Re: New special form suggestion: LET-CONSTANT

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

    Date: Mon, 03 Aug 87 12:28:38 EDT
    From: <samalone@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>

	It seems like a LET-CONSTANT special form....

    As an alternative, I recommend a CONSTANT declaration.

The Cleanup subcommittee of X3J13 were discussing just that in May, incidental
to another proposal for language cleanup.  Perhaps such a declaration is a good
idea.  Presumably it would mean that the compiler is allowed to assume that the
variable is never setq'ed and the variable's value is never side-effected
(e.g. if an array, its elements are not changed and not side-effected themselves),
and the compiler is encouraged to complain if it can prove that these assumptions
are violated.

Right now that cleanup proposal is in limbo but perhaps it will get more attention
later.