&rest replacement/addition

[ELIOT@cs.umass.edu]

I had hoped that the semantics of &rest lists could be completely
specified without or before getting into murky side issues like
this.

Given my position on previous issues it should not be a surprise that
I am strongly opposed to all of the &rest replacement/additon
proposals.  I consider &rest to be a fine feature that is completely
adequate for solving the problems of passing indefinate numbers of 
arguments.  I consider it sufficiently good that it is worth spending
considerable effort giving it a precise specification, as we have
been trying to do.  I don't think it needs replacement.

There has only been one criticism of &Rest lists.  There is the
impression that this feature introduces an unacceptible inefficiency
in programs.  This impression is sufficiently strong that people are
considering pulling one of Maclisp's kludgest features out of its
grave, introducing new strange data types to Common Lisp and doing
all kinds of horrible things in order to eliminate this ineficiency.