[pro] why :key arguments?

[Nikodemus Siivola]

On 4 July 2011 19:42, Pascal J. Bourguignon <pjb at informatimago.com> wrote:

> I don't think so.

I disagree strongly, and I'm pretty sure CLHS agrees with me, since it
goes to the trouble of specifying what happens with FUNCALL.

CLHS, DEFINE-COMPILER-MACRO: "The &whole argument is bound to the form
argument that is passed to the compiler macro function. The remaining
lambda-list parameters are specified as if this form contained the
function name in the car and the actual arguments in the cdr, but if
the car of the actual form is the symbol funcall, then the
destructuring of the arguments is actually performed using its cddr
instead."

(I'm not really interested in fencing re. compiler-macros here, just
trying to keep the record only moderately crooked. This is a sidetrack
of epic proportions already: the OP asked about :KEY, not
compiler-macros.)

Cheers,

 -- nikodemus