[cl-typesetting-devel] Fwd: top-level misuses defconstant

[Edi Weitz]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 13:41:54 +0400, "Dmitriy Ivanov" <divanov at aha.ru> wrote:

> AFAIK, defining a list with defconstant is not prohibited by ANSI CL
> explicitly.

Certainly not.  I think the point is that you usually first compile a
file and then load it and you don't know (from the ANSI standard)
whether the DEFCONSTANT form takes effect twice in this case.  In most
Lisps (not only SBCL) this is the case but the other implementations
aren't as anal as SBCL and will just try to Do The Right Thing[TM].

> IMHO, dealing with constants in SBCL is a SBCL convenience issue,
> not a general ANSI CL non-conformance issue.

Kind of.  I think a library that purports to run on SBCL has to deal
with it somehow.  I'd say it's a (minor) wart in the spec and the SBCL
language lawyers found it... :)

Cheers,
Edi.