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Re: eof
- To: RMS at MIT-AI (Richard M. Stallman)
- Subject: Re: eof
- From: Guy.Steele at CMU-10A
- Date: Wed ,24 Sep 80 09:57:00 EDT
- Cc: lisp-forum at MIT-MC
On the whole, I agree with your remarks concerning #\EOF and #\
versus #,. The original CHPROP had in fact suggested using
#,TAB etc. One disadvantage of this, however, is that the
standard names of characters tend to be short (TAB, CR, etc.),
and there might be some trouble if one were chosen by accident as
a user variable. This is always a problem, of course; what I would
really like is a way to have DEFCONST or equivalent "lock" a value
cell so that it couldn't be bound or setq'd. But I digress.
One advantage of #\ for characters in particular is that they are
easily recognized as character values--and there is a pleasant
symmetry with #/. Also, if #, were to be used then would it
generalize to #<alpha>,TAB for Control-TAB? If so, then a suitable
choice of variable names would preserve recognizability: #,\TAB !