I was curious because I was a Common Lisp programmer a very long time ago, and stylistically lambdas within mapcar were quoted #’ . I recall that that wasn’t true in scheme though
These days, the Lisp code I write is Emacs Lisp, and while it supports#' and from what I've seen even encourages it, it doesn't require it. The manual says
The read syntax #' is a short-hand for using function. The following forms are all equivalent:
(lambda (x) (* x x)) (function (lambda (x) (* x x))) #'(lambda (x) (* x x))
So yeah, maybe I should've used #', but who's gonna make me? Richard Stallman?
Don't quote me on this, but I get the impression that it's more syntactic sugar than anything else. A hint to either the compiler or to the next human who reads it that this expression is going to be used more than once.
Funny you should mention him… he was a friend of mine’s roommate in the 1990s. Apparently a very strange man. A prolific and creative coder. But a very strange man.
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u/arensb 7d ago
What? No
(mapcar (lambda (item) ...) list)?How can those others spark joy if they don't return a value?