ELIMINATE-FORCED-CONSING

[masinter.pa@Xerox.COM]

I'd like to get a sense of the committee on this issue... my guess is that the
best we can do is to report at the October meeting on the state of our
deliberation, and have the final issue ready by January.

My opinion on the issue:

I think the problem is a serious one, and that I don't want to discard the
issue. However, I'm not convinced that any of the proposed solutions actually
solve the stated problem, or are the minimum cost solutions to the problem.

In my mind, making CL more complicated is a very high cost.

What I remember from implementing stuff like this is that a :TARGET keyword just
doubles the size of the code for the functions, because the implementation when
:TARGET is supplied is completely different than the implementation when :TARGET
isn't supplied. This increases the size of the required image (because you can't
selectively compile stuff out) or else increases the complexity of the optimizer
(which has to decide whether the :TARGET is supplied), and increases the size of
error checking (what if :TARGET isn't big enough), increases the size of the
manual and the standard (describing all of these :TARGET arguments), and only
saves conses for a few applications.