Re: Comparing functions

[Jeff Dalton <jeff%aiai.edinburgh.ac.uk@NSS.Cs.Ucl.AC.UK>]

> From:	CCFVX3::SEB1525      "Steve Bacher (Batchman)"  8-SEP-1988 07:30
> To:	IN%"jeff%aiai.edinburgh.ac.uk@nss.cs.ucl.ac.UK",SEB1525     
> Subj:	RE: Re: Implementing :TEMPORARY hash tables at the Lisp level?
> 
> Well, as was already pointed out, an implementation may be creating new
> objects every time #' is done, and it may not be trivial to optimize this
> on the part of the compiler.  There's gotta be a better way...

I think it *is* trivial to optimize #'F when F is a symbol.  Simply
return the value of F in the function namespace: this function should
already exist and should not have to be copied or remade.

Comparison between different results of #'(LAMBDA ...), however, will
always be problematic because we want to allow certain optimizations
which will depend on what side-effects occur in the lambda-expression
and because it is not possible to compare arbitrary functions in general.

-- Jeff