Argument lists

[David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Tue, 1 Jul 86 10:13 EST
    From: mike%gold-hill-acorn@mit-live-oak.arpa

    I still think the right thing to do is to make (type-of <function>)
    return a type signature for the function. Then the user's program can
    conclude whatever it wants. If an implementation can do this, then it
    can certainly do what is required below, and other things too,
    depending on how specific the type signature is. I proposed this last
    week sometime, and I saw only minimal feedback (which was positive).
    Are there any good reasons why the type system isn't the right place
    to garner this information?

Doesn't this conflict with the possibility of (type-of <function>) telling
you whether it's an interpreted or compiled function, and whether it's
a closure or not, and (in some systems) whether it's generic or not?
Or, as CLtL says, "(type-of object) returns an implementation-dependent
result".