Subject: Re: case query From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/07/02 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3139917376580571@naggum.no> * Mark Carroll <markc@chiark.greenend.org.uk> | I was surprised to find it refuses, given that (eql nil 'nil) is true. I hope you are aware that (eql nil '()) is true. | Hope I'm not asking too much of this sort of thing - it's just easy to | fall into bad style in Lisp through not knowing enough to pick a good | workaround. the nature of NIL is perhaps non-obvious, but it is a symbol, the only false value, the empty list, and the end-of-list marker. in this case, you're bitten by the identity of NIL and the empty list of keys, which does not match anything. one might argue that it doesn't make sense to write cases with no keys, and therefore, NIL-qua-symbol should be used instead of NIL-qua-list, but it is this that would be the special case, not that NIL is the empty list. #:Erik -- @1999-07-22T00:37:33Z -- pi billion seconds since the turn of the century