When is a package name equivalent to a package?

[Jon White <JLW@SU-AI.ARPA>]

In-reply-to: your messge of 24-Apr-85 22:04 EST

There are only three places I can remember that explicitly say 
"... must be a package":  the definition of *package*, the argument to
package-name, and the argment to package-nicknames.  It would seem reasonable
to me to let all other arguments called "package" be coercible from symbols,
strings, and packages.  I can't say that requireing the arguments to
package-name and package-nicknames to be "a package" achieves anything;
I'd be happier with Moon's suggestion to let all function args be coercible.

Actually, another constraint has been bugging me recently -- the argument
to in-package is constrained to be a "name"; why not let it be a package
also?  If you did so, it would have no bearing one way or other on the
advisibility of using a form like
   (IN-PACKAGE "USER")
as a CL minor-mode specifier.