Your markdown is making me a sad panda.
Lisp
Are you on old reddit by chance?
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https://old.reddit.com/r/scheme/comments/16y3avr/comparison_of_a_counter_in_racketscheme_and/
Sure am!
Why must the variable c be declared outside and before the function definition my-counter!.
[ If you put it inside the value is always "reset"]
In Common Lisp, as opposed to Scheme, it is not possible that the car of the compound form to be evaluated is an arbitrary form. If it is not a symbol, it must be a lambda expression, which looks like (lambda lambda-list form*).
funcall isn't needed, because in your snippet defun-ed f.
funcall for defvar lambdas in CL.
Scheme is a Lisp-1 -> variables and procedures are defined in one namespace.
In CL (Lisp-2) variables and functions separated.
You shouldn't need funcall
in your common lisp code, but the way you defined your function requires it. You have
(let ((c 0))
(defun my-counter! ()
(lambda ()
(setf c (+ 1 c))
c)))
defun
already defines a function; you don't need to also wrap the function body in a lambda
. This definition allows you to avoid the funcall
:
(let ((c 0))
(defun my-counter! ()
(setf c (+ 1 c))
c))
Though it's worth knowing that unlike in scheme, common lisp will return the value after a setf
. There's also a convenience macro called incf
that increments variables so you can write the whole thing like this:
(let ((c 0))
(defun my-counter! ()
(incf c)))
And your other question: Why the different placing of the let?
In common lisp, defun
, defvar
, defparameter
, defmacro
, ... all affect global scope, no matter where they appear. scheme's define
does not affect global scope; its effects are only visible locally. This means that a defun
inside of a let
body still creates a globally accessible function that closes over the variables defined in the let
bindings. Scheme, by contrast, needs to have a define
at global level (or at least outside the let
) but the function body still needs to close over the let
variables.