Re: Portable way to get a function's arg list (ala Control-Shift-A)?

[hall@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Marty Hall)]

In message entitled "Portable way to get a function's arg list (ala 
Control-Shift-A)?" I asked:

> 	   Is there a portable way to get the parameter list to a function?

Liam Healy (Healy@space50.nrl.navy.mil) replied:
> 
>        arglist, e.g.: (arglist 'foo) returns information on function foo.
>        As near as I can tell this is Symbolics, not CL.  But I'm no
>        wizard.

Barry (Barmar@think.com) confirmed this and added:

>    There is no fully portable function that does this.  But I'll bet
>    several other CL implementations have an ARGLIST function.  Lucid does.

Finally, Ken Fertig (fertig@rpal.rockwell.com) added:

> So does franz on the sun and MCL on the mac.


Many thanks. I pessimistically assumed that would be nothing at all portable,
so a method that works on all four of the LISPs I see most commonly is
much better than I expected. The only one this does not cover is vaxlisp 
(Ultrix) which my students have to use, but I don't mind a system-specific
way there.

Thanks again. In fact, all this help (esp from Barmar) reminds me of a
conversation I had with Ken Tarpey 6 months or so ago when he was making
tours of various sales regions to meet with customers. I was asking
about the likelihood of Symbolics going under, and somehow this led to
an explanation of which Symbolics divisions were profitable. He (or one
of his entourage) mentioned that Support had traditionally been profitable.
When I (only half jokingly) cracked that one of these days Barry would
stop supporting SLUG and then Symbolics would have to start paying employees
for phone and email support, *everyone* around the table in Tarpey's entourage
nodded knowingly! :-)
					- Marty
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