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From: eweb@ccvax.ucd.ie
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Problem with (apply #'or <list>)? (cl 3.0.1)
Message-ID: <47946.27c2d8d3@ccvax.ucd.ie>
Date: 20 Feb 91 20:15:15 GMT
References: <1991Feb15.065508.28609@cs.columbia.edu>
Organization: University College Dublin
Lines: 28

In article <1991Feb15.065508.28609@cs.columbia.edu>, (David Yang) writes:
> Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see why (apply #'or '(t nil t nil))
> shouldn't work.  What am I missing?
> 


I agree that it seems odd that special forms can't be APPLYed or FUNCALLed,
however in your particular example, what you are missing are the functions
EVERY, SOME, NOTANY and NOTEVERY, (CLtL, 1st Ed, page 250).

  (apply #'or list-of-values)     == (some list-of-values)
  (apply #'and list-of-values)    == (every list-of-values)

As for the reason why special forms cannot be FUNCALLed or APPLYe, I reckon
it has to do with the fact that it is unknown which (if any) args are to 
be evaluated or not.

If SOME or EVERY won't do the job, you could use
 (eval (cons 'or list-of-values))....

Eamonn Webster                       eweb@ccvax.ucd.ie
Department of Computer Science       eweb@ccvax.bitnet
University College Dublin            
Belfield
Dublin 4
Ireland

Phone  +353-1-693244 ext 2484        Fax: +353-1-697262