Re: Rationalising c[ad]\{2,5\}r.

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Drew.

On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 03:00:50PM -0700, Drew Adams wrote:
> > 1. caar,  cadr, cdar, and cddr are defined in subr.el;
> > 2. c[ad]\{3,4\}r are actually called cl-caaar, etc;

> Gag. Why is that?

Lack of clear thinking, conflicting design goals, ..., who knows?

> > 3. cl-c[ad]\{3,4\}r are defined in cl-lib.el;

> Why is that?
> What's next, cl-setq?

:-)  Let's hope not.

[ .... ]

> > I propose the following solution: all these defuns should be in subr.el,
> > the canonical names will be caaadr etc., 

> Yes.  How about the _only_ names, instead?

> > and there will be compatibility aliases for cl-caaadr etc..  

> Why? Why is that needed?

Because there are lots of uses of cl-c[ad]\{3,4\}r in the field.  There
are currently 56 uses in the Emacs sources, which we could easily fix,
but there will be an unknown, possibly high, number in packages and code
we don't control.  It would be ill-mannered simply to remove these names.
They should be marked as obsolete, perhaps.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).