Re: Why aren't there functions such as filter, take-while, etc. "by default"?

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David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:

> Deniz Dogan <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Why does it have to be so hard to write Emacs Lisp without requiring cl?
>>
>> Why aren't there functions such as filter (the equivalent of
>> remove-if-not in cl-seq.el), take-while, reduce etc. "native" in
>> Emacs?
>
> They make for no-surprise efficient programs primarily when the language
> has lexical closures.

What about `case', though?

Or `position'?

It's ridiculous -- you have to either define helpers again and again all
the time, or write unnecessarily verbose code, or require the whole of
cl (and I don't think `eval-when-compile' makes so much of a difference
outside Emacs core; it's not like people compile all third-party
packages they use).

The Emacs cl.el "policy" seems rather schizophrenic to me -- if there's
something unsatisfactory about it, then it should be fixed instead of
being banished to compile-time-only. Or failing that, some generally
useful forms like the above should be provided in Emacs core.


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