Re: Ignoring a list.

[preece%ccvaxa@gswd-vms (Scott E. Preece)]

	From: Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM
	Subject: Re: Ignoring a list.
	
	This seems like an environment issue to me, and not one that the
	language needs to take a stand on.  After all:
	
	- A particular environment might have some really nice way of
	implementing and supporting this feature.  It could gray the form out,
	or turn it blue or something. In that environment the "standard" way of
	implementing it might not be useful or it might be difficult to provide
	really nice environment support for it.
----------
A particular environment might have a really nice way of supporting
comments, say by displaying them in italics or boxes.  Therefore the
standard shouldn't provide a standard way of indicating comments...
----------
	- There is no significant need for a "standard" way to do this because
	the only time a user really needs to comment out random forms (in a
	hurry) is when they are debugging.  If you are debugging then you
	already have to learn enough about the environment that knowing how to
	comment out a form does not seem like such a burden.
----------
I suppoose it's slightly tacky to ship code with debugging support in
it, but I'd really like to know that my commented-out forms will still
be commented out on the standard system I deliver them to.  Also, there
is a limited set of #s reserved to the user -- I would prefer this form
came from the general "undefined" pot rather than the "undefined and
guaranteed never to be defined" pot.
----------
	- To the extent that we do need a "standard" way of doing this (which I
	have argued above is a small extent).there is already a standard way of
	doing it.  Take the name of the lisp you are using and use #-, as in
	#-FooLisp.
----------
So somebody taking my code and trying (silly person) to port it to
another CL will suddenly have my commented-out code reappearing?

This isn't really a major issue, but the ability to comment out a
form by marking the beginning of it seems like a very useful ability
to have.  Marking both ends is (a) a pain in the ass, even if it does
take only two keystrokes to get to the end of the form and (b) much
more prone to the "oops, i took out the front one but not the back one"
variety of error.

-- 
scott preece
gould/csd - urbana
ihnp4!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!preece