VLS commands are presented using the following form
Command: command-name Keys: key-sequence Action: description
where the user can execute the command with M-x command-name or with the default key sequence key-sequence. And description is a description of what the command does. Most of these commands are covered in the Vanilla Commands chapter, See section Vanilla Commands.
Some VLS commands will have a universal action that has the same description for all Lisp types but more specific meanings or specific meanings for prefix arguments for a particular Lisp type. These are covered under the specific Lisp section under Other Flavored Commands, See section Other Flavored Commands. These specific descriptions are meant to augment the universal command form above using the specific form
Command: command-name Lisp Type Specific Actions: description
where description in this case describes the specific Lisp actions of command-name.
At a few points in this document we refer to the operating system
variables $LISPDIR and $VLSLIBDIR. Please note that these
variables are not set up by VLS or required to be set up by the
user. They are only used in this document to designate two important
directories.
The variable $LISPDIR designates the directory where the VLS
program has been installed. And the variable $VLSLIBDIR
designates the directory where the VLS types directory is stored.
For example the default designated values for these under Unix are
LISPDIR = /usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp VLSLIBDIR = /usr/local/lib/vls
All Lisps have the concept of nil, more or less. Common Lisp
does in fact were nil means a constant symbol denoting false, the
empty list and is interpreted as the end of a list in a cons that has a
cdr of nil. Some Lisps do not have the concept of
nil by default. Scheme for example does not. In Scheme the
closest thing to nil is the constant #f and the empty
list. When nil is used in this document, regardless of the Lisp
type, please substitute the obvious meaning. Unfortunately it would
have been too tedious to use a specific Lisp meanings in all places
where nil occurs in VLS documents and Elisp commands.
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