From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: /srv/bzr/emacs/trunk r112347: *doc/lispintro/emacs-lisp-intro.texi (defcustom, defun, simplified-beginning-of-buffer, defvar, Building Robots, Review, save-excursion): `defun' and `defcustom' are now macros rather thanspecial forms. (Bug#13853) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:55:22 +0900 Message-ID: <8738uj22gl.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <87obd8rnk1.fsf@yandex.ru> <51741E72.8030204@yandex.ru> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1366566926 31415 80.91.229.3 (21 Apr 2013 17:55:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:55:26 +0000 (UTC) Cc: 'xfq' , Drew Adams , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Dmitry Gutov Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Apr 21 19:55:30 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1UTyU5-0000w1-PG for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 21 Apr 2013 19:55:29 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:42749 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UTyU5-0003uA-Ec for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:55:29 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:42377) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UTyU2-0003tp-G2 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:55:27 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UTyU0-0007OA-Tw for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:55:26 -0400 Original-Received: from mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.224]:37522) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UTyU0-0007Ne-Jc for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:55:24 -0400 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6706997093A; Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:55:22 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 12B2611F978; Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:55:22 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: <51741E72.8030204@yandex.ru> X-Mailer: VM undefined under 21.5 (beta32) "habanero" b0d40183ac79 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 130.158.97.224 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:159085 Archived-At: Dmitry Gutov writes: > http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/Special-Forms.html starts with: > > "Special forms are those expressions in the Lisp language which do not > follow normal rules for evaluation. This is much broader than common usage, though, since it explicitly includes macros. In Commmon Lisp, which has a very narrow (extensional) definition of "special form"[1], it seems to me the intent of the definition is to describe those features of the language which are "unfunctional". > I dunno, calling anything that can be used as a car of an evaluatable > sexp a "function" makes sense in general context. But there's a reason to avoid that usage where possible. In Lisp, functions are "funcall-able", while special operators and macros are not. This makes functions "first class" objects in a way that special operators and macros are not. Footnotes: [1] http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/03_ababa.htm#clspecialops