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Re: Documentation for car and cdr
From: |
Kevin Rodgers |
Subject: |
Re: Documentation for car and cdr |
Date: |
Tue, 24 Jan 2006 15:30:21 -0700 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla Thunderbird 0.9 (X11/20041105) |
Mario Domenech Goulart wrote:
Saying "car returns the car" and "cdr returns the cdr" doesn't sound
very useful for me if I would like to know what car and cdr do, unless I
knew what "car" and "cdr" mean (then I wouldn't check the
documentation). :-)
Wouldn't it be better to write something like "Return the first element
of list" and "Return a list containing all but the first element of
list" for car and cdr, respectively?
I don't think so, but I know Lisp.
I found this little "issue" when I was trying to show a friend of mine
the self-documenting features of Emacs: "If you don't know what car
means, for example, you can always check the documentation, so you can
find out that car... returns the car of a list...". :-) Maybe he
thought lists can drive. :-)
I think it would be useful if the doc string contained a reference
to the "Cons Cells" node of the Emacs Lisp manual.
--
Kevin Rodgers