Subject: Re: setq x setf From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 2000/06/15 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3170059273480607@naggum.no> * Philip Lijnzaad <lijnzaad@ebi.ac.uk> | But SET has been officially deprecated ... I think this was a bad idea. I completely fail to appreciate some of the deprecations -- most of them give me this icky Scheme feeling. (remove-if-not <obvious-function> ...) is supposed to be inferior to (remove-if (complement <obvious-function) ...)? I'm _so_ thrilled with the double negative, already, I really need _complement_! And (set <symbol> <value> is inferior to (setf (symbol-value ...) ...)? Gimme a break! Deprecation is a signal to the community that it needs to evaluate its habits and signal the committee back if it deems them valid. For instance, there's no doubt that :test and :test-not had fuzzy semantics when combined and non-trivial prophylaxis, but that doesn't mean the *-if-not functions suffer similarly fuzziness. I use set when I actually have symbols that I don't _want_ to be some general data structure. Symbols are special animals in many ways, and I don't want to bury that in a "call" to symbol-value. #:Erik, ¢2 -- If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.