Re: Special Form Question

[masinter.pa@Xerox.ARPA]

It would be more consistent and portable to define
(symbol-function 'quote) => nil.

under the theory that "symbol-function" really means to return a
function rather than "what this symbol means when seen as car of
something to be EVAL'd."

Similarly, it would be more consistent and portable to require that
after (defmacro foo --) that (symbol-function 'foo) also return nil.

This would mean that values returned by symbol-function could be assumed
to be functions, in the "funcall-able" sense.

It is likely that implementations will want to have some internal
"really give me what this symbol means when you see it as the CAR of a
form about to be EVALd" for use by the interpreter, but its not clear to
me why that primitive has to be "symbol-function".

Larry