Argument lists: a proposal to shoot at

[Guy Steele <gls@Think.COM>]

    Date: Mon, 30 Jun 86 14:30:51 EDT
    From: Jonathan A Rees <JAR@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>

	Date: Mon, 30 Jun 86 13:57 EDT
	From: Guy Steele <gls at Think.COM>

	Maybe it's not worth eliminating K, I grant.  However, while it may be
	reasonable for the author of the code to write (&key), it's not clear
	that that information is important to a potential caller who needs to
	know what arguments may be passed.  Such a function accepts no keyword
	arguments directly, and does not have &allow-other-keys, and so,
	operationally speaking, what is the need to know that &key was there?

    If the formal parameter list is (&key), then an actual parameter list of
    (:foo 7 :allow-other-keys t :bar 'a) is legal, n'est-ce pas?

Touche!  Magnifique!  (Or, as Frank Zappa titled an album, Zoot allures!)
What a wonderful language.  Therefore the K value is not redundant after all.

--Guy