Re: #O, an alternate view

[Guy.Steele at CMU-10A]

Fine, let #o be only unsigned.  But that is a different issue
from deciding at what point to truncate it (word size).  There are
some applications where you want to use a bignum as a bit string
(especially on the PDP-10, which unlike NIL doesn't have a BITS),
on which to use bignum BOOLE or HAIPART, etc.  (I think Pratt does
some of this kind of thing.)
Think of it this way:  #o is the *portable* way to get bit patterns,
and #* is the way to get *machine-dependent* bit patterns.  The
fact that you can use one to get the other (sometimes) is no more
excuse for confusing them than is using CDR when you mean PLIST,
even though that also works (sometimes).