Re: (declare (type fixnum ---)) considered etc.

[masinter.pa@Xerox.COM]

The fixnum declaration is one of the easiest things to remove.

a) Implementations that support (or need) fixnum declarations can add
them to their extension. This is clearly allowed by the spec, but it
becomes something that is an implementation's private extension rather
than part of the public, portable standard. The cost to implementors is
zero.

b) Users who have code that has fixnum declarations could add,
trivially, a

(deftype fixnum () ...)


c) The intent of fixnum declarations is reasonably supported by a much
more portable expression where the range of a variable is declared
explicitly rather than depending on implementation-dependent fixnum
ranges.

I don't know the source of the "certainly" in your message.