Subject: Re: binding multiple values (Ex: Re: some small proposed  changes to standard)
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/07/25
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3141905649180895@naggum.no>

* Kent M Pitman <pitman@world.std.com>
| Because of the prevalance of variables named things like INTEGER, etc.
| this is probably not adequately good for error checking.  The DO and
| LET above might be typos for ill-formed lets that might not get caught.

  although I find the reasoning puzzling, using a keyword to specify type
  seems like a good idea to me because we might want to add other optional
  declarations, as in

(let ((foo () :type list :dynamic-extent t))
  ...)

| Although there are other reasons why
| 
| (let (((the integer i) ...)) ...)
| 
| would be simplest.

  the symmetry with how it would be written in the absence of declarations
  is appealing, but although I favored this form myself previously, they
  "bury" the variables that are being bound in a lot of clutter, making it
  hard to locate what is being bound.  if your reasoning above is valid, it
  appears to be more cause for concern for typos and problems with this
  approach than the one above.

#:Erik
-- 
  suppose we blasted all politicians into space.
  would the SETI project find even one of them?