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Manual for `cl' package is out of date


From: Gareth Rees
Subject: Manual for `cl' package is out of date
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:22:27 +0100
User-agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.12 (Windows/20070509)

The manual for the `cl' package is out of date in a couple places.

Node "(cl)Porting Common Lisp" says:

  * Reader macros.  Common Lisp includes a second type of macro that
    works at the level of individual characters.  For example, Common
    Lisp implements the quote notation by a reader macro called `'',
    whereas Emacs Lisp's parser just treats quote as a special case.
    Some Lisp packages use reader macros to create special syntaxes
    for themselves, which the Emacs parser is incapable of reading.

    The lack of reader macros, incidentally, is the reason behind
    Emacs Lisp's unusual backquote syntax.  Since backquotes are
    implemented as a Lisp package and not built-in to the Emacs
    parser, they are forced to use a regular macro named ``' which is
    used with the standard function/macro call notation.

This has become a bit misleading: it's still true that Emacs Lisp lacks
reader macros but Emacs Lisp's backquote syntax is no longer "unusual"
because backquote is now handled in the reader.  Maybe just delete the
second paragraph?

Further down in "(cl)Porting Common Lisp":

  * Characters are distinct from integers in Common Lisp.  The
    notation for character constants is also different:  `#\A' instead
    of `?A'.

`?A' is now supported in Emacs.

Node "(cl)Top" offers this menu item:

  * Lists::                `cadr', `sublis', `member*', `assoc*', etc.

The function `cadr' is no longer described in this node.  The menu item
should mention `caddr' instead.

--
Gareth Rees




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