Re: Closure?

["Neil Jerram" <neiljerram@googlemail.com>]

2008/7/11 Kjetil S. Matheussen <k.s.matheussen@notam02.no>:
>
> On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, Kjetil S. Matheussen wrote:
>
>> Ludovic Court?s:
>> >
>> >  guile> ((lambda (a b) (the-environment)) 2 3)
>> >  (((a b) 2 3) #<eval-closure b7c6dcf8>)
>> >
>> > But don't do that, since the representation of environments could
>> > eventually change.

> Sorry, I misunderstood. What I ment is that (the-environment)
> etc. is what makes Guile special. I hope there is no
> plans to remove all that.

I agree.  I can't see a reason why we might want to remove
`the-environment' and `local-eval', even if Guile's internal
representation of environments changes, because the ideas that there
_is_ a lexical environment inside a lambda (or a let ...), and that
one can evaluate with respect to these environments, are absolutely
fundamental in Scheme.

On the other hand, it would be unsafe (w.r.t. the future) to write
code that depends on the current representation.  If you find yourself
doing that, better to ask for an official abstraction of whatever
you're trying to do.  (And even better to provide a patch for it!)

For example, I see no problem with Kjetil's add-var-to-environment,
because it doesn't depend on the representation.

       Neil