primitives

[Kent M. Pitman <KMP at MIT-MC>]

    Date: Friday, 12 November 1982  02:31-EST
    From: MOON at SCRC-TENEX

    ... there is going to be a fairly large update in 6 months to a year.  It
    might be easier to put in the missing primitives then.  Of course the
    danger of this is that each implementation will have its own slightly
    incompatible primitives already by then...

Agreed. But users take what comes if they rely on such things as are not
in the language spec even if they are in an implementation. I think we 
should certainly be willing to discuss proposals for standardizing on
primitives, but there is no reason we have to rush to any decisions. We 
should keep in mind that it's always easier to add new primitives than to
remove ones we decide should never have been...