Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!apple!hercules!gilham From: gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Returning tuples Message-ID: Date: 3 Oct 90 17:37:43 GMT References: <14197@netcom.UUCP> <9010031449.AA02400@world.std.com> Sender: usenet@csl.sri.com Organization: Computer Science Lab, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA. Lines: 20 In-reply-to: bzs@WORLD.STD.COM's message of 3 Oct 90 14:49:51 GMT Barry Shein writes: ---------------------------------------- The (more than) rumor I heard was that Symbolics successfully lobbied to have multiple-value-return put into the common lisp standard because there was something about their hardware that made this very desireable (I think it was that the top of their return stack, the first 256 bytes, was made of very fast stuff mapped into memory.) So the whole thing may have been a hoax (as far as any abstract motivations were concerned.) ---------------------------------------- If I remember correctly, Guy Steele used `values' in his paper, `Lambda, the Ultimate Imperative,' written in the late 70s. I don't remember why he used it, but the whole paper was abstractly motivated. -- Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com ``But, till the revolution comes we gonna party, party, party!'' (Does anyone know who wrote this?)