Re: lexical mumblings

[Richard Stallman]

    The main benefit that I think would result is a reduction in memory
    footprint, from not having real symbols created for all the variables
    which really are local.

What would we do for debugging, though?  It would be quite unfortunate
if we could not get access to these symbols through the debugger.

       - How to reference lexical variables in nested bindings though?  Is
         it acceptable to "flatten" all bindings in a function?  If so, what
         happens if multiple closures are generated that refer to an inner
         binding that is destroyed and recreated in between (ie. the inner
         binding is different for each closure, but the outer bindings are
         shared)?

It is reasonable to fall back on a different mechanism for cases like
this, if that makes the usual case simpler and faster.

     + What to do about buffer-local variables?  In particular, variables
       that are not permanently buffer-local, but declared so dynamically
       using make-local-variable or make-variable-buffer-local.

Making a variable buffer local should permanently make it dynamic.

Miles wrote:

    I think the point of this current exercise though, is that it really
    _isn't_ a `deep change'.

The length of Andrew's message illustrates how big a change this is.