Re: CL package serious deficiencies

[Stefan Monnier]

> At the risk of stating the obvious: we could define compiler-macros for
> keyword-using functions like position and automatically rewrite all uses
> to a keyword-less implementation like cl-position.  Then everybody could
> use the prefix-less version without the need to (require 'cl) at
> runtime.

The problem with this approach is that you end up having to first
implement the function (complex because of all the args you have to
handle), then re-implement it all as a compiler-macro (which happens to
be more complex and bug-prone and more difficult to debug, usually).
In the end, a lot of complexity, lots of bugs, difficult to maintain,
and the function itself is dog-slow because it has to handle all the
weird combinations.
Even a pure macro makes more sense at that point.

I much prefer a leaner approach where instead of (delete-if #'foo :key #'bar)
you have to write (delete-if (lambda (x) (foo (bar x)))).
As for :start :end :from-end and :count, I've never even seen them used
with delete-if.

The :key in `sort*' makes sense.  Not in `delete-if'.


        Stefan