Why is it that this function exists, but practically none of the builtin functions have anything registered with it?
I can do:
(defun identity (&rest foo) "This is a pretty useless function" foo)
and then
(documentation 'identity 'function) => "This is a pretty useless function"
But using documentation yields nothing for all the builtin functions. What other online help facilities are there available other than documentation?
TIA -- David Allen http://opop.nols.com/ ---------------------------------------- A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit. - The Army's magazine of preventive maintenance.
David Allen <s2mda...@titan.vcu.edu> wrote: >Why is it that this function exists, but practically none of the >builtin functions have anything registered with it?
Because most vendors haven't bothered. CLTL and the vendors' written documentation usually provide much better information than can be crammed into a little documentation string.
-- Barry Margolin, bar...@genuity.net Genuity, Burlington, MA *** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups. Please DON'T copy followups to me -- I'll assume it wasn't posted to the group.
In article <8eg0jn$sp...@bob.news.rcn.net>, "David Allen"
<s2mda...@titan.vcu.edu> wrote: > Why is it that this function exists, but practically none of the > builtin functions have anything registered with it?
We can't guess what Lisp implementation you are using...
Anyway, Macintosh Common Lisp for example gives:
? (documentation 'documentation 'function) "returns the documentation string of doc-type for symbol. Documentation strings may be specified when functions, variables, macros, etc. are defined. The documentation strings are only retained if *save-doc-strings* is true when the definition occurs. doc-type may be function, variable, structure, type, or setf."
> But using documentation yields nothing for > all the builtin functions. What other online help > facilities are there available other than > documentation?
Various environments can access CLtL2 or the ANSI CL HyperSpec.
* "David Allen" <s2mda...@titan.vcu.edu> | Why is it that this function exists, but practically none of the | builtin functions have anything registered with it?
probably because there are better ways to find better documentation for the language.
* David Allen wrote: > But using documentation yields nothing for > all the builtin functions. What other online help > facilities are there available other than > documentation?
One of the several hyperspec interfaces is generally a much better way of doing this. I use Erik Naggum's but there are others. You probably need emacs for these.
On 02 May 2000 14:21:44 +0100, Tim Bradshaw <t...@cley.com> wrote:
> One of the several hyperspec interfaces is generally a much better way > of doing this. I use Erik Naggum's but there are others. You > probably need emacs for these.
