Re: Ad-hoc list structure tutorializing

[Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>]

Robin Tarsiger <rtt@dasyatidae.com> writes:

> Richard Stallman wrote:
>> add-to-list is oriented at modifying a variable symbol which need not> be constant.  You can use it with a quoted symbol, of course.
> [etc.]
>
> I will point out more concisely, in case my other message got
> (perhaps rightfully) skipped, that I split off this subthread attempting
> to better describe to Arthur why his new idea for the documentation
> was poorly founded, and preempt certain other related ideas. My rhetorical
> question, intended to help explain why add-to-list exists and is _not_
> simply replaced with other list manipulation forms (in a way which I
> imagined might confuse an elisp novice), was then quoted out of context
> by itself to make it look like I was proposing to do that replacement.
> (I believe this was accidental.) I was _not_ making such a proposal, and
> I gave a longer list of potential reasons why not in the other message.
>
> Since this has become more than cluttered enough already, this is the
> last thing I will post on this topic unless personally asked.
>
> -RTT
Seems like some of my mails never got to the list; I don't see them
myself, but I see them in my out folder. No idea why.

@RTT Anyway, thank you for the explanations, you made it clear why it was
designed the way it was. For what it does, I would illustrate it with a
**List in C, a pointer to a pointer but there are no pointers and
references in Lisp, just symbols and values so it takes a symbol and can
not take a value. What we wish is a pointer to a list. I am not sure but
I think that at least LIST-VAR is better than just SYMBOL, maybe
LIST-SYMBOL; whatever.

@RMS Yes it is old function, but for some peopel it is new. I was just
reading documentation of it and thought it was neither very clear nor
well written: "better be a list" or "quote if if you wish" does not
sound to me as a clear explanation of precondition. Since people have
complained that documentation is incomprehensive, so I just tried to
make it a bit easier to diggest while I was anyway reading it. Didn't
know it would release a storm of comments and proposal for replacement.

Best regards
/a