Re: &whole

[JonL.pa@XEROX.ARPA]

You may remember that since 1979, MacLisp (and NIL too, I believe) have
had DESETQ for a "destructuring" version of SETQ, and have extended
DEFUN and LET to do full destructuring on their "lambda" lists.  (ALAN
may also have produced a version of these things for the Lisp Machine).

There was a small amount of discussion on this point, oh maybe two years
ago, in the Common Lisp mails, with one suggestion being to extend the
notion of destructuring/lambda-binding to every position that is
"analogous" -- this would mean in the lambda-list of DEFUN, in lambda
applications like
    ((LAMBDA (...) ...) ...)
as well as in LET.

The idea died back then because enough people didn't see a compelling
similarity between the argument "spreading" (Interlisp word!) in
DEFMACRO and that in the other places like DEFUN.

-- JonL --