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behavior of mapping



Yes, I realize that it is possible to carry transportability to an
extreme.  Obviously we cannot protect users against every possible
assumption they might make.  But there are some assumptions that we know
from experience are made so universally that we ought to at least
consider that the users might be right and we might be wrong.  I agree
that I can't possibly guarantee that all code will be transportable.  But
it would be irresponsible to leave in something I know will cause most
users to write untransportable programs, unless there are very strong
reasons indeed. I have been involved in Lisp development and support for
a number of years.  I can  tell you from experience that users do in
fact depend upon the exact semantics of mapping functions.  I believe
this is one of the cases where the users' expectations are so universal
that the implementors should bow to them.
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