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Issue: TAILP-NIL (Version 5)
- To: Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM
- Subject: Issue: TAILP-NIL (Version 5)
- From: Jon L White <jonl@lucid.com>
- Date: Wed, 14 Dec 88 00:05:20 PST
- Cc: barmar@Think.COM, cl-cleanup@sail.stanford.edu, masinter.pa@xerox.com
- In-reply-to: David A. Moon's message of Tue, 13 Dec 88 11:52 EST <19881213165206.0.MOON@EUPHRATES.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
re: . . . (EQ is only
in Common Lisp as a concession to implementors who haven't figured out
how to implement EQL efficiently (it isn't hard), or hadn't figured it
out yet in 1984).
Hmmm, I may remember something similar said in the late 1960's or very
early 1970's about why EQ was still in the language -- but back then,
the contender was EQUAL rather than EQL. Plus ca change . . . maybe
there is a more fundamental reason than incompotent implementors. Like,
maybe some folks implement their memory management systems in Lisp, and
are reluctant to give up all user-accessibility to this historic, object
identity function?
But that's just a conjecture. I really don't know why (and don't
particularly care why) EQ persists.
-- JonL --