(Untitled)

[novas007]

mike@neal:~> PAGER='head -n5' perldoc -f map
map BLOCK LIST
map EXPR,LIST
        Evaluates the BLOCK or EXPR for each element of LIST
        (locally setting $_ to each
        element) and returns the list value composed of the results of each such evalua-
        tion. In scalar context, returns the total number of elements so generated.
Ok,

Comments

[kirotea]

I log into LJ and see that you've made a post, but then I can't understand a thing about it. I feel so left out. :'(

:P

[novas007]

Eh, I'm just bemoaning the fact that my two current favorite languages (Perl & C, respectively) both provide good documentation for all of the default language and a good portion of the non-default language. Lisp (which I'm trying very very hard to like (I really like scheme, a language very much like lisp)) doesn't seem to provide the same courtesy.. or, at least, this implementation doesn't. But this implementation is basically the "right" one, insofar as there is a right one. There are docs available online, but none really in an easy-to-get-at format.. I can get all sorts of useless information, but very little good information. I don't want to have to read 50 pages to understand 1 function.

[kirotea]

... I can get all sorts of useless information, but very little good information. I don't want to have to read 50 pages to understand 1 function.

That much I understand. :P I guess I'm just not that much of a WPI nerd that I should be paying attention to posts like these.

[xach]

As I understand it, during the process of generating the CLISP system,
meaningful symbol names for the arguments to built-in functions are lost. Other Lisp
implementations doesn't suffer from this.

I find it easiest to work with SLIME in Emacs, and I use SBCL most of
the time. When I type "(mapcar", the echo area displays
"(mapcar function list &rest more-lists)". If I hit M-., I am taken to
the source code of SBCL's implementation of MAPCAR. If I hit "C-c C-d
h", I'm taken to the HyperSpec page for MAPCAR (http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_mapc_.htm).
I don't tend to use the built-in HyperSpec keys very much, because I
have a smart bookmark
for it, so I can type "clhs mapcar" into my browser and it goes to the
right place.

I also just found slime-describe-function, which is bound to C-c
C-f. It produces this in SBCL:

# is a function