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From: jearly@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU (John Early)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Dumb Common Lisp question
Message-ID: <1005@lehi3b15.csee.Lehigh.EDU>
Date: 3 Jul 90 21:27:10 GMT
References: <4204@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> <1990Jun29.162248.7846@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Distribution: usa
Organization: CSEE Dept. Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
Lines: 31
In-reply-to: max@Neon.Stanford.EDU's message of 29 Jun 90 16:22:48 GMT

In article <1990Jun29.162248.7846@Neon.Stanford.EDU> max@Neon.Stanford.EDU (Max Hailperin) writes:

   In article <4204@jato.Jpl.Nasa.Gov> brian@granite.Jpl.Nasa.Gov
    (Brian of ASTD-CP) writes:
   >[...] I have one pressing question about CL.  What is the rationale
   >behind the (function ...) or #' construct?  [...]
   >I'm most familiar with Scheme/T, where this kind of thing is
   >not necessary.  All symbols are evaluated the same way [...]
   >Treating a function as just another data type
   >like integer or string seems very neat and clean.  There must
   >be some reason it's not done this way in CL.

   It's done this way for the sake of people who like to call an argument
   that's a list "list" and still be able to use the "list" function, as in

   (defun foo (list)
     "Return a list of the sum of the list and the sum-of-squares of the list."
     (list (apply #'+ list)
	   (apply #'+ (mapcar #'square list))))

   instead of having to call it the-list like you would in scheme.
   [Of course, this applies to other names as well, list is just a common one.]
Since this is bad programming (at best) I suspect that that is not the reason.
I would guess that there is instead an historical/compatibility reason.
John.

----------------------------------------
John Early                             |
jearly@lehi3b15.csee.lehigh.edu        |  I was just a child then;
JPE1@Lehigh.Bitnet                     |  now I'm only a man.  [pf]
LUJPE@VAX1.cc.lehigh.edu               |