Re: defvar and (declaim (special ...))

Subject: Re: defvar and (declaim (special ...))
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/04/10
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3132774043802040@naggum.no>

* Vassil Nikolov <vnikolov@poboxes.com>
| I don't know how good this analogy really is, but I am thinking about the
| way C treats global variables.  (If I recall the terminology correctly, a
| _definition_ has an initialiser, otherwise it is just a _declaration_; in
| the absence of any initialisers all declarations collectively serve as
| the definition.)
| 
| Of course, it is not hard to learn to recognise (DECLAIM (SPECIAL *FOO*))
| as an idiom for (DEFVAR *FOO*) though I'd prefer the latter (shorter,
| expresses intent more clearly).

  um, the former is a declaration and the latter is a definition, very much
  like the C terminology.  doesn't it stand out as such, too?  DECLAIM and
  DEFine-VARiable?  it's more than "idiom" to me, and if I were to look for
  definitions, I'd be happy to find a DEFVAR without binding the variable
  to a particular value.

  it looks like a mere load-order hack to me.

#:Erik