>If there are
> other operators whose names you'd like the etymology of, please drop
> me a note and I'll add it to the FAQ (once I get some spare time to
> work on it, that is.)
Come to think of it...
Q: Why are operators' names so long? MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND and
DESTRUCTURING-BIND are almost insulting.
A: Common Lisp's original designers designed the language for people
using editors with a name-completion feature, like tab-completion in
Unix shells. You can get this functionality yourself by using SLIME
with Emacs (or Vim).
You could also use macros to define abbreviations for the offending
names. This is from the "Macro-defining Macros" Chapter of Paul
Graham's On Lisp:
(defmacro abbrev (short long)
`(defmacro ,short (&rest args)
`(,',long ,@args)))
(abbrev dbind destructuring-bind)
(abbrev mvbind multiple-value-bind)
There are a few things to be aware of when using macros -- see any
book on Lisp for details.
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