[no subject]

[Glenn S. Burke <GSB at MIT-ML>]

    Date: 8 SEP 1979 0238-EDT
    From: RWK at MIT-MC (Robert W. Kerns)
    (OPEN 'T) will always do something damaging, why don't we change it to
    do the reasonable thing instead?  Clearly, if the person is wanting to
    open a new TTY or whatever, he can deal in the right file-object by some
    other means.  If you want to think about the semantics of this, consider
    it to be that the SYMBOL meaning of T takes precedence over the FILE
    meaning of T where the two would conflict.  In the other uses of T,
    there is no meaningful interpretation as a SYMBOL, so the interpretation
    as a FILE stands.  I hope we aren't going to purpetuate this crock onto
    NIL except through some non-default compatiblity package....
Whereas (LOAD NIL), which clearly is meaningful and useful, is a special-case
no-op for some perverse and unspecified reason.