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From: ins_amrh@jhunix.UUCP (Martin R. Hall)
Newsgroups: net.ai,net.lang.lisp
Subject: Common LISP style standards.
Message-ID: <2784@jhunix.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 8-May-86 08:52:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: jhunix.2784
Posted: Thu May  8 08:52:12 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 11-May-86 02:34:23 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: AI Dept, Martin Marietta Baltimore Aerospace
Lines: 36
Xref: linus net.ai:3210 net.lang.lisp:736


	It seems that my original request for information on LISP coding 
standards was not very lucid.  Let me clarify.
	We are doing everything in Common LISP, but are looking for
standards in regards to coding *style*.  For contract work, we need
relatively explicit rules for these things.  The standards should
answer these types of questions:

	- How do you keep track of the side effects of destructive functions
	  such as sort, nconc, replaca, mapcan, delete-if, etc?
	- When should you use macros vs. functions?
	- How do you reference global variables?  Usually you enclose it
	  in "*"s, but how do you differentiate between your own vars and
	  Common LISP vars such as *standard-input*, *print-level*, etc?
	- Documentation ideas?
	- When to use DOLIST vs MAPCAR?
	- DO vs LOOP?
	- Indentation/format ideas?  Or do you always write it like the
	  pretty-printer would print it?
	- NULL vs ENDP, FIRST vs CAR, etc.  Some would say "FIRST" is
	  more mnemonic, but does that mean you need to use
	  (first (rest (first X))) instead of (cadar X) ??
	- etc, etc.

	It looks like I will be putting together the standards for our
group here, but it would be nice to see some ideas other people had first.
Anyone have anything?
	Thanks!
				-Marty Hall

Arpa: hall@hopkins			 MP 600
CSNET: hall.hopkins@csnet-relay		 AI and Simulation Dept.
uucp: ..seismo!umcp-cs!jhunix!ins_amrh   Martin Marietta Baltimore Aerospace
      ..allegra!hopkins!hall		 103 Chesapeake Park Plaza
					 Baltimore, MD 21220
					 (301) 682-0917.