From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!129.240.148.23!uio.no!Norway.EU.net!news01.chello.no!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: symbol-function vs. #' References: <3BE9CFAF.10B306D2@nyc.rr.com> <3BE9E236.ECD3EEAB@nyc.rr.com> Mail-Copies-To: never From: Erik Naggum Message-ID: <3214175058506354@naggum.net> Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 24 User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2001 02:24:01 GMT X-Complaints-To: abuse@chello.no X-Trace: news01.chello.no 1005186241 212.186.234.171 (Thu, 08 Nov 2001 03:24:01 MET) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2001 03:24:01 MET Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:19369 * Kenny Tilton | Well, turns out 'fboundp is what I wanted. 'fdefinition works too but | signals an error if undefined and I am not always sure the setter | exists. * Kent M Pitman | It would be better if you called it FBOUNDP or fboundp but not 'fboundp. | When you quote it, you are notating the list (quote fboundp), which is | not an operator name. I read it as "turns out the symbol fboundp is what I wanted", since that is what 'fboundp would evaluate to, but it is just _wrong_. That is why I try to write "the variable foo", "the function bar", "the class zot", etc. The context we have in our source code is not available in prose, so I think it becomes more perspicuous by re-introducing it explicitly. I used to write symbols in all caps to make it stand out, but it looks bad, and in order to ease searching for stuff, but I never used that. /// -- Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate. -- Carrying a Swiss Army pocket knife in Oslo, Norway, is a criminal offense.