DECLARE SPECIAL Considered Confusing

[Jonathan A Rees <JAR@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>]

    Date: Mon, 14 Jul 86 16:46 EDT
    From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK at YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

        Date: 11 Jul 86 18:43 PDT
        From: Pavel.pa@Xerox.COM

        There are six primitive forms in Common Lisp that can both bind
        identifiers and carry declarations:
    	    LET  LET*  FLET   LABELS  MACROLET  LAMBDA
        I will describe the scoping rules for declarations in each of these
        forms.

    You forgot DEFUN and DEFMACRO (and similar top-level definers).
    Those, I believe, would be unchanged by your proposal, no?

Pavel was only talking about the -primitive- forms.  DEFUN and DEFMACRO
are macros.  Presumably DEFUN has the obvious expansion in terms of
LAMBDA, so that it follows the same rules as LAMBDA (which I think
should be analogous to LET*, following the easy-to-remember principle
that the scope of a declaration of something bound by an expression is
the same as the scope of the binding itself).  DEFMACRO, also
presumably, has a somewhat more complicated expansion, but would also
adhere to the principle.

Technically speaking, the proposal (with this amendment about the
meaning of LAMBDA as per a later message from Pavel, I think) consitutes
a change in the *meaning* of DEFUN and DEFMACRO, although probably not
in its implementation in terms of LAMBDA.  In any case DEFUN should be
consistent with LAMBDA.

Jonathan