Multiple Values

[David A. Moon <Moon at MIT-MC>]

We are planning for implementation of the new multiple-value receiving
forms with &optional and &rest, on the L machine, but are unlikely to
be able to implement them on the present Lisp machine without a significant
amount of work.  I would just as soon see them flushed, but am willing
to implement them if the concensus is to keep them.

If by lambda-grovelling you mean (as GJC seems to think you mean) a
subroutine in the compiler that parses out the &optionals, that is about
0.5% of the work involved.  If by lambda-grovelling you mean the generated
code in a compiled function that takes some values and defaults the
unsupplied optionals, indeed that is where the hair comes in, since in
most implementations it can't be -quite- the same as the normal function-entry
case of what might seem to be the same thing.