Re: First Class environments in CL ??

[David A. Moon <Moon@SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>]

Your ideas about what applyhook could be used for are interesting, but
not what it was historically put in for.  It was put in to make it
possible for a program that steps through execution of an interpreted
program to get control after all the arguments have been evaluated and
before the function receives control.  A hook for the "fvaluation" of
the function in the car of the form would be useful, perhaps, but Common
Lisp doesn't have one now.  It would be better to add a third hook for
this than to incompatibly change the meaning of applyhook.  Note that
the fvaluation of the function has to happen -before- the arguments
are evaluated, because that's how EVAL finds out that it's dealing with
a macro or a special form.

I would be the first to admit that this stuff could benefit from
clarification.