Could Emacs be rewritten in Python?

[Carl Banks]

Alexander Schmolck wrote:
> Jeff Epler <jepler at unpythonic.net> writes:
> 
>> Ignoring the fact that "globals" are module-level, you can obtain
>> "stacking" of global variables with only a single level of name lookup,
>> including automatic removal on return, in Python.  All that you need is a
>> convenent way to write complex things in the 'body' argument.  Untested
>> code, of course
>> 
>> _let_undef = object()
>> def let(body, **kw):
>>       restore = {}
>>       g = globals()
>>       for k, v in kw.items():
>>               restore[k] = g.get(k, _let_undef)
>>               g[k] = v
>>       try:
>>               return body()
>>       finally:
>>               for k, v in restore.items():
>>                       if v is _let_undef:
>>                               del g[k]
>>                       else:
>>                               g[k] = v
>>
> 
> Sure, but this is a but a clumsy, almost unusable imitation of
> scheme's (non-standard, but common) fluid-let macro. So what are you
> doing for multithreaded code (which scheme's faked dynamic extent
> via fluid-let doesn't cover easily but CL's special variables do)?
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but non-dynamically scoped globals just
> seem like a bad idea to me.

What you're missing is that Globals are Evil(tm), and furthermore,
that if your program depends on changing a global in a dynamic scope,
it badly needs to be redesigned.  (To wit, that functions that refer
to the global you want to change need to be changed to accept it as an
argument.)

I think dynamic scpoing is a wholly bad idea, and simplifying a very
misguided programming practice doesn't make it any less so.


-- 
CARL BANKS