Issue: EQUAL-STRUCTURE (Version 4)

[Jon L White <jonl@lucid.com>]

re:   EQUALP is similar, except that it ignores case in strings, descends
      the structure of arrays, defstruct and CLOS instances. It uses EQ
      for all other types; for example, it does not descend hash tables.

Hmmm, wanna try one more time?  This needs to say "uses = for numbers,
and uses eql for characters".

Also John Rose made what I thought was a good suggestion -- that some
extended equality predicate treat hash tables as "objects that have
components" (see CLtL p81), and that the correspondence be based on 
the hash tables' keys.  If you merely want to describe the status quo, 
I think you have to say this point has not been clear, and cannot be 
depended upon in any current implementation.




re:   We considered:
	 removing EQUAL and EQUALP from the standard.
	 changing EQUALP to descend structures.
	 changing EQUALP to be case sensitive.
	 adding a :TEST keyword to EQUAL.
	 making EQUAL a generic function


I think it should say that we considered

	 changing EQUAL to descend structures.

rather than EQUALP.  [If we didn't consider it then, then throw out
the whole thing and lets start again.]



-- JonL --