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Issue EVAL-TOP-LEVEL Writeup

Forum:		Public Review

Issue: EVAL-TOP-LEVEL

References: Loosemore's public review comment #29 (X3J13/92-1329)

Section 3.2.3.1, "Processing of Top Level Forms"

EVAL, LOAD, COMPILE-FILE

Issue EVAL-WHEN-NON-TOP-LEVEL

Category: CLARIFICATION, CHANGE

Edit history: 12 Dec 90, Version 1 by Tim Moore

14 Dec 90, Version 2 by Moore w/ comments from Loosemore

08 Mar 91, Version 3 by Moore, discussion from rwk and JonL

06 Feb 93, Version 4 by Loosemore

(new proposal, update writeup)

Status: Proposal LIKE-COMPILER (version 3) failed 4-9 at

the March 1991 meeting.

Proposal LOAD-LIKE-COMPILE-FILE passed 5-2 at the

October 1993 meeting.

Problem description:

Section 3.2.3.1, "Processing of Top Level Forms" specifies the

processing of top-level forms in the file compiler in great detail.

Unfortunately, there is no such specification of the evaluator or

loader's top level behavior. If the evaluator or loader does not

process top-level forms in the same way that the compiler does, there

can be a surprising semantic gap between the compiler and interpreter.

It may be impossible to evaluate forms that macroexpand into more than

one top-level form. For example:

(progn

(defsetf foo setf-foo)

(defun bar (u v)

(setf (foo u) v)))

If the DEFSETF form is not evaluated before the function definition is

processed, the SETF form will expand incorrectly into:

(funcall (function (setf foo)) v u)

instead of:

(setf-foo u v)

The net result is that code which has been carefully structured to

compile correctly under the order-of-processing constraints given in

section 3.2.3.1 may fail to work when loaded interpretively.

At least two implementations -- UCL and WCL -- have unwittingly

stumbled into this trap by implementing evaluators that perform

implicit compilation before executing any code.

Proposal (EVAL-TOP-LEVEL:LOAD-LIKE-COMPILE-FILE):

Replace the fourth paragraph of the description section of the

dictionary entry for LOAD with:

\funref{load} sequentially executes each \term{form} it encounters

in the file named by \param{filespec}. If the file is a source

file and the implementation chooses to perform

\term{implicit compilation}, \funref{load} must recognize

\term{top level forms} as described in {\secref\TopLevelForms} and

arrange for each \term{top level form} to be executed before

beginning \term{implicit compilation} of the next. (Note, however,

that processing of \specref{eval-when} forms by \funref{load} is

controlled by the \kwd{execute} situation.)

Rationale:

Everybody seems to agree that it's a bug for implementations *not*

to be able to load files containing top-level forms such as that

given in the problem description section. Having the standard say

something explicit about it will hopefully prevent implementors

from overlooking this source of bugs in the future.

Current practice:

UCL and WCL have had problems with this in the past. It's not known

whether or how they have been fixed.

Cost to implementors:

In those implementations that do implicit compilation, minor hacks

to make LOAD or EVAL to do stuff similar to the top-level COMPILE-FILE

processing. None in other implementations.

Cost to users:

None.

Aesthetics:

Neutral.

Editorial impact:

Inserting the text included above.

(It would probably be better to reorganize this material into a separate

section describing program structure rather than talking about the

behavior of LOAD and COMPILE-FILE, but that's too much work!)

Discussion:

Sandra Loosemore says:

I submitted this as a public review comment after I discovered that

WCL was "broken" while trying to port some code last fall. I had

completely forgotten that the exact same problem had previously

been presented as a cleanup issue to the committee until Kim Barrett

mentioned it while we were sorting through the comments after the

end of the public review period.

Version 3 of this issue contained a different proposal, LIKE-COMPILER,

which would have constrained EVAL rather than LOAD. That proposal was

defeated at the March 1991 meeting, with people who voted against the

proposal arguing that

(eval x)

should have completely equivalent semantics to

(funcall (compile nil `(lambda () ,x)))

The LOAD-LIKE-COMPILE-FILE proposal in version 4 avoids this problem

by constraining LOAD only. However, it may be implemented either by

tweaking LOAD specifically or EVAL in general to process forms in

the required order.


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