From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!feed.news.nacamar.de!uio.no!news-feed.ifi.uio.no!ifi.uio.no!not-for-mail From: Erik Naggum Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Trivial feature expressions (was Re: Legal ANSI comment form?) Date: 23 Aug 2002 15:02:06 +0000 Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 19 Message-ID: <3239103726620473@naggum.no> References: <3D655868.BFE4C243@cs.cmu.edu> <87u1lmqiaw.fsf@Astalo.y2000.kon.iki.fi> <3D660F51.3BEE3D56@dls.net> <2h7kihbthm.fsf@vserver.cs.uit.no> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: maud.ifi.uio.no 1030114927 25959 129.240.64.16 (23 Aug 2002 15:02:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@ifi.uio.no NNTP-Posting-Date: 23 Aug 2002 15:02:07 GMT Mail-Copies-To: never User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:38586 * Frode Vatvedt Fjeld | Maybe so, but in terms of the choice of feature expression to use for | commenting out forms, I think #+ignore is preferable because it's | vastly more readable, even if it's not 100% theoretically safe. I disagree profoundly. I think Paul's observation is insightful and clever. Although a naive reader may be stumped upon seeing (or) used for `nil´, (and) used for `t´, (+) for 0, and (*) for 1, I imagine it would yield a very pleasant, mathematical realization of the trivial case for these operators. I certainly smiled in appreciation upon reading Paul's article. Once internalized, this becomes an idiom that is not at all obscure. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.