Re: Bugs found in MCL 2.0b1p2

[pkrueger@mahogany.cray.com (Paul Krueger)]

	    Isn't the value of *xxx* equal to the specific "(nil)" that was
	    specified in the defconstant?  The value that was inserted into the
	    list was the value of *xxx*, not just any "(nil)".
	  
	Yes, it's EQUAL and EQL but not necessarily EQ.  Your initial message
	said that 'the "(nil)" part of the list structure fails to be EQ to
	the (defined) constant (identifier),' so I was just explaining why
	it wasn't necessarily going to be EQ.

Actually I believe you are wrong about this.  The guarantee is that
any "copy" of the constant will be eql to the original object.  By
the definition of "eql" for non-numeric objects such as the list (nil)
that is the same as a guarantee of "eq".  In fact, as I pointed out
in a private message, I suspect that the problem really results from
something like a copy-tree being done on the list somewhere along the
line.  Since copy-tree will copy each component of a tree down to
the lowest level the eq'ness of the constant structure will not be
preserved.  This would also account for the "failed after some
amount of processing" comment in the original message.

Paul Krueger (plkrueger@cray.com)