set vs. setf

[Earl A. Killian <Killian at MIT-MULTICS>]

    Date: 25 August 1982 04:41-EDT
    From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at MIT-MC>

    Rather than trying to eliminate the letter 'F' from the language,
    why not consider that this letter 'F' helps clasify all these
    special forms as being related?  I always think of 'F' as standing
    for 'FORM', as in SET-FORM.

I don't think that this is necessary at all.  They are related merely in
that they store, which their names already imply.  Since the function
that stores without taking a "place" is an endangered species, there is
really no need for the "F".  But if you're serious about this, or just
believe in consistency, then I assume you must be in favor of appending
an "F" to PUSH, PUSHNEW, and POP (and whatever other functions I didn't
notice).  If you don't care about consistency, but don't want to change
the status quo much, then you should at least remove the "F" from
comparitively new functions such as SWAPF, EXCHF, INCF, DECF, etc.
having both PUSH and EXCHF as names seems just plain weird to me.

Moon's complaint is that removing the "F" doesn't work for GETF (there
are no other cases that I can find in the language -- REM has been
renamed REMAINDER, and so is not a problem).  Thus the problem is to
find a good name for the function that gets from a property list (as
opposed to a symbol) (I don't think eliminating the function is the
right way to deal with this either!).  So how about GETPR for this?
REMF would become REMPR for consistency, of course.


P.S. to GLS: the concept index should probably include "place" and cross
reference the functions that use it.