IF-EXISTS :SUPERSEDE

["Bernard S. Greenberg" <BSG%SCRC-TENEX@MIT-MC.ARPA>]

    Date: Monday, 5 December 1983, 23:12-EST
    From: David A. Moon <Moon at SCRC-TENEX>
    It seems to me that what we must do is quite clear and there are no
    choices to be made.
I "fixed" the Lisp machine, LMFS and COPYF to act in accordance with the
non-ambiguity you observe (patched).  COPYF now works to extant,
numeric-versioned targets again.

The Common Lisp manual should contain the following quote from the new COPYF
  (OPEN....
   ':IF-EXISTS
    (IF (EQ (SEND TO-PATHNAME ':VERSION) ':NEWEST)
	':NEW-VERSION
	':SUPERSEDE)..
under the description of :SUPERSEDE, and state that unless you
include it in your program, if you use :SUPERSEDE, you will
stop having a versionated file system.

Yes, it is consistent, and yes, I still believe there is a language
problem.  I call to rememberance the PL/I addition operator......

Perhaps :IF-EXISTS :SUPERSEDE should be the default for a non-:NEWEST
version on output (as it used to be, de facto, around here), removing
the temptation to fall into the above hole.