(help some-procedure) may not work sometimes

[jpellegrini]

(help some-procedure) may not work sometimes:

stklos> (help string-split)                       ;; <== it's the procedure object
No help for #[closure 7fa227af1320]

stklos> (help 'string-split)                      ;; <== it's the symbol (procedure name)
Help for string-split:
Documentation:
  (string-split str)
  (string-split str delimiters)
  parses |string| and returns a list of tokens ended by a character of the
  |delimiters| string. If |delimiters| is omitted, it defaults to a string
  containing a space, a tabulation and a newline characters.
  
  (string-split "/usr/local/bin" "/")
                         => ("usr" "local" "bin")
  (string-split "once   upon a time")
                         => ("once" "upon" "a" "time")

But with read-line, both (help read-line), without quoting and (help 'read-line) work.

Why?

Also, a bit confusing:

stklos> (define (f) "a" 1)
;; f
stklos> (help f)
Help for f:
Documentation:
  a
stklos> (help 'f)
No help for f

[jpellegrini]

I think I know.

1. is because the documentation is in the source, but not embedded in the procedure itself. I suppose this can't be fixed except by turning help into a macro that checks for both obj and 'obj... But that would be ugly.
2. is because the documentation is in the procedure... But this is easy to fix: if there's no documentation for the symbol, then eval it and see if the object has documentation. No?

[jpellegrini]

Hm, also:

stklos> (define-method f () "a" 1)
;; f
stklos> (help f)
No help for #[<generic> f (1)]
stklos> (help 'f)
No help for f
stklos> (define-generic f :documentation "a")
;; f
stklos> (help 'f)
No help for f
stklos> (help f)
No help for #[<generic> f (1)]