[cdr-discuss] Three RFCs

[Pierre R. Mai]

Am 18.03.2008 um 15:08 schrieb Edi Weitz:

> On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:49:19 +0100 (CET), "Leslie P. Polzer" <leslie.polzer at gmx.net 
> > wrote:
>
>> I'm all for extending CL:CASE in a backwards-compatible way. Why
>> would that be a problem for CL implementors?
>
> It wouldn't be ANSI-compliant anymore.

Also, changes in implementations have been known to contain bugs,  
hence by forcing the changes to be to cl:case, we are going to  
potentially affect existing code bases, for no discernible gain.   
Given the sizable code bases out there, the only circumstances where I  
find it acceptable to mess with the COMMON-LISP package (or other  
packages or behaviours mandated by ANSI) is when there is no  
reasonable way of achieving the intended goal without doing so.  In  
this case I can see no downsides to placing the extended case (or  
select, or what have you) symbol in a different package.  Indeed this  
will aid adoption, since it makes it easier to provide this CDR as a  
user-maintained library for starters, with implementations still  
having the ability to optimize the implementation if enough users see  
the benefit of this (and personally I'd think that most useful  
optimizations can actually be achieved through user code as well).

Which brings me to another question I've been meaning to bring up  
w.r.t. the latest CDRs:  Would it be sensible to have a defined  
package for these kinds of smallish extensions (like e.g. the index  
types, as well), maybe cdr-cl or ext-cl, or whatever?  Has this been  
discussed already?

Regs, Pierre.

-- 
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