Re: What does the coding system nil mean?

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

> Is this a matter of taste or does nil belonging to multiple data types
> cause problems somewhere (debugging programs, compiler/intepreter
> construction, whatever)?

It does not cause any particular problem, no.
It's just considered unclean by some.  It can definitely surprise people
that (symbolp ()) is true.  In some cases it's annoying: one example
off the top of my head is (intern-soft "nil").

In a sense, it's similar to whether or not chars and integers should
be distinguishable.


        Stefan