Subject: Re: Macros OR, AND From: Erik Naggum <firstname.lastname@example.org> Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 01:59:43 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <email@example.com> * Frode Vatvedt Fjeld | This seems to me a very bad idea, as the transient magic mode of | operation enables a "transient-extent" (efficient) kind of allocation of | the values. If I understand you correctly, those multiple-value objects | would need to be consed at every function return, almost like python's | bad excuse for multiple values. I have no idea whether you understood me correctly or not, because I cannot figure out what you are talking about. I think you may have missed an "instead of" or something. | I (also) find it slightly strange that cond must coerce test-form returns | to single-values. Huh? This is very strange language. It really helps to understand you if you used the common language of the standard. (That is another good reason for a community standard as its focal point of agreement.) It is specified to test and return the primary value. | Seeing as cond is defined to be a macro, I suppose that is the reason; a | cond written in terms of if and let would need to use m-v-list to support | multiple-values. However, if cond was a special operator, I believe | implementing a multiple-values returning cond would be non-problematic | for most implementations. I have implemented a cond special operator, | and in fact the requirement to return a single value from test-forms is | just a nuisance, it would be easier to return all the test-forms values. Whether you implement it as a macro or a special operator does not affect the internal implementation. A symbol in the common-lisp package defined to hold a amacro does not have to be expanded by the compiler if it can do smarter things directly, it only needs to be defined as a macro to make user-defined code walkers see only a known and predefined set of special operators. You could clearly define a cond that held onto the multivalue return vector, if that is how they were implemented, and set up to return it if there were no body-forms. | But then again there may have been (other) good reasons why cond was | selected to be a macro and if a special operator, I don't know (but I'd | like to..) It was probably selected as a macro because it easier to code-walk if than cond. The implementation is free to do whatever it pleases as long as the semantics of the form is maintained. /// -- Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate. -- Carrying a Swiss Army pocket knife in Oslo, Norway, is a criminal offense.