On Sat, Jan 26, 2008 at 01:41:18AM -0800, Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >If I'm not mistaken, what makes a special form to be special is that
> >evaluation happens abnormally....
>
> Why are "and" and "or" special forms yet "not" isn't?

Even I think I can answer that one......I'd guess none of those HAVE to be but
they are ONLY for efficiency reasons.  not isn't special because it always
has to evaluate its single argument.  (and X Y Z) ...if X false, no reason to
evaluate Y or Z.

I'd go even further and make the spec say they are NOT special forms.  But,
I'd let implementers CODE THEM as special forms for optimization reasons if it
never changed the output in anyway.

Chris

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