Issue: REMF-DESTRUCTION-UNSPECIFIED (Version 5)

[Barry Margolin <barmar@Think.COM>]

    Date: Thu, 16 Mar 89 16:11 EST
    From: David A. Moon <Moon@stony-brook.scrc.symbolics.com>

    I don't have the mail message you referred to ("I suggest that the text
    Amemdment I from my 14 February mail be used verbatim as the proposal.").
    However, I like the way you dealt with NCONC in version 5, I don't
    see any need for a separate proposal.

    Generally this looks okay.  I thought you were going to remove this:

     (NSUBSTITUTE new-object old-object sequence ...)
     (NSUBSTITUTE-IF new-object test sequence ...)
      when sequence is a list, is permitted to SETF any part, CAR or
       CDR, of the top-level list structure in that sequence.
      when sequence is an array is permitted to SETF the contents of
       any cell in that array which must be replaced by NEW-OBJECT.

    since in fact there is no need to give NSUBSTITUTE the freedom
    to modify anything more than what it is required to modify.  I
    still think it should be removed, just as NSUBST was removed.

I think I remember my reason (it's been a month since I wrote the
amendment).  I removed NSUBST because CLtL was already very specific
about what it does.  CLtL's description of NSUBSTITUTE isn't very
specific; removing it from the proposal would just leave it implicitly
vague instead of making it explicitly vague, and I'd prefer to be
explicit.

I would support a version that makes NSUBSTITUTE* be explicitly
specific.  I see no reason not to require it to use SETF of CAR or AREF,
as appropriate.  Unless someone is working on CAR-coding, I don't think
it precludes any known optimizations.

                                                barmar