On Nov 16, 2008, at 7:52, Attila Lendvai wrote: > dear list, > > i've got this patch pending: > > (defmacro ensure-functionf (&rest places) > "Call ENSURE-FUNCTION for each place in PLACES and store back the > results." > `(progn > ,@(mapcar (lambda (place) > `(setf ,place (ensure-function ,place))) > places))) > > it might be controversial, so i'll first send it here. if noone > complains for a week or two, then i'll push it eventually.
For what little it's worth: I think this and ENSURE-FUNCTION are abuse of the naming conventions employed by the CL specification. "ensure" is a mutating concept: see cl:ensure-generic-function, cl:ensure-directories-exist. These potentially mutate a function slot and the filesystem, respectively. (alexandria:ensure-symbol is an example of correct usage.) That is, this proposed operator should be called ENSURE-FUNCTION and the current ENSURE-FUNCTION should be called something else. (Perhaps ACTUALLY-FUNCTION or AS-FUNCTION or some sort of name expressing de- indirection?) Also, I think "f" doesn't mean "in-place version of other operator", but only "operates on a place"; e.g. PUSH is not CONSF, INCF is not 1+F, and SETF is not, uh, NTH-VALUES-2F? The CLHS examples for DEFINE- MODIFY-MACRO arguably disagree with me, though. I don't feel this is nearly as important as preserving what ENSURE means. -- Kevin Reid <http://homepage.mac.com/kpreid/> _______________________________________________ alexandria-devel mailing list alexandria-devel@common-lisp.net http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/alexandria-devel
