type-of

[Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>]

I think that your suggestion is contrary to the intent of the
specification.  The "most specific" type can hardly ever be
represented by symbol, since there is almost always a more specific
type that does make use of a list type-specifier.  Although it is
difficult to specify just how specific the type must be, it is clearly
a step in the wrong direction to require it to be a symbol.

It would also be wrong for NIL to be returned to indicate a random
object, since NIL is a meaningful type, but not one that any object
can posess.  It would make more sense to return T or a new type such
as RANDOM.

I also have some doubts about the need to specify what Type-Of
returns.  Could you demonstrate some code that needs to use Type-Of
and is adversely affected by different implementations?  I suppose
that we could rigorously specify some function that does what you
want, but it shouldn't be Type-Of.

  Rob