On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Raoul Duke <[email protected]> wrote:

> > x is not rebound because it has gone out of scope. Most functional
> languages
> > nonetheless diagnose this as a rebinding.
>
> wow, i never knew/noticed that.
>
> seems kind of lame to me.


I'd characterize it as a discrepancy between the semantics and the
requirements of usability. From a semantic perspective, there actually *is*
a top-level let binding whether you use LET or DEF or some other keyword.
What's odd about this case is that when LET is used at top-level it has
different behavior than when it is used internal to a procedure (where a
second binding of x after the first binding goes out of scope usually is
NOT diagnosed.

To put it another way: diagnosing the rebinding means that in a weird way a
let-bound binding places it's symbol in a special scope that is just
*outside* the scope of the let and just *inside* what we would normally
think of as the parent scope. We can certainly tell a story about that
which makes the behavior consistent, rational, and explained. It's just
that this story isn't the story we are actually telling about the behavior
of LET. :-)

Also, I should think that LET's behavior should be consistent regardless of
the scope in which the LET appears. That is: top-level shouldn't be any
more magical than it strictly has to be.


shap
_______________________________________________
bitc-dev mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.coyotos.org/mailman/listinfo/bitc-dev

Reply via email to