RE: code review request for saveplace with dired buffer

[Drew Adams]

> > There might be a convention of using `when' instead of `if', when
> > there's no possibility of an `else' clause.  (I'm not sure about that,
> > though, so if someone else is I hope they'll speak up.)
> 
> I'm not aware of a convention. Personally I prefer (if foo) rather than
> (when foo) if `foo' is a single item, but since (when foo) ==
> (if (progn foo)), and the compiler optimizes away the useless progn, it
> makes no difference in practice.

A Common Lisp convention is to use `when' and `unless' when the return value is 
not important.  It communicates to a (human) reader that the body is for side 
effects only.

I, for one, use this same convention with Emacs Lisp.  I consider code that 
depends on the return value of `when' or `unless' to be bad style (misleading). 
 Some will disagree, no doubt.