From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Lennart Borgman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Documentation for car and cdr Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 22:44:05 +0100 Message-ID: <43D7F125.7080705@student.lu.se> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1138225579 24906 80.91.229.2 (25 Jan 2006 21:46:19 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 21:46:19 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Mario Domenech Goulart , emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Jan 25 22:46:12 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1F1sSn-0004Lx-Cs for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 25 Jan 2006 22:46:01 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1F1sVY-0003HC-HX for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:48:52 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1F1sUF-0001MP-8p for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:47:31 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1F1sUD-0001I8-DH for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:47:30 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1F1sUD-0001Hc-5B for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:47:29 -0500 Original-Received: from [81.228.11.168] (helo=pne-smtpout4-sn1.fre.skanova.net) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1F1sRb-0005iK-Jq; Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:44:47 -0500 Original-Received: from [192.168.123.121] (83.249.218.244) by pne-smtpout4-sn1.fre.skanova.net (7.2.070) id 43CBBB29001962F3; Wed, 25 Jan 2006 22:44:06 +0100 User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201) Original-To: Alan Mackenzie In-Reply-To: X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:49539 Archived-At: Alan Mackenzie wrote: > What does this doc-string say to the novice lisp programmer? It says > "We're telling you that the function called \"cdr\" actually returns the > abstract \"cdr\" of a lisp object, just in case that isn't obvious." It > goes on, implicitly by omission, to say "if you really don't know what a > cdr is by this stage, you're so stupid that there's no point in us > bothering to tell you." > ... > I suggest making this doc-string more helpful by appending the following > to it: > > "Loosely speaking, the cdr of LIST is LIST without its first element." > This is a very good idea since the beginner might remember that one of the gives the first (or was it last?) element and the other gives the rest. Giving a link to the info node is of course also very good.