Subject: Re: newbie in deep over his head From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 18:12:42 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3223908767189370@naggum.net> * "Glenn Burnside" <glenn.burnside@ni.com> | I've been lurking on this newsgroup for like 6 months now, and I've been | doing a lot of reading in Graham's two books and online. But with the | general mood here, I've approached the act of posting with no small | amount of trepidation. So, finally, here goes. Boo! | I was reading recently about read macros - another extensibility feature | I've never seen anywhere else. And I noticed that the CL standard | reserves special delimiters like #n() for things like vectors, etc. But | I didn't see anything for defining a lambda expression. The reason is that they are not sufficiently widely used. Even Scheme has not done a lot of work to make writing lambda forms easier, even though they are far more frequently used there. | I realize I'm probably treading on holy ground, but I can't help feeling | that something like | | #[(x y z) (some-op-over x y z)] | or even | #l((x y z) (some-op-over x y z)) | would be easier to deal with than | #'(lambda (x y z) (some-op-over x-y-z)) The reason could simply be that people want to see the "lambda" because it is so special. | Is there already a read macro shortcut for lambda expressions that I'm | not aware of? No. | Are there any common implementations that do that? Not that I am aware of. | Am I walking a road that every CL newbie walks, only to get spanked by | the gurus in the end? Gurus do not spank newbies. Gurus bank stupid newbies. Only a few newbies are stupid. Those newbies are so stupid they do not even understand why they get spanked, and they remain stupid newbies for very long, some forever. Smart newbies transition out of newbiehood quickly. | Any comments are greatly appreciated. Would it make your life easier? If so, define one yourself. Do you think the language would be different had it supported a reader macro for lambda like it does for quote and function? Do you find it easier or harder to use quote and function because they have reader support? /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.