Re: What's missing in ELisp that makes people want to use cl-lib?

[Philip Kaludercic]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> >> Could you explain what you mean by "traditional" Emacs Lisp?
>> >
>> > Basically, the language as it is, without macros whose syntax is
>> > different from Emacs Lisp.  For example, cl-loop has syntax that to my
>> > eyes is starkly not Emacs Lisp, because it uses many keyword-like
>> > parts that look like they were lifted from Fortran.
>> 
>> Then again (cl-)loop is a peculiar example; even among CL programmers
>> there are many that dislike using it on the same grounds.
>
> Grepping our own sources for "(cl-loop" comes back with more than 760
> hits.  That's more than one use for every 2 Lisp files in our tree.
>
> And cl-loop is not the only example of additions whose syntax deviates
> from Emacs Lisp traditions.

It certainly has fans, though I believe this is more due to the utility
and flexibility than the syntax.  If there were a Elisp'ish alternative
(in the sense in which pcase is also an alternative to cl-case --
assuming that you see pcase as Elisp'ish?), then I honestly believe it
could be more popular than cl-loop.  I would be disappointed if being
Elisp'ish would mean that these kinds of language features per se
wouldn't be permissible.