Subject: Re: More LispOS talk (was Re: Lisp subverts the world (was Re: ints vs fixnums (was Re: Java ... (was Re: ... (was Re: ...)))))
From: rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com (Rob Warnock)
Date: 1999/02/21
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <7ap6oq$7ekqa@fido.engr.sgi.com>
Kent M Pitman  <pitman@world.std.com> wrote:
+---------------
| cbarry@2xtreme.net (Christopher R. Barry) writes:
| > #\A instead of ?A...
| 
| "?" is a bad choice of character becuase it frustrates Scheme programs
| who want to use "?" instead of "P" for the end of predicate names.
+---------------

Actually, IMHO that's not really a problem for Scheme people.
A more serious issue with "?A" would be that (at least, according
to several Lisp & Scheme texts I've read) a bunch of people tend
to use variables prefixed with "?" as "pattern match" variables,
e.g., similar to an example on p.161 of Norvig's PAIP:

	> (setf foo '(joe is a big boy))

	> (pat-match '(?x is a (?* ?y)) foo)
	==> ((?x joe) (?y big boy))


-Rob

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