Re: [Axiom-developer] Literated VMLISP.LISP.PAMPHLET

[root]

> 1) Aliases in general aren't terribly useful.

In general they are not. But if you want to provide porting
functions that cover the semantics of two different functions
it is useful in lisp to just store a pointer in the function
cell of a symbol. It's a porting technique, not a useful
idea in general.




I should point out that you have to be VERY CAREFUL in axiom.
Not all function names that are used show up in the source.
This is NOT OBVIOUS. Axiom dynamically constructs some function
names so you cannot just grep to decide if something is being
used or not.

Plus Axiom plays some optimization games. Functions are initially
defined as 'autoload' which is just a trigger function. On first
use the trigger function loads the actual code which replaces the
function definition so it will have the correct definition on the
second and subsequent uses. There are other automatic 'inline'
operations that occur in order to speed up computation.

t