Re: [cdr-discuss] AEQUALIS and COMPARE

• The idea that COMPARE returns symbols also seems weird to me. Wouldn't it be better to return numbers (-1, 0, +1 or NIL)? Can't immediately tell why, though.

you need to return well-known identities that communicate the result. -1,0,+1 are the easy way for well-known identities in C. in CL, symbols provide a much nicer framework to deal with well-known identities IMO.

• Shouldn't there also be a hash-code generic function that can be specialized alongside AEQUALIS? This also exists in Java and C#, and could make this immediately more useful (and would be much harder to add later as an afterthought). Many CL implementation add an :sxhash option to make-hash-table, where such a hash-code function could be used.

a big +1 for the above.