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misc. stuff
Here are some of my random and more-or-less nit-picking remarks about
the Laser Edition.
[1] Will there be a unified index in the next edition of the manual? I
have the impression that Symbolics has decided that it is best to have
one index instead of four or five. I certainly agree.
[2] Is LAMBDA not defined as a special form? If not, then sections 5.2.2
(LAMBDA-expressions) and 7.1.1 (description of FUNCTION) should
make this clear. LAMBDA should be indexed somewhere.
[3] Page 38, section 4.8, description of TYPE-OF: "TYPE-OF of one
argument" should be just "TYPE-OF" (fifth and sixth lines of that
paragraph).
[4] Pages 76 and 99: what is the lexical scope of the body of a macro
definition? I.e., where do free variables (and functions) get their
values? This needs clarification. E.g., what does the following mean?
(setq x 8)
(eval-when (compile) (setq x 2))
(let ((x 5))
(macrolet ((foo (z) `(+ ,z ,x)))
(foo 7)))
Does this evaluate to 9, 12, or 15? Does it matter whether the code is being
"interpreted" or "compiled"? Can the manual be written in such a way as to
let this be explicitly undefined?
[5] Page 196, third example in description of STRING-UPCASE et al.:
(string-upcase "Dr. Livingston, I presume?" 6 10)
should read
(string-upcase "Dr. Livingston, I presume?" :start 6 :end 10)
[6] Page 229. Section name "Shape-Sign Abbreviations" is misleading -
the wo1d "abbreviation" seems pretty random here. Not all syntaxes
introduced by # are abbreviations for anything - that is, there aren't
other equivalent ways to write most of them.
[7] Page 244. Is READ-DELIMITED-LIST defined to side-affect the syntax
of its "char" argument in *READTABLE*, even if only temporarily?
Presumably it would be implemented by temporarily defining a
right-parenthesis-like readmacro character for "char", using
UNWIND-PROTECT or something of the sort. If such an implementation is
permitted, perhaps this should be mentioned.
-Jonathan
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