[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: MAKE-LOAD-FORM can handle circularities
- To: David N Gray <Gray@DSG.csc.ti.com>
- Subject: Re: MAKE-LOAD-FORM can handle circularities
- From: sandra%defun@cs.utah.edu (Sandra J Loosemore)
- Date: Wed, 11 Jan 89 11:06:05 MST
- Cc: sandra%defun@cs.utah.edu (Sandra J Loosemore), jrose@Sun.COM (John Rose), Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM, jonl@lucid.com, CL-Compiler@SAIL.STANFORD.EDU
- In-reply-to: David N Gray <Gray@DSG.csc.ti.com>, Wed, 11 Jan 89 11:46:46 CST
> Well, the ability to dump objects would not be very useful without that.
> I think this is an argument against proposal alternative
> CONSTANT-CIRCULAR-COMPILATION:NO.
How is dumping circular objects any different than dumping circular lists
or circular DEFSTRUCTs? Would it be "not useful" to be able to dump lists
at all, if circular lists could not be dumped?
As far as I can tell, people seem to have been able to accomplish
useful work using Lisp implementations that can't compile circular
constants or that don't preserve EQness of substructures. I suspect
that the ratio of constants that are circular to those that are not is
very small. Plus, the LOAD-TIME-VALUE special form could be used to
construct constants that cannot be dumped for whatever reason.
-Sandra
-------