Re: getting a full symbol name - Naggum cll archive

Subject: Re: getting a full symbol name
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 2000/04/28
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3165934902672540@naggum.no>

* Barry Margolin <barmar@genuity.net>
| How would a simple rule like "Don't display any package prefix if
| the symbol is in the current package" go against the CL philosophy?
| How does the exception "unless the symbol is in the KEYWORD package"
| really improve things?

  because there are already a number of special cases for the keyword
  package that warrant visual distinction.  if the current package is
  the keyword package, any symbol interned would be a keyword, right?
  I greatly prefer the printer to reflect this fact if it is called to
  print the value of such a symbol.

| As I said, it's so unlikely that anyone would be working in the
| keyword package that this exception would rarely be invoked, so why
| did we create it in the first place?

  I already answered this: to avoid creating a dummy package in
  certain circumstances.

#:Erik