Eval-invisible let bindings

[P T Withington]

On 2007-12-07, at 05:06 EST, Lars Hansen wrote:

> That may in turn require heap-allocating individual
> captured storage cells in order to avoid capturing entire rib objects,
> which in its turn may cause overall slowdowns in code that does use
> closures.

My experience is that closures are poorly implemented in current es3  
runtimes because they don't do this analysis and instead capture the  
entire environment, making them _much_ more expensive than allocating  
an instance.  My Lisp experience is that the compiler can warn when an  
'indefinite extent' (upward) closure is being created to help the  
programmer avoid those (and the compiler can stack-allocate the  
captured state for 'dynamic extent' (downward) ones).  Some languages  
eschew closures altogether because they are isomorphic to instances,  
but with explicit allocation.  Personally, I find downward closures a  
powerful structuring tool, so I am glad we have them; but upward  
closures can be difficult for even the expert to spot, so I hope  
implementors will give us a hand there.