[Openmcl-devel] Compiler warnings

[Tim Bradshaw]

On 21 Oct 2009, at 16:14, Ron Garret wrote:

> Serious question: why does portability matter to you so much?

I think it matters: I don't want to have to spend a whole lot of time  
changing my code if I go back to LispWorks, say.  However I don't  
think this is any kind of code portability issue.  No one, I think, is  
suggesting that assignment of unbound variables in code is something  
which should go unremarked-upon by the compiler.  This whole  
portability thing is an annoying red herring, unless you're in the  
habit of writing all your programs by typing them at the listener.

And for the "there can be only three types of variables, and global  
lexicals are not one of them" people: symbol macros *already* provide  
global lexicals, and can quite easily be prevailed upon to do it in  
such a way that it is really quite hard for code to know that this is  
being done (I think you can tell if you're willing to explicitly  
check, at compile time, but, well, why would you do that?).

Sorry, I said I would not respond further, and now I have.