Subject: bug#73853: 31.0.50; Should and-let* become a synonym for when-let*?

From: Jim Porter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2024 12:25:43 -0700

On 10/22/2024 8:24 AM, Michael Heerdegen via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, 
the Swiss army knife of text editors wrote:
> Sean Whitton <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
>> retitle 73853 Should and-let* become a synonym for when-let*?
>> thanks
> 
> Thanks for the fine summary.
> 
>>    - I'd like to go ahead and install a patch marking when-let and if-let
>>      as obsolete, unless Michael is keen to be the one to do it as the
>>      initiator of the previous effort
> 
> He is not, feel free to go ahead when there are no objections from
> others.

I missed this before this change merged, but I think I'd have preferred 
to keep 'if-let' and 'when-let' around, and only to obsolete their 
backward-compatible forms, with the goal of removing that 
backward-compatibility one day. Then we'd eventually result in 'if-let' 
and 'when-let' (with their preferred semantics) being the only forms around.

It's a minor thing, but I generally read a "*" suffix on a 
function/macro name to mean "this function is an extension or 
modification of the non-* form". But if there's no (non-obsolete) 
non-star form then that breaks down.

On the other hand, the way bindings work in 'if-let*' and 'when-let*' 
are closer to 'let*' than 'let'. I think that's a false friend though, 
since they're only similar, not actually the same (of course the 
semantics couldn't be exactly the same or there'd be no reason for 
'if-let*' and 'when-let*' to exist).

Maybe I'm the odd one out here and everyone else prefers to keep 
'if-let*' for the long term, in which case I won't dig my heels in on 
this issue.