Another omission: global lexicals

[Guy Steele <gls@THINK-AQUINAS.ARPA>]

    Date: Sun, 15 Dec 1985  18:40 EST
    From: Rob MacLachlan <RAM@C.CS.CMU.EDU>

	Yes, we seem to be talking about the same thing.  I believe you
    have the right model for interaction with specials: there is none.
    Unfortunately this means that shallow-binding implementations would
    have to have separate lexical and special value cells, since you could
    do something like this:

    (defglobal foo :global)
    (let ((foo :special))
      (declare (special foo))
      (bar))

    (defun bar ()
      (format t "~S or ~S, take you pick."
	      foo (locally (declare (special foo)) foo)))

    This doesn't mean that your symbol needs another slot though.  You
    could keep the lexical value cells somewhere else (such as on the
    PLIST!!), since you only need to locate the value cell at load time.

      Rob


I think it is a bad idea to let "global lexicals" and specials be completely
independent, for the simple reason that in

(defvar foo 3)
(defun baz () foo)
(baz) => 3
(defglobal foo 5)
(baz) => 5

the DEFGLOBAL changes the meaning of the variable reference in BAZ.
Right now the meaning of FOO within BAZ can be determined by inspection
of only BAZ:  because there is no *lexically apparent* lexical binding,
the reference to FOO must be special.  With DEFGLOBAL as proposed, the
meaning of FOO cannot be understood out of context.

Here is a different model for DEFGLOBAL: it is just like DEFCONSTANT
except you are allowed to SETQ it.  So you can change its value with a
side effect (or even make it unbound), but it is an error to bind it.

--Guy