Re: Foot-in-mouth disease

[Guy.Steele at CMU-10A]

Well, I suppose that most of my remarks about NIL and strings need
to be retracted in the light of JONL's recent note about the state of
NIL.  I can say that my remarks were made in good faith on the basis
of the most recent documentation available to me; and I cannot slight
NIL for its lack of up-to-date documentation inasmuch as it hasn't been
released yet.  (I do fervently hope, however, that documentation will
accompany the release; and I predict that this will be very difficult
to do if the documentation doesn't proceed in parallel.)

In any case, I did get the results I was looking for:  NIL uses a count
for compatibility with other languages and with architectures, and LISPM
uses start/end because counts have been observed to be more awkward and
because LISPM is not constrained by the architecture of the VAX or S-1
(which also uses counts) or whatever.  If DLW is right that end positions
are more available than counts anyway, then the subtraction JONL fears
will turn up anyway:
	(STRING-SUBSEQ FOO START (- END START))
rather than
	(SUBSTRING FOO START END)	;compilation requires a subtraction
so the merit of the argument for eliminating a subtraction is unclear;
however, the stylistic arguments are also unclear.

Everything is unclear.  Sigh.  Thanks to all for bearing with me.
--TGQ (The Gronked Quux)