From: Paul Tarvydas
Subject: idio(ma)tic question
Date: 
Message-ID: <Zebn6.258321$KP3.66051957@news3.rdc1.on.home.com>
I feel that I'm missing something about how to fully use the common lisp
environment (e.g. Xanalys).

What's a good way to get hints about existing functions / macros that would
be useful to me (I suspect that the hardcopy documentation is incomplete, or
at least hard to search).  Is there a way to mapcar through the symbols in a
namespace (then I could display their documenation strings)?

thanx
pt
·········@tscontrols.com

From: Vebjorn Ljosa
Subject: Re: idio(ma)tic question
Date: 
Message-ID: <cy3g0gybnb3.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no>
* "Paul Tarvydas" <·········@tscontrols.com>
| 
| What's a good way to get hints about existing functions / macros that would
| be useful to me (I suspect that the hardcopy documentation is incomplete, or
| at least hard to search).  

if you mean functions and macros that are part of Common Lisp, then
get (1) a textbook, such as Paul Graham's "ANSI Common Lisp" (ISBN
0133708756); and (2) the Common Lisp Hyperspec [1].  if you use Emacs,
get Erik Naggum's hyperspec.el [2].

| Is there a way to mapcar through the symbols in a namespace (then I
| could display their documenation strings)?

have a look at the macros DO-SYMBOLS, DO-EXTERNAL-SYMBOLS, and
DO-ALL-SYMBOLS.

[1] <URL:http://www.xanalys.com/software_tools/reference/HyperSpec/>
[2] <URL:ftp://ftp.naggum.no/emacs/hyperspec.el>

-- 
Vebjorn
From: Eugene Zaikonnikov
Subject: Re: idio(ma)tic question
Date: 
Message-ID: <6y66hutz8g.fsf@viking.cit>
* "Paul" == Paul Tarvydas <·········@tscontrols.com> writes:

Paul>  What's a good way to get hints about existing functions /
Paul>  macros that would be useful to me (I suspect that the hardcopy
Paul>  documentation is incomplete, or at least hard to search).  Is
Paul>  there a way to mapcar through the symbols in a namespace (then
Paul>  I could display their documenation strings)?

In most Lisp systems, you can do (apropos "substring-of-interest"): it
will print all symbols containing the specified substring.

-- 
  Eugene
From: David Bakhash
Subject: Re: idio(ma)tic question
Date: 
Message-ID: <m3n1b6vt7d.fsf@alum.mit.edu>
Eugene Zaikonnikov <······@cit.org.by> writes:

> Paul>  Is there a way to mapcar through the symbols in a namespace
> Paul>  (then I could display their documenation strings)?
> 
> In most Lisp systems, you can do (apropos "substring-of-interest"):
> it will print all symbols containing the specified substring.

Yeah.  And the apropos function takes an optional 2nd argument which
is a package to limit the search to, which handles the namespace
issue.

dave
From: Lieven Marchand
Subject: Re: idio(ma)tic question
Date: 
Message-ID: <m3g0gywl60.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
"Paul Tarvydas" <·········@tscontrols.com> writes:

> I feel that I'm missing something about how to fully use the common lisp
> environment (e.g. Xanalys).
> 
> What's a good way to get hints about existing functions / macros that would
> be useful to me (I suspect that the hardcopy documentation is incomplete, or
> at least hard to search).  Is there a way to mapcar through the symbols in a
> namespace (then I could display their documenation strings)?
> 

(apropos "substring-of-interest")

or

(find-package "PACKAGE-NAME")
and then Values->Inspect 

You can see the list of exported and unexported symbols quite
conveniently that way.

-- 
Lieven Marchand <···@wyrd.be>
Gla�r ok reifr skyli gumna hverr, unz sinn b��r bana.
From: Simon Katz
Subject: Re: idio(ma)tic question
Date: 
Message-ID: <UXpn6.45$8I1.8124@news.dircon.co.uk>
"Paul Tarvydas" <·········@tscontrols.com> wrote in message
······························@news3.rdc1.on.home.com...
> I feel that I'm missing something about how to fully use the common
> lisp environment (e.g. Xanalys).
>
> What's a good way to get hints about existing functions / macros
> that would
> be useful to me (I suspect that the hardcopy documentation is
> incomplete, or
> at least hard to search).  Is there a way to mapcar through the
> symbols in a
> namespace (then I could display their documenation strings)?

In Xanalys's LispWorks, you can jump from an editor window (including
a Listener) to the documentation for the symbol under the cursor. The
appropriate page of the HyperSpec or of LispWorks-specific
documentation is displayed.

Select the menu item "Help => On Symbol..." and then press OK in the
ensuing dialog.

To do this via the keyboard in LispWorks for Windows, press AND
RELEASE the META/ALT key, then press "H", then press "O".