Naming suggestions

Steve Haflich shaflich at gmail.com
Thu Feb 4 19:25:32 UTC 2016


<silly_question>
Does it work for plists? For alists?
</silly_question>

Can the user write methods to add his own structures/classes/constructs to
the set understood by REF?

More seriously, this function seems to me to be an over generalization,
distorting CL style.  Built into the numerous built-in ways of supporting
data in CL are assumptions about the efficiency and scaling of the various
kinds. Although efficiency might not matter for particular low-bandwidth
operations, in other places it will certainly matter.  That's obvious.  But
even more important is that use of an over-generalized reference operator
makes the code harder to read and understand.  If I see an aref, I know I'm
looking at an array, understand something about the expected performance,
and know what to look for elsewhere in a huge module to examine where this
array is constructed and modified.

For me, traditional CL operators have a nice, time-tested balance between
generality and specificity.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.common-lisp.net/pipermail/pro/attachments/20160204/6a90e61c/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the pro mailing list