[pro] #; comments...

[Alan Bawden]

   Message: 1
   Date: Sun, 6 May 2012 20:57:27 +0200
   From: Pascal Costanza <pc at p-cos.net>

   Here is a suggested wording.

   ------------- snip -----------------

   #; is used to comment out single expressions; the syntax is /#; expression/. This textual notation is treated as whitespace; that is, it is as if the ``#; expression'' did not appear and only a space appeared in its place.

   #; operates by skipping over the form. Skipping over the form is accomplished by binding *read-suppress* to true and then calling read.

   ------------- snip -----------------

It might be better to simply state that "#;" behaves exactly the same way
that "#+(or)" behaves.  That way any future clarifications about various
edge cases can all be fixed in the same place.

   Any comments or ideas about this?

It also might be better to instead try to standardize on a short feature
name that is guaranteed to -never- appear on the features list.  For
example, if it was guaranteed that :% would never appear as a member of
*FEATURES*, then you could use "#+%".  (Or "#+_", "#+-", "#+||", "#++", ...)

This has the advantage that it has a very low cost of adoption.  All known
Common Lisp inplementations effectively already implement it.  To truly
implement it they would only have to make a promise.