Hi ka, You're right. Eliminating special cases is more a factor of the design of the API than of the programming language. Nevertheless, a well- designed API (that has eliminating special cases in mind) in combination with a functional programming language makes your code extremely elegant. Thus many API's for functional languages put considerable thought into this issue.
The (pred) issue you point out is a good one: if pred is nil: then (pred elt) results in an error because nil cannot be called as a function. This (when pred...) is necessary. You can surmise that Rich could have hypothetically designed Clojure such that nil will return "nil" when called as a function, thus eliminating the need for the special case check. But this opens up more opportunity for shooting yourself in the foot later, thus the current scheme is a nice balance between elegance and safety. Enjoy Clojure! -Patrick -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
