Re: semantics of ?=

[Bruce Hoult <address@hidden>]

At 1:13 AM -0400 17/9/02, P T Withington wrote:
>On Sunday, Sep 15, 2002, at 20:00 US/Eastern, Bruce Hoult wrote:
>
>>I believe that use of ?=it in awhile() should refer to a variable of
>>that name in the textual environment in which awhile is mentioned.
>
>I.e., as if awhile were expanded without hygiene for 'it', just like 
>C would do.
>
>I was not party to the #dylan conversation, so perhaps I am missing 
>something; but I agree with Bruce.

The guts of it (but hopefully better thought-out) is what you see on 
the newsgroup/info-dylan.

Unfortunately, both gd and fd currently behave identically in 
thinking that "it" is unbound in intermediate-level macros such as 
pig-out unless you use ?=it there too.  "it" is available at the root 
(non macro) level without ?=.  Which I think is pretty useless and 
possibly dangerous.  This may well be correct according to the spec, 
but if so I don't think it's a *useful* spec -- or a necessaru one.

-- Bruce