Subject: Re: Destructive Side Effects From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2001 18:37:50 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3215011069184765@naggum.net> * David McClain | I just noticed that REMF actually destructively modifies a property list | and returns a boolean. But REMOVE erodes sequences without destructively | modiying the source, returning the modified sequence. DELETE on the | other hand destructively modifies a sequence and then returns it as well. | There does not appear to be a DELF fuction in ANSI CL. Is it just the name that you are dissatisfied with? What about get and set, getf and setf? Is that confusing or what? Or are you allergic to destructive operations? It would probably help to think of the property list not as a list that you are supposed to use as a list, any more than you are supposed to look at a package as an object whose internals you can mess with. That it is implemented as a list is just an historical accident. So is the name. | I was a bit shocked at first to find this behavior... I guess I spend too | much time writing SML. Yeah, SML should come with a warning label. /// -- Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate. -- Carrying a Swiss Army pocket knife in Oslo, Norway, is a criminal offense.