mac@uvacs.UUCP (09/24/83)
I've seen the \ (backslant) character used elsewhere as a character macro for lambda. This seemed like a nice idea, but likely to cause trouble on UNIX(tm). Is this a common practice? How about ^ (carat), which looks like a capital Lambda?
shebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs) (10/20/83)
Personally, I'd say that using a character macro for lambda is pretty frivolous. If you use defun's etc, you shouldn't ever have to *see* a lambda, let alone type one in. The number of characters available for macros is sufficiently small that making a new character macro is pretty serious business. Also, the redefinition of certain non-obvious characters could have tragic consequences (try redefining * or !). I don't think *those* two would actually do anything awful, but then I'm paranoid about systems with as many globals as Franz has (try looking at the oblist sometime - every one of those variables is potential headache. Example: OPS5 defines its own 'remove', replacing the Franz 'remove'. Had to write my own... (PSL plug: it warns you about such tricks, unless you tell it to shut up)) stan the l. hacker utah-cs!shebs