Re: DESCRIBE-ARGUMENTS

[mike%gold-hill-acorn@mit-live-oak.arpa]

    Date: 15 Jul 86 00:51 PDT
    From: Pavel.pa@Xerox.COM
    
    	Date: Mon, 14 Jul 86 16:36:46 pdt
    	From: oster%ucblapis@BERKELEY.EDU (David Phillip Oster)
    
    	franz!fizzy!jkf in Mesg 14 suggests that DESCRIBE-ARGUMENTS return a
    list like:
    	(a b c &optional d e &rest r &key x y &allow-other-keys)
    
    	Fahlman@c.cs.cmu.edu says that a list is hard to parse and a string
    should
    	be returned instead.  Is this a joke? Where are the ":-)"s?
    	The function exists in Interlisp and is very useful.
    ....
    It is the case, however, that Xerox Common Lisp stores a list just
    exactly like that in every compiled function...
    
    	Pavel

Info is also lost if it is a string. Package qualifiers are needed to
tell which variables are being bound if any of the symbols in the arglist
are specvars. 

...mike beckerle
Gold Hill Computers