[Openmcl-devel] Weird code

[james anderson]

On 2010-09-11, at 10:45 , Gary Byers wrote:

> The #_ does something like the following (with some
> details glossed over):
>
> [...]

even after which explanation, the question remains, why this process  
requires a reader macro.
(as noted further in the text.)

> So:
>
> [...]
>
> (The macro that Ron found probably would be simpler if it expanded
> into something like
>
> (external-call "memset" ...)
>
> instead of doing what it's doing.  I wouldn't be shocked if the  
> READ-FROM-STRING
> idiom was used in a few other places (or if those other places also  
> neglected
> to ensure that the expected readtable was in effect.)
>
> People who used MCL may remember something called REQUIRE-TRAP; it  
> existed for
> the reasons outlined above and may have been implemented in terms  
> of READ-FROM-STRING.

which is what had led me to ask the question. my recollection is  
that, when i was worried about the execution context of that class of  
operation, i called require-trap/load-trap directly. which reads as  
if it operates on the given symbol - without recourse to the reader.