Argument lists

[Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>]

    Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1986  14:22 EDT
    From: "Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>
    ...
			    However, it would be unprecedented, and probably
    a bad idea, to require that every compiler do this clever thing, and
    without such a requirement many implementations would skip this.  People
    writing applications like the ones KMP has in mind would not be able to
    use FUNCTION-PARAMETERS if it is important to them that there be no
    consing in any reasonable implementation.  On the other hand, there is
    no temptatation to do consing for FUNCTION-PARAMETER-RANGE, so it would
    be non-consing in any halfway decent implementation, without our having
    to require explicitly that it avoids consing.

Also unprecedented in Common Lisp is the notion that a function be
explicitly documented as not consing.  Perhaps we want to introduce
such a notion into the documentation, but it has repercussions far
greate than on FUNCTIOn-PARAMETER-RANGE.

--Guy