Re: issue SHARP-COMMA-CONFUSION

[Kent M Pitman <KMP@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

I disagree that there is anything even remotely bad about #. and I would
see no reason to flush it under any circumstances. In my opinion, it is
not a barrier to program-analyzing programs because its semantics is
`pretend I had really typed this'. An example of a place where I might
use #. is

(defun foo (x)
  (if x #.(format nil "This string is very long and I want to ~
                     ~%type it in my editor buffer with nice~
                     ~%indentation, but I want Lisp to ignore that
		     ~%indentation.")))

I disagree that #+ and #- are a good idea to consider flushing even in the
most optimistic of worlds. What we should be anxious to do is to make the
language useful enough that the need to appeal to them is rare, but the
fact is that having these things is an acknowledgement that it's hard to
plan for things you didn't plan for. To suggest that you can designed your
language so well that these would never be needed is haughtier than I'm
prepared to be about CL's design.

I hope no one will pursue these supposed wishes of yours because 
discussion on the issue could easily waste a lot of time to no good end.