[pro] DEFVARs combined service

[Daniel Herring]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2011, Kazimir Majorinc wrote:

> "DEFVAR and DEFPARAMETER do the combined service of
>
>  - in some implementations, recording the "definitional home" of the
> variable
>  - declaring the indicated variable special in compiler and runtime
>  - assigning the variable (either conditionally, as in DEFVAR, which
> assigns only in the case that the variable is unbound, or
> unconditionally, as in  DEFPARAMETER). "
>
> K. Pitman, comp.lang.lisp, 26. April 2001.
>
> What "recording the definitional home" means? Why "in some
> implementations?"

Without seeing the context, I read a couple things into this.

- source location for stuff like M-.
- compilation unit which creates memory for and initializes the variable

Later,
Daniel