). I find it incredible that this idea should
be suddenly gaining concurrency.
Ever since LISP began (I realize this is a meaningless argument to most
Common LISPers)... or maybe I should say that scattered throughout
every LISP manual and certainly CLtL (though I can't quote any exact
references), it has been emphasized that the destructive operations
are DANGEROUS and should be used WITH CAUTION only by EXPERIENCED
LISP PROGRAMMERS. It follows that if you are about to do something
that will destructively update a list, you'd better be damned sure
that nobody else is pointing to that list. The only way to be certain
of this is (usually) if you create the list yourself out of fresh
conses (or if you get the list back from a function which you know has
created a list safe for destruction).
Conversely, I find it hard to accept the notion that Common LISP may
specify that some particular kind of argument to a function is
GUARANTEED to be freshly consed and therefore destructible. Suppose you
have a function like
(defun foo (a b &rest c) ...)
Why should I be guaranteed that the value bound to c will be
clobberable, when I am not given such a guarantee for a and b?
Perhaps your answer will be that functions should always do COPY-LIST on
any list arguments they pass to other functions, since those other
functions might wish to do NCONC or RPLACA on their args? :-)
On the other hand, NEVER in the history of any LISP that I know has
there been a rule that for some situation or other, the user may not
pass a given object back as a return value or store it somewhere
permanent. Such a restriction is truly abhorrent and contrary to the
spirit of the language. But it sure might make some compiler
implementors happy. Imagine: the whole problem of upward funargs
could have been avoided so easily - just tell users that functions
may be passed as arguments, but they may not be returned as values or
assigned to global variables! We might never had had to design all
those hairy mechanisms for saving environments in heap storage.
If the rationale behind this is that certain implementations
put their &REST args on the stack to save some conses, that's just too
bad. (Should we support implementations that keep lexical closure
environments on the stack because it's just too hard to let users
pass lexical closures around as arguments?) I agree with
Scott Fahlman's suggestion for an additional mechanism in the
language to provide for LEXPR'ish passing of varying numbers of args
on the stack as an alternative to consing &REST lists.
In short, there most definitely IS a qualitative distinction between
proscribing wanton clobbering of lists regardless of their origin
and limiting users' right to do with arguments what they please in
nondestructive ways.
- Steve Bacher
C.S.Draper Laboratory
≠
∂10-Aug-86 1205 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU &rest destruction
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Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1986 15:05 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12229750419.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: &rest destruction
In-reply-to: Msg of 10 Aug 1986 02:11-EDT from Hvatum at MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
From: Steve Bacher (CSDL)
Subject: What's all this fuss about &rest destruction?
...
Conversely, I find it hard to accept the notion that Common LISP may
specify that some particular kind of argument to a function is
GUARANTEED to be freshly consed and therefore destructible. Suppose you
have a function like
(defun foo (a b &rest c) ...)
Why should I be guaranteed that the value bound to c will be
clobberable, when I am not given such a guarantee for a and b?
The situation for A and B is not the same as for C. The values for A
and B come direct from the caller. In the case of a normal call to FOO,
the value passed in for C will be a list that is freshly consed at
runtime. The only case in which C might not be freshly consed is if FOO
is called via APPLY. Since calls via APPLY are relatively rare, the
question is whether we should require copying in this rare case (which
would allow users to assume that a rest arg is ALWAYS freshly-consed),
or whether we should warn the users that the &rest arg may have shared
top-level strucutre in some rare cases.
The issue of whether &rest args have indefinite extent is a separate
one, dragged in by some random comments by DCP. It seems that everyone
agrees that Common Lisp currently requires &rest args to have indefinite
extent, and that this should not be changed.
-- Scott
∂10-Aug-86 1350 shebs%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa TAGBODY vs LABELS
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Date: Sun, 10 Aug 86 14:50:39 MDT
From: shebs%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa (Stanley Shebs)
Message-Id: <8608102050.AA00254@utah-orion.ARPA>
To: common-lisp@su-ai.arpa
Subject: TAGBODY vs LABELS
I was in the process of implementing TAGBODY in terms of LABELS (each
piece of straightline code turns into a function, and GO turns into
function calls), but upon perusing CLtl more closely, I found that
the GO is apparently supposed to undo catchers, which wouldn't happen
if it becomes a function call... Is this analysis correct? If so,
then perhaps the standard deserves something a little stronger than
the phrase "can break up catchers if necessary to get to the target"
(middle of p. 131), which leaves me wondering what else GOs are supposed
to do to get to those elusive targets...
stan
∂10-Aug-86 2132 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU TAGBODY vs LABELS
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Date: Mon, 11 Aug 1986 00:32 EDT
Message-ID: <RAM.12229853616.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: shebs%utah-orion@λutah-cs.arpa (Stanley Shebs)λ
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: TAGBODY vs LABELS
In-reply-to: Msg of 10 Aug 1986 16:50-EDT from shebs%utah-orion at utah-cs.arpa (Stanley Shebs)
GO has to do whatever is necessary in your implementation to get
out of whatever possible stuff that you wrap around the GO. There are
no restrictions on where a GO may appear other than that it must
be lexically within the body of the TAGBODY and that it must be
evaluated within the dynamic context of the TAGBODY.
It may be partly due to a lack of complete understanding of how
the LABELS hack works, but I believe that there isn't a
straightforward general conversion in Common Lisp. In general, any
kind of dynamic state may have to be magically undone. Consider the
example in p131 where the call to MAPCAR is aborted by a GO. Special
bindings seem to cause similar problems.
Rob
∂10-Aug-86 2327 masinter.PA@Xerox.COM tagbody using labels
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From: masinter.PA@Xerox.COM
Date: 10 Aug 86 23:26:24 PDT
Subject: tagbody using labels
To: ram@c.cs.cmu.edu
cc: common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Message-ID: <860810-232733-1239@Xerox>
GO requires no more magic than return-from.
This was an interesting puzzle. This definition doesn't handle go's from
inside an inner tagbody to an outer one, but I couldn't figure out how
to do that without introducing a compiler-let.
(defmacro tagbody (&rest rest)
(labels
((parse (tail &aux (rest (member-if #'atom (cdr tail))))
(if tail (cons (cons (gensym) (ldiff tail rest)) (parse rest)))))
(let ((name (gensym))
(bodies (parse (cons (gensym) rest))))
`(block ,name
(macrolet ((go (tag)
`(return-from ,(car (find tag ',bodies :key 'cadr))
nil)))
(labels
,(maplist
#'(lambda (tail)
`(,(caar tail) ()
,@(reduce #'(lambda (body tag)
`((block ,(car tag) ,@body)
(return-from ,name (,(car tag)))))
bodies
:initial-value
`(,@(cddar tail)
,(if (cdr tail)
`(return-from ,(caadr tail) nil))))))
bodies)
(,(caar bodies))))))))
Larry
<:-)
∂11-Aug-86 0916 gls@Think.COM ,',@
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Date: Mon, 11 Aug 86 12:16 EDT
From: Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>
Subject: ,',@
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@AQUINAS
In-Reply-To: <860801153243.3.ALAN@PIGPEN.AI.MIT.EDU>
Message-Id: <860811121629.4.GLS@NYMPHODORA.THINK.COM>
For the record, I was somewhat wedged in my last reply to Alan about
,',@ and I am now in full agreement with him on the technical issues.
--Guy
∂11-Aug-86 1120 gls@Think.COM tagbody using labels
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Date: Mon, 11 Aug 86 14:20 EDT
From: Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>
Subject: tagbody using labels
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@AQUINAS
In-Reply-To: <860810-232733-1239@Xerox>
Message-Id: <860811142008.3.GLS@NYMPHODORA.THINK.COM>
Utterly astonishing! --Guy
∂11-Aug-86 2258 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM TAGBODY vs LABELS
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Date: Tue, 12 Aug 86 01:56 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: TAGBODY vs LABELS
To: Stanley Shebs <shebs%utah-orion@UTAH-CS.ARPA>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <8608102050.AA00254@utah-orion.ARPA>
Message-ID: <860812015648.5.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 86 14:50:39 MDT
From: shebs%utah-orion@utah-cs.arpa (Stanley Shebs)
I was in the process of implementing TAGBODY in terms of LABELS (each
piece of straightline code turns into a function, and GO turns into
function calls), but upon perusing CLtl more closely, I found that
the GO is apparently supposed to undo catchers, which wouldn't happen
if it becomes a function call... Is this analysis correct? If so,
then perhaps the standard deserves something a little stronger than
the phrase "can break up catchers if necessary to get to the target"
(middle of p. 131), which leaves me wondering what else GOs are supposed
to do to get to those elusive targets...
Most people implement non-local GO in terms of THROW and local GO.
(tagbody (foo #'(lambda () (go a)))
(baz)
a (bar))
==>
(tagbody (case (catch g0001
(foo #'(lambda () (throw g0001 1)))
2)
(1 (go a))
(2 (baz)))
a (bar))
or
(tagbody (catch g0001
(foo #'(lambda () (throw g0001 nil)))
(go g0002))
(go a)
g0002 (baz)
a (bar))
where g0001 is bound to something dynamically unique (using
a gensym constant here won't work, you should easily be able
to construct a counterexample using recursive functions).
Regardless of your exact implementation, I think you'll find that cases
exist in which only an implementation of GO that uses THROW will work.
∂11-Aug-86 2307 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM :allow-other-keys query
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Date: Tue, 12 Aug 86 02:06 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: :allow-other-keys query
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12229586322.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860812020607.7.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1986 00:04 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: earl
Given
(defun bah (&key humbug)
...)
which of the following are legal?
1 (bah :allow-other-keys nil :other 'blah)
2 (bah :allow-other-keys t :other 'blah)
3 (bah :allow-other-keys nil)
Certainly 1 is in error and 2 is legal. What about 3? The way I read
the manual this is an error, which I don't think is the intent of this
feature. Opinions?
I agree with your analysis: a strict reading of the current wording of
the manual would suggest that case 3 is an error, but it would make more
sense if this were not treated as an error.
Our implementation treated 3 as an error for a while, due to being misled
by the manual, and we decided that that was a bug. I agree with Earl;
all &key functions accept :allow-other-keys, and the manual (pp.62-3)
should be clarified accordingly.
∂12-Aug-86 1246 snyder%hplsny@hplabs.HP.COM Re: Proposal #7 Status: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
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From: Alan Snyder <snyder%hplsny@hplabs.HP.COM>
Message-Id: <8608121944.AA12075@hplsny>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 86 12:43:53 PDT
Subject: Re: Proposal #7 Status: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
To: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM, Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
Cc: common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
In-Reply-To: Your message of 28-Jul-86 11:52:00
X-Mailer: NMail [$Revision: 2.5 $]
Date: 28 Jul 86 11:52 PDT
From: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
c) this is a request for a feature, but there's little evidence that
there are significant, meaningful, portable uses for it. (Portable = a
program written with one Common Lisp's version is likely to run with
another Common Lisp's version.)
e) there is another proposal (before the Object Oriented Programming
committee in this case) which satisfies at least part of the original
requirement in a different way.
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 86 20:24 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I have no objection to either of TYPE-SPECIFIER-P or TYPE-NAME-P if
someone can show why these are needed to fix something wrong with the
language. Perhaps Guy can comment on why the original proposal 51 in
his clarifications list was tagged with an asterisk indicating that it
corrects an important flaw or resolves an ambiguity in the
specification.
I think the original request for this feature came from me, and the motivation
was in fact to allow the portable implementation of object-oriented
programming extensions. If DEFCLASS defines a TYPE, then DEFCLASS needs some
way to tell if the specified class name is the name of an existing type, so
that it can issue some reasonable error message. (Presumably, DEFCLASS knows
if the specified name is the name of an existing CLASS, but it doesn't know
about other types.) TYPE-NAME-P is adequate for this purpose, although it
would look ugly to have TYPE-NAME-P in the language if we ever figured out
what TYPE-SPECIFIER-P should do (perhaps Guy's definition is adequate).
To the best of my knowledge, neither DEFTYPE nor DEFSTRUCT define what happens
if the specified type name names an existing type. Defining their behavior in
this case might also solve the problem (if an error is signalled in all cases
of interest). (Only the moderator is allowed to interpret this paragraph as
opening a new issue!)
Alan
-------
∂13-Aug-86 1051 Moon@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Proposal #7: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
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Date: Wed, 13 Aug 86 13:41 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Proposal #7: TYPE-SPECIFIER-P
To: Alan Snyder <snyder%hplsny@hplabs.HP.COM>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <8608121944.AA12075@hplsny>
Message-ID: <860813134107.6.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 86 12:43:53 PDT
From: Alan Snyder <snyder%hplsny@hplabs.HP.COM>
I think the original request for this feature came from me, and the motivation
was in fact to allow the portable implementation of object-oriented
programming extensions. If DEFCLASS defines a TYPE, then DEFCLASS needs some
way to tell if the specified class name is the name of an existing type, so
that it can issue some reasonable error message. (Presumably, DEFCLASS knows
if the specified name is the name of an existing CLASS, but it doesn't know
about other types.) TYPE-NAME-P is adequate for this purpose, although it
would look ugly to have TYPE-NAME-P in the language if we ever figured out
what TYPE-SPECIFIER-P should do (perhaps Guy's definition is adequate).
To the best of my knowledge, neither DEFTYPE nor DEFSTRUCT define what happens
if the specified type name names an existing type. Defining their behavior in
this case might also solve the problem (if an error is signalled in all cases
of interest). (Only the moderator is allowed to interpret this paragraph as
opening a new issue!)
I see. Note that you should be allowed to re-evaluate "the same" DEFTYPE,
DEFSTRUCT, or DEFCLASS, but should get an error if you evaluate one that is
not "the same" but has the same name. This seems like a programming
environment issue. For example, in Symbolics' system "the same" is defined by
the name of the file containing the form, with all forms typed in from the
terminal assumed to be "the same" and not "the same as" any form that came
from a file. I can easily imagine other programming environments where
"the same" would be defined in a very different way.
The problem with calling this a programming environment issue rather than a
language issue is that that doesn't make it go away, since the whole point was
that you want a portable way to define (or extend) the programming
environment. I don't have any solutions to offer, but my opinion is that
one of TYPE-NAME-P or TYPE-SPECIFIER-P should exist, but DEFCLASS should not
need to call it.
∂13-Aug-86 2151 LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA question about subtypep
Received: from UTAH-20.ARPA by SAIL.STANFORD.EDU with TCP; 13 Aug 86 21:43:17 PDT
Date: Wed 13 Aug 86 22:43:11-MDT
From: SANDRA <LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: question about subtypep
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <12230642017.7.LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
On p. 35 of CLtL, it says that the type "array" may or may not be a
subtype of "common", depending on whether your implementation allows you
to make arrays that can only hold items of a type which isn't a subtype
of common. Supposing the implementation has not made this extension, is
it acceptable for (subtypep 'array 'common) to return T? Or is subtypep
only supposed to return T if the subtype relationship definitely holds
in *all* CL implementations?
-Sandra
-------
∂14-Aug-86 0353 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU question about subtypep
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Received: ID <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Thu 14 Aug 86 06:51:55-EDT
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1986 06:51 EDT
Message-ID: <RAM.12230709127.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: SANDRA <LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: question about subtypep
In-reply-to: Msg of 14 Aug 1986 00:43-EDT from SANDRA <LOOSEMORE at UTAH-20.ARPA>
CLTL is pretty vague about what subtypep does. My intpretation
(based on intensive meditation and reading of scripture) is that
SUBTYPEP returns information about the actual subtype relations in
your implementation. Discrepencies will exist most often when an
implementation decides to fold potentially distinct types together.
For example, if all arrays are adjustable and have fill-pointers, then
SIMPLE-ARRAY is indentical to ARRAY, and therefore
(SUBTYPEP 'ARRAY 'SIMPLE-ARRAY) is true.
Note there are some possible users of SUBTYPEP that would prefer
answers to be based on some hypothetical maximally restrictive type
system. The main example is a compiler which does compile-time type
checking when possible. Although (THE SHORT-FLOAT 1F0) is quite legal
in an implementation in which SHORT-FLOAT and SINGLE-FLOAT are
identical, it would be reasonable for the compiler to give a warning
anyway. Applications that care about this sort of thing will have to
use a variant version of subtypep that is distinct from the real
SUBTYPEP.
Rob
∂14-Aug-86 0559 Hvatum.DLAB@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA &rest destruction
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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 86 08:57 EDT
From: Hvatum@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: &rest destruction
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860814125727.259238@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA>
From: Steve Bacher: CSDL
Subject: &rest destruction
I see one more potential case where the &rest args may be indestructible - a
possible compiler optimization where, given a function
(defun foo (&rest x) ...)
and a call like
(foo 'bar 'baz 'frob)
the compiler may choose to pass an inline list '(BAR BAZ FROB) to save
on consing. Guaranteed destructibility would merely enjoin the compiler
writer from generating this optimization, which would probably not be a
problem (although I wouldn't be too happy with such a restriction).
(There's one other useful case: if there's a function FROBOZZ,
say, that takes one &REST arg, the compiler should be able to take
(apply #'frobozz some-list)
and compile it as a direct call to FROBOZZ, passing the list itself on
as is. In some architectures this may be much more efficient, even
apart from the elimination of APPLY from the picture; there may be
an INTERNAL-FROBOZZ that takes a single list arg and does the same
thing, in which case the compiler could do a source transform on the
above. Again, forced consing in this (possibly more frequent) case
could be detrimental.)
- Steve
≠
∂14-Aug-86 1444 Pavel.pa@Xerox.COM More words on the scoping of declarations
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Date: 14 Aug 86 14:11 PDT
From: Pavel.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: More words on the scoping of declarations
In-reply-to: NGALL@G.BBN.COM's message of 19 Jul 86 17:17 EDT
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860814-141151-4806@Xerox>
Having been gone for three weeks, I was unable to properly defend my
proposal on the scoping of declarations. Although I've been back for
three days now, I have only now finished reading the incredible torrent
of mail spewed out over that time. I therefore ask for your indulgence
as I refer to messages now more than 25 days old. I have included
contextual excerpts for those of you who haven't just read it all at
once.
Date: 19 Jul 86 17:17 EDT
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
Date: 11 Jul 86 18:43 PDT
From: Pavel.pa@Xerox.COM
In this message I will give a complete description of my proposal
for
declaration scoping. I won't attempt to argue for it on the basis
of
``obviousness'' or clarity, though, because I think that there are
people who find each of the two ways of scoping special
declarations
confusing. Rather, I like this way of doing things because it
satisfies
an important (to me) consistency criterion: the scope of \any/
declaration coincides with a particular lexical identifier scope.
I don't think you mean 'any' here; I think you mean 'any declaration
that concerns the bindings of variables' (cf. pg. 154). You cannot
mean 'any' since in the example below
(let ((x 1))
(declare (inline foo))
(foo x))
the declaration does not 'coincide with a particular lexical
identifier scope.' A more extreme example is
(let (...)
(declare (optimize ...))
...)
in which the declaration does not refer to ANY named entity.
Being a disciple of the Mad Hatter, I said what I meant and meant what I
said. A declaration need not refer to a named entity in order to share
that entity's scope. In the second example you gave, the OPTIMIZE
declaration applies to the bindings made in the LET and to all code in
the body of the LET. Thus, if we were asking to optimize speed at the
expense of space, the compiler would be encouraged to bind the variables
in the fastest way possible, even if it used up an extra stack cell, for
example. I fully understand that most implementations, including that
of Xerox, haven't the freedom to further optimize the creation of
bindings (though it is a fascinating concept...). The point is that
those bindings \are/ covered by the declaration and that the init-forms
for the bindings are \not/ so covered, as stated in my proposal.
Unfortunately, TYPE and IGNORE are the only decl specs that only
concern bindings. SPECIAL concerns bindings also, but it
also pervasively affects references (this is what you want changed).
I am \not/ trying to change the so-called ``pervasive'' nature of
special declarations, only their scope. More on this later.
And FTYPE and INLINE simply confuse me.
How can FTYPE be confusing when TYPE is not? They perform precisely
symmetrically along the value/function axis. TYPE makes a statement
about the kinds of \values/ that can be referred to by the \value/-names
given, while FTPYPE makes a statement about the kinds of \functions/
that can be referred to by the \function/-names given. No difference,
no confusion.
First of all, FTYPE is not explicitly stated to be a pervasive decl
spec, I believe this is an omission. Secondly, there is this
confusing sentence at the end of their descriptions:
"Note that the rules of lexical scoping are observed; if one of the
functions mentioned has a lexically apparent local definition (as made
by FLET or LABELS), then the declaration applies to that local
definition and not to the global definition."
This makes it sound like FTYPE and INLINE are like SPECIAL: they
concern bindings AND affect references (but not pervasively?).
For example,
(FLET ((zap (...)...(zap...)...))
(declare (inline zap))
...)
Is the call to zap in the local definition of zap affected by the
declaration? My reading of CLtL and commonsense make me answer no.
The call to zap is not a call to the local def. of zap, and according
to my reading of the sentence quoted above, the decl. only affects
references within the scope of the innermost binding of the name zap.
But this interpretation depends upon not interpreting 'pervasively' as
stated in CLtL. Is my interpretation correct?
One is strongly reminded of rabbinical study of the Talmud...
This whole view of pervasive vs. non-pervasive is a red herring based
upon some unclearly-written prose in CLtL. A given declaration has a
certain scope and has an effect (possibly empty) on every single
language construct in that scope. Thus, \every/ declaration is
``pervasive'' in the sense of CLtL. To describe the meaning of a given
kind of declaration, it is necessary and sufficient to lay out its
effect on every kind of language feature that can appear within its
scope; clearly, most declaration-kinds will have non-empty effects on
only a small set of language features. For example, a SPECIAL
declaration affects variable bindings and references, but not
function-calls or other declarations. The DECLARATION declaration
affects only other declarations and none of variable bindings,
references or function calls. I will lay out my understanding of the
meanings of all of the CLtL declaration-kinds in another message (since
this one is going to be too long as it is).
I propose the following change to CLtL (which pretty much agrees with
both CLtL and Pavel):
...
I disagree with the statement that Nick's proposal agrees with mine.
...
Some examples should help clarify this:
(let ((y x))
(declare (type list x))
...x...)
Both references to x are affected.
(let ((x x))
(declare (type list x))
...x...)
Only the second reference to x is affected (since the first reference
is not within the scope of the binding named by x).
This is losing. Either the init-forms of the LET should be covered by
the declarations or they should not, but it shouldn't depend upon what
variables are being bound. It is precisely behaviour like this against
which I am raging: the scope of declarations corresponding to random,
arbitrary, and hard-to-remember rules as opposed to the same, sane rules
of lexical scoping around which the whole remainder of the language
revolves.
(FLET ((zap (...)...(zap...)...(zoop...)...))
(declare (function zap (...)...)
(function zoop (...)...))
...)
The call to zap is not affected, but the call to zoop is.
This is the example that really hurts. The world will be a simpler
place if we can simply agree that every declaration has a certain scope,
regardless of what constructs appear in that scope. Thus, the scope of
these declarations either includes or does not include the body of the
function ZAP. If they do (and I think that they should not), then both
function calls shown should be affected. If the scope does not include
that body, then neither call is affected. Clear?
Note that I specified a \single/ scope for both declarations above, not
a separate one for each; the only exception to this policy should be the
sequential binding forms, including LAMBDA.
I believe this proposal is complete, consistent, and simple to apply.
I believe this proposal is incomplete (since it does not include a
specific enumeration of the semantics of all declarations in all of the
special forms), inconsistent (see my last set of comments above) and
difficult to apply (it requires examination of the names of variables
being bound, as opposed to having scope and semantics independent of
specific context).
-----------
The next proposal was from Bawden and was later dubbed ``Bawden's
Alternate Proposal'':
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 86 16:02:37 EDT
From: Alan Bawden <ALAN@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
...
Actually, the more I think about this as a simplification, the more I
like
it. So here is a counter-proposal for rationalizing the semantics of
declarations:
1. All declarations are completely pervasive. That is, if you write
(locally (declare (special foo)) ...)
then every occurance of FOO within the body is taken to be a special
reference or a special binding. The only way to escape from the
effects of
a declaration within the body, is to explicitly shadow the declaration
with
another. This applies to -all- declarations: FTYPE, INLINE, etc.
2. Declarations that occur in the bodies of special forms (DEFUN, LET,
DO,
etc.), and in LAMBDA expressions, are taken to mean the same thing as
if
the entire form was enclosed in a LOCALLY containing the same
declarations.
So
(let ,pairs ,@dcls ,@body)
and
(locally ,@dcls (let ,pairs ,@body))
are completely equivalent.
(Since LAMBDA expressions aren't forms, the equivalent using LOCALLY
isn't
always completely straightforward to construct. For example, this
case:
((lambda ,vars ,@dcls ,@body) ,@vals)
is equivalent to using LOCALLY as follows:
(funcall (locally ,@dcls (function (lambda ,vars ,@body))) ,@vals)
.)
One certainly can't fault this proposal on the ground of complexity.
No, my major objection to Alan's plan is that it sets up an entirely
separate scoping mechanism for declarations. That mechanism is entirely
lexical and straightforward and all that, but it's not the same one that
the binding of names uses. Why have two scopes when one will do? Also,
I agree with Paul the Greek that the following is undesirable:
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 86 17:55:05 EDT
From: Alan Bawden <ALAN@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
From: "BACH::GREEK" <greek%bach.decnet@hudson.dec.com>
Bawden's proposal would result in the following.
(FLET ((FOO (X) (FOO X X)))
(DECLARE (FUNCTION FOO (INTEGER) INTEGER))
... (FOO 5) ...)
The declaration for FOO would pertain to both the locally-defined
FOO and the outer FOO used in its body.
This is correct. Since function names are lexically scoped, you can
call
the inner function something other than FOO with only a minor change to
your program. Is this situation actually common in anyone's code?
It bothers me that a single declaration can refer to two different
variables that happen to share the same name. Notice that it is the
creation of a separate-but-equal scoping mechanism for declarations that
causes this problem; were declarations to use the same scoping mechanism
as names, this problem could not arise.
JonL wrote in support of Alan's proposal:
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 86 03:53:30 PDT
From: edsel!bhopal!jonl@navajo.stanford.edu (Jon L White)
...
It seems to me that Alan's proposal infuses declarations with the same
kind of scoping semantics that exists for variable bindings. In the
form
(let ((a <something>))
. . .
(let ((a <something-else>))
. . .
))
the meaning of this is "a is bound to something, unless it is bound
to something else"; which is parallel to Alan's notion for declarations
that has (unfortunately) been called "shadowing".
I find the unification of these two scoping rules to be very
attractive.
-- JonL --
Alan's proposal does not unify the two scoping rules, but rather grants
them both first-class status, separate but equal, as I said above. I
believe that my proposal, linking the scope of declarations directly to
the scope of names, truly unifies the two.
I've talked enough for this letter. I will send out a separate message
revising and completing my proposal in as much detail I would expect
(hope) the language specification to contain.
Pavel
∂14-Aug-86 1602 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU More words on the scoping of declarations (FTYPE)
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Received: ID <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Thu 14 Aug 86 18:57:21-EDT
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1986 18:57 EDT
Message-ID: <RAM.12230841185.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Pavel.pa@XEROX.COM
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: More words on the scoping of declarations (FTYPE)
In-reply-to: Msg of 14 Aug 1986 17:11-EDT from Pavel.pa at Xerox.COM
My reading of the manual supports the claim that FTYPE is not
symmetrical with TYPE. TYPE may only be used with a binding, while
FTYPE is shown in examples as being used "pervasively" on a global
identifier. If FTYPE was in fact like TYPE, then you couldn't use it
at all, since currently no declarations are allowed in functional
binding forms.
Whether this is desirable is another point altogether. We should
probably clean up this gratuitous inconsistency if we are going to
make sweeping changes to the declaration scoping rules.
Rob
∂15-Aug-86 0734 cvfong@mitre.ARPA drop out
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Full-Name: C. Vanessa Fong
Message-Id: <8608151424.AA21531@mitre.ARPA>
Organization: The MITRE Corp., Washington, D.C.
To: common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Subject: drop out
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 86 10:24:33 -0500
From: Vanessa Fong <cvfong@mitre.ARPA>
Please delete my name from your distribution list. Thanks!
C. Vanessa Fong (cvfong@mitre.arpa)
∂18-Aug-86 1101 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU More words on the scoping of declarations
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Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1986 13:56 EDT
Message-ID: <RAM.12231834939.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Pavel.pa@XEROX.COM
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: More words on the scoping of declarations
In-reply-to: Msg of 14 Aug 1986 17:11-EDT from Pavel.pa at Xerox.COM
I think that I like the substance of your proposal for declaration
scoping, but I have some misgivings about the way that you have
expressed it.
In your definition, you attempt to simply define all interactions
between all forms where declarations can appear and all code that can
appear in them. This approach attempts to deny the need for a theory
of declaration scoping. Such a theory would give people a model for
understanding how things work, and would also enforce some sort of
consistency in the definition.
It is evident that you do have a theory of variable binding, but
you don't really attempt to formalize it to the point where
declartion semantics becomes obvious. You theory is based on the idea
that declaration scoping should follow the same scope rules as
variables. It is a property of this theory that a declaration for a
specific name cannot refer to multipel variables which have the same
name.
So far as the application of the theory goes, the main problem
that I see is with LET* and possibly other places where sequential
bindings happen. It is not obvious to me what the scope of
delcarations in LET* should be, even if we disallow repeated variable
names.
Rob
∂18-Aug-86 1459 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:File-Server@DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM string-/=, etc.
Received: from [128.81.51.3] by SAIL.STANFORD.EDU with TCP; 18 Aug 86 14:58:53 PDT
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 86 17:58 EDT
From: DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
Sender: File-Server@DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM
Subject: string-/=, etc.
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Supersedes: <860808175848.1.DCP@FIREBIRD.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Comments: Retransmission of failed mail.
Message-ID: <860818175815.4.FILE-SERVER@DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Page 301 is slightly ambiguous. If you read it carefully, some parts
imply it is a relative index ("...then the result is the index within
the strings..." and "put another way, the result is the length of the
logest common prefix...") but other parts imply it is absolute ("The
index returned in case of a mistmatch is an index into /string1/.") The
last sentence on the page is the real clincher, but is said much too
late and the almost-relative wording.
[In hindsight, some of us may think the answer should be relative to the
beginning of the specified substrings, not absolute in string1, but
that's incompatible and probably too incompatible.]
∂18-Aug-86 1725 HEDRICK@RED.RUTGERS.EDU close on synonym streams, etc
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Date: 18 Aug 86 20:25:45 EDT
From: Charles Hedrick <HEDRICK@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Subject: close on synonym streams, etc
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <12231905873.61.HEDRICK@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
I would think that it would be legal to close a synonym stream,
broadcast stream, etc., but that this close would affect only the
synonym stream, as opposed to the stream it points to. I could conceive
of implementations where buffering is done in each stream. In that
case, it might be a good idea to close a synonym or broadcast stream, in
order to make sure that any buffered characters are taken care of and
any cleanup is done. It should be an error to do any I/O operation on a
stream that has been closed. If you intend to outlaw close on one
of these composite streams, then you should mention this fact clearly
where synonym and broadcast streams are defined, and note that this
means that they must be implemented in such a way that a close is not
required when you are finished using them.
-------
∂18-Aug-86 1825 franz!fizzy!jkf@kim.Berkeley.EDU Re: synonym streams..
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From: franz!fizzy!jkf@kim.Berkeley.EDU
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Message-Id: <8608182223.AA19698@fizzy>
To: ucbkim!Xerox.COM!Masinter.pa
Cc: common-lisp@su-ai.arpa
Subject: Re: synonym streams..
In-Reply-To: Your message of 05 Aug 86 11:09:00 PDT.
<860805-111034-2460@Xerox>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 86 15:22:59 PDT
>> Date: 5 Aug 86 11:09 PDT
>> From: franz!ucbkim!Xerox.COM!Masinter.pa
>> I propose the following rule: "It is an error to attempt to close a
>> stream that wasn't created with open."
>> With this rule, it would follow that, since synonym, broadcast and
>> two-way streams are not created with open, it is an error to perform
>> "close" on them.
[sorry for the delay in the reply, this is the first chance I've had
to reply]
This topic was brought up in this mailing list on Aug 21, 1985 and
discussed at great length on Sept 7, 1985. My feeling was then and
is still now that closing a synonym stream is legal, and that the only
effect is that read and writes to the closed synonym stream will cause an
error to be signaled. [At the time the only other possibility
discussed was that closing a synonym stream would cause the stream
that it was a synonym of to be closed as well. No one has brought
this option up so I assume that either it has no backers or else they
are on vacation].
Suppose I have a function which takes a stream and reads and
processes data from that stream and when an eof is seen, it closes the
stream and returns. What is to be gained by my program having to know
about synonym streams and having to check that it wasn't a synonym
stream passed in before it does a close? I would like my function to
be able to accept input from *standard-input* by having
my program create a synonym stream (call it X) for *standard-input*
and passing it to the function. When my function closes X, that should
be ok, and it shouldn't affect *standard-input* (or *terminal-io*,
if *standard-input* is a synonym for *terminal-io*).
-john foderaro
Franz Inc.
∂19-Aug-86 1045 ACUFF@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Re: synonym streams..
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Date: Tue 19 Aug 86 10:45:43-PDT
From: Richard Acuff <Acuff@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Re: synonym streams..
To: franz!fizzy!jkf@KIM.BERKELEY.EDU,
ucbkim!Xerox.COM!Masinter.pa@KIM.BERKELEY.EDU
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <8608182223.AA19698@fizzy>
Message-ID: <12232095191.66.ACUFF@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
I agree with John that making it an error to close an active stream
of any sort is a mistake, since the closing code may have picked up
the stream anywhere and not know its nature.
What are the arguments against CLOSE closing the actual stream passed
to it, leaving any underlying streams alone? The only one I can think
of is the desire to close those underlying streams as well, which indicates
a potential need for a mechanism to recover embedded streams.
-- Rich
-------
∂19-Aug-86 1240 KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM close on synonym streams, etc
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Date: Tue, 19 Aug 86 15:24 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: close on synonym streams, etc
To: HEDRICK@RED.RUTGERS.EDU
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <12231905873.61.HEDRICK@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Message-ID: <860819152419.2.KMP@RIO-DE-JANEIRO.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 18 Aug 86 20:25:45 EDT
From: Charles Hedrick <HEDRICK@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
... I could conceive of implementations where buffering is done
in each stream. In that case, it might be a good idea to close
a synonym or broadcast stream, in order to make sure that any
buffered characters are taken care of and any cleanup is done.
It looks to me like this issue is adequately addressed by the presence
of FINISH-OUTPUT and FORCE-OUTPUT. Perhaps the documentation could be
clearer on that point.
... If you intend to outlaw close on one of these composite streams,
then you should mention this fact clearly where synonym and broadcast
streams are defined, and note that this means that they must be
implemented in such a way that a close is not required when you are
finished using them.
Indeed, the documentation should be clear about these points.
It seems to me, however, that the only point to CLOSE is that it
allows the freeing of things like operating system "channels"
which are often critical resources. In that respect, it's like
a fast GC. If they weren't critical resources, I assume we'd
just drop pointers to streams and let the GC take care of
straightening out the resources in its own sweet time.
Since echo and broadcast streams are presumably just lisp objects
which have slots containing other streams, I see no reason to worry
about fast GC of them. Statistically, I bet their components will
tend to (not really coincidentally) get closed anyway by other
mechanisms. eg, consider:
(WITH-OPEN-FILE (FILE-STREAM ...)
(LET ((ECHO-STREAM (MAKE-ECHO-STREAM STREAM *TERMINAL-IO*)))
...))
The file stream will get closed fine by the WITH-OPEN-FILE. The echo
stream (holding the closed file stream) will eventually get cleaned
up by the GC. That should be fine. No one's going to miss the couple
of conses which is presumably the only resource being used in the
meantime.
It's true that there may be certain situations where you might think
you want ECHO-STREAM-P, ECHO-STREAM-INPUT-STREAM, and
ECHO-STREAM-OUTPUT-STREAM operations in order to clean up the loose
ends. Eg, you might have done:
(DEFVAR *ECHO-STREAM* (MAKE-ECHO-STREAM (OPEN ...) *TERMINAL-IO*))
and maybe you later want to close the encapsulated real stream, but my
feeling is that it was so easy for you to have done:
(DEFVAR *FILE-STREAM* (OPEN ...))
(DEFVAR *ECHO-STREAM* (MAKE-ECHO-STREAM *FILE-STREAM* *TERMINAL-IO*))
that there just isn't any way to claim that the language didn't let
you do what you wanted to do. In fact, if someone else wrote the module
that gave you the pointer to the echo stream and that person wouldn't
give you the encapsulated stream, maybe it was for a reason. If so,
you're asking a lot by claiming it should be ok to be closing that
encapsulated stream...
∂19-Aug-86 1556 pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM streams ...
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Received: by hplabs.HP.COM ; Tue, 19 Aug 86 15:54:54 pdt
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id AA20141; Tue, 19 Aug 86 12:52:19 PDT
Date: 19 Aug 1986 12:52 PDT
From: David Bein <pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM>
Subject: streams ...
To: common-lisp@su-ai
Message-Id: <524862532/bein@pyramid>
Sorry for all the confusion. Now for a fresh batch.
My questions are motivated by what is supposed to happen when
a stream which is composed of other streams runs into one of the
standard streams (e.q. original *standard-input*,*standard-output*,
or *terminal-io*). Note that I am assuming that it is erroneous
to bash the original streams. I do not know whether it should cause
an error or simply do nothing. My feeling is that either is desirable
at different times. I also can imagine cases where one explicitly
wants to bash one of the original streams. Any interactive error/query system
ought to be able to throw its hands up when someone closes *terminal-io*.
My proposal for handling this mess without forcing true believers
on either side of the question is:
(1) Provide a stream operation which marks a stream as "NEVER-CLOSE".
When CLOSE (either directly or via a CLOSE on some composed stream)
hits one of these it ignores it and returns. We could designate
this as a "DINER" stream since it is always open.
(2) Provide a stream operation which marks a stream as "COMPLAIN-IF-CLOSED".
When CLOSE (same conditions as above) hits one of these it flames
out and causes an error.
Any stream which has neither of these attributes is fair game
for closing either directly or via recursion. Both options may of
course be turned off if a user desires it.
Establish well-defined defaults for any of the standard streams
so that one can write "portable" code. Perhaps neither attribute
should be on when a stream is created. Of course this does not
help much when *terminal-io* appears out of nowhere as far as
any user is concerned.
I agree with those people who believe a close on a composed-stream
(echo,synonym,two-way,concatenated,broadcast) should render the
top level stream unusable.
While on the subject, I think that it would be reasonable to be
able to query a composed stream. It would also be reasonable to
make the various kinds of streams be distinct types (each a subtyp of STREAM)
so the typing system could help differentiate between the streams.
Of course we will have to draw some distinction between "portable"
streams and all the other kinds which implementers have added.
More food for thought -- what do people think is reasonable to
do with *terminal-io* if the process is running without any kind
of connection to an interactive device? I have seen different
approaches. I personally like the idea that use of *terminal-io*
when no kind of interactive device exists should cause some kind
of merciless death. This has implications for error/query systems
of course.
--David
∂19-Aug-86 1827 sridhar%tekecs.tek.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA documentation strings in BOA constructors ?
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id AA29746; Tue, 19 Aug 86 14:22:27 PDT
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id AA03925; Tue, 19 Aug 86 14:23:25 PDT
From: "S. Sridhar" <sridhar%tekecs.tek.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Message-Id: <8608192123.AA03925@tekecs.GWD.TEK>
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 86 14:23:23 PDT
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: documentation strings in BOA constructors ?
Suppose you have :
(defstruct (point (:constructor make-point (x y) "this makes a point"))
x y)
There is no mention on page315-316 in CltL about having
documentation strings for such functions.
Our implementation does:
(documentation 'make-point 'function) => nil.
What should the "correct" behaviour be?
--sridhar
∂19-Aug-86 1840 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU documentation strings in BOA constructors ?
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Received: ID <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Tue 19 Aug 86 21:38:44-EDT
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1986 21:38 EDT
Message-ID: <RAM.12232181270.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "S. Sridhar" <sridhar%tekecs.tek.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: documentation strings in BOA constructors ?
In-reply-to: Msg of 19 Aug 1986 17:23-EDT from S. Sridhar <sridhar%tekecs.tek.csnet at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Date: Tuesday, 19 August 1986 17:23-EDT
From: S. Sridhar <sridhar%tekecs.tek.csnet at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
Re: documentation strings in BOA constructors ?
Suppose you have :
(defstruct (point (:constructor make-point (x y) "this makes a point"))
x y)
I think it clear that this is illegal and that there is no way to
specify doc strings in DEFSTRUCT. Although a possible area for
extensions, it not a big problem since SETF of DOCUMENTATION can be
used to given function documentation to any function.
If we were to extend DEFSTRUCT so that the functions could be directly
documented, then the extension should apply to *all* defstruct
generated functions, and not just BOA constructors.
Rob
∂20-Aug-86 0540 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM "fonted" characters in CL
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Date: Wed, 20 Aug 86 08:40 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: "fonted" characters in CL
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860802175500.1.DCP@FIREBIRD.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <860820084000.8.DCP@FIREBIRD.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
I propose we eliminate char-font-limit and the associated concepts from
the language. Either that or make the specification considerably more
tight and detailed saying how >numeric< values are interpreted. Either
that, or specify some >symbolic< notion of "fonts" we can live with.
Symbolics found that the CL notion of "fonts" is not very portable, nor
is it very useful. Therefore, char-font-limit => 1 and (char-font
<char>) =always=> 0. This is in accordance with CLtL, but it doesn't
help us move code to other Common Lisp implementations, and it doesn't
help others port to our system.
What we have done instead (note I don't want to push this and I'm not
sure the development staff does either since only beta-test sites have
seen this so far) is to define a character to have the following
attributes:
A character set
A code within the character set
Bits
Style
The character set and code within character set is roughly char-code.
Bits are as per CLtL. Style is a symbolic notion of what the characters
LOOK like, for example, bold, italic, small, very-large, fixed width,
etc, and combinations. A "font" is a set of glyphs. A font is mapped
to by the triple character-set, style and output device. There are
probably some lies in this description; our documentation is clearer and
more verbose.
My point is that the current numbering scheme is a holdover from 1970's
text formatters (TJ6, R, etc) and the simplistic mapping of those to the
MIT Lisp Machines editor buffers. The numbers in those systems are
relative to something; the numbers in CLtL aren't relative to anything.
Those ideas don't hold in real production systems.
∂20-Aug-86 1040 RICE@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Defstruct and Documentation.
Received: from SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU by SAIL.STANFORD.EDU with TCP; 20 Aug 86 10:40:33 PDT
Date: Wed 20 Aug 86 09:59:37-PDT
From: James Rice <Rice@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Defstruct and Documentation.
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <12232348944.62.RICE@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
I agree that doc string should be allowed in ALL
defstruct generated functions.
I also think that Declarations should be allowed.
There may well be good reasons for wanting to
(declare (optimize (safety 3) (speed 0))).
Particularly whilst debugging.
Rice.
-------
∂22-Aug-86 1333 @MC.LCS.MIT.EDU,@SEBASTIAN.THINK.COM:gls@AQUINAS.THINK.COM 1986 Lisp conference bibliography
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Date: Fri, 22 Aug 86 14:06 EDT
From: Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>
Subject: 1986 Lisp conference bibliography
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA, rrrs-authors@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU
Cc: gls@AQUINAS
Message-Id: <860822140628.4.GLS@SEBASTIAN.THINK.COM>
With the help of Bill Scherlis, I have massaged the table of contents
(with some corrections) for the 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and
Functional Programming into the form of a bibliography database suitable
for use with LaTeX/BibTeX and (almost) SCRIBE. The database has been
tested with BibTeX, and uses TeX conventions for forcing capitalization
and for accenting characters (there are three accents acute, one umlaut,
and one "i" with a circumflex over it). The database should require
only slight modification to make it suitable for use with SCRIBE.
I am mailing out the database in the interest of making it easier for
everyone to refer to all these great papers from the conference. The
database follows at the end of this message, followed by the BibTeX
transcription of it for a bibliography format very similar to that
required by CACM. (I considered just mailing out a pointer to an
FTP-able file, but I find that in practice this method is rather clumsy
and people don't use it.)
--Guy
----------------------------------------------------------------
@InProceedings(LAWS-IN-MIRANDA
,Key = "Thompson"
,Author = "Simon Thompson"
,Title = "Laws in {M}iranda"
,Pages = "1-12"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(MINI-ML
,Key = "Clement"
,Author = "Dominique Cl\'ement and {Jo\"elle} Despeyroux and Thierry Despeyroux and Gilles Kahn"
,Title = "A Simple Applicative Language: {M}ini-{ML}"
,Pages = "13-27"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(INTEGRATING-FUNCTIONAL-AND-IMPERATIVE-PROGRAMMING
,Key = "Gifford"
,Author = "David K. Gifford and John M. Lucassen"
,Title = "Integrating Functional and Imperative Programming"
,Pages = "28-38"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(EXPERIENCE-WITH-AN-UNCOMMON-LISP
,Key = "Alberga"
,Author = "Cyril N. Alberga and Chris Bosman-Clark and Martin Mikelsons and Mary S. Van Deusen and Julian Padget"
,Title = "Experience with an Uncommon {L}isp"
,Pages = "39-53"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(DESIDERATA-FOR-THE-STANDARDISATION-OF-LISP
,Key = "Padget"
,Author = "Julian Padget and others"
,Title = "Desiderata for the Standardisation of {L}isp"
,Pages = "54-66"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(OPTIMIZING-DYNAMICALLY-RETARGETABLE-COMPILER-FOR-COMMON-LISP
,Key = "Brooks"
,Author = "Rodney A. Brooks and David B. Posner and James L. McDonald and Jon L. White and Eric Benson and Richard P. Gabriel"
,Title = "Design of an Optimizing, Dynamically Retargetable Compiler for {C}ommon {L}isp"
,Pages = "67-85"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(IMPLEMENTATION-OF-PC-SCHEME
,Key = "Bartley"
,Author = "David H. Bartley and John C. Jensen"
,Title = "The Implementation of {PC} {S}cheme"
,Pages = "86-93"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(CODE-GENERATION-TECHNIQUES-FOR-FUNCTIONAL-LANGUAGES
,Key = "Fairbairn"
,Author = "Jon Fairbairn and Stuart C. Wray"
,Title = "Code Generation Techniques for Functional Languages"
,Pages = "94-104"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(ARCHITECTURE-FOR-MOSTLY-FUNCTIONAL-LANGUAGES
,Key = "Knight"
,Author = "Tom Knight"
,Title = "An Architecture for Mostly Functional Languages"
,Pages = "105-112"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(EFFICIENT-MULTIPROCESSOR-COMBINATOR-REDUCTION
,Key = "Lemaitre"
,Author = "M. Lema\↑\itre and M. Castan and M.-H. Durand and G. Durrieu and B. Lecussan"
,Title = "Mechanisms for Efficient Multiprocessor Combinator Reduction"
,Pages = "113-121"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(CURRY-CHIP
,Key = "Ramsdell"
,Author = "John D. Ramsdell"
,Title = "The {CURRY} Chip"
,Pages = "122-131"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(VARIATIONS-ON-STRICTNESS-ANALYSIS
,Key = "Bloss"
,Author = "Adrienne Bloss and Paul Hudak"
,Title = "Variations on Strictness Analysis"
,Pages = "132-142"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(EXPANSION-PASSING-STYLE
,Key = "Dybvig"
,Author = "R. Kent Dybvig and Daniel P. Friedman and Christopher T. Haynes"
,Title = "Expansion-Passing Style: Beyond Conventional Macros"
,Pages = "143-150"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(HYGIENIC-MACRO-EXPANSION
,Key = "Kohlbecker"
,Author = "Eugene Kohlbecker and Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen and Bruce Duba"
,Title = "Hygienic Macro Expansion"
,Pages = "151-161"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(EXACT-REAL-ARITHMETIC
,Key = "Boehm"
,Author = "Hans-J. Boehm and Robert Cartwright and Mark Riggle and Michael J. O'Donnell"
,Title = "Exact Real Arithmetic: A Case Study in Higher Order Programming"
,Pages = "162-173"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(RECONFIGURABLE-RETARGETABLE-BIGNUMS
,Key = "White"
,Author = "Jon L. White"
,Title = "Reconfigurable, Retargetable Bignums: A Case Study in Efficient, Portable {L}isp System Building"
,Pages = "174-191"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(LISP-ON-A-REDUCED-INSTRUCTION-SET-PROCESSOR
,Key = "Steenkiste"
,Author = "Peter Steenkiste and John Hennessy"
,Title = "{L}isp on a Reduced-Instruction-Set-Processor"
,Pages = "192-201"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(PARTITIONING-PARALLEL-PROGRAMS-FOR-MACRO-DATAFLOW
,Key = "Sarkar"
,Author = "Vivek Sarkar and John Hennessy"
,Title = "Partitioning Parallel Programs for Macro-Dataflow"
,Pages = "202-211"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(NORMA-GRAPH-REDUCTION-PROCESSOR
,Key = "Scheevel"
,Author = "Mark Scheevel"
,Title = "{NORMA}: A Graph Reduction Processor"
,Pages = "212-219"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(FOUR-STROKE-REDUCTION-ENGINE
,Key = "Clack"
,Author = "Chris Clack and Simon L. Peyton Jones"
,Title = "The Four-Stroke Reduction Engine"
,Pages = "220-232"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(USE-OF-LISP-IN-IMPLEMENTING-DENOTATIONAL-SEMANTICS
,Key = "Lee"
,Author = "Peter Lee and Uwe Pleban"
,Title = "On the Use of {L}isp in Implementing Denotational Semantics"
,Pages = "233-248"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(SEMANTICS-DIRECTED-COMPILING-FOR-FUNCTIONAL-LANGUAGES
,Key = "Nielson"
,Author = "Hanne R. Nielson and Flemming Nielson"
,Title = "Semantics Directed Compiling for Functional Languages"
,Pages = "249-257"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(CONNECTION-GRAPHS
,Key = "Bawden"
,Author = "Alan Bawden"
,Title = "Connection Graphs"
,Pages = "258-265"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(IMPLEMENTING-FUNCTIONAL-LANGUAGES-IN-THE-CATEGORICAL-ABSTRACT-MACHINE
,Key = "Mauny"
,Author = "Michel Mauny and Asc\'ander Su\'arez"
,Title = "Implementing Functional Languages in the Categorical Abstract Machine"
,Pages = "266-278"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(CONNECTION-MACHINE-LISP
,Key = "Steele"
,Author = "Steele, Guy L., Jr. and W. Daniel Hillis"
,Title = "Connection Machine LISP: Fine-Grained Parallel Symbolic Processing"
,Pages = "279-297"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(MYSTERY-OF-THE-TOWER-REVEALED
,Key = "Wand"
,Author = "Mitchell Wand and Daniel P. Friedman"
,Title = "The Mystery of the Tower Revealed: A Non-Reflective Description of the Reflective Tower"
,Pages = "298-307"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(TYPE-INFERENCE-APPROACH-TO-POLYMORPHIC-EXPRESSIONS
,Key = "Mitchell"
,Author = "John C. Mitchell"
,Title = "A Type-Inference Approach to Reduction Properties and Semantics of Polymorphic Expressions (summary)"
,Pages = "308-319"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(EQUATIONS-SETS-AND-REDUCTION-SEMANTICS
,Key = "Jayaraman"
,Author = "Bharat Jayaraman and Frank S. K. Silbermann"
,Title = "Equations, Sets, and Reduction Semantics for Functional and Logic Programming"
,Pages = "320-331"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(SEMANTIC-THEORY-FOR-EQUATIONAL-PROGRAMMING-LANGUAGES
,Key = "Thatte"
,Author = "Satish R. Thatte"
,Title = "Towards a Semantic Theory for Equational Programming Languages"
,Pages = "332-342"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(PROTOCOL-FOR-DISTRIBUTED-REFERENCE-COUNTING
,Key = "Lermen"
,Author = "Claus-Werner Lermen and Dieter Maurer"
,Title = "A Protocol for Distributed Reference Counting"
,Pages = "343-350"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(SEMANTIC-MODEL-OF-REFERENCE-COUNTING-AND-ITS-ABSTRACTION
,Key = "Hudak"
,Author = "Paul Hudak"
,Title = "A Semantic Model of Reference Counting and its Abstraction (detailed summary)"
,Pages = "351-363"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
@InProceedings(DISTRIBUTED-COPYING-GARBAGE-COLLECTION
,Key = "Rudalics"
,Author = "Martin Rudalics"
,Title = "Distributed Copying Garbage Collection"
,Pages = "364-372"
,Booktitle = "Proc.~1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming"
,Organization = "ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART"
,Year = "1986"
,Month = Aug
,Address = "Cambridge, Massachusetts")
----------------------------------------------------------------
\bibitem{EXPERIENCE-WITH-AN-UNCOMMON-LISP}
Alberga, Cyril N., Bosman-Clark, Chris, Mikelsons, Martin, Deusen, Mary S. Van, and Padget, Julian.
Experience with an uncommon {L}isp.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 39--53.
\bibitem{IMPLEMENTATION-OF-PC-SCHEME}
Bartley, David H., and Jensen, John C.
The implementation of {PC} {S}cheme.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 86--93.
\bibitem{CONNECTION-GRAPHS}
Bawden, Alan.
Connection graphs.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 258--265.
\bibitem{VARIATIONS-ON-STRICTNESS-ANALYSIS}
Bloss, Adrienne, and Hudak, Paul.
Variations on strictness analysis.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 132--142.
\bibitem{EXACT-REAL-ARITHMETIC}
Boehm, Hans-J., Cartwright, Robert, Riggle, Mark, and O'Donnell, Michael J.
Exact real arithmetic: a case study in higher order programming.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 162--173.
\bibitem{OPTIMIZING-DYNAMICALLY-RETARGETABLE-COMPILER-FOR-COMMON-LISP}
Brooks, Rodney A., Posner, David B., McDonald, James L., White, Jon L., Benson, Eric, and Gabriel, Richard P.
Design of an optimizing, dynamically retargetable compiler for {C}ommon {L}isp.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 67--85.
\bibitem{FOUR-STROKE-REDUCTION-ENGINE}
Clack, Chris, and Jones, Simon L. Peyton.
The four-stroke reduction engine.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 220--232.
\bibitem{MINI-ML}
Cl\'ement, Dominique, Despeyroux, {Jo\"elle}, Despeyroux, Thierry, and Kahn, Gilles.
A simple applicative language: {M}ini-{ML}.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 13--27.
\bibitem{EXPANSION-PASSING-STYLE}
Dybvig, R. Kent, Friedman, Daniel P., and Haynes, Christopher T.
Expansion-passing style: beyond conventional macros.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 143--150.
\bibitem{CODE-GENERATION-TECHNIQUES-FOR-FUNCTIONAL-LANGUAGES}
Fairbairn, Jon, and Wray, Stuart C.
Code generation techniques for functional languages.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 94--104.
\bibitem{INTEGRATING-FUNCTIONAL-AND-IMPERATIVE-PROGRAMMING}
Gifford, David K., and Lucassen, John M.
Integrating functional and imperative programming.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 28--38.
\bibitem{SEMANTIC-MODEL-OF-REFERENCE-COUNTING-AND-ITS-ABSTRACTION}
Hudak, Paul.
A semantic model of reference counting and its abstraction (detailed summary).
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 351--363.
\bibitem{EQUATIONS-SETS-AND-REDUCTION-SEMANTICS}
Jayaraman, Bharat, and Silbermann, Frank S. K.
Equations, sets, and reduction semantics for functional and logic programming.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 320--331.
\bibitem{ARCHITECTURE-FOR-MOSTLY-FUNCTIONAL-LANGUAGES}
Knight, Tom.
An architecture for mostly functional languages.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 105--112.
\bibitem{HYGIENIC-MACRO-EXPANSION}
Kohlbecker, Eugene, Friedman, Daniel P., Felleisen, Matthias, and Duba, Bruce.
Hygienic macro expansion.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 151--161.
\bibitem{USE-OF-LISP-IN-IMPLEMENTING-DENOTATIONAL-SEMANTICS}
Lee, Peter, and Pleban, Uwe.
On the use of {L}isp in implementing denotational semantics.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 233--248.
\bibitem{EFFICIENT-MULTIPROCESSOR-COMBINATOR-REDUCTION}
Lema\↑\itre, M., Castan, M., Durand, M.-H., Durrieu, G., and Lecussan, B.
Mechanisms for efficient multiprocessor combinator reduction.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 113--121.
\bibitem{PROTOCOL-FOR-DISTRIBUTED-REFERENCE-COUNTING}
Lermen, Claus-Werner, and Maurer, Dieter.
A protocol for distributed reference counting.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 343--350.
\bibitem{IMPLEMENTING-FUNCTIONAL-LANGUAGES-IN-THE-CATEGORICAL-ABSTRACT-MACHINE}
Mauny, Michel, and Su\'arez, Asc\'ander.
Implementing functional languages in the categorical abstract machine.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 266--278.
\bibitem{TYPE-INFERENCE-APPROACH-TO-POLYMORPHIC-EXPRESSIONS}
Mitchell, John C.
A type-inference approach to reduction properties and semantics of polymorphic expressions (summary).
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 308--319.
\bibitem{SEMANTICS-DIRECTED-COMPILING-FOR-FUNCTIONAL-LANGUAGES}
Nielson, Hanne R., and Nielson, Flemming.
Semantics directed compiling for functional languages.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 249--257.
\bibitem{DESIDERATA-FOR-THE-STANDARDISATION-OF-LISP}
Padget, Julian, et al.
Desiderata for the standardisation of {L}isp.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 54--66.
\bibitem{CURRY-CHIP}
Ramsdell, John D.
The {CURRY} chip.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 122--131.
\bibitem{DISTRIBUTED-COPYING-GARBAGE-COLLECTION}
Rudalics, Martin.
Distributed copying garbage collection.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 364--372.
\bibitem{PARTITIONING-PARALLEL-PROGRAMS-FOR-MACRO-DATAFLOW}
Sarkar, Vivek, and Hennessy, John.
Partitioning parallel programs for macro-dataflow.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 202--211.
\bibitem{NORMA-GRAPH-REDUCTION-PROCESSOR}
Scheevel, Mark.
{NORMA}: a graph reduction processor.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 212--219.
\bibitem{CONNECTION-MACHINE-LISP}
Steele, Jr., Guy L., and Hillis, W. Daniel.
Connection machine lisp: fine-grained parallel symbolic processing.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 279--297.
\bibitem{LISP-ON-A-REDUCED-INSTRUCTION-SET-PROCESSOR}
Steenkiste, Peter, and Hennessy, John.
{L}isp on a reduced-instruction-set-processor.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 192--201.
\bibitem{SEMANTIC-THEORY-FOR-EQUATIONAL-PROGRAMMING-LANGUAGES}
Thatte, Satish R.
Towards a semantic theory for equational programming languages.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 332--342.
\bibitem{LAWS-IN-MIRANDA}
Thompson, Simon.
Laws in {M}iranda.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 1--12.
\bibitem{MYSTERY-OF-THE-TOWER-REVEALED}
Wand, Mitchell, and Friedman, Daniel P.
The mystery of the tower revealed: a non-reflective description of the reflective tower.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 298--307.
\bibitem{RECONFIGURABLE-RETARGETABLE-BIGNUMS}
White, Jon L.
Reconfigurable, retargetable bignums: a case study in efficient, portable {L}isp system building.
In {\it Proc. 1986 ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming}.
ACM SIGPLAN/SIGACT/SIGART (Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 1986), 174--191.
∂25-Aug-86 1059 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Defstruct and Documentation.
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Date: Mon, 25 Aug 86 13:54 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Defstruct and Documentation.
To: James Rice <Rice@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <12232348944.62.RICE@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Message-ID: <860825135423.6.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Wed 20 Aug 86 09:59:37-PDT
From: James Rice <Rice@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
I agree that doc string should be allowed in ALL
defstruct generated functions.
I also think that Declarations should be allowed.
There may well be good reasons for wanting to
(declare (optimize (safety 3) (speed 0))).
Particularly whilst debugging.
Shouldn't that be done as
(locally (declare (optimize (safety 3) (speed 0)))
(defstruct ...))
or (proclaim '(optimize (safety 3) (speed 0))) ?
∂25-Aug-86 1105 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM question about subtypep
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Date: Mon, 25 Aug 86 14:02 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: question about subtypep
To: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
cc: SANDRA <LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>, common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <RAM.12230709127.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860825140245.7.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1986 06:51 EDT
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Note there are some possible users of SUBTYPEP that would prefer
answers to be based on some hypothetical maximally restrictive type
system. The main example is a compiler which does compile-time type
checking when possible. Although (THE SHORT-FLOAT 1F0) is quite legal
in an implementation in which SHORT-FLOAT and SINGLE-FLOAT are
identical, it would be reasonable for the compiler to give a warning
anyway. Applications that care about this sort of thing will have to
use a variant version of subtypep that is distinct from the real
SUBTYPEP.
They'll have to do more than that. If the user wrote (THE SHORT-FLOAT 1s0)
it would read as exactly the same Lisp object as (THE SHORT-FLOAT 1f0) in an
implementation where SHORT-FLOAT and SINGLE-FLOAT are identical, so I don't
see how the compiler could distinguish these and give a warning for one but
not for the other.
My intpretation
(based on intensive meditation and reading of scripture) is that
SUBTYPEP returns information about the actual subtype relations in
your implementation.
I agree. I think that's the only consistent interpretation.
∂25-Aug-86 1117 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: synonym streams..
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Date: Mon, 25 Aug 86 14:12 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: synonym streams..
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <8608182223.AA19698@fizzy>,
<12231905873.61.HEDRICK@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>,
<12232095191.66.ACUFF@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>,
<860819152419.2.KMP@RIO-DE-JANEIRO.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<524862532/bein@pyramid>
Message-ID: <860825141247.8.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I believe all of these problems would go away if programmers would follow
the rule that the same module that opens (or otherwise creates) a stream
is responsible for closing (or otherwise disposing of) it. This seems
eminently simple and sensible, and has worked well for us for many years.
∂25-Aug-86 1201 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU question about subtypep
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Received: ID <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Mon 25 Aug 86 14:56:53-EDT
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 1986 14:56 EDT
Message-ID: <RAM.12233680997.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "David A. Moon" <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: question about subtypep
In-reply-to: Msg of 25 Aug 1986 14:02-EDT from David A. Moon <Moon at STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Monday, 25 August 1986 14:02-EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon at STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1986 06:51 EDT
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Although (THE SHORT-FLOAT 1F0) is quite legal in an
implementation in which SHORT-FLOAT and SINGLE-FLOAT are
identical, it would be reasonable for the compiler to give a warning
anyway. Applications that care about this sort of thing will have to
use a variant version of subtypep that is distinct from the real
SUBTYPEP.
They'll have to do more than that. If the user wrote
(THE SHORT-FLOAT 1s0) it would read as exactly the same Lisp object as
(THE SHORT-FLOAT 1f0) in an implementation where SHORT-FLOAT and
SINGLE-FLOAT are identical, so I don't see how the compiler could
distinguish these and give a warning for one but not for the
other.
I realized this was a bad example after I sent the message. Instead
1F0, substitute <any expression known to be SINGLE-FLOAT>. For
example, (THE SHORT-FLOAT (THE SINGLE-FLOAT ...)).
Rob
∂25-Aug-86 2029 @MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA,@GOLD-HILL-ACORN.LCS.MIT.EDU:mike%gold-hill-acorn@MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA More words on the scoping of declarations
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Date: Mon, 25 Aug 86 23:09 EST
Sender: mike%gold-hill-acorn@mit-live-oak.arpa
To: RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: mike%acorn@mit-live-oak.arpa
Subject: More words on the scoping of declarations
Cc: Pavel.pa@XEROX.COM, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1986 13:56 EDT
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
.....
It is evident that you do have a theory of variable binding, but
you don't really attempt to formalize it to the point where
declartion semantics becomes obvious. You theory is based on the idea
that declaration scoping should follow the same scope rules as
variables. It is a property of this theory that a declaration for a
specific name cannot refer to multipel variables which have the same
name.
So far as the application of the theory goes, the main problem
that I see is with LET* and possibly other places where sequential
bindings happen. It is not obvious to me what the scope of
delcarations in LET* should be, even if we disallow repeated variable
names.
The scoping of a declaration in a let* should be as close as possible
to that of a let. I think repeated names should be allowed, and the
innermost one should be the one to which the declaration applies.
(let* ((a (foo a))
(b a)
(a 7))
(declare (type fixnum a)
(type frobboz b))
...a...b...)
The only "a" which is a fixnum here is the one which gets the value 7.
Semantically, the form should be equivalent to:
(let ((a (foo a)))
(let ((b a))
(declare (type frobboz b))
(let ((a 7))
(declare (type fixnum a))
... a ...b..)
This means that the semantics of declaration in let* is exactly as
if you moved the declarations up into a nested let construct,
except for the case of a repeated identifier, where the innermost
name is the one the declaration applies to.
There are of course ambiguous cases where expressing exactly the
declarations you want requires breaking up a let* into two nested
let*'s so that you can stick a declare in between. I don't see this
as a tragedy. It's still better than the situation in most programming
languages, where the names of identifiers are often chosen to reflect
their type......
In summary, two things. (1) I think Pavel's proposal is right.
(2) I think the "theory" should be extended to reflect the "innermost"
principle for sequential binding constructs.
...mike beckerle
Gold Hill Computers
∂25-Aug-86 2154 @MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA,@GOLD-HILL-ACORN.LCS.MIT.EDU:mike%gold-hill-acorn@MIT-LIVE-OAK.ARPA "fonted" characters in CL
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Date: Tue, 26 Aug 86 00:14 EST
Sender: mike%gold-hill-acorn@mit-live-oak.arpa
To: DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
From: mike%acorn@mit-live-oak.arpa
Subject: "fonted" characters in CL
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 86 08:40 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I propose we eliminate char-font-limit and the associated concepts from
the language.
I agree, vehemently.
Either that or make the specification considerably more
tight and detailed saying how >numeric< values are interpreted. Either
that, or specify some >symbolic< notion of "fonts" we can live with.
I don't think this is a good idea for CL, see more below.
Symbolics found that the CL notion of "fonts" is not very portable, nor
is it very useful.
......
What we have done instead (note I don't want to push this and I'm not
sure the development staff does either since only beta-test sites have
seen this so far) is to define a character to have the following
attributes:
A character set
A code within the character set
Bits
Style
The character set and code within character set is roughly char-code.
Bits are as per CLtL. Style is a symbolic notion of what the characters
LOOK like, for example, bold, italic, small, very-large, fixed width,
etc, and combinations. A "font" is a set of glyphs. A font is mapped
to by the triple character-set, style and output device.
Let me dramatize for a second to make a point. I don't see "size",
"rotation", "shading", "projection", "mask", "color",... why don't we
just put TROFF in format macros and throw that in too. This
would give us a full composition language....
Now don't get me wrong. I agree completely with the MOTIVATION for
the new symbolics way of representing characters. It acknowledges
that characters are complex objects having lots of relative
attributes, etc., and that quick little hacks with font "bits" and
numbers up to some limit won't work for real high-quality output.
However, I see no reason for this to become part of a language
standard. The users of common lisp are NOT primarily typographers.
High quality screen output should be discussed w.r.t. a window system
standard. (Note: there seems to be no de-facto standard here.) High
quality printer output should be discussed w.r.t. an output device
standard. (Note: there are two emerging standards here... Postscript
and Interpress. Trademarks of somebody...) Without these notions,
having "font" information is just clutter in the language.
Concretely. I think char-font-limit = 1, (char-font <char>) = 0
should always be the case, and that ultimately we should drop
the font concept from the language. (like I said, I agree vehemently...)
...mike beckerle
Gold Hill Computers
∂26-Aug-86 0057 pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM re: synonym streams..
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Date: 26 Aug 1986 00:48 PDT
From: David Bein <pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM>
Subject: re: synonym streams..
To: common-lisp@su-ai
Message-Id: <525418881/bein@pyramid>
Regarding David Moon's comment about what sensible programmers should do,
I agree wholeheartedly. It is somewhat clearer that streams come
in more flavors than just what OPEN will return (as currently defined
in both CLtL and various LispMachine manuals for existing implementations).
David's suggestion seems to omit the need for making streams more usable.
Closing down a stream (whether it be the product of some composite
operation like make-broadcast-stream or not) is a reasonable thing
to want to do. I think the issue here is deciding whether or not
the programmer/user has an adequate amount of flexibility in
this area.
ONE QUESTION for the designers:
Why was there no function like
(MAKE-FILTER-STREAM '<input-stream>
'<output-stream>
'<function-of-2-args>)
where function gets passed both streams and does input from <input-stream>
filtering it in some way and possibly doing some output to
<output-stream>?
I really wish that the original specification for streams had
included itself in the typing system. I feel that it would have
been cleaner to define one function called:
(stream-message stream :keyword <...>)
much in the object-oriented spirit. I can think of some esoteric
methods I would have added certainly, but the most important ones
include being able to differentiate amongst streams, interrogating
streams and applying a handful of options to alter how close behaves
on any stream.
Below the ====='ed line is my proposal.
I welcome comments,modifications,critcisms, et al to the proposal
presented below.
--David
=============================================================================
(typep stream 'stream)
(stream-message stream :type)
Returns stream type, e.g. synonym-stream.
This should return something rather specialized.
Those who feel that TYPE-OF would answer this
need might consider what kinds of hair seem
to be in most implementations of TYPE-OF.
(stream-message stream :operations)
Returns a list of operations which make
sense for this stream. Defined to not
recurse into streams underneath.
(typep stream 'broadcast-stream)
(stream-message stream :broadcasters)
Returns a list of the streams to broadcast to.
(typep stream 'synonym-stream)
(stream-message stream :synonym)
Returns the symbol which the stream is synonymous with.
(stream-message stream :sanity-check)
Returns T if the stream contains no loops like
the kind which bite KMP and others (me too). Otherwise,
returns NIL which means that this stream is inherently
unsafe. NOTE: I know this is out of place and definitely
smells bad. I could live with out this one I guess.
(or (typep stream 'two-way-stream)
(typep stream 'echo-stream))
(stream-message stream :input)
Returns the input stream.
(stream-message stream :output)
Returns the output stream.
(I think of echo streams as a specialization of two-way streams.)
(typep stream 'concatenated-stream)
(stream-message stream :sources)
Returns a list of the input streams.
(typep stream 'stream) ;; CLOSE attributes
(stream-message stream :close-forever)
Marks this stream as one which CLOSE
should render unsuable and which
should have CLOSE applied to its
children. This is the DEFAULT for
streams produced by OPEN or
MAKE-<COMMON>-STREAM.
(stream-message stream :close-never)
Marks this stream as always open.
A CLOSE will not look to see if
this stream has children.
(stream-message stream :close-parent)
Marks this stream as one which CLOSE
renders unusable but does not touch
any streams underneath.
(stream-message stream :close-children)
Marks this stream as one which never closes
but a CLOSE applied to it will be applied
to streams underneath.
(typep stream 'stream) ;; CLOSE and ERROR
(stream-message stream :close-no-error)
Permit this stream to be CLOSEd. This
is the DEFAULT for streams produced by
OPEN,MAKE-<COMMON>-STREAM.
(stream-message stream :close-error)
Marks this stream in such a way that
a CLOSE of it causes an error. Handy for
things like (close *terminal-io*) where
it probably does not make sense to close it.
∂26-Aug-86 0653 preece%ccvaxa@gswd-vms.ARPA Re: More words on the scoping of dec
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Date: Tue, 26 Aug 86 08:51:24 cdt
From: preece%ccvaxa@gswd-vms.ARPA (Scott E. Preece)
To: COMMON-LISP@su-ai.arpa
Subject: Re: More words on the scoping of dec
> From: mike%acorn@mit-live-oak.arpa
> The scoping of a declaration in a let* should be as close as possible
> to that of a let. I think repeated names should be allowed, and the
> innermost one should be the one to which the declaration applies.
----------
I agree that repeated names should be allowed, but I think the
declaration should apply to the ENTIRE set of bindings, not just
the innermost. If the user wants to have different declarations
for the repeated instances of the name, she can break the LET*
into nested LET*s. If, on the other hand, she is playing games
and doing a multi-step calculation of a value in the header of the LET*,
the one declaration should apply to all parts of it.
--
scott preece
gould/csd - urbana
uucp: ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!preece
arpa: preece@gswd-vms
∂26-Aug-86 0904 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU More words on the scoping of declarations
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Received: ID <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Tue 26 Aug 86 12:03:22-EDT
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1986 12:03 EDT
Message-ID: <RAM.12233911549.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: mike%acorn@LIVE-OAK.LCS.MIT.EDU
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA, Pavel.pa@XEROX.COM
Subject: More words on the scoping of declarations
In-reply-to: Msg of 26 Aug 1986 00:09-EDT from mike%acorn at mit-live-oak.arpa
Actually I wasn't primarily worried about the meaning of repeated
LET* variables, supposing they are legal. I was more concerned about
the scope in LET* of declarations which don't pertain to a particular
variable. In LET* there isn't a clear environment division which can
contain these "pervasive" declarations.
I can think of two reasonable scopes for pervasive declarations in LET*:
1] The declarations syntactically enclose all of the incremental
environments in the LET*, and thus affect all init forms as well as
the body.
2] The declarations affect only the innermost environment, and thus
are in effect only in the body, and in none of the init forms.
I favor the latter interpretation, since it more closely resembles the
scoping in LET. In any case, it seems that LET* must special-case the
declarations depending on whether they are "pervasive" or not.
Although the concept of a pervasive declaration seems to cause Pavel
to cringe, I am not yet convinced that it is a bankrupt idea.
Rob
∂27-Aug-86 0925 Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM Fixing optional arguments?
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Date: 27 Aug 86 09:24 PDT
Sender: Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM
From: Gregor Kiczales <Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM>
Subject: Fixing optional arguments?
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.arpa
cc: Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM
Message-ID: <860827-092426-1167@Xerox>
A standard problem with optional arguments in Common Lisp is that it
difficult to use the fact that a function was only called with n
arguments to call some other function with only n arguments. For
example:
(defun foo (x &optional (y nil y-p))
...
(if y-p
(bar x y)
(bar x)))
This is a proposed solution to that problem.
- The default default value for an optional argument is the value of the
constant UNSUPPLIED-OPTIONAL-ARGUMENT (instead of nil).
So given the definition (defun foo (x &optional y) y). (foo 1) would
return the value of the constant unsupplied-optional-argument.
- When function call sees the value of unsupplied-optional-argument
being used as an argument to a function, it treats it as an unsupplied
value for an optional argument. As an important performance
optimization, any arguments following unsupplied-optional-argument are
also discarded.
The example becomes:
(defun foo (x &optional y)
...
(bar x y) ..)
In addition, it is possible to write code like:
...
(when <something>
;; We are only going to call baz with 2 arguments.
(setq arg-3 unsupplied-optional-argument))
(baz arg-1 arg-2 arg-3 arg-4)
In this example, the call to baz will be as if only two arguments were
supplied.
The supplied-p variable stuff is also no longer needed since the same
thing can be determined by using (unsupplied-optional-argument-p <arg>).
∂27-Aug-86 1058 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Fixing optional arguments?
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Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1986 13:51 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12234193461.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Gregor Kiczales <Gregor.pa@XEROX.COM>
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Fixing optional arguments?
In-reply-to: Msg of 27 Aug 1986 12:24-EDT from Gregor Kiczales <Gregor.pa at Xerox.COM>
This could be done by convention, without any change to the language, as
long as both the caller and the callee know and observe the same
convention.
-- Scott
∂27-Aug-86 1846 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Fixing optional arguments?
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Date: Wed, 27 Aug 86 21:14 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Fixing optional arguments?
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
Gregor Kiczales <Gregor.pa@XEROX.COM>
cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12234193461.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860827211406.7.DCP@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 1986 13:51 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
This could be done by convention, without any change to the language, as
long as both the caller and the callee know and observe the same
convention.
Sure, but I think that misses the point. Suppose I have a function that
looks like
(defun foo (a &optional b c &rest d &key e)
...)
and somebody calls it with B or C being the value of unsupplied-... That
means I would have to put a prelude function in that looks roughly like
(tagbody
(cond ((eq b unsupplied...)
(go b-is-unsupplied))
((eq c unsupplied...)
(go c-is-unsupplied)))
b-is-unsupplied
(setq c unsupplied...)
c-is-unsupplied
(setq d nil
e unsupplied...))
(setq c unsupplied...)
(go c-unsupplied))
in order to make all the unsupplieds consistent.
It also means I can't
(when (not b)
(setq b (compute-b-default)))
since B is not NIL. This is a rather major change to the language.
There is probably some validity behind it someplace, but history
probably won't allow it.
Gregor, does multiple-value-call solve any of your problems?
(multiple-value-call #'bar
arg-1 arg2
(if <something>
(values)
(values arg-3 arg-4)))
?
∂28-Aug-86 1122 Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Fixing optional arguments?
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Date: 28 Aug 86 11:18 PDT
Sender: Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM
From: Gregor Kiczales <Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM>
Subject: Re: Fixing optional arguments?
In-reply-to: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>'s message
of Wed, 27 Aug 86 21:14 EDT
To: DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
cc: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU, Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860828-111926-2340@Xerox>
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Fixing optional arguments?
and somebody calls it with B or C being the value of unsupplied-... That
means I would have to put a prelude function in that looks roughly like
No you wouldn't have to put such a prelude. As soon as function call sees the
value of unsupplied-optional-argument it drops the rest of the arguments on
the floor.
(multiple-value-call #'bar
arg-1 arg2
(if <something>
(values)
(values arg-3 arg-4)))
I don't see that as being much easier than saying:
(if <something>
(foo arg-1 arg-2)
(foo arg-1 arg-2 arg-3 arg-4))
∂28-Aug-86 1216 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU Fixing optional arguments?
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Received: ID <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Thu 28 Aug 86 15:14:00-EDT
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1986 15:13 EDT
Message-ID: <RAM.12234470538.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Gregor Kiczales <Gregor.pa@XEROX.COM>
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Fixing optional arguments?
In-reply-to: Msg of 28 Aug 1986 14:18-EDT from Gregor Kiczales <Gregor.pa at Xerox.COM>
I don't think that we should significantly change the language in
a way that will adversely affect the performance of many
implementations to get an enhancement that is of marginal utility at
best.
Many implementations on stock hardware use a link-table to resolve
the optional arg entry points at load time, thus eliminating any
run-time arg-count dispatching. The change you propose would make
this impossible since there would be no way for the compiler to tell
how many "real" arguments are being supplied.
Even if we disregard this efficiency issue, we would have good
reason to reject the proposal as being too radical a change in
language semantics.
Rob
∂29-Aug-86 0956 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM,@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Fixing optional arguments?
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Date: Fri, 29 Aug 86 12:50 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: Fixing optional arguments?
To: Gregor Kiczales <Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM>,
DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
cc: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860828-111926-234@Xerox>
Message-ID: <860829125053.7.DCP@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 28 Aug 86 11:18 PDT
From: Gregor Kiczales <Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM>
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Fixing optional arguments?
and somebody calls it with B or C being the value of unsupplied-... That
means I would have to put a prelude function in that looks roughly like
No you wouldn't have to put such a prelude. As soon as function call sees the
value of unsupplied-optional-argument it drops the rest of the arguments on
the floor.
I guess that depends a lot on how your architecture does function
calling. Many machines currently do not look at the value of the
arguments, partly for historical reasons, partly for speed and perhaps
partly for ease of implementation. It would also have to be very
careful if some CL extension included the MultiLisp concept of futures.
In that case, you DON'T want to examine the data (or you have to do so
very carefully) for fear of forcing the contained computation to
complete.
∂31-Aug-86 1341 LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA question about pprint, *print-pretty*
Received: from UTAH-20.ARPA by SAIL.STANFORD.EDU with TCP; 31 Aug 86 13:41:15 PDT
Date: Sun 31 Aug 86 14:39:44-MDT
From: SANDRA <LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: question about pprint, *print-pretty*
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <12235272600.9.LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
In Common Lisp, both print and pprint are defined to print out a newline
*before* the form rather than after. This is backwards from PSL, where
the prettyprinter indents things relative to the "current" character
position on the output stream, and prints a newline afterwards. Is there
a portable way I can get the same kind of relative indentation in Common
Lisp? Exactly what turning on *print-pretty* does is left rather vague --
the manual just says the printer should insert more whitespace. Is there
some overwhelming reason why these functions were defined "backwards" in
the first place that I've missed?
-Sandra
-------
∂02-Sep-86 0909 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM question about pprint, *print-pretty*
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Date: Tue, 2 Sep 86 12:05 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: question about pprint, *print-pretty*
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <12235272600.9.LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Message-ID: <860902120503.5.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Sun 31 Aug 86 14:39:44-MDT
From: SANDRA <LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
In Common Lisp, both print and pprint are defined to print out a newline
*before* the form rather than after. This is backwards from PSL, where
the prettyprinter indents things relative to the "current" character
position on the output stream, and prints a newline afterwards. Is there
a portable way I can get the same kind of relative indentation in Common
Lisp? Exactly what turning on *print-pretty* does is left rather vague --
the manual just says the printer should insert more whitespace. Is there
some overwhelming reason why these functions were defined "backwards" in
the first place that I've missed?
I don't know if this is an overwhelming reason, but PRINT has always printed
the newline first, all the way back to Lisp 1.5 (check the blue and white Lisp 1.5
manual). I think it's intentional that the definition of what it means to
print prettily is left rather vague, since different implementations have
different ideas about what looks pretty and about how effort they are willing
to expend to make something look pretty.
Surely binding *PRINT-PRETTY* to T is not supposed to turn PRIN1 into
PPRINT. In other words, PRIN1 with *PRINT-PRETTY* = T should not print
a leading newline, should indent things relative to the current
character position on the output stream, and should not print a trailing
newline. Next time the manual should include definitions of all of these
functions in terms of WRITE, instead of only defining half of them!
∂02-Sep-86 0909 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM question about pprint, *print-pretty*
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Date: Tue, 2 Sep 86 12:05 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: question about pprint, *print-pretty*
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <12235272600.9.LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Message-ID: <860902120550.6.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Sun 31 Aug 86 14:39:44-MDT
From: SANDRA <LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
In Common Lisp, both print and pprint are defined to print out a newline
*before* the form rather than after. This is backwards from PSL, where
the prettyprinter indents things relative to the "current" character
position on the output stream, and prints a newline afterwards. Is there
a portable way I can get the same kind of relative indentation in Common
Lisp? Exactly what turning on *print-pretty* does is left rather vague --
the manual just says the printer should insert more whitespace. Is there
some overwhelming reason why these functions were defined "backwards" in
the first place that I've missed?
I don't know if this is an overwhelming reason, but PRINT has always printed
the newline first, all the way back to Lisp 1.5 (check the blue and white Lisp 1.5
manual). I think it's intentional that the definition of what it means to
print prettily is left rather vague, since different implementations have
different ideas about what looks pretty and about how effort they are willing
to expend to make something look pretty.
Surely binding *PRINT-PRETTY* to T is not supposed to turn PRIN1 into
PPRINT. In other words, PRIN1 with *PRINT-PRETTY* = T should not print
a leading newline, should indent things relative to the current
character position on the output stream, and should not print a trailing
newline. Next time the manual should include definitions of all of these
functions in terms of WRITE, instead of only defining half of them!
I think the answer to your question is to call WRITE and then TERPRI.
∂02-Sep-86 1149 KMP@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM PRINT
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Date: Tue, 2 Sep 86 14:47 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: PRINT
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
cc: KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA
References: <860902120550.6.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
<12235272600.9.LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Message-ID: <860902144720.7.KMP@EMU.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
If we get to a point where we're capable of contemplating incompatible
changes to CL, I would strongly urge the group to consider renaming
PRIN1 to PRINT (and, obviously, renaming what's currently called PRINT
to something else). Sandra's query is not an isolated one. There is
wide-spread confusion about what it means to "print" something because
the operator named PRINT does more than just "print" a thing. eg,
the :PRINT-FUNCTION specifier in DEFSTRUCT effectively defines how to
PRIN1 something, not how to PRINT something, which I think most novices
are apt to be confused by. I think that thoughtful renaming of a few
functions to make the English and the Lisp be consistent would go a
long way toward fixing this kind of confusion.
∂02-Sep-86 1234 Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM Re: close on synonym streams, etc
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Date: 2 Sep 86 12:26 PDT
From: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: close on synonym streams, etc
In-reply-to: various
To: common-lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Message-ID: <860902-122649-1037@Xerox>
I still prefer "it is an error" to close streams not created with OPEN.
However, if there is strong sentiment to allow CLOSE on pseudo-streams
like broadcast, synonym and the like, it would be the most consistent to
define it as a no-op. That is, closing a synonym stream should have no
effect.
Why?
a) this is certainly the simplest to implement. There's no need to keep
pseudo-state "open" or "closed" on streams that would otherwise not need
them.
b) this would allow the most programs to function, when handed
pseudo-streams instead of file streams. In the example of "a program
that, when encountering end-of-file closes the inpupt stream and
returns" would work when handed a synonym stream to *standard-input*.
c) it is upward compatible-- no current program would stop functioning.
d) those implementations which "cache" some information into buffered
streams could use "close" to mean "flush the cache", although this would
have no effect on the program semantics.
∂03-Sep-86 1409 RICE@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Documentation strings and function.
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Date: Wed 3 Sep 86 11:56:07-PDT
From: James Rice <Rice@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Documentation strings and function.
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <12236040169.57.RICE@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Since one is allowed to declare the following :-
(defun foo (a b)
"A docstring."
(declare (special a))
"Another docstring."
(declare (special b))
(frob a b))
what will the documentation be for Foo? The book seems to be quiet on
this issue. I would hope that it would be either a) the two strings
concatenated (i.e. when Parse-Body (what?) returns the docstring they
are all stuck together, or b) it returns a list of docstrings.
The implemetation I am using discards all but the first.
While on the subject of documentation :-
Wouldn't it be a good idea to have a Documentation function doc type
called :All or some such, returning an AList of doctype and docstring.
Since a number of CL supporting systems will have doc types of their
own (Flavor and such like) and users might want to add their own it
would be jolly good if one could guarantee getting all of the docs
for a symbol.
Rice.
-------
∂03-Sep-86 1636 VERACSD@A.ISI.EDU Deletion from Mailing-List
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Date: 3 Sep 1986 19:14-EDT
Sender: VERACSD@A.ISI.EDU
Subject: Deletion from Mailing-List
From: VERACSD@A.ISI.EDU
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: veracsd@A.ISI.EDU
Message-ID: <[A.ISI.EDU] 3-Sep-86 19:14:52.VERACSD>
Please delete me from the mailing-list.
(I can now get it via a bulletin board.)
Thanks.
-- Cris Kobryn
∂03-Sep-86 1810 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documentation strings and function.
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Wed 3 Sep 86 21:09:46-EDT
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1986 21:09 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12236108178.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: James Rice <Rice@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Documentation strings and function.
In-reply-to: Msg of 3 Sep 1986 14:56-EDT from James Rice <Rice at SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Since one is allowed to declare the following :-
(defun foo (a b)
"A docstring."
(declare (special a))
"Another docstring."
(declare (special b))
(frob a b))
What makes you think that one is allowed to declare the preceding? I
believe that this form is illegal, and that the resulting doc-string is
therefore undefined. See page 67 about a third of the way down: "It is
an error if more than one doc-string is present." Since that second
string cannot be a doc string, the second declare form is in an illegal
position.
-- Scott
∂03-Sep-86 1929 @WAIKATO.S4CC.SYMBOLICS.COM:KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Documentation strings and function.
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Date: Wed, 3 Sep 86 21:57 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Subject: Documentation strings and function.
To: Fahlman@CMU-CS-C.ARPA
cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA, Rice@SUMEX-AIM
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12236108178.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860903215722.4.KMP@EMU.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Although I would not argue in favor of such an interpretation, I think you'd
have a tough time arguing that the restriction on p67 refers to anything other
than functions defined by DEFUN.
Both the description of DEFUN on p67 (which you cite) and the description of
LAMBDA on p60 (which you don't comment on) use the same confusing syntax
description:
...
{declaration | documentation-string}*
...
Well, ok, they don't. p60 refers to documentation-string and p67 refers to a
doc-string. (-: Maybe only a doc-string is constrained the way you suggest but
a documentation-string is not. :-)
[On an unrelated issue that I noticed on the same page, p67 should clearly
say that
(DEFUN name lambda-list {declaration|doc-string}* {form}*)
causes the symbol NAME to be a global name for the function specified by
the lambda expression
(LAMBDA lambda-list {declaration|doc-string}* (BLOCK name {form}*))
Otherwise, the ability of RETURN-FROM to work in a DEFUN seems just a little
too magical, and suggests that LAMBDA or DEFUN somehow interacts with RETURN-FROM
in some strange way that we don't ever explain.]
Anyway, I think that multiple doc strings should not be undefined and that we
should relax that restriction. They would be especially to people (like myself)
who get grossed out by The Indentation Problem as illustrated in:
(DEFUN FOO (X Y)
"This is a very long documentation string which when printed out
seems to have an obscure amount of indentation on its second and
third line even though it looked nicely lined up in the source."
...)
or:
(DEFUN FOO (X Y)
"This is a very long documentation string which when printed out
has no problem about indentation for the subsequent lines, but when
viewed in the source looks pretty yucky."
...)
I'd prefer:
(DEFUN FOO (X Y)
"This is how we might allow a very long documentation string to be"
"typed in in order to let it look good in the source and also to"
"let it look good when obtained later, perhaps as a single string with"
"newlines inserted between each of the pieces.")
This would also be handy for defmacro, since you could prefix or postfix
documentation strings in the expansion without worrying about whether the
user was also going to supply a documentation string that elaborated on
the standardly provided documentation.
∂04-Sep-86 0739 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Documentation strings and function.
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Date: Thu, 4 Sep 86 10:37 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Documentation strings and function.
To: James Rice <Rice@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>,
Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <12236040169.57.RICE@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>,
<FAHLMAN.12236108178.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
<860903215722.4.KMP@EMU.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <860904103704.6.DCP@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
When I brought up the multiple-doc-string issue when we were discussing
parse-body, everybody seemed unanimous that the current book intended
that the first string was the only doc string and that subsequent
strings were part of the executable body (and therefore declarations
after the second string were an error).
Anyway, I was then and am willing to continue believing multiple doc
strings should be OK, though I don't have strong enough opinions to take
sides. If multiple doc strings are allowed, what does parse-body (if we
ever decide on what that should be and do) return? Should it return a
list of the doc strings (in the order encountered)? Should it return
one string with newlines between the individual strings? What does
(documentation 'foo 'defun) return? A list of strings? One string with
newlines or some other separator?
∂04-Sep-86 0853 allen@bfly-vax.bbn.com Re: Documentation strings and function.
Received: from BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM by SAIL.STANFORD.EDU with TCP; 4 Sep 86 08:53:52 PDT
To: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@c.cs.cmu.edu>
cc: James Rice <Rice@sumex-aim.ARPA>, Common-Lisp@su-ai.ARPA,
allen@bfly-vax.bbn.com
Subject: Re: Documentation strings and function.
In-reply-to: Your message of Wed, 3 Sep 1986 21:09 EDT.
<FAHLMAN.12236108178.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: 04 Sep 86 11:45:55 EDT (Thu)
From: allen@bfly-vax.bbn.com
Scott:
It would seem that "It is an error if more than one doc-string is present"
is inconsistent with the syntactic description of defun at the top of page 67.
I refer specifically to the {declaration | doc-string}* segment, which
implies a free mix of any number of declarations and doc-strings. Rice's
example is legal, if one relies on the latter. It should be decided which
is correct, and the appropriate repair made to the book.
/Don
∂04-Sep-86 0945 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documentation strings and function.
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Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1986 12:44 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12236278321.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: allen@BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Documentation strings and function.
In-reply-to: Msg of 4 Sep 1986 11:45-EDT from allen at bfly-vax.bbn.com
Well, there are things that are hard to express in the simple syntactic
notation Guy chose to use: exactly three of these things are allowed if
and only if one of those things is present, etc. I think that there are
several places in the book where the syntactic expressions provide some
necessary conditions, but where further restrictions on the format are
specified by the text.
In order to fix all of these things, so that the syntactic expressions
provide a necessary and sufficient formal grammar for the language, we
would have to go to a much more complex notation, which would be
much tougher on the average reader. I think that the current system,
where there are syntactic expressions that are sometimes further
restricted by English statements, is the way to go.
I agree that the statement forbidding multiple doc-strings should not be
as well-hidden as it currently is. The fact that people have missed it
is pretty good evidence that it is not visible enough.
-- Scott
∂04-Sep-86 1038 LINNDR%VUENGVAX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU Problems with Notation in CLtL
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at 12:37:07 CDT
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 86 12:27 CST
From: <LINNDR%VUENGVAX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU> (David Linn)
Subject: Problems with Notation in CLtL
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
X-Original-To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA, LINNDR
>Well, there are things that are hard to express in the simple syntactic
>notation Guy chose to use: exactly three of these things are allowed if
>and only if one of those things is present, etc. I think that there are
>several places in the book where the syntactic expressions provide some
>necessary conditions, but where further restrictions on the format are
>specified by the text.
>
>In order to fix all of these things, so that the syntactic expressions
>provide a necessary and sufficient formal grammar for the language, we
>would have to go to a much more complex notation, which would be
>much tougher on the average reader. I think that the current system,
>where there are syntactic expressions that are sometimes further
>restricted by English statements, is the way to go.
>
>I agree that the statement forbidding multiple doc-strings should not be
>as well-hidden as it currently is. The fact that people have missed it
>is pretty good evidence that it is not visible enough.
>
>-- Scott
>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Would it be appropriate to provide a second reference to clear up this
confusion? If sufficient notation would make CLtL impenetrable for the
average reader, could not a reference with sufficient notation be made
availble for those with the desire to wade through it?
David Linn
LINNDR@VUENGVAX.BITNET
LINNDR%VUEGNVAX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU ! Internet (I think)
...!psuvax1!vuengvax.bitnet!linndr ! uucp/USENET
∂04-Sep-86 1102 allen@bfly-vax.bbn.com Re: Documentation strings and function.
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To: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@c.cs.cmu.edu>
cc: allen@bfly-vax.bbn.com, Common-Lisp@su-ai.ARPA
Subject: Re: Documentation strings and function.
In-reply-to: Your message of Thu, 4 Sep 1986 12:44 EDT.
<FAHLMAN.12236278321.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
--------
Scott:
Date: 04 Sep 86 13:55:50 EDT (Thu)
From: allen@bfly-vax.bbn.com
It may be that there are aspects of the language that are hard or
impossible to express in Guy's simple notation. Since I think that
simplicity is a virtue, I would advocate retaining the notation and in
those cases where it is insufficient the description can be augmented
with (non-well-hidden) English.
For this case though, if we agree that the sentence midway thru pg 67
is The Truth, then how about
defun name lambda-list {declaration}* [doc-string] {declaration}* {form}*
/don
∂04-Sep-86 1222 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Documentation strings and function.
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Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1986 15:20 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12236306826.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: allen@BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Documentation strings and function.
In-reply-to: Msg of 4 Sep 1986 13:55-EDT from allen at bfly-vax.bbn.com
defun name lambda-list {declaration}* [doc-string] {declaration}* {form}*
Yes, it looks like this is the right way to express things in this case.
-- Scott
∂04-Sep-86 1421 Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Documentation strings and function.
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Date: 4 Sep 86 13:58 PDT
From: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: Documentation strings and function.
In-reply-to: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>'s message
of Thu, 4 Sep 86 10:37 EDT
To: DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
cc: Rice@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA, Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU,
KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860904-140042-1593@Xerox>
If multiple doc strings are allowed, what does parse-body
(if we ever decide on what that should be and do) return?
A single string or a list of such, so that these are distinguished.
-- danny
∂04-Sep-86 1421 Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM Re: Documentation strings and function.
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Date: 4 Sep 86 13:56 PDT
From: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: Documentation strings and function.
In-reply-to: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>'s message of Thu,
4 Sep 86 12:44 EDT
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: allen@BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860904-140040-1592@Xerox>
I think multiple document strings should be allowed. Perhaps all should
precede any declarations. The argument for multiple document strings is
that one can then use a simple parsing program to collect documentation
from code. One could imagine a convention of the first document string
describing the external interface or purpose of a document, and the
second information about the implementation. Why isn't the syntax
... lambda-list {documentation}* {declarations}* ...
-- danny
∂04-Sep-86 1518 @ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Documentation strings and function.
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Date: Thu, 4 Sep 86 18:13 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: Documentation strings and function.
To: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM, DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
cc: Rice@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA, Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU,
KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860904-140042-1593@Xerox>
Message-ID: <860904181314.3.DCP@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 4 Sep 86 13:58 PDT
From: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM
If multiple doc strings are allowed, what does parse-body
(if we ever decide on what that should be and do) return?
A single string or a list of such, so that these are distinguished.
I would prefer that the result would always (SATISFY LISTP). This would
let macros do
,@doc-strings
instead of
,@(if (stringp doc-strings) `(,doc-strings) doc-strings)
as well as what DOCUMENTATION returns. I think this is the case where
optimizing a singleton list to be its single component does more harm
than good.
∂04-Sep-86 1639 @ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: Documentation strings and function.
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Date: Thu, 4 Sep 86 18:36 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: Documentation strings and function.
To: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM, Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: allen@BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860904-140040-1592@Xerox>
Message-ID: <860904183653.9.DCP@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Personally, I usually put the documentation strings after the
declarations. One also has to consider macros expanding into both
documentation strings (is this really allowed?) as well as declarations.
The "simple parsing program" you allude to has been proposed under the
name of PARSE-BODY, but partly with my flaming seems to have been
stalled in committee.
∂04-Sep-86 1842 @REAGAN.AI.MIT.EDU:cfry@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU Re: Documentation strings and function.
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Date: Thu, 4 Sep 86 21:43 EDT
From: Christopher Fry <cfry@OZ.AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Documentation strings and function.
To: Bobrow.pa@Xerox.COM, Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: allen@BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <860904-140040-1592@Xerox>
Message-ID: <860904214328.1.CFRY@JONES.AI.MIT.EDU>
Expressing the current CL syntax is complicated because the syntax is unnecessarily flexible.
Let's decide on whether the first doc string should be before or after the declarations
and change the spec to reflect that.
I think multiple document strings should be allowed. Perhaps all should
precede any declarations. The argument for multiple document strings is
that one can then use a simple parsing program to collect documentation
from code. One could imagine a convention of the first document string
describing the external interface or purpose of a document, and the
second information about the implementation. Why isn't the syntax
... lambda-list {documentation}* {declarations}* ...
I've yanked in Bobrow's statement since I think he has basically the right idea.
Here's an example of the format that I use:
(defun foo (a b) "this is THE doc string. It's used for describing the functionality of
this function as seen by the outside world."
(declare ...)
(declare ...)
(some code)
"this is a programmer comment. I use it to say things like,
FIX UP this code someday, or this algorhythm is too slow."
(some code)
"maybe another programmer comment"
(final code))
The function DOCUMENTTION returns the top doc string.
My own function PROGRAMMER-COMMENTS returns a list of
strings. In the above example it would return the 2nd and 3rd strings
in the body. The programmer-comments above don't violate existing CL semantics.
And a clever compiler will just throw them out.
The restriction on programmer-comments is that they do not include the
first string in the body and do not include the last form in the body if that happens
to be a string. The flexibility of whether doc strings or declarations go first
or intermingle is unncessarily confusing for both human and machine.
I find being able to imbed programer-comments in a definition and have a program that
can find them helps me make notes to myself in code. Frequently you know something is
not working well but can't fix it at the moment. Having a convenient way to store
the information which a machine can get at and tell you about it when you ask
is a great reminder.
∂05-Sep-86 1236 gls@Think.COM Problems with Notation in CLtL
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Date: Fri, 5 Sep 86 15:32 EDT
From: Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>
Subject: Problems with Notation in CLtL
To: LINNDR%VUENGVAX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Cc: gls@AQUINAS
In-Reply-To: <8609041739.AA09293@Zarathustra.Think.COM>
Message-Id: <860905153241.6.GLS@KATHERINE.THINK.COM>
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 86 12:27 CST
From: <LINNDR%VUENGVAX.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU> (David Linn)
Would it be appropriate to provide a second reference to clear up this
confusion? If sufficient notation would make CLtL impenetrable for the
average reader, could not a reference with sufficient notation be made
availble for those with the desire to wade through it?
The construction of an accurate if impenetrable reference for CLtL is
merely "a small matter of writing". Sounds like a job for ANSI X3J13.
Any volunteers? The first meeting, as has already been announced on this
mailing list, is in Washington D.C. on September 23-24. Be there or
be square.
--Guy
∂05-Sep-86 2358 ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Programmer Notes
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Date: Fri, 5 Sep 86 19:40 EST
From: ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Programmer Notes
X-VMS-To: CSNET%"Common-Lisp@SU-AI.arpa"
When I want to leave a note to myself I include a comment with (...) in it.
This can easilly be found by a program (EMACS/ZWEI) and then I am
even in context where I can do something about it. Along this line,
I have often wanted to make the symbol ... be a special symbol which can
always be read, but whose evaluation always signals an error. In NIL
the symbol ... causes the compiler to bomb, so you can't use it to
indicate unimplemented functions (GJC!). I think that LISPMs can read
that symbol and do reasonable things with it. (Make it a special.)
I think that one documentation string is enough, the rest can be
ignored by any sufficiently smart compiler given the semantics of the
language, and anyone who builds a really nice Commmon Lisp environment
is welcome to extend the notion of documentation strings to include
multiple ones.
Most people are, I think, under the impression that documentation strings
can only be supplied once per function and so multiple documentatoin
strings are, de facto, a change to Common Lisp. This is a very unimportant
kind of thing to worry about, and I suggest it isn't worth it. I don't
care one way or the other, except that I think we need to have a standard.
A much more important issue is to define a syntactic standard for these kind
of things. There are several places in CLtL where it is suggested that
some entity fit into a sentence-schema in a certain way. I think that these
guidlines should be made strict requirements, and I think that a good
sentence-schema for documentation strings would be appropriate.
...Now back to important things, like message passing and declaration
scoping=>
∂07-Sep-86 1646 KMP@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM #+FOO:BAR
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Date: Sat, 6 Sep 86 16:42 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: #+FOO:BAR
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <860906164226.2.KMP@RIO-DE-JANEIRO.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
We need to rule on whether people can say:
#+FOO:BAR
#+(AND FOO:BAR ...)
if FOO is a potentially non-existent package and/or BAR is a
potentially non-exported symbol. My feeling is that in both
cases, these should be treated as "failing" features but should
not signal read errors.
There are other things that should be resolved about #+/#-, too.
Such as what package it defaultly reads in, whether there are any
standard features we can all agree on which should be in some known
package, etc.
∂08-Sep-86 0909 @ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Programmer Notes
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Date: Mon, 8 Sep 86 11:57 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Programmer Notes
To: ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: The message of 5 Sep 86 20:40 EDT from ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
Message-ID: <860908115735.1.DCP@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Re: ... try using ---, since CLtL has forbidden (unquoted) symbols
consisting soley of dots.
I think it is a VERY BAD idea to encourage "really nice CL envirnoment"
to extend the concept of documentation strings to multiple documentation
strings. That is encouraging >gratuitous< incompatibility. We should
decide what we want and make the description and the prose match the
decision.
∂11-Sep-86 0839 MATT@LL.ARPA
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Date: Thu 11 Sep 1986 11:36:59 EDT
From: <MATT@LL.ARPA>
Subject:
To: COMMON-LISP@SU-AI
Message-ID: <MATT.25441758@LL.ARPA>
Hi,
Please add me to your common lisp mailing list. Thanx.
Matt Stillerman
∂12-Sep-86 0311 bradley@Think.COM An example of where setf does not do what I want.
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Subject: An example of where setf does not do what I want.
Date: 12 Sep 86 06:11:02 EDT (Fri)
From: Bradley C. Kuszmaul <bradley@Think.COM>
I want to do
(setf (apply #'aref (cons my-array dims)) value)
where MY-ARRAY, DIMS, and VALUE are bound to meaningful values
Unfortunately, my reading of SETF says that the above won't work.
If I had (ASET value array &rest dims) then I could to
(apply #'aset (list* value my-array dims))
to do what I want.
How do I do what I want?
-Brad
∂12-Sep-86 0814 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU An example of where setf does not do what I want.
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Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1986 11:13 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "Bradley C. Kuszmaul" <bradley@ZARATHUSTRA.THINK.COM>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: An example of where setf does not do what I want.
In-reply-to: Msg of 12 Sep 1986 06:11-EDT from Bradley C. Kuszmaul <bradley at Think.COM>
The inclusion of APPLY as one of the cases handled by SETF (page 96)
was prompted by exactly the case you describe:
(setf (apply #'aref (cons my-array dims)) value)
As I recall, we considered saying that (setf (apply #'aref ...) ...)
was required to work one way or another, but went with this supposedly
more general form instead: in a SETF the first argument to APPLY must be any
function known to SETF whose internal setting function is of a certain
form.
Unfortunately, when all this got written into the manual, we neglected
to say explicitly that AREF was required to be one of those functions
that works in this context (though all the examples indicate that this
is what we had in mind). So technically, given the current wording of
the manual, it is legal for SETF of APPLY of AREF not to work. In my
opinion, any Lisp that takes advantage of this loophole is broken, and
the manual should be clarified to require that SETF of APPLY of AREF
must work as you would expect.
Unfortunately, the Spice Lisp code seems to be broken in exactly this
way at present. I thought we had put in a special check to handle
AREF years ago, but apparently the fix didn't take. Other
implementations may have caught this bug from us.
-- Scott
∂12-Sep-86 0844 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM An example of where setf does not do what I want.
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Date: Fri, 12 Sep 86 11:41 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: An example of where setf does not do what I want.
To: Bradley C. Kuszmaul <bradley@Think.COM>, common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <8609121011.AA17090@Godot.Think.COM>
Message-ID: <860912114143.1.DCP@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 12 Sep 86 06:11:02 EDT (Fri)
From: Bradley C. Kuszmaul <bradley@Think.COM>
I want to do
(setf (apply #'aref (cons my-array dims)) value)
where MY-ARRAY, DIMS, and VALUE are bound to meaningful values
Unfortunately, my reading of SETF says that the above won't work.
If I had (ASET value array &rest dims) then I could to
(apply #'aset (list* value my-array dims))
to do what I want.
How do I do what I want?
Your code should work. First, you don't need to do that consing for
apply. The old Zetalisp APPLY only took 2 arguments, but Common Lisp
APPLY takes 2 or more (and is like Zetalisp lexpr-funcall).
Notice (in the Symbolics [7.0] implementation)
(setf (apply #'aref my-array dims) value)
=> (APPLY #'ZL:ASET VALUE MY-ARRAY DIMS)
and also
(setf (apply #'aref (cons my-array dims)) value)
=> (APPLY #'ZL:ASET VALUE (VALUES (CONS MY-ARRAY DIMS)))
To show order of evaluation is still correct:
(setf (apply #'aref (my-array) (dims)) (value))
=> (LET* ((#:G8656 (MY-ARRAY))
(#:G8657 (DIMS)))
NIL
(APPLY #'ZL:ASET (VALUES (VALUE)) #:G8656 #:G8657))
and
(setf (apply #'aref (cons (my-array) (dims))) (value))
=> (LET* ((#:G8659 (CONS (MY-ARRAY) (DIMS))))
NIL
(APPLY #'ZL:ASET (VALUES (VALUE)) #:G8659))
What "reading of SETF" are you using? Pages 96 and 97 explicitly
describe this situation and also use AREF as the example. What
implementation are you using and how does it expand (or fail to expand).
∂12-Sep-86 0942 fateman@renoir.Berkeley.EDU OPS-5 in Common Lisp
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Date: Fri, 12 Sep 86 09:42:15 PDT
From: fateman@renoir.Berkeley.EDU (Richard Fateman)
Message-Id: <8609121642.AA06052@renoir.Berkeley.EDU>
To: common-lisp@Sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: OPS-5 in Common Lisp
A student here has ported the OPS-5 code from Franz Lisp to Common Lisp.
If there are no objections from CMU, we are willing to send
this to requestors to whom we can send electronic mail.
We would like recipient to tell us about bugs (and fixes,
if possible) that they find.
I don't know if there is any other OPS-5/CL version around, but
if there is a comparably "public" version, I'd be glad to compare the
two and suppress ours if ours is inferior.
It might lend itself to some useful benchmarking.
∂12-Sep-86 1030 Moon@ELEPHANT-BUTTE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM An example of where setf does not do what I want.
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Date: Fri, 12 Sep 86 13:27 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: An example of where setf does not do what I want.
To: Bradley C. Kuszmaul <bradley@Think.COM>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <8609121011.AA17090@Godot.Think.COM>
Message-ID: <860912132726.6.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 12 Sep 86 06:11:02 EDT (Fri)
From: Bradley C. Kuszmaul <bradley@Think.COM>
I want to do
(setf (apply #'aref (cons my-array dims)) value)
where MY-ARRAY, DIMS, and VALUE are bound to meaningful values
Unfortunately, my reading of SETF says that the above won't work.
If I had (ASET value array &rest dims) then I could to
(apply #'aset (list* value my-array dims))
to do what I want.
Recall that APPLY in Common Lisp allows more than two arguments,
unlike APPLY in traditional languages such as Maclisp, Zetalisp,
and Lisp 1.5. Hence the expansion is
(APPLY #'aset VALUE (CONS MY-ARRAY DIMS))
where aset is not a standard Common Lisp function, but we all know
what it does.
∂13-Sep-86 1846 ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Locally
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Date: Wed, 10 Sep 86 20:24 EDT
From: ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Locally
X-VMS-To: CSNET%"Common-Lisp@Su-Ai.arpa"
What does the form:
(locally (declare (special foo))
(let ((foo 3))
(print foo)))
do?
On P.156 it says that Locally "does not bind any variables and therefore
cannot be used meaningfully for declarations of variable bindings".
This would imply that the FOO bound by the LET is not affected by the
LOCALLY and that this form should be an error because the SPECIAL
reference to FOO in (print foo) is not bound by the lexical binding
of FOO.
In NIL, Vaxlisp and HPCommon Lisp this form executes smoothly and
prints "3". Either all three implementations are wrong, or
the documentation is confusing (to me.)
Personally I think that the implementations are correct, since
the other interpretation implies that the let in:
(locally (declare (special foo))
...
(let ((foo ...))
...))
Cannot ever be meaningfu, since the variable foo is REFERENCED as
a special, but bound as a lexical.
I think that Locally (declae (special foo)) should affect
every binding and reference to foo within the body of the locally.
This would make it behave like a lexically scoped version of "proclaim".
In any case the documentation seems ambiguous or wrong.
∂14-Sep-86 1337 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Locally
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Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1986 16:35 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12238941924.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@RELAY.CS.NET
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Locally
In-reply-to: Msg of 10 Sep 1986 20:24-EDT from ELIOT%cs.umass.edu at CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
(locally (declare (special foo))
(let ((foo 3))
(print foo)))
In NIL, Vaxlisp and HPCommon Lisp this form executes smoothly and
prints "3". Either all three implementations are wrong, or
the documentation is confusing (to me.)
...
I think that Locally (declae (special foo)) should affect
every binding and reference to foo within the body of the locally.
This would make it behave like a lexically scoped version of "proclaim".
I think that all three implementations are right, but not for the reason
you suspect. The binding of FOO within the LET is a lexical binding,
because the external special declaration has no effect on this binding.
This lexical binding is what the reference to FOO in the PRINT form
sees. This new binding shadows the SPECIAL declaration for references
lexically within the LET. See the example on page 158, which is almost
exactly the same case.
The current rules covering special declarations are strange, at best,
but I think the manual is reasonably clear, under the circumstances.
There is an example covering the case that confused you. I admit that
the example is a bit hard to follow...
-- Scott
∂14-Sep-86 1543 Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM Portable CommonLoops port liasons
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Date: Sun, 14 Sep 86 15:36 PDT
From: Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Portable CommonLoops port liasons
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.arpa
Message-ID: <860914153628.2.GREGOR@AVALON.XEROX-PARC>
Line-fold: no
I apologize for the wide distribution of this message.
For each of the Common Lisp developers, I am looking for a liason with
whom I can communicate about porting Portable CommonLoops (PCL) to their
Lisp.
In the past I have been able to do most of the implementation-specific
customizations myself. Now, in order to make PCL run faster, I expect
the customizations to become more elaborate, and I would like to have
someone who works on each of the Common Lisp implementations to ask
questions of etc.
Could a system implementor from each of the from each of the Common Lisp
implementation groups please send me a message.
Thanks.
P.S. I already have liasons for the following implementations:
Kyoto Common Lisp
Lucid
Symbolics
Xerox Common Lisp
-------
∂15-Sep-86 1357 fateman@renoir.Berkeley.EDU ops-5
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Date: Sun, 14 Sep 86 17:08:23 PDT
From: fateman@renoir.Berkeley.EDU (Richard Fateman)
Message-Id: <8609150008.AA22172@renoir.Berkeley.EDU>
To: common-lisp@Sail.Stanford.EDU
Subject: ops-5
There turns out to be an ops5 in CL at CMU, in addition to
the one done here. A cursory inspection of the CMU one indicates
that the changes made were quite similar to those in our version.
Unless someone is desperate for a copy, I suggest holding off a
few weeks until we get a chance to more carefully
compare the two and perhaps put the best of both in one system.
Distribution in either case would be public domain.
∂15-Sep-86 1438 jeff%aiva.edinburgh.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK Re: OPS-5 in Common Lisp
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id a006635; 13 Sep 86 19:19 BST
From: Jeff Dalton <jeff%aiva.edinburgh.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 86 19:20:10 -0100
Message-Id: <12876.8609131820@aiva.ed.ac.uk>
To: fateman@renoir.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: OPS-5 in Common Lisp
Cc: common-lisp@su-ai.arpa
For what it's worth, I ported OPS-5 from Franz to CL a while ago but
haven't been sending it around because I didn't know what restrictions
applied (there is a copyright notice at the beginning).
My port wasn't meant to be very efficient because I wanted to use
techniques that would apply to arbitrary Franz programs without
my understanding how they worked. So, for example, rather than
eliminate the fexprs, I had an automatic way to define them as a
combination of a macro and a function.
Anyway, I would also be interested in knowing whether I can redistribute
this, as there is some demand for it in the UK.
I have run some benchmarks using things like the monkey and banana problem,
but I would be interested in better tests if anyone has some.
-- Jeff
∂15-Sep-86 1937 NGALL@G.BBN.COM defstruct slots' default-inits
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Date: 15 Sep 1986 22:35-EDT
Sender: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
Subject: defstruct slots' default-inits
From: NGALL@G.BBN.COM
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[G.BBN.COM]15-Sep-86 22:35:17.NGALL>
Is the following legal CL:
(defstruct foo
(a 1)
(b (+ a 2)))
Specifically, is the default-init form of a slot allowed to reference the
values of slots to its left (above)? In other words, is the above
defined by CL to be equivalent to
(defstruct (foo (:constructor make-foo (&key (a 1) (b (+ a 2)))))
a
b)
(assuming that &key was allowed in the lambda-list for a BOA
constructor)
The only hint that I can find that indicates that it is legal is on
page 309 (bottom): "It is as if the initialization forms were used as
init forms for the keyword parameters of the constructor function."
Is there a more direct statement about the interaction of default-init
forms and other slots? If not, there should be.
-- Nick
∂17-Sep-86 1044 tsf@theory.cs.cmu.edu Readtables and prin1
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Date: Wednesday, 17 September 1986 13:40:39 EDT
From: Timothy.Freeman@theory.cs.cmu.edu
To: common-lisp@su-ai.arpa
Subject: Readtables and prin1
Message-ID: <1986.9.17.17.29.57.Timothy.Freeman@theory.cs.cmu.edu>
When prin1 is used to print something out, should it look at the current
value of *readtable* and produce text that can be read in assuming that
readtable is in effect, or should it produce text that can be read in with
the standard readtable? The manual says the following about the
*print-escape* flag:
"When this flag is not nil, then an attempt is made to print an
expression in such a way that it can be read again to produce an equal
structure."
(page 370, near the bottom)
Maybe Common Lisp needs a *print-readtable* variable that is analogous to
the *print-base* variable.
∂17-Sep-86 1813 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Readtables and prin1
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Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1986 21:07 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12239777784.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Timothy.Freeman@THEORY.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Readtables and prin1
In-reply-to: Msg of 17 Sep 1986 13:40-EDT from Timothy.Freeman at theory.cs.cmu.edu
I think that the usual practice is to print things out so that they can
be read in using the standard readtable. It would be VERY difficult to
write code that can print out text for any user-modified readtable,
especially if the read-table contains macros.
-- Scott
∂17-Sep-86 1847 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Readtables and prin1
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Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1986 21:07 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Timothy.Freeman@THEORY.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Readtables and prin1
In-reply-to: Msg of 17 Sep 1986 13:40-EDT from Timothy.Freeman at theory.cs.cmu.edu
I think that the usual practice is to print things out so that they can
be read in using the standard readtable. It would be VERY difficult to
write code that can print out text for any user-modified readtable,
especially if the read-table contains macros.
-- Scott
∂17-Sep-86 2001 Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Readtables and prin1
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Date: Wed, 17 Sep 86 23:00 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Readtables and prin1
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
cc: Timothy.Freeman@THEORY.CS.CMU.EDU, common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12239777784.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860917230007.5.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1986 21:07 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
I think that the usual practice is to print things out so that they can
be read in using the standard readtable. It would be VERY difficult to
write code that can print out text for any user-modified readtable,
especially if the read-table contains macros.
Many systems attempt to print things out so that they can be read in using
the current readtable. For example, the Symbolics system uses the current
readtable to determine where escape characters are required (feed the
symbol's name back through the readtable and see if you get the same thing).
I agree that it is very difficult to cope with arbitrary user modifications
to the readtable, especially with the readtable-modifying primitives provided
by Common Lisp, but on the other hand it's easy to cope with some common,
simple modifications such as changing exclamation point from a constituent
to a macro. Basing this on the current readtable rather than the standard
readtable gives the user more flexibility, but as Common Lisp is currently
defined it is up to each implementation to decide whether it wants to go
to this much care.
I think if we're going to be more specific than "an attempt is made to
print an expression in such a way that it can be read again", then it
is incumbent on us to define more specifically how to customize the
printer in the same way that the reader can be customized, e.g. changing
the parenthesis characters.
∂17-Sep-86 2216 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DDYER@RIVERSIDE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Readtables and prin1
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Date: Wed, 17 Sep 86 21:54 PDT
From: DDYER@RIVERSIDE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
Subject: Readtables and prin1
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>,
Timothy.Freeman@THEORY.CS.CMU.EDU
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Fcc: W:>ddyer>mail.sent
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12239777784.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860917215432.5.DDYER@PURPLE.SWW.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1986 21:07 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
I think that the usual practice is to print things out so that they can
be read in using the standard readtable. It would be VERY difficult to
write code that can print out text for any user-modified readtable,
especially if the read-table contains macros.
-- Scott
Gee, that's the way Interlisp has always done it. In Interlisp, all
print operations accept a readtable as an optional argument, which
determines how things are printed. All you have to do is pre-process
the readtable so you know which characters need to be slashified.
∂18-Sep-86 0701 @UR-ACORN.ARPA,@UR-CASHEW.ARPA:miller@UR-ACORN.ARPA Re: Readtables and prin1
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Date: Thu, 18 Sep 86 10:00 EDT
From: Brad Miller <miller@UR-ACORN.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Readtables and prin1
To: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Fcc: ACORN:>miller>babyl.text
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12239777784.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <860918100035.2.MILLER@UR-CASHEW.ARPA>
Sender: miller@UR-ACORN.ARPA
Organization: University of Rochester, Department of Computer Science
Postal-address: 617 Hylan Building, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627
Phone: 716-275-7747
Moon: 7 minutes since the full moon.
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1986 21:07 EDT
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
I think that the usual practice is to print things out so that they can
be read in using the standard readtable. It would be VERY difficult to
write code that can print out text for any user-modified readtable,
especially if the read-table contains macros.
-- Scott
It may be hard, but I suspect necessary. Given the user is in some context, he
would expect his print function to work "so it can be read in again" which
implies in his current context. Having to change contexts just to enter forms
(which would then get into even more difficult problems about packaging, etc.
in the new context) is not in my opinion a good user interface.
Brad Miller
------
miller@rochester.arpa
miller@ur-acorn.arpa
∂18-Sep-86 1037 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Readtables and prin1
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Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1986 13:35 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Readtables and prin1
In-reply-to: Msg of 18 Sep 1986 10:00-EDT from Brad Miller <miller at UR-ACORN.ARPA>
OK, apparently lots of systems peek at the current readtable in order to
see which characters need to be slashified (or vertical-barred) on
output. That's probably impossible to get right, if by "right" you mean
doing the minimal slashification that is necessary but no more.
However, it doesn't hurt to slashify extra characters if there is some
doubt. I'm not sure whether I think this is valuable or important, but
I won't argue against it.
I still think that requiring PRIN1 to perform correctly given any
arbitrary readtable is much too hard to make this a required part of the
language, and probably impossible. I'm not sure whether a half-assed
attempt to adapt to the current readtable is better than explicitly not
doing this at all. My inclination would be to require anyone using an
extensively hacked readtable to write his own matching printer.
-- Scott
∂18-Sep-86 1039 yuasa%kurims.kurims.kyoto-u.junet%utokyo-relay.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Re: OPS5 in Common Lisp
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To: common-lisp%su-ai.arpa%u-tokyo.junet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
Subject: Re: OPS5 in Common Lisp
We also have OPS5 running on KCL. It is VPS2, an interpreter for OPS5,
copyrighted by C.Forgy in 1979, 1980, and 1981. The sources came from
Edinburgh AIAI, where Jeff ported VPS2 onto Spice Lisp. Just removing
the use of fexpr was enough to port it onto KCL.
-- Taiichi
∂18-Sep-86 1100 LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA *applyhook* question
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Date: Thu 18 Sep 86 11:58:48-MDT
From: SANDRA <LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: *applyhook* question
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <12239961893.17.LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
CLtL says the apply hook function "takes three arguments, a function, a list
of arguments, and an environment". Three questions:
(1) Is the "function" argument already evaluated? There are no user
accessible functions for extracting its definition from the environment.
-------
∂18-Sep-86 1104 LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA *applyhook* question (hopefully I'll get it right this time)
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Date: Thu 18 Sep 86 12:04:06-MDT
From: SANDRA <LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Subject: *applyhook* question (hopefully I'll get it right this time)
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <12239962857.17.LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
CLtL says the apply hook function "takes three arguments, a function, a list
of arguments, and an environment". Three questions:
(1) Is the "function" argument already evaluated? There are no user-
accessible functions for extracting its definition from the environment, so
I don't see how the hook function could make much use of an unevaluated
function.
(2) Are the arguments in the argument list argument already evaluated, or
is it the responsibility of the hook function to evaluate them before
applying the function?
(3) If both the "function" and "argument list" arguments are already
evaluated, what does the hook function need an environment for?
-Sandra
-------
∂18-Sep-86 1538 pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM testing addresses ... please ignore
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Date: Thu, 18 Sep 86 15:12:46 PDT
From: pyramid!bein@hplabs.HP.COM (David Bein)
Message-Id: <8609182212.AA14499@pyramid>
Received: by pyramid (5.51/3.14)
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To: common-lisp@sail.stanford.edu
Subject: testing addresses ... please ignore
--David
∂19-Sep-86 1853 cross@afit-ab.ARPA please add my name
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Date: 19 Sep 1986 21:26-EDT
From: cross@wpafb-ab
To: ai-ed-request@sumex-aim, soft-eng-request@mit-xx, common-lisp@su-ai,
info-xlisp-request@cmu-cs-spice
Subject: please add my name
Please add me to the list. Thanks.
Steve Cross
AFIT/ENG, WPAFB OH 45433-6583
(513) 255-3576
∂20-Sep-86 1751 cross@afit-ab.ARPA xlisp query
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Date: 20 Sep 1986 20:46-EDT
From: cross@wpafb-afita
To: common-lisp@su-ai, ai-ed@sumex-aim
Subject: xlisp query
Would appreciate a pointer to where I could download the source code for
xlisp 1.6 and any demonstratable programs written in xlisp. I'm aware
of the stuff published in AI Expert and have downloaded it, but cannot
find the source code. Thanks in advance.
Steve Cross
∂22-Sep-86 1734 @RIVERSIDE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM,@BIS-ALICE-LIDDELL.DialNet.Symbolics.COM:Stever@BIS-ALICE-LIDDELL.BISCC.DIALNET.SYMBOLICS.COM " macro character
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Date: Mon, 22 Sep 86 16:24 EDT
From: Stephen Robbins <Stever@BIS-ALICE-LIDDELL.BISCC.Dialnet.Symbolics.Com>
Subject: " macro character
To: common-lisp%su-ai.arpa@SCRC-RIVERSIDE.DialNet.Symbolics.COM
Message-ID: <860922162454.3.STEVER@BIS-ALICE-LIDDELL.BISCC.Dialnet.Symbolics.Com>
Hi!
On page 347 of CLtL, it says that the double quote character
accumulates characters until another double quote is seen. "An
exception to this occurs if a \single escape/ character is seen; ..."
If I want to write my function which handles " in Common-Lisp itself,
how can my handler tell when a character it's read is a single escape
character? It would have to be able to look into the readtable. If
there are ways to look inside readtables, I've missed them...
Thanks!
Stever
∂22-Sep-86 1749 Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM *applyhook* question (hopefully I'll get it right this time)
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Date: Mon, 22 Sep 86 20:46 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: *applyhook* question (hopefully I'll get it right this time)
To: SANDRA <LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <12239962857.17.LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
Message-ID: <860922204642.0.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Thu 18 Sep 86 12:04:06-MDT
From: SANDRA <LOOSEMORE@UTAH-20.ARPA>
I haven't seen any replies to this. I guess I can try to take a crack at it.
CLtL says the apply hook function "takes three arguments, a function, a list
of arguments, and an environment". Three questions:
(1) Is the "function" argument already evaluated? There are no user-
accessible functions for extracting its definition from the environment, so
I don't see how the hook function could make much use of an unevaluated
function.
(2) Are the arguments in the argument list argument already evaluated, or
is it the responsibility of the hook function to evaluate them before
applying the function?
The intent of this ("when a function is about to be applied to arguments",
CLtL p.322) is that the applyhook is called after everything has been evaluated.
(3) If both the "function" and "argument list" arguments are already
evaluated, what does the hook function need an environment for?
It's not for anything! Apparently this was discussed on the mailing list
long ago, because this comment appears in our source code:
;After discussion on the Common Lisp mailing list, the ENV for the apply hook
;is the environment in which the arguments have already been evaluated, not
;the environment of the function to be called, which is of course still inside
;its closure. Its completely inutile to have the environment as an argument here,
;but it's in the book so I'll accept it and ignore it.
I suspect this env is a mistake, although it's conceivable that it is a hook
for some kind of future feature.
∂23-Sep-86 0352 ma←jpf%ux63.bath.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK OPS-5
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id a012978; 22 Sep 86 15:14 BST
Date: 22 Sep 1986 11:14:06-GMT
To: common-lisp <@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK:common-lisp@su-ai.arpa>
Subject: OPS-5
From: ma←jpf%ux63.bath.ac.uk@Cs.Ucl.AC.UK
What is all the fuss about? We ported OPS-5 to the HP Bobcat Common LISP
in a very small time; even improved the thing on the way. Is there an
official port to Common Lisp? Why?
==John
∂24-Sep-86 1159 ACUFF@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA Re: Readtables and prin1
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Date: Wed 24 Sep 86 11:56:35-PDT
From: Richard Acuff <Acuff@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Readtables and prin1
To: Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU, common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <FAHLMAN.12239957598.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Message-ID: <12241545278.32.ACUFF@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
... My inclination would be to require anyone using an
extensively hacked readtable to write his own matching printer.
-- Scott
What do you mean by "extensively"?
-- Rich
-------
∂24-Sep-86 1932 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Mailing list requests
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Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1986 22:31 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12241628079.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Mailing list requests
Several people have recently written to me with requests to be taken off
the Common Lisp mailing list. This list is maintained and altered by
Dick Gabriel, RPG@SU-AI.
-- Scott
∂24-Sep-86 1943 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Readtables and prin1
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Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1986 22:33 EDT
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Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Richard Acuff <Acuff@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Readtables and prin1
In-reply-to: Msg of 24 Sep 1986 14:56-EDT from Richard Acuff <Acuff at SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
... My inclination would be to require anyone using an
extensively hacked readtable to write his own matching printer.
What do you mean by "extensively"?
Hacked enough that you can't do what you want to do with what is
presently in Common Lisp.
-- Scott
∂25-Sep-86 0640 @MC.LCS.MIT.EDU:STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU Are strings adjustable arrays?
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Date: Thu, 25 Sep 86 09:23:17 EDT
From: "Stephen E. Robbins" <STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Are strings adjustable arrays?
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[MX.LCS.MIT.EDU].949090.860925.STEVER>
I have an application that does a lot of string hacking. For
efficiency reasons, we'd like to mutate our strings rather than
creating new ones all the time. It seems like strings which are
adjustable arrays with fill pointers are what we want. I
gather from page 299 that, while strings MAY have fill pointers,
there is no mechanism for having them automatically created
that way.
Is that the intention, or is there actually some way to have
strings created with fill pointers?
Stever
∂25-Sep-86 1358 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Are strings adjustable arrays?
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Date: Thu, 25 Sep 86 16:56 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Are strings adjustable arrays?
To: Stephen E. Robbins <STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>,
common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <[MX.LCS.MIT.EDU].949090.860925.STEVER>
Message-ID: <860925165650.3.DCP@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 86 09:23:17 EDT
From: "Stephen E. Robbins" <STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
I have an application that does a lot of string hacking. For
efficiency reasons, we'd like to mutate our strings rather than
creating new ones all the time. It seems like strings which are
adjustable arrays with fill pointers are what we want. I
gather from page 299 that, while strings MAY have fill pointers,
there is no mechanism for having them automatically created
that way.
Is that the intention, or is there actually some way to have
strings created with fill pointers?
To get either fill-pointers or adjustability, you have to use
make-array. make-string is not enough.
(make-array <size>
:element-type 'string-char
:fill-pointer 0
:adjustable t)
∂25-Sep-86 1416 RPG Jim Meehan Comments
To: common-lisp@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Jim Meehan asked me to forward a remark he was unable to successfully
mail to Common-Lisp.
-rpg-
ps. Oh yeah, by the way, here it is:
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 86 13:24:42 edt
From: James R. Meehan <csi!meehan@UUCP>
To: common-lisp@su-ai.arpa
Subject: Ignoring the DOTIMES variable
CLtL doesn't say whether DOTIMES actually "uses" the loop-variable, as
opposed to its value, and this ambiguity causes problems with portable
code. If DOTIMES does use the loop-variable, then
(DOTIMES (I 10) (DECLARE (IGNORE I)) (FOO))
can cause the compiler to issue a warning, but if DOTIMES doesn't use
the loop-variable, then
(DOTIMES (I 10) (FOO))
can also cause the compiler to issue a warning.
Personally, I think DOTIMES shouldn't use the variable, so that
(DOTIMES (I 10) (DECLARE (IGNORE I)) (FOO))
would be the correct style. That is, it should behave as if it were
implemented this way, more or less:
(DEFMACRO DOTIMES ((VAR END &OPTIONAL FINAL) &BODY BODY)
(LET ((I (GENSYM)) (STOP (GENSYM)))
`(DO ((,I 0 (1+ ,I))
(,STOP ,END))
((>= ,I ,STOP) (LET ((,VAR ,I)) ,FINAL))
(LET ((,VAR ,I)) ,@BODY))))
[This may need some additional work for copying declarations in the
"final" code, via the proposed PARSE-BODY or whatever.]
I've seen several implementations where DOTIMES actually uses the
loop-variable, thus permitting horrors like using SETQ to change the
value of the loop-variable and therefore control the iterations. The
implementation above would prevent that.
∂26-Sep-86 0558 Dan@Think.COM Jim Meehan Comments
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Date: Fri, 26 Sep 86 09:00 EDT
From: Dan Aronson <Dan@Think.COM>
Subject: Jim Meehan Comments
To: RPG@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
Cc: common-lisp@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
In-Reply-To: <8609252118.AA00590@Zarathustra.Think.COM>
Message-Id: <860926090057.4.DAN@ZACHARY.THINK.COM>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 86 13:24:42 edt
From: James R. Meehan <csi!meehan@UUCP>
CLtL doesn't say whether DOTIMES actually "uses" the loop-variable, as
opposed to its value, and this ambiguity causes problems with portable
code.
I've seen several implementations where DOTIMES actually uses the
loop-variable, thus permitting horrors like using SETQ to change the
value of the loop-variable and therefore control the iterations. The
implementation above would prevent that.
Oh yes it does, page 128 of CLtL says:
Altering the value of VAR in the body of the loop (by using SETQ, for
example) will have unpredictable, possibly implementation-dependent results.
A Common Lisp compiler may choose to issue a warning if such a variable
appears in a SETQ.
This clearly means that if you do things like SETQ then you are going to run
in to portability problems.
--Dan
∂29-Sep-86 1037 DALY@IBM.COM getting on the common lisp list
Received: from IBM.COM by SAIL.STANFORD.EDU with TCP; 29 Sep 86 10:37:46 PDT
Date: 29 September 1986, 12:47:02 EDT
From: "Timothy P. Daly" <DALY@ibm.com>
To: common-lisp@su-ai.arpa
Message-Id: <092986.124703.daly@ibm.com>
Subject: getting on the common lisp list
Hi,
How can I get on the list to receive the common lisp discussion?
My address is DALY@IBM.COM.
∂03-Oct-86 1337 @MC.LCS.MIT.EDU:STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU
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Date: Fri, 3 Oct 86 16:36:39 EDT
From: "Stephen E. Robbins" <STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <[MX.LCS.MIT.EDU].950779.861003.STEVER>
Hi!
I'm doing a fair amount of string hacking right now. A lot of
things involve comparing and manipulating substrings. I do most
of this via the :START and :END arguments on the string functions.
Symbolics Common Lisp blows up if you specify a :END which is
greater than the length of a string. It also signals an error
if you give a large :END to a subsequence extract with SUBSEQ.
I looked through CLtL, but couldn't find any mention of this
case. Is the result of extracting past the end of a subsequence
considered undefined?
Stever
∂03-Oct-86 1429 RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU
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Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1986 17:27 EDT
Message-ID: <RAM.12243932018.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: "Stephen E. Robbins" <STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-reply-to: Msg of 3 Oct 1986 16:36-EDT from Stephen E. Robbins <STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU at MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: Friday, 3 October 1986 16:36-EDT
From: Stephen E. Robbins <STEVER%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU at MC.LCS.MIT.EDU>
...Is the result of extracting past the end of a subsequence
considered undefined?
Stever
Yes. Although it isn't explicitly stated when :END is discussed on
page 246, the discussion doesn't make any sense otherwise. One could
hypothesize a magical exception in the case where END is greater than
the length, but there is nothing in the manual to support such a
conclusion. There are many illegal things which are not explicitly
stated to be illegal in the manual.
Rob
∂03-Oct-86 1853 @REAGAN.AI.MIT.EDU:RDZ@AI.AI.MIT.EDU Printing DEFSTRUCTs
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Date: Fri, 3 Oct 86 21:53 EDT
From: Ramin Zabih <RDZ@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Printing DEFSTRUCTs
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <861003215337.4.RDZ@NULLSTELLENSATZ.AI.MIT.EDU>
The standard way of printing structures involves printing out all
the slots in #S notation. The Common Lisp manual requires that
structures print in this way unless the user specifies his own
printing function in his structure definition (page 370). I don't think
that this is a very useful way of printing structures, since a lot of
structures are circular, and even those that aren't tend to be large in
any program that isn't a toy.
I would prefer that the default way of printing structures be changed to
be more useful (for instance the way ZetaLisp DEFSTRUCTs used to print,
which was as "#<SHIP 7765321>"). A less-preferable solution would
involve a global variable that controls how structures default to
printing.
Ramin
∂03-Oct-86 2100 DT50@A.CS.CMU.EDU printing structures
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Date: 3 Oct 86 23:57 EDT
From: Dave.Touretzky@A.CS.CMU.EDU
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: printing structures
I second Ramin Zabih's suggestion that the default way to print a structure
should be to NOT show its components. If Common Lisp has to specify a
default print convention, the #<SHIP 1234567> notation is a better choice.
The same problem shows up with closures: some implementations build
closures that are circular or, at the very least, long and and hairy. They
are a source of annoyance every time the user accidentally (or purposely)
tries to print one. Since the Common Lisp standard deliberately says
nothing about the representation of closures, maybe it shouldn't specify
how they are printed. But it should at least SUGGEST to implementors that
they should choose a printing convention doesn't screw the user by default,
i.e. by trying to print something huge or circular. I like the Lisp Machine
#<LEXICAL-CLOSURE 1234567> notation just fine.
-- Dave
∂04-Oct-86 0023 bader@spice.cs.cmu.edu Re: printing structures
Received: from SPICE.CS.CMU.EDU by SAIL.STANFORD.EDU with TCP; 4 Oct 86 00:23:51 PDT
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 1986 02:28:46-EDT
From: Miles Bader <bader@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: printing structures
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <BMS.528791326.bader@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Of course, some people actually like to read in what they print. Why not
just give different values to *print-length*, *print-level* and
*print-circle* in your init file?
-Miles
∂04-Oct-86 1817 RWK@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: printing structures
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Date: Sat, 4 Oct 86 21:16 EDT
From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: printing structures
To: Miles Bader <bader@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <BMS.528791326.bader@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Message-ID: <861004211602.2.RWK@WHITE-BIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 1986 02:28:46-EDT
From: Miles Bader <bader@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Of course, some people actually like to read in what they print. Why not
just give different values to *print-length*, *print-level* and
*print-circle* in your init file?
-Miles
As Common Lisp is currently designed, this just breaks
programs that like to read in what they print.
We provide a macro, WITH-STANDARD-IO-ENVIRONMENT which
binds the I/O control variables to their standard values.
This provides a sorely needed decoupling between I/O
for inter-program communication and the user-interface.
It is far easier to wrap this one form around the
portion of your program which does I/O than it is to
figure out what variables it depends on, and bind each
of them. Even if you want a few non-standard bindings,
it's easier to start with the standard bindings and
rebind a few than to deal with each of them.
I >strongly< recommend this be adopted. Once it's
adopted, it's much easier to discuss changing
the default global bindings for the I/O control
variables to make the environment easier to use
interactively. Without it, we'll just get caught up
in the communications and compatibility issues.
∂05-Oct-86 2017 Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM Re: printing structures
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Date: 5 Oct 86 20:08 PDT
From: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
Subject: Re: printing structures
In-reply-to: Robert W. Kerns <RWK@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>'s message of
Sat, 4 Oct 86 21:16 EDT
To: RWK@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <861005-200551-3386@Xerox>
Separating out I/O for for inter-program communication and the
user-interface is a good idea, but your proposal puts the burden on
inter-program communication ("wrap this one form around the portion of
your program which does I/O.") rather than on the user interface.
Wouldn't it be simpler to suggest that implementors of a
"top-level-loop" might want to bind a separate I/O environment for
reading and printing (but not for execution)?
Back onto the original discussion: we added a variable *print-structure*
which controlled how structures were printed by the default structure
printer, in the same way that *print-array* controls array output. I'm
reluctant to propose additions to the language, but if one was wanted,
this seems like a logical choice.
∂05-Oct-86 2115 SOLEY@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU printing structures
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Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1986 00:14 EDT
Message-ID: <SOLEY.12244530480.BABYL@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
From: SOLEY@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU
To: Dave.Touretzky@A.CS.CMU.EDU
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: printing structures
In-reply-to: Msg of 3 Oct 1986 23:57-EDT from Dave.Touretzky at A.CS.CMU.EDU
Date: Friday, 3 October 1986 23:57-EDT
From: Dave.Touretzky at A.CS.CMU.EDU
I second Ramin Zabih's suggestion that the default way to print a structure
should be to NOT show its components. If Common Lisp has to specify a
default print convention, the #<SHIP 1234567> notation is a better choice.
I third the suggestion, and further suggest *print-structure* control
the action of the printer on structures (a la *print-array*), and default
to not show components.
These two are just general cases of "*print-readably*", so to speak;
perhaps we should generalize?
-- Richard Soley
∂05-Oct-86 2223 ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA Printing Structures
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Date: Sun, 5 Oct 86 09:33 EDT
From: ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Printing Structures
X-VMS-To: CSNET%"Common-Lisp@Su-ai.arpa"
I do not want the default printing format for structures changed.
Symbolic's incorrect implementation of this has gotten me very upset.
The default syntax is good at the begining of an implementation, when
the data structures are being defined and you will be looking
closely at all of the details. Eventually, I always define print
functions for each defstruct. "Eventually" often means just before
I implement the functions to create circular links.
The default syntax is also good for teaching people about Lisp. It is much
easier to explain how to use structures when you can show people
exactly what is in them. It would be harder to convince people
that nothing magical is going on if`
if you had to define a print function while explaining it.
As for lexical closures, and other system defined objects which do
not behave well using the default syntax, nothing in CL should prevent
the implementation from giving these objects special syntax. The default
syntax applies to user defined structures.
One more point. The default syntax is also best for testing out new
Lisp features.
∂06-Oct-86 1045 DLW@ALDERAAN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Printing Structures
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Date: Mon, 6 Oct 86 13:48 EDT
From: Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@ALDERAAN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Printing Structures
To: ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA, Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: The message of 5 Oct 86 09:33 EDT from ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
Message-ID: <861006134816.4.DLW@CHICOPEE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Sun, 5 Oct 86 09:33 EDT
From: ELIOT%cs.umass.edu@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA
I do not want the default printing format for structures changed.
Symbolic's incorrect implementation of this has gotten me very upset.
Just for the record, Symbolics's Release 7 (coming very soon) implements
this in accordance with the standard. In general, Release 7 has far
fewer variances with the CL spec than Release 6.
We also have a special variable, called *print-structure-contents*,
(default t, of course) that controls this behavior. That several
implementations have found it necessary to adopt extensions to provide
this ability suggests that the ability ought to be made part of the
common standard.
∂06-Oct-86 2103 RWK@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: printing structures
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Date: Tue, 7 Oct 86 00:01 EDT
From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: printing structures
To: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <861005-200551-3386@Xerox>
Message-ID: <861007000135.2.RWK@WHITE-BIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: 5 Oct 86 20:08 PDT
From: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
Separating out I/O for for inter-program communication and the
user-interface is a good idea, but your proposal puts the burden on
inter-program communication ("wrap this one form around the portion of
your program which does I/O.") rather than on the user interface.
I claim that's where the burden belongs. Programs interact
with the user a lot more than they interact with other programs
via read/print. And these interactions happen in a myriad
unpredictable way (consider tracing, for example). The
user-interface is global, it's the inter-program I/O that's
localized, so that's why it gets the form wrapped around it.
Besides and every time programms communicate, you have to think about
whether what is being communicated can be communicated via read/print,
whether you need *print-circle*, etc, anyway.
Wouldn't it be simpler to suggest that implementors of a
"top-level-loop" might want to bind a separate I/O environment for
reading and printing (but not for execution)?
That doesn't solve the problem. It isn't just a matter of
printing the return values, it's error messages, messages from
the program, debugging, etc. etc.
Back onto the original discussion: we added a variable *print-structure*
We called ours *print-structure-contents*
which controlled how structures were printed by the default structure
printer, in the same way that *print-array* controls array output. I'm
reluctant to propose additions to the language, but if one was wanted,
this seems like a logical choice.
Indeed.
∂07-Oct-86 0917 @DIAMOND.S4CC.Symbolics.COM:DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM Re: printing structures
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Date: Tue, 7 Oct 86 12:14 EDT
From: David C. Plummer <DCP@QUABBIN.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: Re: printing structures
To: Robert W. Kerns <RWK@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>,
Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM
cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <861007000135.2.RWK@WHITE-BIRD.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <861007121449.5.DCP@KOYAANISQATSI.S4CC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 86 00:01 EDT
From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
...
Back onto the original discussion: we added a variable *print-structure*
We called ours *print-structure-contents*
Nit: SYMBOLICS-COMMON-LISP:*PRINT-STRUCTURE-CONTENTS*, (or
SCL:*PRINT-STRUCTURE-CONTENTS*) to be exact.
which controlled how structures were printed by the default structure
printer, in the same way that *print-array* controls array output. I'm
reluctant to propose additions to the language, but if one was wanted,
this seems like a logical choice.
Indeed.
Ditto. I set it to NIL in my init file for the same reasons other
implementations have provided this extension.
∂16-Oct-86 0123 KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM DEFVAR
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Date: Thu, 16 Oct 86 00:28 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: DEFVAR
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <861016002852.8.KMP@EMU.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
CLtL (p68) is not explicit on its intent about whether (DEFVAR FOO) is
allowed to or intended to intialize FOO. For example, in Symbolics'
Common Lisp FOO is left unbound but in VAXLISP it is initialized to NIL.
The manual should state clearly whether an initialization occurs or be
more up front if an ambiguity is in fact intended.
∂16-Oct-86 0123 KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM ADJUST-ARRAY
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Date: Thu, 16 Oct 86 00:40 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: ADJUST-ARRAY
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Message-ID: <861016004039.9.KMP@EMU.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
CLtL (p297) says that it is "not permitted to call ADJUST-ARRAY on an
array that was not created with the :ADJUSTABLE option." This strikes me
as overly restrictive. Why don't we say that ADJUST-ARRAY always returns
an adjusted array and that the argument array will be modified only if
(ADJUSTABLE-ARRAY-P array) was true. This is no more unreasonable than
the current specification for the DELETE function. The way to be sure you
were going to win would be to say:
(SETQ X (ADJUST-ARRAY X ...))
just as you would do
(SETQ X (DELETE ... X))
and in special cases you would know that you didn't have to do the SETQ.
Does anyone really feel strongly that erring is necessary here?
I have an application where this comes up and as nearly as I can tell,
I must now go and simulate the effect of ADJUST-ARRAY in order to create
an array to a new size and make sure it gets filled properly. It makes me
sad that I should have to do this when there's a function already that
comes so close to what I want.
∂16-Oct-86 1604 Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM ADJUST-ARRAY
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Date: Thu, 16 Oct 86 13:22 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: ADJUST-ARRAY
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <861016004039.9.KMP@EMU.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <861016132226.5.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 86 00:40 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
CLtL (p297) says that it is "not permitted to call ADJUST-ARRAY on an
array that was not created with the :ADJUSTABLE option." This strikes me
as overly restrictive. Why don't we say that ADJUST-ARRAY always returns
an adjusted array and that the argument array will be modified only if
(ADJUSTABLE-ARRAY-P array) was true. This is no more unreasonable than
the current specification for the DELETE function.
I suspect people rely on arrays as updatable objects with identity a lot more
often than they rely on lists that way. In other words, if ADJUST-ARRAY
sometimes quietly returns a new array and leaves the old one unadjusted,
there are likely to be other references to the old array that don't get
updated, and hence there will be bugs.
I always argued for making all arrays adjustable, for this reason. Given
that we can't have that, I think your behavior is reasonable but it should
not be the default because it could lead to undetected bugs.
I have an application where this comes up and as nearly as I can tell,
I must now go and simulate the effect of ADJUST-ARRAY in order to create
an array to a new size and make sure it gets filled properly. It makes me
sad that I should have to do this when there's a function already that
comes so close to what I want.
This is a good argument. This is a typical example of where Common Lisp went
wrong by standardizing a new, untried idea instead of standardizing current
practice, which would be okay except that what was standardized was a bundle
of several primitives and the underlying primitives were not exposed, so that
users can't easily define functions to hide the deficiencies they feel are
present in the standardized bundle.
I think there should be a new keyword argument to ADJUST-ARRAY that does
what you want, or else a separate function for this purpose, as there
was in Zetalisp (ARRAY-GROW). I don't think the default behavior of
ADJUST-ARRAY should be changed, for reasons given above. I can't think
of any good names for the keyword argument; the best I was able to come
up with was :IF-NOT-ADJUSTABLE with values :ERROR and :COPY.
∂16-Oct-86 1801 Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM ADJUST-ARRAY
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Date: Thu, 16 Oct 86 13:22 EDT
From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Subject: ADJUST-ARRAY
To: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
In-Reply-To: <861016004039.9.KMP@EMU.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Message-ID: <861016132226.5.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 86 00:40 EDT
From: Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
CLtL (p297) says that it is "not permitted to call ADJUST-ARRAY on an
array that was not created with the :ADJUSTABLE option." This strikes me
as overly restrictive. Why don't we say that ADJUST-ARRAY always returns
an adjusted array and that the argument array will be modified only if
(ADJUSTABLE-ARRAY-P array) was true. This is no more unreasonable than
the current specification for the DELETE function.
I suspect people rely on arrays as updatable objects with identity a lot more
often than they rely on lists that way. In other words, if ADJUST-ARRAY
sometimes quietly returns a new array and leaves the old one unadjusted,
there are likely to be other references to the old array that don't get
updated, and hence there will be bugs.
I always argued for making all arrays adjustable, for this reason. Given
that we can't have that, I think your behavior is reasonable but it should
not be the default because it could lead to undetected bugs.
I have an application where this comes up and as nearly as I can tell,
I must now go and simulate the effect of ADJUST-ARRAY in order to create
an array to a new size and make sure it gets filled properly. It makes me
sad that I should have to do this when there's a function already that
comes so close to what I want.
This is a good argument. This is a typical example of where Common Lisp went
wrong by standardizing a new, untried idea instead of standardizing current
practice, which would be okay except that what was standardized was a bundle
of several primitives and the underlying primitives were not exposed, so that
users can't easily define functions to hide the deficiencies they feel are
present in the standardized bundle.
I think there should be a new keyword argument to ADJUST-ARRAY that does
what you want, or else a separate function for this purpose, as there
was in Zetalisp (ARRAY-GROW). I don't think the default behavior of
ADJUST-ARRAY should be changed, for reasons given above. I can't think
of any good names for the keyword argument; the best I was able to come
up with was :IF-NOT-ADJUSTABLE with values :ERROR and :COPY.
∂20-Oct-86 1046 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU DEFVAR
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Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1986 13:45 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12248348124.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Kent M Pitman <KMP@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>
Cc: Common-Lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: DEFVAR
In-reply-to: Msg of 16 Oct 1986 00:28-EDT from Kent M Pitman <KMP at STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
CLtL (p68) is not explicit on its intent about whether (DEFVAR FOO) is
allowed to or intended to intialize FOO.
I believe that everyone's intent was that (DEFVAR FOO) should leave FOO
unbound. I would have sworn that the manual said this, but I guess it
doesn't.
Given that and the current syntax, there is the question of how the user
is supposed to supply a doc string for the variable if no initial
value is wanted. This was discussed in the past on one or two
occasions. I think the general feeling was that SETF of DOCUMENTAITON
was good enough in the rare case where this functionality is needed.
-- Scott
∂21-Oct-86 0851 @UR-ACORN.ARPA,@UR-CASHEW.ARPA:miller@UR-ACORN.ARPA Applying functions to all the symbols in a package...
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Date: Tue, 21 Oct 86 11:53 EDT
From: Brad Miller <miller@UR-ACORN.ARPA>
Subject: Applying functions to all the symbols in a package...
To: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
cc: miller@UR-ACORN.ARPA
Message-ID: <861021115308.3.MILLER@UR-CASHEW.ARPA>
Sender: miller@UR-ACORN.ARPA
Organization: University of Rochester, Department of Computer Science
Postal-address: 617 Hylan Building, University of Rochester, Rochester NY 14627
Phone: 716-275-7747
Moon: 3 days, 13 hours, 15 minutes since the full moon.
As a general rule, I find that as a style of coding, MAP and recursion are the
most clear, iteration much less so, and GO's the least so. I realize this may
be somewhat of a religious issue, so I won't go into why I despise iteration,
with the possible exception of array manipulation.
For this reason, I am somewhat surprised, that CL has iterative functions for
fiddling with all they symbols in a package (i.e. DO-SYMBOLS and
DO-EXTERNAL-SYMBOLS but no equivalent MAP forms (e.g. the zetalisp MAPATOMS
and MAPATOMS-ALL). This is particularly surprising in light of the fact that
almost every other MAP function has equivalent iterations forms, and
vice-versa.
I would like to suggest that such functions be added to the CL standard. I
believe the zetalisp functions mentioned above are sufficient, and provide a
clean user interface. This would be a downward compatible upgrade.
Brad Miller
------
miller@rochester.arpa
miller@ur-acorn.arpa
∂21-Oct-86 0913 FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU Applying functions to all the symbols in a package...
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Received: ID <FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU>; Tue 21 Oct 86 12:12:19-EDT
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1986 12:12 EDT
Message-ID: <FAHLMAN.12248593239.BABYL@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: FAHLMAN@C.CS.CMU.EDU
From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
To: Brad Miller <miller@UR-ACORN.ARPA>
Cc: common-lisp@SU-AI.ARPA
Subject: Applying functions to all the symbols in a package...
In-reply-to: Msg of 21 Oct 1986 11:53-EDT from Brad Miller <miller at UR-ACORN.ARPA>
Back when the initial design was being done, we explicitly considered
whether to go with MAP-SYMBOLS or DO-SYMBOLS. At the time, it seemed
that most of us had the opposite religion from Mr. Miller. Most of us
favored the iterative form, and I don't remember anyone arguing for the
mapping form. A practical argument is that DO-SYMBOLS typically is used
in situations where there are a LOT of symbols must be processed, and in
the absence of a very clever compiler the MAP form would be slower due
to the need for explicitly calling the supplied functional argument.
I don't think that it would be worthwhile to include both forms just to
accommodate both stylistic preferences. These facilities are not used
often, so the occasional use of a less-favored style should not be a big
hardship for anyone. And, of course, fanatical DO-haters can write a
MAP-SYMBOLS macro easily enough, and not have to worry about what it
expands into.
-- Scott