Hi Bill,
... I am proposing to remove NIL (or at least to hide it
in some low level library), since in my eyes that sounds
not very mathematical. If I want an empty list, it is
much better to say "empty$List(...)" than "NIL$Lisp".
Don't you agree?
Sure. It's only a name. Maybe the notation:
[]$List(...)
is even better? (We can hope the compiler optimizes this too.)
Maybe someone knows better than me, but I am very much thinking that the
compiler has no chance to optimize that.
The reason is very simple.
"[]" is the same as "bracket()" and there is no **program code** that
says that "bracket()" should be equal to the constant "empty". That
equality is currently a reasonable convention, but it is a **convention**.
In order to optimize, the compiler would have to analyze "List" very
carefully. I think that is impossible. Am I wrong?
Ralf
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