Re: Issue EVAL-WHEN-NON-TOP-LEVEL, v2

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

> Date: TUE, 10 JAN 89 07:42 EST
> From: SEB1525@mvs.draper.com
> 
> Suppose you want to tell the compiler that your code is to be
> compiled with variable FOO special, but you don't want to make
> FOO special in the compiler's environment?  How do you do it
> under your EVAL-WHEN model using PROCLAIM?

Generally speaking, you can't.  Note that some implementations that
treat top-level calls to proclaim specially also have it side-effect
the compiler's environment instead of only affecting the code being
compiled.

> it seems to me that if the issues
> pertaining to the treatment of PROCLAIM and the package functions
> at top level haven't been ironed out yet, it may be a bit premature
> to change EVAL-WHEN so drastically.

I don't think there's really much relationship between EVAL-WHEN and
the package functions and PROCLAIM.  Speaking for myself here and not
all the other compiler folk, I would like to see a DEFPROCLAIM macro
introduced to take care of PROCLAIM, and the magic compile-time
behavior of the package functions removed and a macro introduced to
set up the package environment correctly.  This would mean that there
would never be any need for compilers to treat any function calls
specially at top-level.

-Sandra
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