Re: issue EVAL-WHEN-NON-TOP-LEVEL

[sandra@cs.utah.edu (Sandra J Loosemore)]

> Date: Sat, 21 May 88 04:42:51 PDT
> From: Jon L White <edsel!jonl@labrea.stanford.edu>
> 
> This proposal changes EVAL-WHEN from being a special-form into being a 
> MACRO [that expands into some readily-understandable(?) code].  Thus it 
> wouldn't be subject to the no-shadowing-of-special-forms rule.

Well, it doesn't go quite that far.  In the new, revised version of the
proposal, I was going to say that EVAL-WHEN behaves *as if* it were
implemented as a macro.  Changing its "official" status from special form
to macro is a somewhat larger step.  

I can think of cases where user code would still want to think of it as
a special form, particularly if we don't decide to make the *compiling-p*
variable public.  For instance, if you're trying to implement some kind
of a code-walking preprocessor, you would probably want it to leave the
EVAL-WHENs in place since the context in which the preprocessor executes
may not be the same as the context in which the code it produces is to
be processed.

I will bow to the wishes of the subcommittee on this issue.  I do think
we need to make a decision one way or the other and include the rationale
in the proposal, because somebody else is bound to bring it up later on.

-Sandra
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