Subject: how to pass the name of a variable as argument?
From: Robert Dodier
Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 09:10:18 -0600
On 5/8/08, Barton Willis <willisb at unk.edu> wrote:
> I've had this though too---if we had a reliable Maxima to CL
> translator we could translate all inputs into CL. If the translator
> was flexible and easy to modify, we could have lexical behavior too.
> And we would banish the differences between interpreted and translated
> Maxima.
Hmm, that makes a lot of sense to me. It might be pretty easy
to get lexical binding --- at present the translator emits a lot of
(DECLARE (SPECIAL FOO)) so all we have to do is find those
and cut them out.
The Maxima declare function still recognizes declare(foo, special)
although I think it does nothing with it. At this point I think I am
inclined to banish special variables, if we were to implement lexical
scope; special binding isn't necessary to implement global
variables, and other uses cause pain and confusion.
FWIW
Robert Dodier