Subject: Re: basic question on lambda
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: 2000/10/24
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3181405391206326@naggum.net>

* Lyman Taylor <lyman.taylor@mindspring.com.no.spam>
| Didn't that change come with ANSI Common Lisp?  CLtL2 required
| the #'(lambda... ) if I recall correctly.  I'm sure I'll get 
| corrected if I'm wrong. :-) 

  CLtL2 is in no position to require anything.  The second edition is
  an informational work bridghing CLtL, a standards document, and ANSI
  Common Lisp (which I sometimes call CLtS), obviously a standards
  document.

  CLtL didn't require the #' if you added the lambda macro yourself.
  What specifically changed was that quoted lambda forms were OK for
  funcall and the like.  They aren't, any longer.

| I know folks should write ANSI Common Lisp now.  However, textbooks
| often have to stradle time.  Or were written in a perious "age".
| Furthermore, I suspect most modern lisp implementations will take
| either.

  All the more reason to update people here, don't you think?

| Perhaps there is some hackery that the #' reader macro does when it
| encounters "(lambda".

  What kind of hackery would that be?

| A list that begins with the symbol LAMBDA has magical connotations in   
| certain contexts. 

  No.  This is what vanished between CLtL and CLtS.

  If you're trying to help, please make sure that you don't nonsense,
  and check your facts whenever you include them.  Thank you.

#:Erik
-- 
  I agree with everything you say, but I would
  attack to death your right to say it.
				-- Tom Stoppard