Re: Additional side-effect-free functions

[Jonathan Yavner]

JY>     truncate
DK> This can raise a range-error exception.

There are two classes of side-effect-free functions.
   (side-effect-free error-free) means function cannot signal.
   (side-effect-free t) means function makes no assignments
The distinction matters only if you set byte-compile-delete-errors to
nil.

cons has (side-effect-free error-free), even though it increments the
variable cons-cells-consed.

car is (side-effect-free t),  so why not truncate?


JY> format-time-string
DK> This depends on the current time

So?  It doesn't *change* the time.  If you have code like
    (prog1 47 (format-time-string "%Y"))
nothing goes wrong if the compiler just reduces this to 47.


JY>     make-symbol
DK> This changes the obarray.

It shouldn't.  That's intern's job.