Subject: bug#40968: 28.0.50; (apply nil)

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 May 2020 06:02:45 -0700

Pip Cet <[email-masked]> writes:

> (apply FUNCTION ARGUMENT &rest ARGUMENTS), I guess. I missed it in the
> first patch.

Thanks.

FWIW, I still think we should avoid changing the function signature if
at all possible.

apply is fundamental to Lisp, and has been defined like this for a
long time.  See the definition of "The Universal S-Function apply" in
John McCarthy's paper: [1]

    apply[f;args] =eval[cons[f;appq[args]];NIL],

Also note that it is still defined like this elsewhere:

Scheme: (apply function argument-list)
Common Lisp:  apply function &rest args+ => result*
Clojure: (apply f args)

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

Footnotes:
[1]  http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive.pdf