Re: making patterns the hard way

[bill@cambridge.apple.com (Bill St. Clair)]

>MACL 2.0 final defines the pattern :record as a handle.
>It used to (and I believe should be) defined as a pointer.

This is correct.

Our automagic Pascal to Lisp interface file converter is responsible
for these changes in default record types. If it saw a data type
defined which is a handle to a record, it made the default record type
be a handle. Because it is unpredictable, I have stopped assuming
anything about the default storage type for records. I always use the
:STORAGE option to MAKE-RECORD and I use PREF & HREF instead of RREF.
If you do the same you will probably confuse yourself less.