Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!otter!kers
From: kers@otter.hple.hp.com (Christopher Dollin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Re: The need for D-scussion (was Re: D Wishlist)
Message-ID: <2400012@otter.hple.hp.com>
Date: 28 Mar 88 08:02:39 GMT
References: <719@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
Lines: 20

"barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)" says:

|You're behind the times in your Lisp knowledge.  Common Lisp, and
|Zetalisp before it, has functions with true multiple values.  The
                                        ^^^^
|above would be written

"true" multiple values? When most of the good bits have been taken away? [Is
white bread "true" with respect to brown?] The only justification I can see for
the feebleness of Common Lisp's "multiple" values is that it's a little easier
to describe the types of functions over them.

Sorry to sound so anguished. It's just that Common Lisp's multiple values seem
to give you so little when you come from a language such as Pop11 where the
open stack makes them so easy to use and opens up a host of effective idioms.
[Yes, you can be bitten, just as you can with VL's implicit supply of NIL's.
Yes, describing the types is a little harder. I think it's worth it.]

Regards,
Kers                                    | "Why Lisp if you can talk Poperly?"