Re: The doc-strings for car and cdr are insulting.

[Kevin Rodgers <ihs_4664@yahoo.com>]

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
 > Try C-h f car and C-h f cdr.  What you get on the screen are
 >
 > "Return the car of LIST.  If arg is nil, return nil.
 >  Error if arg is not nil and not a cons cell.  See also `car-safe'."
 >
 > and
 >
 > "Return the cdr of LIST.  If arg is nil, return nil.
 >  Error if arg is not nil and not a cons cell.  See also `cdr-safe'."
 >
 > Now, to my way of thinking, if I type "C-h f car" it's because I want to
 > know what the car function does.  The existing doc string seems
 > implicitly to append "..., and if you're too stupid to know what the car
 > of a list means, and you're too lazy to spend hours searching through the
 > available documentation, we don't give a damn."  It's bad enough getting
 > this sort of "help" from proprietary software, but from Emacs ....???
 >
 > I suggest these doc-strings be amended to:
 >
 > "Return the first element of LIST.  If arg is nil, return nil. ....."
 >
 > and
 >
 > "The result of removing the first element from LIST, or nil if arg is 
nil.
 >  Error if arg .....".

cdr does not remove any elements from LIST.  CLtL says "the rest of the
list, which is a list with all elements but the first".

Perhaps the doc string should explicitly destructure the LIST argument:
"Error if LIST is neither nil nor a (CAR . CDR) cons cell."

-- 
Kevin Rodgers