Subject: Re: (setq car 0) - Functions on Indices
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 02 Oct 2002 23:02:10 +0000
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3242588530612895@naggum.no>

* Bill Birch
| Paul Graham's web site (www.paulgraham.com) has a neat idea regarding
| compounds in Arc.

  This "neat idea" dates about about 30 years.  It is most noted for having
  been abandoned.  Ignorants keep reinventing what they do not understand
  are bad ideas until they have tried them for a while.  The basic idea was
  to store an array in the function slot of a symbol.

| Your views?

  If you want this, you have closures and local functions and macros.

(defun foo (string ...)
  (macrolet ((string (n) `(char string ,n)))
    ...
    (string 42)
    ...
    ))

  This even works when the indexes are in variables.  <-- neat idea

-- 
Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway

Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder.
Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.