Re: Issue DEFCONSTANT-NOT-WIRED

[Brad Miller <miller@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU>]

    Date: Fri, 7 Oct 88 12:52:34 pdt
    From: Eric Benson <eb@lucid.com>

    I disagree.  You may not remember, but DEFPARAMETER was defined to be
    equivalent to Zetalisp's DEFCONST.  DEFCONST was always used to denote
    values that would "never" change, even though the compiler was not
    licensed to substitute their values.  After the Common Lisp version of
    DEFCONSTANT was accepted, DEFPARAMETER was proposed to be used in
    place of DEFCONST in cases where DEFCONSTANT isn't desirable.  As it
    turns out, most uses of DEFCONST have been converted to DEFCONSTANT,
    so DEFPARAMETER has been a bit neglected.

I use DEFCONSTANT for symbols whose definitions will never change (or at
least, I am willing to recompile all references, as if I change a macro) but
DEFPARAMETER for cases where the definitions will not change *over a
particular execution of the program* but may change *between executions of
the program* and thus the compiler must treat it as a variable, so I don't
have to recompile references.

Have I missed something? Am I misusing DEFPARAMETER?
----
Brad Miller		U. Rochester Comp Sci Dept.
miller@cs.rochester.edu {...allegra!rochester!miller}