Re: Emacs Lisp coding style question

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>>> But (without being able to give concrete examples right now) I noticed
>>> that advanced Lispers tend to call this 'C-style', consider the let

I've never seen it referred to as "C-style".  To me "C-style" would be

   (let (a b c d e)
     (setq a (foo-a))
     (setq b (foo-b))
     ...)

>>> What would be the recommended style for Emacs Lisp, or is this just a
>>> matter of taste?

Mostly taste, and it depends on the specifics.  I.e. it depends on
whether the intermediate names can be useful as code documentation, and
indentation issues may also tip the balance between the two.

>> Notice that both code might compile to the exact same binary, so there's
>> no efficiency advantage in either.

The Emacs Lisp implementation (both interpreted and compiled) is not
sophisticated enough to get the same efficiency out of the let-binding
version, actually.

> But in terms of uncompiled user-code - would the impact of the let
> bindings here be worth thinking about performance?

No the difference should not be noticeable anyway.


        Stefan