Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!nrl-cmf!ames!amdcad!sun!pitstop!robv
From: robv@pitstop.UUCP (Rob Vollum)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Summing a list
Message-ID: <249@pitstop.UUCP>
Date: 27 Oct 88 14:03:29 GMT
References: <10794@srcsip.UUCP> <10813@srcsip.UUCP>
Reply-To: robv@pitstop.UUCP (Rob Vollum)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc., Lexington, MA
Lines: 22

In article <10813@srcsip.UUCP> rogers@orion.UUCP (Brynn Rogers) writes:

>(EVAL (CONS '+ NUMLIST)) which (no surprise here) wasn't any faster
>Is there a better way?? (I think there has got to be)

>Brynn Rogers      rogers@src.honeywell.com
>P.S. I apoligize for being a novice poster.  But I have to learn somtime :-)

One rule of thumb that I use when programming in Lisp is that if you
find yourself wanting to call EVAL explicitly, you are probably doing
something wrong -- there will almost always be a better way to solve your
problem than resorting to user-controlled "double evaluation" (args being
EVAL's once (since EVAL is a function) then EVAL's again (as a result
of EVAL)). Of course, there are the other problems, such as EVAL not being
able to "see" lexical variables, etc.

Rob Vollum
Sun Microsystems
Lexington, mA

UUCP: sun!sunne!robv
ARPA: rvollum@sun.com