Re: A question about read syntax and compiled backreferences

[Juanma Barranquero]

On 1/27/07, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:

> I don't think that
> the ability to byte-compile code with circular lists is really
> important enough to warrant this sort of inconvenience.

I don't think having a local variable to deactivate it is
inconvenient; after all, there's only a few elisp packages in Emacs
where the slowdown is significant.

OTOH, perhaps we could to the reverse: default print-circle to nil
during byte-compilation, and add a variable to activate it for the few
files that really need it.

But anyway, some sensible behavior should be used: either we do
compile correctly, or we detect circular lists (I mean, we detect uses
of backreferences, like #1=...) and refuse to byte-compile it. What is
not reasonable is byte-compiling it and generating wrong byte-code
that can not be loaded.

                   /L/e/k/t/u