Ar an seachtú lá déag de mí Méan Fómhair, scríobh Stephen J. Turnbull:
QUERY
Aidan Kehoe writes:
> Replace the O2N (delq nil (mapcar (lambda (W) (and X Y)) Z)) with
> the ON (mapcan (lambda (W) (and X (list Y))) Z) in these files.
This can't work as written, can it? If X is nil, if Y is nil, it will
wrap nil in a list and the nil will not be deleted. I guess from a
quick look at the patch that it's expected that if X is non-nil, Y
will be non-nil, but are you sure?
It doesn’t quite work as written, you’re right. It was difficult to say
succinctly what I was doing, but I’m confident the actual changes are sane.
I'm also not convinced that this is necessarily faster if (length
Z)
is small, as the mapcan version involves extra consing.
It involves fewer calls to #'cons, because the #'mapcar version has to
cons space for the nil elements as well as the non-nil elements.
--
“Apart from the nine-banded armadillo, man is the only natural host of
Mycobacterium leprae, although it can be grown in the footpads of mice.”
-- Kumar & Clark, Clinical Medicine, summarising improbable leprosy research
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