2010/4/5 Pascal J. Bourguignon <pjb@informatimago.com>

On 2010/04/05, at 18:55 , Nikodemus Siivola wrote:
> macro WHICHEVER &rest possibilities
>
> "Evaluates exactly one of POSSIBILITIES, chosen at random."

ONE-OF seems to be often used not name a similar function.

I understand the need for a macro version of the feature, but could we
name it in a similar way?

Could we include the ONE-OF function too?

If we included a function named ONE-OF, perhaps we could name the
macro EVAL-ONE-OF ?
(think EVAL-WHEN, not EVAL).

As a functional version of whichever there is already random-elt. I can't think of an implementation of one-of that would not need to build a list at compile time, so the only difference between one-of and random-elt is if the construction is made explicitly by the user or implicitly.

As for the name, I believe whichever is a good name and should not be changed.