On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 6:28 PM, David Herman <[email protected]> wrote:
> The fact is that "dynamic scope" is used to mean multiple things: 1) the
> "stack-like" semantics employed by e.g. the original Lisps, and 2) any
> non-static scoping semantics. The former was so famous that it came to be
> the common usage of the term, but #1 is really just a special case of #2.
> I've seen people use it both ways. Sam's using it the second way, Dmitry is
> using it the first way (and trying to claim that Sam's way is wrong). It's
> not really a deep issue, just ambiguous terminology.
#1 has such a long history and is such a clear concept that I really wish to
preserve our ability to talk about it clearly. Why dynamic scoping was
attractive and why it turns out to be bad is one of the most important
lessons from the history of language design. For me "dynamic scoping" will
always be #1. For #2, "non-static scope" is adequate and perfectly clear.
--
Cheers,
--MarkM
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