Re: macros vs. blocks

[Sundar Narasimhan <address@hidden>]

>Rather, the problem with LOOP was that it turned out to be
>hard to predict what it would do, when you started using a
>lot of different facets of LOOP all together.  
I'd agree w/ this. Is the problem of using different facets together
related to the fact that some use positional arguments, others use
keywords and -- here's my tool-support peeve -- ctrl-shift-A almost
never does anything useful w/ such complex macros, so you are
constantly having to look things up? (Almost as complex as the new
Perl6 pattern proposal perhaps? :)

a. If you could summarize options that were considered wrt. LOOP, that
might be useful. (I wonder for example, if separation, or an ordered
separation of the facets was considered).

b. Jonathan Amsterdam wrote "iterate" (which I think of as a useful 
alternative to loop/iterate). 
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/code/iter/iterate/0.html

Thanks for the summary, btw. (Loop is one of those things I love/hate
about Lisp - can't live w/out it of course, but there are plenty of
times when I've been frustrated by it to drop back to old-style
predictable DO :).