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Comment by DonaldFisk | Hacker News Reader

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I don't recommend using loop. Neither does Paul Graham (http://www.paulgraham.com/loop.html) nor John Foderaro, the main developer of Franz Lisp (http://compgroups.net/comp.lang.lisp/re-the-loop-macro-3/195...). Including loop in the Common Lisp standard was a contentious issue, opposed by Scott Fahlman, Guy Steele (3.2 in http://dreamsongs.com/Files/HOPL2-Uncut.pdf), and others (Steven M. Haflich's article on 9/16/02 in https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.lisp/tBmK0...).

Loop is ugly but sometimes an ugly tool is the best one for the job. Format is ugly too, but same issue.

One of the nice things about CL programmers is that we're all pretty smart and we can disagree while acknowledging each others' points. PG also dislikes CLOS for example. I think he's wrong about that, but I respect his opinions.

Format is ugly, but like a bulldog it is so ugly it's cute.

If you don't want loop, you can always use iterate. :-)

Ack. I've never been able to wrap my head around iterate and it's non-standard, so I ignore it. (I also ignore the pretty printer because I don't understand it, even though it is standard.)

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