From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Garreau\, Alexandre" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Why is there no `until' in elisp? Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2018 00:54:33 +0200 Message-ID: <87ftx4421i.fsf@portable.galex-713.eu> References: <87murdu6to.fsf@portable.galex-713.eu> <87lg6xgc58.fsf@portable.galex-713.eu> <86294998-2c96-a1be-6a83-2e34b7fa6046@cs.ucla.edu> <87d0s86zrs.fsf@portable.galex-713.eu> <5e6f544e-811f-fc0a-bc08-e77d601a4c4d@cs.ucla.edu> <87woqg5jm7.fsf@portable.galex-713.eu> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1539816795 17215 195.159.176.226 (17 Oct 2018 22:53:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2018 22:53:15 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus (5.13), GNU Emacs 25.1.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) Cc: Yuri Khan , Stefan Monnier , Emacs developers To: Paul Eggert Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Oct 18 00:53:10 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1gCugf-0004NB-VK for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 18 Oct 2018 00:53:10 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:39432 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gCuim-00062L-Hw for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 17 Oct 2018 18:55:20 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:43567) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gCuiA-00062E-3a for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 17 Oct 2018 18:54:43 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gCui8-00030D-OL for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 17 Oct 2018 18:54:41 -0400 Original-Received: from portable.galex-713.eu ([2a00:5884:8305::1]:51572) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1gCui8-0002uf-Ef for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 17 Oct 2018 18:54:40 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1] helo=portable.galex-713.eu) by portable.galex-713.eu with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1gCui1-000699-Gd; Thu, 18 Oct 2018 00:54:33 +0200 X-GPG-FINGERPRINT: E109 9988 4197 D7CB B0BC 5C23 8DEB 24BA 867D 3F7F X-Accept-Language: fr, en, it, eo In-Reply-To: (Paul Eggert's message of "Wed, 17 Oct 2018 15:33:03 -0700") X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Genre and OS details not recognized. X-Received-From: 2a00:5884:8305::1 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 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" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:230466 Archived-At: On 2018-10-17 at 15:33, Paul Eggert wrote: > On 10/17/18 2:49 PM, Garreau, Alexandre wrote: >> Le 17/10/2018 =C3=A0 14h35, Paul Eggert a =C3=A9crit=C2=A0: >>> On 10/17/18 2:15 PM, Garreau, Alexandre wrote: >>>> =E2=80=9Cwhile=E2=80=9D as used in natural language does *not* mean th= e same thing >>> [=E2=80=A6] And the same is true for "until". >> How=E2=80=99s that? > > In English, "until Y do X" typically means "keep checking Y while > you're doing X and stop the instant that Y becomes true". This means > something different from the proposed (until Y X), for the same reason > that the common meaning of "while Y do X" in English means something > different from (while Y X). Really? I thought it meant the same as =E2=80=9Cdo X until Y=E2=80=9D or = =E2=80=9Cdo X and stop doing X when Y is true=E2=80=9D, which to me seems the same. While =E2=80=9Cwhile=E2=80=9D seems to me to have some notion of contempora= rity of the two actions / expressions / etc., so it feels different to me, but eventually I am to believe you. >> I find =E2=80=9Cuntil=E2=80=9D be a lot more used in all the languages I >> know, including english. > > Although that might be true in other languages, it's certainly not > true of English. Google, for example, reports about 8 billion hits for > "while" but only 2 billion for "until". Admittedly Google hit counts > are only vaguely approximate, but still.... Okay, you convinced me now (I get 6M and 2M). >> The most obvious and only implementation of `unless', I ever seen *until >> now* is (while (not cond) body) > > "unless" is something different from "until". My bad, I made a mistake: I wanted to say `until' (as could show the following expression).