How's that again?

[hall@research.att.com (Bob Hall)]

    From: "Mark A. Tapia" <markt@dgp.toronto.edu>
    To: hall@research.att.com
    [...]
    The first error is correct since the variable x is declared in the 
    dolist form but not used. The second error is also correct since the
    variable x is used for the "dolist" iteration but not in the body.

On the face of it, a variable is either ignored or not.  I see your point,
but I believe the first error message should have said something like
"variable x is written but not read" or the like.

    The following removes the error message:
    ? (defun foo (l)
	(dolist (x l)
	  (declare (ignorable x))
	  (print "Hi")))
    FOO

Thanks.  Is "IGNORABLE" as portable as "IGNORE"?  What about IGNORE-IF-UNUSED?
(see below).  My code has to compile in three different common lisps.
(MCL, Franz, Harlequin).  

    Some stylistic remarks are in order.

    Unless you intend to reference x in the body of the dolist form, you
    should use dotimes or loop.

Right.  My example is abstracted from a much bigger application.
Currently, not all the features are implemented in that application,
so the dolist subforms that use x are commented out.  Nevertheless,
I'd like the code to compile silently as is, because I want to give
out early versions for testing.  Maybe I should just break down and recode the
loop as you suggest below until the new features are implemented.
    [...]
    Also, please choose variable names that mean something. For example,
    use "list"  instead of "l" and "el" (or "element") instead of "x".

Yes, of course.  I was merely abstracting for the purposes of this email.
I didn't think having the original variable name would add anything
to my message's point: (DOLIST (EVENT-HANDLER <big expr>)...) 

Thanks for the response.

    Date: Tue, 1 Feb 1994 09:58:15 -0500
    From: e@Flavors.COM (Doug Currie, Flavors Technology, Inc.)
    [...]
    Translation: UnREAD lexical variable X, in FOO.

I would think this is a more informative error message than what they
currently give.

    ? (defun foo (l)
	(dolist (x l)
	  (declare (ignore-if-unused x))
	  (print "Hi")))
    FOO
    ?

Or IGNORABLE?

Thanks for the response.

-- Bob