Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!udel!haven.umd.edu!mimsy!flubber.cs.umd.edu!waander From: waander@flubber.cs.umd.edu (Bill Andersen) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: INSIST Macro (was:Re: string to symbol conversion) Message-ID: <36066@mimsy.umd.edu> Date: 29 Jun 91 04:45:45 GMT References: <32436@dime.cs.umass.edu> Sender: news@mimsy.umd.edu Reply-To: waander@flubber.cs.umd.edu (Bill Andersen) Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742 Lines: 14 I noticed the INSIST macro in your SYMCAT code. Why use this when you can just use CL's ASSERT? The function of ASSERT is to allow programmers to insert arbitrary tests into their functions to guard against bad arguments, etc. I pointed this out to another UChicago person and he agreed with me. This macro is all over the place in Schank & Riesbeck's "Inside Case Based Reasoning" so I assume that's how it migrated to UChicago (via Hammond & others). -- Bill Andersen (waander@cs.umd.edu) | University of Maryland | clever .signature saying Department of Computer Science | under construction College Park, Maryland 20742 |