From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: `compare-strings' style question
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:54:20 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <barmar-3DA3D6.15542019112009@nothing.attdns.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 87einuij59.fsf@lola.goethe.zz
In article <87einuij59.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
wrote:
> tomas@tuxteam.de writes:
>
> > On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 12:39:33PM +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
> >> tomas@tuxteam.de writes:
> >>
> >> > Hi,
> >> >
> >> > In Elisp, I'm trying to test whether a string is a prefix of another.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >> > (when (eq (compare-strings foo 0 5 bar 0 5) t)
> >> > ...)
> >> >
> >> > which looks rather funny. My question: are there better idioms? Am I
> >> > barking up the wrong function?
> >>
> >> (unless (numberp ...
> >>
> >> or
> >>
> >> (if (symbolp ...
> >
> > Thanks. Still looks a bit funna, though :-)
>
> In my opinion, t was the wrong choice for a match. nil would have been
> much better because you can't use the result of compare-strings as a
> condition.
>
> But I suppose there is not much one can do now because of compatibility.
That would still be weird, because
(not (compare-strings ...))
would be the way to tell if they're equivalent. C has the same problem
with its strcmp() function, which returns negative, 0, or positive,
where 0 is C's falsehood.
The basic problem is that IF is designed to work with binary predicates,
and this operation is trinary.
Maybe compare-strings should have been defined like strcmp, returning 0
for the middle case. Then you wouldn't be tempted to think of it as a
predicate. (zerop (compare-strings ...)) doesn't seem as weird as (not
(compare-strings ...)).
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2009-11-19 20:54 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <mailman.11037.1258628274.2239.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2009-11-19 11:39 ` `compare-strings' style question David Kastrup
2009-11-19 15:27 ` tomas
2009-11-19 19:55 ` Andreas Politz
2009-11-20 6:47 ` tomas
[not found] ` <mailman.11057.1258644880.2239.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
2009-11-19 16:17 ` David Kastrup
2009-11-19 20:54 ` Barry Margolin [this message]
2009-11-20 7:00 ` tomas
2009-11-20 8:13 ` Andreas Politz
2009-11-20 6:53 ` tomas
2009-11-19 10:50 tomas
2009-11-20 3:08 ` Kevin Rodgers
2009-11-20 7:03 ` tomas
2009-11-20 10:34 ` Kevin Rodgers
2009-11-24 9:32 ` tomas
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