Subject: Re: help w/ &key in macros
From: Erik Naggum <cl@naggum.no>
Date: 1998/06/01
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3105673084328091@naggum.no>


* David Bakhash
| is there some significance to the dot `.' before and after the
| `arguments'?  i.e. what are the dots for?

  to me, such dots communicate "internal use".  in a macro, you would
  typically have used an uninterned symbol to avoid problems, except that
  this would make the argument list less than useful.  "&rest .arguments."
  at least says something moderately useful.

  (remember that all characters can be part of symbol names, and that
  people adopt many conventions to deal with cognitive overload.  *foo* for
  specials is a pretty solid convention, many use +foo+ for constants, some
  use .foo. for internal use, I used class names like <foo> for a while,
  and perhaps there are some even less widely used conventions.  :)

#:Erik
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