[no subject]

[Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>]

George, let me help you out.  Don't scream about there being too many
optimizations.  The problem here is the lack of one.  Don't scream about
correctness... I think that's why = and EQ were being used, the reasoning
being along the lines of simple translation with an exception for them
nasty fixnums.  Remember when you were flaming about defining a new
predicate to do this kind of comparison?  I could be wrong, but I think
this was probably what JONL was thinking...it certainly was when I saw
what he did.

So anyway, I now perceive that you are (currently at least) perceiving
the situation correctly.  I apologize for all my flaming back at you.
I admit I didn't get much sleep last night and am probably overreacting
to the flaming tone and content of your notes with flaming of my own.

Rather than try to show you on a point by point basis why I was mislead
by your notes, let me just show you how easily you could have said what
I now think you meant.

What you really wanted to tell us:

1)  You have a bug (unquoted symbol).  Please check before installing.
2)  You can optimize out the (AND (NOT <fixnump>) ...) check
3)  You can optimize for codesize (typically a 30% savings, for my guess
    of "typical" code) at mere order-of-magnitude cost in speed, and GJC
    believes it's worth it in MacLisp.  Use EQ on clauses with single symbols,
    otherwise use MEMBER or EQUAL.