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Re: Apropos case sensitive?



re:
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From:  Steve.Handerson@spice.cs.cmu.edu

Sorry if this has already been decided, but I've been using
lucid, which has a case-sensitive apropos, and think it's
*the wrong thing*.
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I think lucid is doing the right thing according to CLTL. CLTL  says

	"(apropos [italics]string) tries to find all available symbols
	  whose print name contains [italics]string as a substring."

Since we are dealing  with  strings, I take  "substring"  here to mean
case  sensitive. For example  (string= "FOO" "foo") => NIL. If this is
what CLTL says however (clarification  please) then two points need to
made.  (1.)  There  are  other CL   implementations    that  do a case
INSENSATIVE   apropos.   (2.)   The  traditional   apropos  did a case
INSENSATIVE  comparison and I find this to be a generally  more useful
one.

It would have been better (I think) if CLTL had specified EXACTLY that
if  apropos  was  given a string  as an  argument  it  would  do  case
sensitive,  and if given a  symbol  it  would  do  case   insensative.
Because,  on an  implementation  that does a strictly  speaking  "case
sensitive  apropos"  then  (apropos  'foo)  should not  print  out the
function  who's print name is "foo" since the print name of the symbol
'foo is "FOO".
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