Re: macros expanding into definitions

[John D. Ramsdell <ramsdell@linus.mitre.org>]

> Personally, I would favor a semantics for internal definitions that is
> closer to toplevel definitions:
> 
> 1) Definitions are evaluated in order.
> 2) They can be intermixed with non-definitions.
> 3) A redefinition of a variable is legal and equivalent to a set!

I strongly agree with the suggestion that internal definitions should
behave much as toplevel ones do.  It always seemed odd to me that the
order counts at toplevel, but not internally.  I would like to see the
semantics of internal definitions defined without reference to LETREC.

John

P.S.  With Marc's proposal for internal definitions, one could purify
LETREC by restricting its initializers to LAMBDA expressions.  The
side-effect behavior of LETREC could be obtained using internal
definitions instead.