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(cl)Old CL Compatibility

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Old CL Compatibility
********************

Following is a list of all known incompatibilities between this package
and the older Quiroz `cl.el' package.

   This package's emulation of multiple return values in functions is
incompatible with that of the older package.  That package attempted to
come as close as possible to true Common Lisp multiple return values;
unfortunately, it could not be 100% reliable and so was prone to
occasional surprises if used freely.  This package uses a simpler
method, namely replacing multiple values with lists of values, which is
more predictable though more noticeably different from Common Lisp.

   The `defkeyword' form and `keywordp' function are not implemented in
this package.

   The `member', `floor', `ceiling', `truncate', `round', `mod', and
`rem' functions are suffixed by `*' in this package to avoid collision
with existing functions in Emacs.  The older package simply redefined
these functions, overwriting the built-in meanings and causing serious
portability problems.  (Some more recent versions of the Quiroz package
changed the names to `cl-member', etc.; this package defines the latter
names as aliases for `member*', etc.)

   Certain functions in the old package which were buggy or inconsistent
with the Common Lisp standard are incompatible with the conforming
versions in this package.  For example, `eql' and `member' were
synonyms for `eq' and `memq' in that package, `setf' failed to preserve
correct order of evaluation of its arguments, etc.

   Finally, unlike the older package, this package is careful to prefix
all of its internal names with `cl-'.  Except for a few functions which
are explicitly defined as additional features (such as `floatp-safe'
and `letf'), this package does not export any non-`cl-' symbols which
are not also part of Common Lisp.


The `cl-compat' package
=======================

The "CL" package includes emulations of some features of the old
`cl.el', in the form of a compatibility package `cl-compat'.  To use
it, put `(require 'cl-compat)' in your program.

   The old package defined a number of internal routines without `cl-'
prefixes or other annotations.  Call to these routines may have crept
into existing Lisp code.  `cl-compat' provides emulations of the
following internal routines: `pair-with-newsyms', `zip-lists',
`unzip-lists', `reassemble-arglists', `duplicate-symbols-p',
`safe-idiv'.

   Some `setf' forms translated into calls to internal functions that
user code might call directly.  The functions `setnth', `setnthcdr',
and `setelt' fall in this category; they are defined by `cl-compat',
but the best fix is to change to use `setf' properly.

   The `cl-compat' file defines the keyword functions `keywordp',
`keyword-of', and `defkeyword', which are not defined by the new "CL"
package because the use of keywords as data is discouraged.

   The `build-klist' mechanism for parsing keyword arguments is
emulated by `cl-compat'; the `with-keyword-args' macro is not, however,
and in any case it's best to change to use the more natural keyword
argument processing offered by `defun*'.

   Multiple return values are treated differently by the two Common
Lisp packages.  The old package's method was more compatible with true
Common Lisp, though it used heuristics that caused it to report
spurious multiple return values in certain cases.  The `cl-compat'
package defines a set of multiple-value macros that are compatible with
the old CL package; again, they are heuristic in nature, but they are
guaranteed to work in any case where the old package's macros worked.
To avoid name collision with the "official" multiple-value facilities,
the ones in `cl-compat' have capitalized names:  `Values',
`Values-list', `Multiple-value-bind', etc.

   The functions `cl-floor', `cl-ceiling', `cl-truncate', and
`cl-round' are defined by `cl-compat' to use the old-style
multiple-value mechanism, just as they did in the old package.  The
newer `floor*' and friends return their two results in a list rather
than as multiple values.  Note that older versions of the old package
used the unadorned names `floor', `ceiling', etc.; `cl-compat' cannot
use these names because they conflict with Emacs built-ins.