On 4/20/07, Andreas Eder <aeder at arcor.de> wrote:
If it was my edits which introduced the errors, I'm sorry. I'll try to be
more careful.
And besides I don't think it was a good thing to reintroduce memq
> instead of the proper CL idiom of using member with :key '#eq.
Memq is a simple, handy function for a very common case. Simply because
Common LIsp doesn't happen to define it in the default libraries doesn't
mean that we can't define it for our comfort and convenience.
The full generality of (member ... :key ..) is certainly a nice capability
which has many uses, but compact notation makes it easier to read and write
code. Defining functions and macros isn't only for performance, it is also
for clarity.
By the way, in GCL at least, (memq...) and (member... '#eq) compile to the
same thing, so this is not about efficiency, it is about clarity. That
said, if I were confident that (member 'x ...) and (member ... '(x y z))
(where x, y, z are all symbols) compiled to (member ... '#eq) in all the
implementations we care about, I suppose I would simply use member *without*
the :key construction.
-s