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sinsudo • yesterday at 8:43 PM • 3 replies • view on HN

I know that the purpose of the page is to compare syntax of common lisp, racket, clojure, and emacs lisp. But some examples could be more idiomatic, for instance instead of

  (defun add (a &rest b)
    (if (null b)
        a
        (+ a (eval (cons '+ b)))))
One should avoid eval and use endp instead of null:

   (defun add (a &rest b)
        (if (endp b) a
            (apply #'add (+ a (first b)) (rest b))))

Replies

aidenn0 • today at 4:44 AM

The use of cl:eval alone is enough to make me believe that the CL column was never reviewed by an experienced CL programmer. I am now more suspicious of the other columns, which are languages I'm far less familiar with.

CodeArtisan • yesterday at 10:31 PM

Shouldn't it be (+ a (apply + b))

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ludston • yesterday at 11:06 PM

Worse: Using recursion in Common Lisp isn't idiomatic, given that CL doesn't guarantee tail-call optimisation in the specification.

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