The Environment

[David C. Plummer <DCP@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>]

    Date: 2 Apr 86 11:07:00 EST
    From: "BACH::GREEK" <greek%bach.decnet@hudson.dec.com>

    Gregor has pointed out some of the many problems with writing programs 
    that need to understand the current global environment.  There are 
    additional problems caused by the separation of global environment from 
    compilation environment.  Not that we all agree on how that separation 
    should work.

    Do y'all think we could get enough concensus on how the environment 
    should look to the user so that we could add the appropriate support 
    functions to Common LISP?  This would lock in at least basic concepts, 
    making it hard to experiment with radically different environments.  But 
    that loss might be well worth the gains.

    If a concensus is possible, I'd be willing to make a rough proposal 
    concerning the representation of symbols attributes and separation of 
    global and compiler environments.

This is the wrong direction, since it imposes restrictions on the format
of the environment.  What would be OK is to define an interface which
imposes requirements of the environment.  Define the functionality you
need, invent some function names, but don't go near the format of the
environment.