Re: proposal LOAD-TIME-EVAL:REVISED-NEW-SPECIAL-FORM

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

Sigh -- it seems like we've already been through this whole debate
at least a half dozen times on the cl-compiler mailing list, and now
we're back right where we started.

To sum up, we started with four options:

    (1) Get rid of #, entirely.

    (2) Keep #, as currently defined but do not make the hook user-visible.

    (3) Some variant of Moon's original proposal.

    (4) Some variant of Pitman's original proposal.

A number of us (including myself) prefer option (1), but others
indicated that they thought removing #, from the language would be
unacceptable.  The next most popular option was (4), defining a new
special form.  However, Pitman's proposal had some serious problems;
it did not clearly define what would happen in the presence of shared
code, for example.  Even more importantly, nobody has suggested how to
implement the semantics it proposes other than by requiring the
interpreter to do a preprocessing codewalk, which would be a very
major change for some implementations.  Hence my revised proposal to
address those problems.

So now we still have people expressing support for options (1), (3),
and (4); and each of these alternatives has also invoked vehement
disapproval.  There remains alternative (2), which is the compiler
committee's fallback position.  If we are unable to reach some
consensus and compromise about either removing #, or extending its
functionality, at the very least we need to clarify the status quo by
explicitly stating that #, must appear in a QUOTEd expression and that
it isn't really just like #..

-Sandra
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