Re:Anarki – Community-managed fork of the Arc dialect of Lisp
by kazinator on Sunday July 15, 2018 @11:03PM
(#17538474)
Where your comment falls down is that in a Lisp-1, every let is also a flet.
Also, of course, you must use gensyms for any locally bound identifier, whether it is a let or flet. Nobody said that Lisp-2 allows for labels and flets without having to use gensyms; nobody in their right mind is going to lexically bind identifiers in macro-generated code that don't use gensymed names (other than in cases when there is no possible capture).
Lisp-2 addresses (in a good-enough-beats-perfect way) the following problem: the programmer's code wrongly capturing references that the macro would like to use.
The macro wants to generate some (foo ...) call to a function in the global environment. But, oops, in a Lisp-1, a user's local variable foo takes this. In a Lisp-1, the user would have to have a local function by that name.
If global functions have reasonably descriptive names, and local functions are used sparingly, the potential for a clash is low.
We can have a warning when a local function shadows a global one; it won't be too much of a nuisance since global functiions tend to use descriptive names, and local functions are relatively rare compared to local variables.
Also, of course, you must use gensyms for any locally bound identifier, whether it is a let or flet. Nobody said that Lisp-2 allows for labels and flets without having to use gensyms; nobody in their right mind is going to lexically bind identifiers in macro-generated code that don't use gensymed names (other than in cases when there is no possible capture).
Lisp-2 addresses (in a good-enough-beats-perfect way) the following problem: the programmer's code wrongly capturing references that the macro would like to use.
The macro wants to generate some (foo ...) call to a function in the global environment. But, oops, in a Lisp-1, a user's local variable foo takes this. In a Lisp-1, the user would have to have a local function by that name.
If global functions have reasonably descriptive names, and local functions are used sparingly, the potential for a clash is low.
We can have a warning when a local function shadows a global one; it won't be too much of a nuisance since global functiions tend to use descriptive names, and local functions are relatively rare compared to local variables.