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Issue: TEST-NOT-IF-NOT (Version 1)
- To: Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
- Subject: Issue: TEST-NOT-IF-NOT (Version 1)
- From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
- Date: Mon, 3 Oct 88 22:30 EDT
- Cc: CL-Cleanup@SAIL.Stanford.EDU
- In-reply-to: <881002213452.4.KMP@GRYPHON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
I don't buy the argument that this makes the language smaller, since
I don't think -IF-NOT and :TEST-NOT make the language larger to any
significant extent either in terms of difficulty of teaching or
difficulty of implementation; that's because these features are just
minor variations of other features that you are not proposing to remove.
It's not true that it's not clear what to do when both :TEST and :TEST-NOT
are specified; CLtL p.245 (near the bottom of the page) is quite explicit
that this is an error. Nevertheless, the need for this restriction is
unaesthetic, and that consideration changed my opposition to this
proposal from vehement to mild. The only reason I'm opposed now is
that I'm opposed on principle to incompatible changes in mature languages.