On Jul 12, Robby Findler wrote: > Personally, I think the name "cons*" is better because the function > does a whole bunch of cons's (and "whole bunch of" is one common > meaning of "*").
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that there are no other possible justifications for `cons*'... Another one would be that you could just define `cons' to do the same, without breaking existing code. Also, I forgot to add that IMO the most important point in favor of `list*' is what I listed as #3. > On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Eli Barzilay<e...@barzilay.org> wrote: > > On Jul 12, Paulo J. Matos wrote: > >> On Sun, 2009-07-12 at 10:43 -0400, Carl Eastlund wrote: > >> > We call it list*. > >> > > >> > >> Missed that... thanks! > >> However, can't understand why list* when cons* seems a better name. > > > > 1. `list*' is older IME -- it had been part of mzscheme and every > > other scheme implementation I worked with, and it is "even" part of > > CL. I have never seen `cons*' before srfi-1. > > > > 2. You can see this raised on the very first message to the srfi-1 > > list, http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-1/mail-archive/msg00000.html > > with a suggestion to include both since they are "equally popular". > > At the time, only `list*' was suggested. > > > > Later, Olin simply said "General consensus is that CONS* is a > > better name. I have changed the name accordingly". That's in > > http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-1/mail-archive/msg00033.html . > > > > 3. IMO `list*' works much better -- and sets a nice precedent for > > `append*' and `string-append*' which we have now. (The first is > > extremely useful, and was suggested by Ryan.) `cons*' does not > > provide the same precedent. > > > > 4. In fact, the only justification I see for `cons*' is that you can > > write bad things like (cons* 1 2) and (cons* 1 2 3 4 5). This is > > also the explanation in that first message to the srfi list ("while > > CONS* may suggest that the result could be an improper list"). > > > > -- > > ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: > > http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! > > _________________________________________________ > > For list-related administrative tasks: > > http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-dev > > -- ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-dev
