On Dec 19, 2007 4:25 PM, Attila Lendvai attila.lendvai@gmail.com wrote:

Nikodemus, i've seen your comment regarding r-f-p. i have more or less copied r-f-p from arnesi and unfortunately didn't give it enough thoughts and therefore the current argument order just a heritage.

the (r-f-p plist &rest keys) signature looks much better and performance can be have through inlining the calls, so i suggest to simply changing r-f-p to that signature, and recording the change with a big fat warning.

Um. I think there is some confusion here.

What we have is

function REMOVE-FROM-PLIST plist &rest key

What I think we should have is

function REMOVE-FROM-PLIST keys plist &key test key

function SANS plist &rest keys

I suspect they are both good idioms for diffent cases -- what bothers me about R-F-P as it stands now is that

(remove :foo plist :key #'car)

has a reversed argument order in comparison to

(remove-from-plist plist :foo)

I agree that for most uses the &rest list is almost certain to be better, though. And I don't think this is a huge showstopper issue -- just a minor niggle.

Another yet-different possibility would be to call it PRUNE-PLIST and keep the current order. Balance between clear name, naming conventions, and usability? Perhaps we can only get two out of three...

Cheers,

-- Nikodemus