25.2. Documentation

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A simple facility is provided for attaching strings to symbols for the purpose of on-line documentation. Rather than using the property list of the symbol, a separate function documentation is provided so that implementations can optimize the storage of documentation strings.

[Function]
documentation symbol doc-type

This function returns the documentation string of type doc-type for the symbol, or nil if none exists. Both arguments must be symbols. Some kinds of documentation are provided automatically by certain Common Lisp constructs if the user writes an optional documentation string within them:

Construct               Documentation Type 
============================================
defvar                  variable 
defparameter            variable 
defconstant             variable 
defun                   function 
defmacro                function 
defstruct               structure 
deftype                 type 
defsetf                 setf 
============================================

In addition, names of special forms may also have function documentation. (Macros and special forms are not really functions, of course, but it is convenient to group them with functions for documentation purposes.)

setf may be used with documentation to update documentation information.
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X3J13 voted in June 1988 (CLOS) to make documentation a CLOS generic function (see chapter 28).

X3J13 voted in March 1989 (FUNCTION-NAME) to extend documentation to accept any function-name (a symbol or a list whose car is setf - see section 7.1). Thus one may write (documentation '(setf cadr) 'function) to determine whether there is any documentation for a setf expansion function for cadr.
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