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Re: Help sought understanding shorthands wrt modules/packages


From: João Távora
Subject: Re: Help sought understanding shorthands wrt modules/packages
Date: Fri, 11 Nov 2022 12:09:04 +0000

On Fri, Nov 11, 2022, 09:35 Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com> wrote:
Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > I don't agree.  Symbols are at the heart of Lisp.  Changing their
>   > semantics is a big deal, and as soon as that features is in, it will be
>   > used.
>
> The shorthands feature is already installed, but it doesn't change the
> sematics of symbols.

I don't agree.  Before shorthands, a symbol had one name, after, it can
have many.

This is incorrect. You're confusing the text manifestation of a symbol in a Lisp form before it is read (as in CL:READ) with the symbol itself, which has only one name. This didn't and couldn't change with shorthands. 

Deciding to use it not use a shorthand is no different from deciding to use or not use package qualification for a symbol in CL packages.

Neither changes the name of a symbol, just the manifestation is different. If you force them to be the same thing, then no namespacing symbol is possible at all

If you conflate symbol name and symbol designation/manifestation in source files , you'll have problems implementing any package system (CL, shorthands, whatever) and you confuse people trying to understand any Lisp package system, i.e. you confuse this discussion. Let's try to avoid that :)



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