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Re: canonical name ending "-p"
From: |
Evans Winner |
Subject: |
Re: canonical name ending "-p" |
Date: |
Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:36:08 -0600 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (gnu/linux) |
,------ ken wrote ------
| Lots of things in elisp end in "-p"... is there some
| particular meaning in this?
On a related note (since Pascal already explained it) I have
wondered why the rather odd use of the term "predicate" was
chosen.
When I hear the term "predicate" I usually think of its
meaning in grammar and logic. But there is also the use in
which one says that if one thing (A) depends on another
thing (B) that A is "predicated on B." I suspect it is
because one might verbally reason that in:
(if (atom t) t nil)
the answer to whether Lisp will return t or nil is
predicated on the results of (atom t), therefore by
extension we call the function itself a predicate. It's a
little confusing because it is not one of the common uses of
the noun "predicate." I would be interested to hear from
someone who knows if this is indeed the sense on which the
term was chosen.