Re: MAKE-LOAD-FORM can handle circularities [was Compilation implications]

[David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Wed, 11 Jan 89 11:20:52 MST
    From: sandra%defun@cs.utah.edu (Sandra J Loosemore)

    The thing that makes preservation of EQness "hard" in KCL is that its
    implementation of COMPILE-FILE PRINTs out the constants.  We've pretty
    much concluded that there are other reasons why PRINT is not powerful
    enough for this purpose, though.  It would still be possible to use
    READ in the loader if you wrote a custom "printer" that makes liberal
    use of #, to reconstruct objects that don't PRINT right.

I don't understand.  Are #n= and #n# missing from KCL?  Any printer can
use those to preserve EQness.

A separate issue might be that using PRINT completely fails to reconstruct
some objects correctly, and as you say #. could be substituted in those
cases.  But that has nothing to do with EQ.