moveitem

[Teitelman.PA]

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Date:  8 FEB 1981 2346-PST
From: KAPLAN
Subject: MOVEITEM problem
To:   VANBUER at USC-ECL
cc:   MASINTER, TEITELMAN

In a recent message to Teitelman, you complained about the behavior
of MOVEITEM.  In particular, you found that if the latest version of the
function was in core, it would ignore that definition and retrieve an
older definition from a file, clobber the in-core def with that
one, and move the older one to the new file.

This is how the function behaves when you specify a particular file
for the FROMFILE argument.  By specifying that file, you are indicating
that the definition you want is NOT the in-core definition, but rather
the one from that file.  If, however, you don't specify a file, you are
indicating that you want either the current in-core def, a saved
definition, or one from some file known to WHEREIS.  Thus, if you hadn't
specified a FROMFILE in your call, you would have gotten what you
expected.

I don't think this is a bug in the logic of MOVEITEM.  Perhaps a
caveat in the manual about the significance of the FROMFILE argument
is in order.

--Ron
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