I understand what they do, and I appreciate that it helps performance to inline them. What I don't understand is the (setf vref) syntax. I thought that after a defun statement you had to have a symbol, not an S-expression? Something like so:
(defun-inline set-vref (new-value chip x y)
...)
And how would you actually call the original function to set a pixel? (I'm not very familiar with inlines, maybe that's my problem here.)
Common lisp has this universal setter-macro, SETF, which can be used to set values to all sorts of places.
In this case you would use
(setf (vref chip x y) new-value)
to call the function (just like with AREF above). Using SETF has the advantage that you can define "modify macros" that read and write a place. For example,
This is special syntax in Common Lisp. (SETF F) actually names a function too. It allows you to define a setter (a setf-expansion) with a normal DEFUN.
