[slime-devel] Using the REPL when a computation is running.

[Dirk Gerrits]

Hi.

On 13 January I noted that evaluating an expression in the REPL was
not possible if there was still a computation underway.  I then asked
whether this could be fixed.  

I was told by Brian Mastenbrook that it required threading, and that
some work on it had been done.  Raymond Toy replied that threads were
not strictly necessary, and that ILISP did it by interrupting the
current computation, performing the requested action, and then
resuming the computation again.  Luke Gorrie said he liked that idea.
He also noted that the discussions on threading until that time were
not exactly related to my request.

Since then, I haven't really followed the SLIME list that much, nor
have I done much with Lisp :(.  Now that my summer vacation is here,
I decided to catch up, and fetch the latest SLIME.  Not only did I
find a nice manual, but to my amazement, the following actually
works: 

CL-USER> (defvar *stop-damnit* nil)
*STOP-DAMNIT*
CL-USER> (loop until *stop-damnit*)
(setq *stop-damnit* t)
NIL
CL-USER> 
T

Great job guys!  Keep it up. :)

I'd just like to ask if there's anything else I need to know about this
functionality.  Are there any limitations?  Dangers?  Which Lisp
implementations does it work with?

Regards,
Dirk Gerrits