[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Issue: DEFPACKAGE (version 3)



    Date: Tue, 27 Sep 88 22:41:16 PDT
    From: Jon L White <jonl@lucid.com>

    Add a DEFPACKAGE macro to the language.  It encourages putting the
    entire definition of a package in a single place.  It also encourages
    putting all the package definitions of a program in a single file, which
    can be loaded before loading or compiling anything that depends on those
    packages.  This file can be read in the USER package, avoiding any
    package bootstrapping issues.

I think that at least IN-PACKAGE should not accept these options, and
should be used for selection only.  The reason is the same as the one
for adding DEFPACKAGE.  If you do this to IN-PACKAGE, people will end	
up making the same mistake of using in-package with different arguments
in different files of their program.


Also, wherever it currently takes a symbol or a symbol-name (string), it
should just take a string.  There are two reasons for this.  The first
is simplicity, the current description of what happens with symbols is
confusing.  More importantly is current practice.  In systems which use
a "structure" editor, forms which take symbols as their argument, and
then change the print-name of those symbols, cause all sorts of
problems.  So, at least the import options will cause problems for this
system.
-------