Re: Unary /

[David Kastrup]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup writes:
>
>  > In Elisp, (/ 2.0) returns 2.0.  In Common Lisp
>  > <URL:http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw50/CLHS/Body/f_sl.htm>
>  > (and in Scheme), this returns 0.5.
>
> Also in XEmacs (/ 2.0) => 0.5.  Just a bug in Emacs, I bet.

Hardly a bug since it matches the function DOC:

/ is a built-in function in ‘src/data.c’.

(/ DIVIDEND &rest DIVISORS)

Return first argument divided by all the remaining arguments.
The arguments must be numbers or markers.

[back]

> So I guess the Common Lisp behavior isn't particularly useful, either
> or somebody would have reported sooner. :-)

At least it's a good data point that XEmacs has it the other way round.
That suggests that at least packages common to both Emacsen do not rely
on either definition in important code.

That makes it more of a temptation to change it after all this time.

-- 
David Kastrup