On Mon, Nov 27, 2023, 9:44 PM Richard Stallman <
rms@gnu.org> wrote:
> > In particular, what is the reason for the period and inner
> > parenthsses? Why doesn't the code say this?
> > > > (`(,hookfun ,start ,end ,collection . ,plist)
> I would think the author is simply emphasizing that [perse is] parsing an
> entity in an association list for which hookfun is a key.
You may well be right about per intensions, and it is possible that a
person who already fully understands what this code is doing would
have realized that immediately.
But a person who is just starting to look at this code, and reads that
function first, is likely to be impeded in starting to reach that sort
of understanding.
I have to respectfully disagree - dotted pair notation is a pretty fundamental part of LISP syntax, regardless of dialect. There's no reason I'm aware of (for human-written code) for a dotted pair to have a list in the CDR unless the author is emphasizing the pair as being an entry in an association list.
Lynn