help-gnu-emacs
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: About `defun' in elisp manual


From: Pascal J. Bourguignon
Subject: Re: About `defun' in elisp manual
Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2012 18:52:44 +0100
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.2 (gnu/linux)

florian@fsavigny.de (Florian v. Savigny) writes:

> I'm not an expert,

Yes, and you won't be anytime soon if you go on like this:

> but it would seem to me that by "dotted list", you
> mean a cons cell, 

That's not the definition of a dotted list.  I gave the definitions!
Just read them and learn them.  If you don't trust me, just take any
good lisp book (eg. the Common Lisp HyperSpec glossary) for their
definitions!

> and if BODY-FORMS is a list, the two are the
> same. 

No. That would depend on the kind of list BODY-FORMS is.

> (I'm not sure why Elisp builds lists that way, since this is not too
> intuitive, 

Because that's what lists are! DUH!

Lists are singly linked chains of cons cells.

Notably, lists ARE NOT vectors! (Like some other programming languages
want you to believe).

The difference between the various lists, is how they terminate or not.


> but I suspect it has something to do with the very limited
> technological possibilities at the time when Emacs was first written.)

It's not a technological limitation whatsoever.  The 7090 or the
processors where GNU emacs was written are as good as the latest Intel
processors (that reflects badly on those later…).



> I hope I'm not completely wrong, and that this sheds some light on the
> matter. (Otherwise, I'll keep quiet in the future.)

Try to learn something first.


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.


reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]