Subject: Re: On conditionals From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 00:21:08 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3215377267841910@naggum.net> * Thomas F. Burdick | Would it really kill people to put a couple (not (null ..))s here and | there, and make their intentions more explicit? Yes. Adding (not (null ...)) to previously obvious code would make everything nearly unreadable. Besides, the intention _is_ to return the empty list to those who look for a list and false to those who want a boolean value. This is an important property of Common Lisp. Scheme does not have this property, and consequently Scheme systems have a gazillion small functions that are anal-retentively type-specific. One of the reasons I like Common Lisp is that it has none of this nonsense. /// -- 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.