Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!harlqn.co.uk!harlequin.co.uk!jason
From: jason@harlequin.co.uk (Jason Trenouth)
Subject: Re: SETF (was Re: Why do people like C? (Was: Comparison: Beta - Lisp))
In-Reply-To: cyber_surfer@wildcard.demon.co.uk's message of Mon, 31 Oct 1994 10:57:55 +0000
Message-ID: <JASON.94Nov2122036@wratting.harlqn.co.uk>
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References: <Cy3E67.42K@rheged.dircon.co.uk> <Cy5Bv7.JDy@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
	<Cy62A5.5G7@rheged.dircon.co.uk> <CyAM0D.57n@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
	<CyFE3K.8KL@rheged.dircon.co.uk> <783601075snz@wildcard.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1994 12:20:36 GMT
Lines: 52

>>>>> "Cyber" == Cyber Surfer <cyber_surfer@wildcard.demon.co.uk> writes:

In article <CyFE3K.8KL@rheged.dircon.co.uk> simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk "Simon Brooke" writes:

Simon> But there is a fundamental point of philosophy here. My preference
Simon> is that the default way of doing things should be safe but slow,
Simon> and that there should be an alternative, clearly labelled, way of
Simon> doing the quick-and-dirty for people who know what they're
Simon> about. Perhaps in

Cyber>  Quick and dirty is the way that most programmers I know prefer
Cyber> to do it. That may be because the code they write is _never_
Cyber> fast enough.

Simon> some future LisP standard, we might adopt a convention of appending
Simon> a 'D' to the name of a function which destructively modifies its
Simon> arguments, just as we now append a 'P' (or in other LisP family
Simon> languages a '?') to the names of functions which are
Simon> predicates. Thus we might have a pair:

Cyber>  I have no objection to that. When do you think we'll see a
Cyber> Lisp that uses such a convention? Could it be done in a package
Cyber> for CL, as an alternative to the standard package for CL names?

Remember, there is a prefix convention already:

	nbutlast
	nconc
	nintersection
	nreconc
	nreverse
	nset-difference
	nset-exclusive-or
	nstring-capitalize
	nstring-downcase
	nstring-upcase
	nsublis
	nsubst
	nsubst-if
	nsubst-if-not
	nsubstitute
	nsubstitute-if
	nsubstitute-if-not
	nunion

but Scheme's ? and ! suffix conventions are probably better if CL were
redesigned.
--
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| Jason Trenouth,                        | EMAIL: jason@uk.co.harlequin     |
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