[no subject]

[George J. Carrette <GJC at MIT-MC>]

cc: BUG-LISP at MIT-MC, BUG-LISPM at MIT-MC, MACSYMA-I at MIT-MC

    Date: 26 SEP 1980 0517-EDT
    From: JPG at MIT-MC (Jeffrey P. Golden)
    To:   GJC
    cc:   (BUG LISPM), (BUG LISP), MACSYMA-I

    I distinctly remember CWH saying it was ok to use this sort of 
    argument destructuring a few months back when BMT first used it.
    Now you say not to use it.  What gives?

The compile-time environment was messed up in some way. The extra
stuff to allow destructuring in defun's was not loaded.

I think its a bit of a crock that destructuring is supported in Defmacro
but not in Defun, for the following reason: many times one writes
auxiliary functions which are also syntactic in the way they take
their arguments. If somebody writes (defun foo ((a b)) ...)
it doesn't mean they are violating data-abstractions. Of course,
they MIGHT be violating data abstractions.

So, when are we going to see a more general destructuring and binding
mechanism, one that can handle more than just lists?

-gjc