On Feb 20, 2013 9:41 AM, "Bill Wood" <william.wood3 at comcast.net> wrote:
> I think we're on the same page here. I meant "responsibility" only in
> the sense that a caller could only get more than the "principal" value
> of a function if it explicitly used one of the multiple-value operators.
> That wouldn't change if the called function were declared to return
> multiple values, would it?
That is correct. There is a simple rule about declarations in CL: Aside
from the SPECIAL declaration, no declarations affect the semantics of code
execution, provided the declaration is not violated. An implementation is
therefore free to ignore them completely, or use them to optimize execution.
BTW, there us something in the ANS that the file compiler may assume that
the definition of a function called in the same file as it's definition
will not change later. This implies that a sufficiently smart compiler may
treat calls to functions defined in the same file as fully declared.
> I'm fairly liberal, so cats living with dogs doesn't bother me much.
Cats are irrational. Does Maxima declare this?