Re: [ELPA] Want to submit two packages "ilist" and "blist"

[Adam Porter <adam@alphapapa.net>]

Durand <mmemmew@gmail.com> writes:

> The two packages can be found via the following links:
>
> <https://gitlab.com/mmemmew/ilist/>
> <https://gitlab.com/mmemmew/blist/>

By the way, I see in ilist.el this comment:

  ;; This is similar to using `cl-defstruct', but this struct is so
  ;; simple that depending on the cl library seems unnecessary to me.

You may not know that `cl' has been part of Emacs for over 30 years.
It's curious why some users seem to have an aversion to it.  Somehow
there's this persistent myth that using it in a library would be not
minimalistic enough, yet cl-lib is used by Emacs's own code, so it's
loaded anyway, and its code is standard and reliable.

So rather than defining a number of aliases for a bespoke list format
like:

  ;;;; column accessors

  (defalias 'ilist-column-name 'car
    "Return the NAME of COLUMN.

  \(fn COLUMN)")

  (defalias 'ilist-column-fun 'cadr
    "Return the FUN in COLUMN.

  \(fn COLUMN)")

  (defalias 'ilist-column-min 'caddr
    "Return the MIN in COLUMN.

  \(fn COLUMN)")

  (defalias 'ilist-column-max 'cadddr
    "Return the MAX in COLUMN.

  \(fn COLUMN)")

  ;; Unfortunately (or not) there is no caddddr and cadddddr.
  (defun ilist-column-align (column)
    "Return the ALIGN in COLUMN."
    (nth 4 column))

  (defun ilist-column-elide (column)
    "Return the ELIDE in COLUMN."
    (nth 5 column))

It would be much more efficient and simple to just use cl-defstruct.