Controlling loop flow with simple restarts

Sometimes you know in advance how you want to change control flow in a loop. Other times you might want to defer that decision by offering a restart. For example, here’s a loop with a pair of with-simple-restarts:

(with-simple-restart (stop-processing "Stop processing users")
  (dolist (user (pending-user-list))
    (with-simple-restart (skip "Skip user ~A" user)
      (process-user user))))

If there is a problem processing users, you might get something in the debugger that looks like this:

Could not find home directory for "nancy"
   [Condition of type SIMPLE-ERROR]

Restarts:
 0: [SKIP] Skip user nancy
 1: [STOP-PROCESSING] Stop processing users

You can then interactively choose which action to take, depending on what’s most appropriate for the condition at hand.

(You can also choose restarts non-interactively. That’s a tip for another day.)