Re: more loop fan mail

[George J. Carrette <GJC at MIT-MC>]

I didn't count the PNAME, SYMBOL & PLIST because
there is no reason they need be generated.
This is just implementation lossage in maclisp,
which RLB has a fix for (if someone can justify
the time to finish the project). Mainly I wanted
to use codesize as a measure of elegance and
expressive power. I did count the machine-code
taken by the breakoff function.

Even if one does count the symbol space used
it is not a fair comparison, since it buys
you a lot, the ability to TRACE, and even
redefine the function, not something you
get in a LOOP.

A point not to be overlooked is the fact
that with the MAP it is very natural to
have these condiderations decided at compile-time,
(or assemble/fasload/link/runtime)
whereas with loop you make an irreversable
decision at programming-time.

-gjc