> > FWIW, I think that if any changes are made to dotimes they
> > should be in the direction of Common Lisp dotimes.
>
> How do Elisp's dotimes and Common Lisp's dotimes differ?
http://clhs.lisp.se/Body/m_dotime.htm
It respects `return' and `return-from'. It allows tags
(for `go').
A variant of `dotimes' that supports such constructs (only the "return" ones though) is available in cl-lib.el: `cl-dotimes'.
For purposes of this thread: As in Emacs Lisp, both VAR
and COUNT are required arguments. In general, I'd prefer
that Emacs Lisp not diverge from but converge toward
Common Lisp.
The (implicit) decision to diverge further from Common Lisp has been made a while ago, by prefixing the CL functions with `cl' and importing the `seq' and `map' libraries, which provide similar functionality, but with a different interface. Regarding third-party package, the hugely popular `dash' library advertises itself with "No CL required." Given these indicators, I'd expect the divergence to increase further instead of decrease.