[alexandria-devel] curry and rcurry -> papply and rpapply?

[szergling]

On 6/8/09, Attila Lendvai <attila.lendvai at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I find them too long. Long names can distract from the intent of the
>> actual code. They're supposed to merely combine domain-level logic, but
>> being long they make the impression they're more than that.
>
> if i see PAPPLY (or any other abbreviated name for that matter), my
> brain first maps it to PARTIAL-APPLY and then to the meaning itself.
>
> IMHO, abbreviation is bad because it can be done in a million ways and
> it only introduces an extra level of indirection which is an
> (admittedly small) obstacle against understanding.
>
> of course the picture is different for names that are used in every second
> line.
>
> it might be only me, though. and i don't have strong feelings because
> names are inherently subjective and our tools should handle the
> personal preferences. CL + slime does not provide much in this regard,
> but packages and symbol aliases work.

I tend to agree on long names & short names being an orthogonal issue.

What is this "symbol aliases" you mentioned? Is it some common idiom
or unannounced library of yours?

I was wondering if anyone knows of any equivalent to Python's

import some_long_external_module_name as shortname

using just the plain CL package system?

Yong.