Re: LOAD

[David Bartley <Bartley%ti-csl.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>]

My first thought is that LOAD should be retained, but not as an
essential procedure.  That would help a programmer avoid some name
conflicts, since most implementations of Scheme and Lisp have a LOAD.

My second thought is to wonder why we have included non-essential
procedures in the Report.  Is it to warn a programmer that the given
identifier should be considered "reserved" or is it to guide
implementors toward consistent extensions to the essential language?
In the first case, I'd say that the programmer should be referring
primarily to the manual for his implementation, not to the Report, and
that that manual should take care to warn him of portability issues.
In the second case, I'd say that our coverage of "suggested"
extensions is so patchy that it's almost irrelevant whether LOAD is
mentioned or not.  After all, where are COMPILE and EVAL, two obvious
names for extended features?

So, my inclination is to let JAR do whatever he likes.  This is a
pragmatic issue.  Ideally, we'd have an appendix that discusses these
things, but that may be Pandora's box.

--db--
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