proposal LOAD-TIME-EVAL:REVISED-NEW-SPECIAL-FORM

[Jim McDonald <jlm@lucid.com>]

								I would
    prefer to remove #, and its functionality altogether from the
    language.  It just isn't that important.  I have yet to see any use for
    #, which could not have been achieved by other means.


  Sigh. I simply don't believe this claim.  ...

  But this last statement just isn't true.  Here is an example:

Excuse me for being pedantic, but how can either of you claim to know
what EB has seen?  If *you* have seen such uses, that's interesting,
but doesn't invalidate his observation, which is (I think) intended to
lend support to the argument that such uses are very rare or
non-existant. 

  ... I could say:

  (defun a-little-function (x)
    (aref #,(get-table-for 'a-little-function '(x))
          x))

But would you, or has anyone?  That's the real question.  The last
time I looked, there were exactly two uses of #, in Lucid's product--
both to setup something like *software-version* (I forget the exact
details).  Surely #, is overkill for such uses.

We can provide lots of efficiency hooks that no one will ever use.
I think the burden of proof here is for someone to show some *real*
examples of where #, is a clear win.

  jlm