issue COMPILER-LET-CONFUSION

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

To summarize what has [not] been happening on this issue:

Kent Pitman had prepared a new proposal, REPAIR, to go along with the
older ELIMINATE proposal just before the January meeting.  This writeup
has not been distributed to X3J13. 

At the meeting, Kim Barrett showed me a technique for using
SYMBOL-MACROLET as a replacement for COMPILER-LET that (to me) appears
to satisfy Kent's requirements.  It relies on using MACROEXPAND to get
the "value" of the symbol macro from the lexical environment and
avoids all the problems relating to special binding in COMPILER-LET.
(I sent out a more detailed message on the technique shortly after the
meeting.)

What I want to know, is anybody now still in favor of retaining
COMPILER-LET?  Kent, since you're the one who has argued for
COMPILER-LET most strongly in the past, do you think the
SYMBOL-MACROLET technique would be sufficient to solve the kind of
problems you now use COMPILER-LET for?  Or do you still want to keep
COMPILER-LET around anyway?

-Sandra
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